Recent Comments:
Mobile DTV standard in the US gets raised to "proposed standard" status {Engadget HD}
Jul 8th 2009 7:55AM We have to have our own mobile TV standard because the US already has ATSC and has already standardized upon it. ATSC and DVB-H cannot exist on the same multiplex (DVB-T and DVB-H can, and ATSC and ATSC-M/H can), so if we decide that we're going to go DVB then one of two things has to happen:
1. We have to throw out ATSC and introduce DVB-T, forcing tens of millions of households to throw out their digital TVs and buy new ones supporting DVB-T instead.
2. We have to allocate an entirely different set of frequencies for DVB-H broadcasting.
Now, personally, if I was appointed dictator of the US, then I'd probably tell everyone (2) is the way to go and get some microwave spectrum cleared for it, not because I'm a fan of DVB-H (I really don't give a crap) but because I'd rather see the ATSC broadcasters use as much of their bandwidth as possible on their HD channels, especially as we're stuck with MPEG2 for the time being. But, alas, unfortunately for you guys, I'm not likely to ever be appointed dictator. Sorry about that.
Anyway, that's the bottom line. DVB-H is not compatible with ATSC, so would need its own frequencies or would need the US to switch to DVB-T, neither of which are ever going to happen.
And, y'know, in the end, it doesn't matter much. Even back in the bad old days of PAL vs SECAM vs NTSC, TV manufacturers would frequently make TVs that had all the circuitry necessary to support all three standards (though the control panels would generally lock the TVs to a particular system) as it didn't add much to the cost.
I'd hazard a guess that once the patents run out on the low level radio systems, making TVs that support DVB and ATSC is going to cost no more than making TVs that support one or the other. That's right, I said no more, not "very little more". You're essentially supporting two different multiplexing and modulation schemes in the hardware, the rest is software.
How hard is supporting two different multiplexing and modulation schemes in hardware? Most TVs do multiple modulation schemes already. OTA ATSC is 8VSB, while cable is either 16VSB or 256QAM. Virtually all ATSC TVs support all three modulation schemes. Multiplexing is harder - ATSC uses one big-ass carrier, while DVB splits the carrier into lots of little ones (OFDM), and yeah, that probably requires two different circuits.
And the software? The software differences between DVB and ATSC are limited largely to "How do I extract the MPEG2 or H.264 stream for this channel? How do I find out what channels are on this multiplex? And how do extract the OTA EIT?"
In the end, I don't think it's a major issue for the US to have "its own standard". I think the vast majority of receivers will be designed to work with all the standards available. The thing I don't like about this is we're still stuck with broadcasters having to reduce their available HD bandwidth. That's the real objection, the FCC should be clearing space for mobile broadcasting, or even working on a path towards H.264.
85 percent of the 14 billion videos downloaded last year were illegal {Engadget HD}
Jul 7th 2009 10:37PM DRM is the final issue preventing downloads from taking off, but unfortunately the industry is generally sprinting in the opposite direction.
Part of the reason (perhaps the reason) Blu-ray survived the BD-HD DVD "fight" was that certain major studios, Fox in particular, wanted levels of DRM that go beyond absurd and refused to have anything to do with HD DVD as it only supported the "minimum" (which was already pretty bad, AACS + HDCP, though with neither forced upon content owners.)
Blu-ray added BD+, and made AACS use mandatory, and so Fox stuck with it and refused to switch, and supposedly that's why the DVD Forum was unable to get more support at the critical moment when Warner was chosing between one or the other and was willing to go HD DVD exclusive if the DVD Forum could persuade one other studio to join.
If DRM sunk HD DVD, imagine what the chances are of it being removed from online download schemes, where the content is, by definition, already in a format easily distributed over the internet. You've just described Fox's and Sony's worst nightmare.
And yes, it's stupid, DRM doesn't work, people upload DVDs and BDs as fast as they can buy them, while the systems just cause problems for legitimate owners who find their playback options limited and, in BD+'s case, unpredictable. But Fox et al knew this ten years ago. They knew it five years ago. They knew it in January 2008. They're ignoring what they know and sticking with their guts, and so it's going to be many years, decades perhaps, before we see any sanity in this area.
UK Blu-ray sales up 231% over last year {Engadget HD}
Jul 4th 2009 10:31AM Those of us who are sceptics of Blu-ray are generally not saying "It must be as popular as DVD to survive." I've said the reverse, that I believe it's going to be a niche format, like Laserdisc.
What most of us have said is that it's not going to replace DVD, which is a line pushed by BD supporters, that somehow it is "growing faster" than DVD did (usually based upon bogus comparisons such as pretending Blu-ray didn't exist until February 2008), and is actually at the heart of Warner's decision last year to take a side in the format war.
As a DVD replacement it's hard to see how that can happen, plastic discs are not where the world is heading, so Blu-ray is/is going to be a failure in terms of how the industry and most BD supporters see it.
As a niche format that will live alongside DVD much as Laserdisc did VHS, well, I guess it's doing astonishingly well, much better than I would have predicted, though it does benefit from the fact that the cost difference between DVD and BD isn't anything like as high as it is between VHS and Laserdisc (though I'd love to know why LD cost so much as presumably the hardware and media costs were lower...)
What you have here are multiple goals. There's the industry's goal (BD will overtake DVD in 2010^W2011^W2012...) which is a metric setting it up as a failure*. Then there's the realistic goal and probably the one Blu-ray fans would be most happy with, BD being commercially viable and profitable within the next couple of years and remaining a supported format until, say, 2015, which is a metric it can be successful in.
As long as EHD promotes the first goal, and does so with such bizarrely misleading articles such as this one - which makes no internal sense until you hear the 3% thing - they're promoting failure, and they're encouraging people to post here saying BD'll be a failure.
* OK, BD will overtake DVD, but not in a "DVD is successful, BD is even more successful!" type way. DVD will slowly be replaced by other forms of media, from downloads to VOD. That's actually already happening in my house hold, we used to buy a new DVD every week or so, now the combination of our Dish DVR + Cinemax, and services like Hulu, means we really don't need to and we rarely do. BD will overtake it in the same way as it's already overtaken VHS, because DVD will become obsolete.
UK Blu-ray sales up 231% over last year {Engadget HD}
Jul 4th 2009 10:16AM BD Fanboy/Benny: Couple of points:
1. Yes, MFM keeps ragging on BD, and sometimes he's over the top, but in this case the comment he made does actually add context to the original article, and even helps explain it. If Blu-ray really only has 3% of the market in the UK, then it's not surprising the last comment talks about downloads being more likely to take off over there.
2. I don't believe MFM was ever a fan of HD DVD either. My understanding was that he hated both formats, but is especially irritated by EHD's Blu-ray cheerleading which is frequently misleading and frequently over the top (like posting four articles attempting to debunk that stupid "HD DVD is doing better than BD" poll, which actually served to make EHD look more ridiculous than the poll!)
I do think EHD should have included the fact BD has a 3% share over there. The article actually physically makes no sense (well, the last part anyway) without that added bit of context.
Paramount considering home video partnership with Sony, Fox {Engadget HD}
Jul 1st 2009 8:53PM I've been ripped off enough times by Fox to never plan to do business with them again. I mean full on lies, like the DVD edition of The Abyss that was packaged as anamorphic that was actually 4:3 with letter boxing (and the subsequent argument with the store trying to return the f---ing thing because apparently returning something that isn't what it says it is on the box is "copyright infringement" - yes, that's what Fox has told retailers.)
Screw 'em. Something tells me I'll be buying fewer and fewer discs over the next few years, what with the dishonesty of the distributors and the decision to use an HD format with a flawed and draconian DRM system.
Paramount considering home video partnership with Sony, Fox {Engadget HD}
Jul 1st 2009 8:49PM More likely they bought the sales pitch (more fool them.) Fox isn't going to care if Paramount's discs have BD+ on them. They only care if their own discs (including those containing content they're licensing from Paramount) have BD+.
Fox bought into BD+ too early for it to be a factor, but it would be more likely that Paramount, convinced that BD+ is somehow not a ridiculously stupid idea, would have been impressed by Fox supporting it than vice versa.
Panasonic justifies Blu-ray recorder cost by asking "How much are memories worth to you?" {Engadget HD}
Jul 1st 2009 8:46PM Believe it or not, the MPAA has said that you still have those rights because you can point a camcorder at your screen and record the results.
The really odd thing is that given the relative quality of the things, it probably will not be that long before that's a serious option. A 2160P camera pointing at a 1080P 10,000:1 monitor? That might even work.
At this point though, there are options for putting recorded ATSC TV into DVD/BD. I made an "HD" DVD of a movie I recorded a few weeks ago as a proof of concept and the process was lossless. It actually plays on my HD DVD player though that's an aside. What you need is a PC with an ATSC tuner and DVR software like Myth. ATSC is unencrypted. DVD burners are cheap, and BD burners may come down to a reasonable price (though whether they'll ever compete with hard disk prices is open to question)
If you want to burn OTA TV onto a disc playable on your BD or DVD players, the options exist today. Cable and satellite though, well, that's just not going to happen any time soon.
Futuresource still predicting big things for Blu-ray {Engadget HD}
Jun 27th 2009 9:11AM Because you're a blog site you don't care about your credibility? That's a very strange thing to say: I write a blog, and on the rare occasion (*snort*) I write something bad that undermines my credibility, I generally feel it's a bad thing. I find it astonishing anyone would say "Oh, I write on the Internet, not in a newspaper, therefore I don't care if nobody takes me seriously or not."
EHD does indeed cover some alternatives to BD, but EHD covers those at best dispassionately or often even negatively, without the bias seen in Blu-ray articles. If a poorly designed survey came out suggesting VHS tapes were doing better than Netflix streaming, do you honestly think we'd see four or five articles explaining how well Netflix is doing?
Indeed, Netflix's streaming video penetration, after barely a year or so of operation, is now at 20% of its customer base, and EHD actually prefixed that stat with "only" the other day:
"This is of course why Netflix is actively building it's streaming service which evidently is currently only used by 20 percent of Netflix customers."
EHD has, indeed, done some minor criticism of BD-Live, but it's notable they've focussed on a little used feature that doesn't appear on DVD, rather than a drop-dead feature that has to work in order for users to be able to use it. Blu-ray's flaws right now include BD+ (a guarantee you will never find a player capable of playing every BD disc). They include secure path (which adds immense complexity to every stage of the playing process causing everything from Windows Vista to your Player -> Receiver -> TV link to be a restrictive, bug-ridden, mess), and expense. They include mandatory AACS DRM which means that niche content or content that nobody would want to spend more than a few dollars on will never, ever, come out on Blu-ray. Want a hi-def Nosferatu or Carnival of Souls? They'll probably be available in HD on the Internet sooner.
As if to add insult to injury, EHD's attitude towards certain features, including BD-Live, has always been to suggest it's unnecessary and not wanted, and then go out of the way to promote that, rather than try to get it fixed. Look at the bizarre push-poll last week where EHD suggested that the studios had two choices for managed copy, either make it entirely free (not going to happen), or charge a minimum of $10 for every copy including the first (not going to happen either.)
So yeah, forgive me, but I don't think EHD is interested in addressing BD's flaws. It's interested in pushing the technology. It will continue to report successes of non-BD content negatively. It will continue to ignore or sweep under the carpet the serious issues Blu-ray has. And it will continue, every sodding time any survey comes out suggesting that BD isn't actually doing well, to flood us with a week's worth of surveys saying the opposite.
But, hey, they're a blog, so they shouldn't care if they have credibility or not, and so we shouldn't care either, we should just treat EHD as a work of fiction, and actually not bother reading it.
Hulu to PlayStation 3 browsers: "This video is not available on your platform" {Engadget HD}
Jun 27th 2009 8:27AM This whole cat and mouse game with people who watch Hulu on TV is going to end at some point. Pretty much every modern laptop can be hooked up to every modern TV with the right cable, and there's usually a way to hook them up even if they don't both have DVI/HDMI. So what, ultimately, does blocking the PS3 achieve?
I know why Hulu has a "no TVs" policy, and it makes sense given their content owners cannot legally license the content primarily for on-TV viewing, but there's a difference between not actively assisting people with putting Hulu on TV, and trying to prevent it from happening. The latter is an impossibility, and just creates bad feeling. The content owners need to cut Hulu some slack and stop demanding they go to these lengths.
It's not as if the PS3 doesn't have, *cough*, "alternative" ways of getting the same damned content on it, in ways where the content owners, networks, and affiliates, don't see a single penny. Part of the reason for Hulu is to undermine those channels, right? Why force people to use them?
Futuresource still predicting big things for Blu-ray {Engadget HD}
Jun 26th 2009 5:32PM Maybe, but I think stories like this do EHD's credibility no good whatsoever.
The poll a few days ago showing HD DVD having more penetration than Blu-ray was absurd, and it deserved to be exposed as absurd. EHD seems to take the view however that any criticism of Blu-ray's performance must require a week or so of positive stories about that format.
If EHD was a fair friend of Blu-ray, and was prepared to criticize its flaws in an attempt to get them fixed, that would be one thing. But it isn't. EHD comes across as a mindless Blu-ray cheerleader, unable to handle the notion that the format might not be doing that well and constantly promoting the notion that there are no problems in Blu-ray land.
In other words, EHD looks ridiculous, more so than the idiots who posted that poll without doing a sanity check on the results.
What a mess.
