DVD battle goes high-definition

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Globeandmail.com

DVD battle goes high-definition

By MICHEL MARRIOTT
New York Times News Service

UPDATED AT 3:53 PM EST Monday, Jan 31, 2005

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Jordan Greenhall sat before a flat-panel television that glowed with
remarkably crisp, bright images, offering it as evidence that he could
put a full-length movie in high-definition quality on a standard DVD,
with room to spare.

Neat trick.

So neat, in fact, that it would seem to upstage the efforts of the
biggest consumer electronics companies and Hollywood studios, which
are choosing sides in a battle between two high-definition DVD
formats, Blu-ray and HD DVD. Those formats, expected to reach North
America late this year, will require ultra-high-capacity DVDs and a
new class of expensive players.

The advent of Blu-ray and HD DVD may give rise to a format war
reminiscent of the Betamax-VHS contest in the early days of
videocassette recorders. At stake are potentially billions of dollars
in hardware and discs as the demand for high-definition content grows.

In the midst of the battle, for which the two sides mounted elaborate
floor displays this month at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las
Vegas, Greenhall is asking, Why wait for the giants to sort it all
out? There's a little guy, he said, with a high-definition solution
right now: his own company's DivX 6 software.

"We're just going straight to market," said Greenhall, the 33-year-old
co-founder and chief executive of DivXNetworks. "It's cheap. It's
great, and it's going to be in the DVD players."

The first DivX-capable DVD player is the $250 (U.S.) Avel LinkPlayer 2
by I-O Data. Greenhall and his DivX team, based in San Diego, said the
company hopes to see DivX high-definition players for as little as
$100 by late fall. (Toshiba, in contrast, recently announced an HD DVD
player to be brought market late this year for about $1,000.)

In short, Greenhall said, he wants high-definition DivX to be to video
what the MP3 audio format was to music: a "grass-roots movement that
breaks above ground." But if you're thinking about joining the
movement, there is a major vulnerability: No major studio is marching
along. That means those buying DivX players, for now at least, will
lack prerecorded high-definition discs -- like major Hollywood movies
-- to play in them.

All the talk of high-definition DVDs, no matter which approach
ultimately prevails, may seem premature in a marketplace saturated
with standard-definition DVDs. According to industry analysts, most
consumers indicate that they are satisfied with the picture and audio
quality of standard DVDs, and they are growing accustomed to finding
the players an inexpensive commodity, priced as low as $40.

Nonetheless, as television picture quality evolves with high
definition, many consumer electronics makers expect substantial demand
for DVDs and players that can use that quality to advantage.

Consider, for example, the consumer who just spent thousands of
dollars for the latest big-screen high-definition television, only to
find that a Bon Jovi concert on a high-definition cable television
service looks vastly better than a standard DVD of Zhang Yimou's
colour-drenched "Hero."

Besides, said Andy Parsons, senior vice president for advanced
technology at Pioneer Electronics, a major backer of Blu-ray
technology, consumers are already outgrowing traditional DVDs, which
were first introduced in 1996.

"If you look at most of the 'A' titles coming out now -- 'Spider-Man
2,' these sorts of things -- they're two discs," Parsons said.
"There's one for the movie and there is usually one for the bonus
features."

Parsons said next-generation DVDs must offer much more storage than
today's five to nine gigabytes. HD DVD, backed primarily by Toshiba,
NEC and a number of studios -- including Paramount Home Entertainment,
Universal Pictures, Warner Brothers and New Line Cinema -- is capable
of storing 15 gigabytes of data on a single-layer disc. A Blu-ray DVD
can store up to 25 gigabytes on a single layer and 50 gigabytes on a
dual-layer disc. Both formats use blue lasers rather than the regular
red one.

"It would be, I think, foolish to limit ourselves in terms of capacity
unnecessarily," Parsons said. "Why not do the very best we can do as
far as today's technology?"

Backers of HD DVD say making discs in their format will be much less
difficult and expensive than Blu-ray DVDs, which are supported by
Sony, Samsung, Hewlett-Packard, Panasonic, LG Electronics, Sharp,
Mitsubishi, Dell, Walt Disney Pictures and Television, 20th Century
Fox and others.

For Greenhall of DivXNetworks, much of the debate between Blu-ray and
HD DVD misses the immediate point.

"The essence is that DivX makes you realize that high definition and
blue laser are not linked at the hip," he said. "Blue laser means lots
of storage; high definition means good quality. With DivX you don't
need lots of storage to get quality."

Blu-ray and HD DVD partisans would disagree. In all these approaches,
a significant factor is the way the video file is compressed to make
it fit on a disc. While DivX can compress video to a greater degree --
hence its use of conventional DVDs -- it makes compromises in picture
quality, its rivals say.

Greenhall said his company was pursuing an aggressive DivX
certification program to help more DivX-capable players get to market
this year. It has also received an investment from Samsung.

But, he added, he has no illusions. While DivXNetworks says that more
than 160 million people worldwide have downloaded and used its
video-compression software since the company was founded in 2000, the
lack of studio support is a major handicap. "Very frankly," he
conceded, "the studios are tough to crack on the high-definition
front. They're kind of standing away."

Meanwhile, he said, DivX is "concentrating on all the other content in
the universe," notably independent movies. He also noted that
consumers with high-performance personal computers could record
high-definition television broadcasts in DivX 6, then burn the
broadcasts onto blank DVDs. High-definition home movies can also be
burned onto DVDs using DivX, available as a free download at
www.divx.com.

"They have begun to build a significant presence among PC users," P.J.
McNealy, an analyst for American Technology Research, said of DivX.
"They have become a nice alternative to HD DVD and Blu-ray, and more
readily available. But the question is, can they get significant
content from the major studios and television networks?"

The reputation of DivX (which is unrelated to a defunct video-rental
format of the same name) has also suffered because of its early use
for pirating. And after having their content on commercial DVDs
illegally copied and distributed, studios have said they are less
willing to take additional risks with next-generation DVDs.

So far, the studios have entrusted DivXNetworks with a few
high-definition movie trailers, available from the DivX site; they can
be played on a PC if a free DivX software player is downloaded and
installed.

Greenhall said he was aware of whispers of the use of DivX as a piracy
tool, but said it would take time to distance DivX from that image.
"Dastardly deeds were done," he said, adding that such incidents
happened long ago. "We've been getting away from that image for almost
five years now."

He said DivX 6 provides strong digital-rights-management safeguards.
He attributes the studios' caution to DivX's late entry into standards
talks that gave way to the adoption of the Blu-ray and HD DVD
technologies. Blu-ray players are being sold in Asia.

"We were very late to the game," Greenhall said of DivXNetworks. "A
lot was going on before we matured enough to know what was going on in
this world. They were in the endgame by the time we were ready."

Nonetheless, he said, as DivX high definition becomes more available
in players there will be more content, and more content will help
usher in more DivX-capable players. "Ten million people later," he
said, pausing, the studios will have little choice but to take DivX
seriously.

But Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis at the NPD Group, a
research firm, said there was probably no rush to adopt any of the
formats. For consumers to play high-definition DVDs, they need
high-definition-capable televisions.

"The installed base right now is quite small, certainly under 10
percent of the population," Rubin said. "Consumer electronics makers
probably don't want to confuse the marketplace, which is already
confused enough."

Almost lost in the one-upmanship of announcements, claims and
counterclaims in the DVD format skirmishes at the Consumer Electronics
Show this month in Las Vegas was the mention that a leading video-game
developer had joined one of the competing high-definition camps.

Electronic Arts, the maker of such blockbuster game franchises as
Madden NFL and Tiger Woods PGA Tour, joined the Blu-ray Disc
Association as a contributing member. The move heightened speculation
that the generation of consoles succeeding Sony's PlayStation 2 and
Microsoft's Xbox will offer high-definition gaming for playback on
HDTV sets, as well as play high-definition movies.

"The delivery of high-definition games is becoming increasingly
important to us," Scott Cronce, chief technology officer for
Electronic Arts Worldwide Studio, said in a prepared statement.
"Blu-ray Disc has the capacity, functionality and interactivity we
need for the kinds of projects we have in mind."

Only PlayStation and Xbox consoles play games and movies on standard
DVDs. Nintendo's GameCube uses a smaller, proprietary disc for game
content only.

While Sony and Microsoft have closely guarded plans for their
next-generation consoles, which are expected to be released as early
as next year, company officials have acknowledged that high definition
is likely to be part of the new offerings.

Bell Globemedia
© 2005 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.







"Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game
because they almost always turn out to be -- or to be indistinguishable from
-- self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time."
- Neil Stephenson, _Cryptonomicon_

 

Divx as a movie software? What Divx could do is find movies in the
public domain and make their own to jump-start the process. But how
will retailers feel about properly segregating Divx discs so that
consumers don't mix them up with current DVDs leading to
discontentment issues?
-Rich

 

But how

Maybe by separating them and labeling them. Like with PS2
games or XBox games. CD's or DVD audios. etc, etc, etc

 

Movie companies need to embrace the DivX format. The PC is
becoming a central part of home entertainment, and people
want to be able to store all of their media in one central
location in their home, and then access it from all of their
screens. Current PC's are more than capable of HD output to
your HD screens.

 

Who are these people? Most (mainstream) people I run into are still
awed that they can play a DVD on their laptop. What you're describing
would be Star Trek technology to them. Sure, there's a market for that,
but I don't think it's gonna be The Next Big Thing(TM).

The set-top box is a cultural icon. I think we'll see more and more
crammed into it in the future, but the Media Center PC is still in its
infancy, and I don't care how big your hard drive is, a shelf full of
DVDs will beat it in terms of expandability and reliability.

--

Aaron J. Bossig

http://www.GodsLabRat.com
http://www.dvdverdict.com

 

"Aaron J. Bossig" <>
wrote in message

In my newsreader, this forum currently has 1919 posts. The
microsoft.public.windows.mediacenter has 4010 posts. It
certainly seems a fair number of people are at least
discussing this option; and as media centers advance they
will become much more mainstream. Sure there are alot of
bugs they will need to work out before they can become
mainstream, like the lack of ability to record HD satellite
or cable. But I think they will be a very popular option in
the very near future. Look at this machine and see how
easily it might fit into your HT.

http://tinyurl.com/4vjhe

Be sure to look at the gallery photos.

What the media center has the potential to offer, is access
to all of your music, photo and movie files from one easy to
use interface. I don't have a crystal ball, but I would bet
money that the PC will be an integral part of 30-50% of home
theaters within 7-10 years; and I think that is a
conservative estimate. How many shelves of DVD's could you
eliminate when the terrabyte heard drive becomes more
affordable? And wouldn't it be more convenient to scroll
through your movie collection onscreen, rather than cruising
in front of your shelves of DVD's to see what you want to
watch?

 

While I appreciate your point, I don't think judging the number
of posts on a group is a great measure of how much mainstream appeal
something has. If you only paid attention to usenet, you'd think
no one ever bought pan & scan DVDs.

Yeah, people like the option, but I think it takes a certain kind
of person to invest in a HT PC. They've already got a plan on how
to merge it with their exising hardware.

Sweet. Actually, I've considered doing something similar with a
Mac Mini, and I know I'm not alone. But that'd mostly just be so
I could have a decent broadband web browser on my TV.

Here is where you lose me. I don't see that getting simple enough
that non-geeks can enjoy doing it. Evne the Windows XP MC Edition is
intimidating to some people. All in all, if you want to view pictures
or movie clips, it still makes sense to get a memory card reader for
your TV.

How many movies will be lost when that hard drive crashes,
gets a virus, or gets filled up?

Not if you want to take that movie to a friend's house or watch it
on a plane. And honestly, I don't see the big convenience there.
Either way, I've got them sitting next to my TV, be they on a shelf
or a HD.

I'm not denying the appeal to the idea, I just don't think it's as
attractive as you seem to.



--

Aaron J. Bossig

http://www.GodsLabRat.com
http://www.dvdverdict.com

 

"Aaron J. Bossig" <>
wrote in message

I didn't say that it was.

In the beginning only techies got DVD's too.

A back up hard drive, or the movie files could be sold on
discs that could easily be transferred to PC, so you always
have a back up.

Or a portable hard drive so you can take your whole movie
collection to your friend's house.

I think as they become more user friendly and have all the
capabilities needed, they will become a very popular option.

 

MPAA will embrace divx (or any other pc-based video format) as easily
as RIAA embraced mp3, that is, kicking and screaming.

I'm interested in seeing if an iPod+video is due out sometime and if
that will cause another paradigm shift.

and i'd bet that the format that ends up as the "official" format will
prolly be some flavor of wmv or quicktime.

-goro-

 

Current PC's are more than capable of HD output to your HD screens.
Make that compressed HD! Most computers in general can't even come
close to playing back full uncompressed HD footage without the fastest
processors, hug amounts of RAM and a blazingly fast RAID.

 

And the MPAA needs to learn from the RIAA's mistakes. If
you don't allow people to purchase what they want, they will
find another way to get it.

 

The advent of Blu-ray and HD DVD may give rise to a format war
reminiscent of the Betamax-VHS contest in the early days of
videocassette recorders. At stake are