December 2007 Archives

A little over 18 months ago near the beginning of the HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray format war I made a few predictions.  The original post is here.  I made an update once already about 12 months ago, that first update is here.  Most of the timelines for these predictions are now up so I can finalize them, there a few still outstanding though.

1. Microsoft will release a HD-DVD add-on for Xbox 360 for less than $200 (maybe as low as $100) by the time the PS3 launches in US. - The HD-DVD add-on was released within the same month as PS3. - TRUE
2. Microsoft will offer a bundle of Xbox 360 and HD-DVD player for the same or lower price as the PS3 in CY06. Microsoft will not however revise the Xbox 360 hardware to include a HD-DVD internally in CY06. - Never happened. - FALSE
3. HD-DVD stand alone players will outsell Blu-Ray stand alone players in calendar year 2006 in US. - Even extending this to today the end of CY07 this is still valid. - TRUE
4. PS3 and its built in Blu-Ray player will outsell the combined sales of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray standalone players world wide in CY06. - Also extending this one to the end of CY07 it is still valid - TRUE
5. There will be no dual format stand alone players available in CY06 in US. - The first dual format player the LG BH100 wasn't released until late Jan / early Feb 07. - TRUE
6. The first fully capable dual format player will be Windows Vista based Media Center boxes that include individual drives for each format. This will not happen in CY06 and may not even happen in 1H07. The machines may not be sold with both drives but will be easily upgradeable to add which ever drive did not ship in the original configuration. - Many MCE machines came out in early 2007 and may have just barely beat the BH100 out. - PUSH
7. All players sold by the beginning of CY07 will be 1080p output capable and support HDMI 1.3. - All players sold today are HDMI 1.3, however Toshiba still sells the HD-A3 which can only do 1080i. - PUSH
8. The war between these formats will not be resolved prior to Christmas 2007 and as a result sales will suffer for both. - Uh yep. - TRUE
9. Sometime in 2008 a winner will emerge or dual format players will become universal. Universal players never caught on for DVD-A and SACD however and look how those formats fared. - Still pending.
10. A prediction from my friend Jerry (that I have seen other places as well) - "Both camps will spend so much time fighting each other, that by the time a winner is decided, everyone will be downloading their movies over the internet." I however don't quite agree with this. Mostly because even using H.264 a 2 hour long 1080p file will be about 20 GB. The ability to download files of that size in a reasonable amount of time seems quite a distance away. - Still Pending.

Okay so there are 8 predictions that can be evaluated at this point, of those I got 1 wrong, 5 right and 2 pushes.  Not bad for 18 months ago.  Now to see what 2008 brings for the format war.

I wanted to write an article about where I think HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are and where I think they are going. I am not looking to declare one better than the other or a winner of the latest format war but I will point out differences at times. This article is more to compare DVD to the combination of HD-DVD / Blu-Ray. I want one of these formats to succeed and I now have a player that can play both, however so far it doesn't look good.  I will break the article into sections and then have a good and bad portion for each section.  In many cases I will say HD disc when referring to both formats, if I am writing a specific format I will mention it.  There is quite a bit of technical specs that I will mention but I can't think of a way to describe the differences without it.  I have tried to link to further explanation of terms usually at wikipedia.  I wish that I had hard statistical data to back some of this up but most of it is sales data that is a highly guarded secret.  This post is to some extent a follow-up or update to a post I did in April, unfortunately it hasn't gotten much better in the 8 months since.

Video

• Good

  HD discs have video data encoded at 1920x1080x24 fps progressive which is even better than the best HDTV signal available via OTA, cable or satellite currently.  This compares to DVD which is 720x480x30 fps interlaced (usually seen at 854x480 anamorphically stretched).  This works out to a 6x improvement when comparing the 345600 pixels to 2073600 pixels.
  
  Beyond the pure number of pixels the quality of video is better due three reasons.  First reason is that DVD uses an much older MPEG-2 encoding standard that is not nearly as efficient as the VC-1 and MPEG-4 encoding used on most HD discs.  The second reason is that the HD discs have more space available on them with 15-51 GB compared to DVD 4.7-9 GB.  The last reason is that the bit rate allowed by the newer formats is 4.5-6 Megabytes/s as compared to DVD at 1.3 MB/s.  Just to add to the last comparison HDTV is broadcast at a maximum of 2.25 MB/s so even HDTV at its best is much lower quality than the HD Disc formats.

• Bad

  To enjoy all these extra pixels people will need a 1080i/p display of at least 37" or larger and ideally one with a HDMI input.  Even with a 1080 display if the viewers are sitting far enough away depending on screen size they may not be able to see the difference.
  
  Most people can tell the difference between VHS and DVD or Standard Definition TV and High Definition TV.  However due to upconverting DVD players and improving quality of scalers in HDTVs it is harder to tell the difference between DVD and HD discs, especially on smaller or poorly calibrated TVs.
  
  Very few displays can display HD discs at the optimum of a multiple of 24 fps such as 72, 96 or 120 Hz.

Audio

• Good

  HD discs have newer higher quality sound sound formats such as Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD MA and LPCM.  The best way I know to describe these formats is to equate them to CD's and various encoding methods.  This comparison is not exact and is simply to help in understanding, also this table assumes maximum potential and isn't what is always used on a particular disc.

  CD	Original Movie Soundtrack
  64 Kbs MP3	Dolby Digital
  128 Kbs MP3	DTS
  256 Kbs MP3	Dolby Digital Plus, DTS-HD HR
  Lossless	Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD MA
  WAV	LPCM

• Bad

  A large percentage of people only use the stereo (virtual surround) speakers built into their TVs.  Using this method anything beyond Dolby Surround is wasted.
  
  Anyone using anything less than HDMI for audio connection will not get anything better than Dolby Digital so again the better sound formats would be wasted.
  
  Even those with a HDMI capable stereo may not be able to hear the difference between Dolby Digital and the better sound formats due to speaker quality, room layout and level calibration.

Interactivity and Bonus Features

• Good

  Both HD Disc formats have the ability to do very impressive interactive menus, games and more.  Current DVD titles (especially Disney ones) have pushed the format beyond what anyone imagined 10 years ago but the newer HD Discs can now take it to the next level.  Also as with DVD initially there is much potential left untapped at this point.
  
  Due to the increased space it is easier to add more bonus features such as commentary and making of documentaries.  Beyond what is on the disc there is the potential for expanded content to be downloaded from the Internet to add to the experience.

• Bad

  This first bad is exclusive to Blu-Ray players.  All players sold up to Jan 1, 2008 are not feature complete.  This is no small part due to the fact that the final spec for Blu-Ray still isn't done.  There are Blu-Ray 1.0, 1.1 and 2.0 specification players.  Many of the advanced interactivity features are not available with 1.0 players and some are not available to the 1.1 players being sold today now 18 months into the life of the format.
  
  Both types of HD Disc players have been plagued by disc incompatibilities due to some of the advanced features.  This happened to a small extent with certain DVD players in the first year of existence but since then has pretty much been a non-issue.  However it continues to be an on-going issue with HD disc players.  Further I have one of the very first DVD players ever made and it has played every disc I have ever tried without issue, no player so far on the HD side can say this yet.

Backwards Compatibility

• Good

  All HD disc players play DVDs and also upconvert them.  Some have higher quality upconverting chips than others and some only do 1080i vs 1080p.  All players can only do 480p over non-HDMI with standard commercial DVD.
  
  Many of the HD disc players can play both SACD and DVD-Audio discs.

• Bad

  Some HD disc players can't play CDs, I haven't verified this myself but I have read reports that indicate this.
  
  According to reports I have read it seems the current HD disc players are less tolerant of poor quality discs such as rental or Netflix discs.

Disc Pricing, Availability and Rental

• Good

  HD discs are currently selling for $25-30.  Frequently there are sales on the discs either simply lowering the price or extreme deals such as buy one get one free.
  
  Most stores such as Best Buy, Circuit City, Target and Wal-Mart stock both of the HD formats.  Amazon of course has the best selection and often by far the best pricing.
  
  Netflix has all titles available in all the possible formats and currently 95% of my queue is available in one of the HD formats.

• Bad

  DVDs regularly sell for $15 or less.
  
  The shelf space allotted and as a result the selection for HD discs is much smaller than DVD.
  
  Blockbuster can't seem to make up its mind regarding HD discs, first they did both, then only Blu-Ray and who knows what now.  Most smaller rental locations have avoided HD discs altogether at this point.

Players and Upgradability

• Good

  The Blu-Ray side has a good selection of players from about five different manufacturers with the PS3 leading the pack.  The HD-DVD side is pretty much exclusively Toshiba and Xbox 360, there have been other players but they have for the most part been Toshiba players in a different box.  There are now two companies making dual format players, both are very similar and are far from feature complete as they are currently shipping.
  
  All players are firmware upgradable to some degree.  All HD-DVD players can be upgraded via the Internet as can newer Blu-Ray players.  Older Blu-Ray players can be upgraded via files downloaded from the Internet and burned to a CD.  This ability has allowed for features to be added after release such as 1080p24 and advanced audio codec bitstreaming for HD-DVD or Blu-Ray 1.1 compliance.  Firmware fixes have also allowed for updates relating to disc compatibility.  This type of updating was not available to DVD players until the last few years and even then only on certain players, because of this getting features such as progressive output and DTS decoding meant buying a new DVD player.
  
  The current players available are truly purpose built computers.  Most if not all run a version of linux.  It is because of this that they can be upgraded.  As a result the best Blu-Ray player in many respects is the PS3 since it is the most powerful and versatile of the computers.  The Xbox 360 is a good HD-DVD player, but due to some hardware choices necessitated by its release time frame it can't support newer HDMI standards.

• Bad

  Even though there are a few companies making players price and feature differentiation is almost non-existant.  There are probably close to a hundred companies making dvd players worldwide with prices from $10 to $1000 and features and build quality to match.  Also things like portable or in car players aren't even close to being available and it is arguable if they would be worth it anyway.
  
  Due to the fact that manufactures know their players are upgradable one could argue that they don't feel as compelled to finish them totally before putting them on sale.  The fact that the standards aren't set doesn't help this.
  
  In the future once the standards have stabilized players will have to be simplified to reduce production costs.  Until the majority of players are below $200 there is no chance HD players will become mainstream.

Computer Usage

• Good

  Both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD can in theory be used for computers.  Both have recordable formats that can be used to make discs for video uses or for backup purposes.  The initial formats were 15/30 GB per disc for HD-DVD and 25/50 GB for Blu-Ray.  HD-DVD has recently released an updated spec that includes 17/34/51 GB per disc, however it is unclear right now if those discs will be 100% backwards compatible with existing players.

• Bad

  Neither format has made much of an impact as a standard player to be included with new computers.  Until that happens both are essentially irrelevant for computers other than burning discs to play in HD disc players.
  
  Both formats are very expensive for blank media.  Currently the blank discs cost about $1.00 / GB.  This is in comparison to blank DVD which are about $.05 / GB and hard drives which are about $.25 / GB.  It is hard to justify the costs currently for this media.

Sales

• Good

  There isn't much good to say about sales figures thus far other than they keep increasing.

• Bad

  One of the best selling Blu-Ray titles so far is Ratatouille and the best selling HD-DVD is Transformers.  Both however sold no more than 2.5% on HD discs as compared to sales on DVD.  For right now these discs are not making any money for the studios.  One can only assume they are doing them in hopes of building the format and reaping the rewards later.
  
  The bigger problem is the split between the formats which varies between 50/50 and as much as 75/25 in Blu-Ray's favor.  This just makes deciding which way to go a guessing game at best.

Format War

• Good

  I can't in good conscience say there is anything good about the format war for the consumer.

• Bad

  As I mentioned above in the sales figures Blu-Ray is leading but by no means winning.  This just continues the mess that started 18 months ago.
  
  Right now the PS3 which is primarily a video game machine is by far the best selling HD disc player and arguably one of the best.  The PS3 has outsold all HD-DVD players and all stand alone Blu-Ray players combined.  Further Sony can't let Blu-Ray die since it is the format of games on the PS3.  Blu-Ray is here to stay for the life of the PS3, just like UMD will exist as long as the PSP does.  As a result the format war is likely not to end any time soon.
  
  The only studio releasing discs on both formats is Warner Bros.  They also had plans for a disc format to play on both players but those plans seem to have been pushed off or totally canceled.  All other studios are only on one format or the other which means consumers may have to choose player based on content, which is just silly.

Wrap-Up Notes

I wish I could setup two test rooms to test out some of my theories here.  Ideally one room would have a upconverting DVD player and anohter room with HD Disc player with both on the same model of calibrated TV.  Another set of tests could be done regarding audio; one with Dolby Digital and the other with newer sound formats (any of the lossless ones).  I think it would telling to see if average people could pick out which is which.  The last test only for video or audio philes would be to set up the two rooms with the only difference being HD-DVD or Blu-Ray discs.  A dual format player could even be used to make the rooms identical, this way any other differences can be eliminated.  This I think would prove that the differences in the core goal of watching a movie between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are academic at best.

I am hopeful that what I have laid out here will improve over the next twelve months and there might be some real progress by 2009.  However the only real chance I see of that happening is dual format players that are feature complete for both formats are available at reasonable prices.  Until that happens it is difficult for me to recommend anyone get an HD disc player right now unless you want an upconverting DVD player that also happens to play the new formats at a good price.

I found this article at wikipedia that adds a bit more stats to my statements above.

Another quick follow-up it appears that the NT Times has an article out today for the most part agreeing with me as well.  You can read the article here.

In the last two days both Dell and Toshiba have released their new tablets on the world.  For Dell it is their very first tablet based machine whereas for Toshiba it is their 9th generation (Toshiba's claim).  Both models feature a dual mode touch / digitizer screen.  I am not sure if they are exactly the same screen or not, but they are both 1280x800 12.1 WXGA screens based at least partially on Wacom technology and feature LED backlighting.

Dell's Latitude XT is shooting for the low power long battery life price is no object market.  With a starting price of $2499-2678 it is not a model that my school will be considering.  This model comes with low power slower processors which will allow for longer battery life.  There is also the option of a SSD based HD which should further reduce power usage.  The XT has the option of an extended life internal battery as well as an additional slice battery attached to the base.  The two together should easily allow a full day's worth of use.  Dell chose to drop the optical drive from the main chassis and made it available in a docking station.

Toshiba's Portégé M700 is primarily a refinement of their previous M400 model.  As mentioned above Toshiba has moved from their 1400x1050 12.1 screen to a new 1280x800 12.1 wide screen model.  They are also now offering touch screen ability to go along with the continuing digitizer usage.  The external case is almost identical to the M400 model other than the movement of some of the ports.  Some highlights of the changes include an integrated webcam, the removal of the latching mechanism.  The starting price of this model is $1449 and it does include an optical drive.  Toshiba also offers a slice battery that in combination with the internal battery should provide almost all day use (7 Hrs to Dell's 9.5).  This will most likely be the model that my school considers for next school year.

Just for completeness some other models released in the not too distant past that will probably be options still available for next school year include HP's 2710p, Gateway's C-120X, Lenovo's X61, Fujitsu's LifeBook T4220 and lastly a new player to direct sales of tablets is ASUS with their R1E.

It is popular sentiment now to call Windows Vista a failure on a grand scale.  Some with historical context are even calling Vista the next Windows Me, which for those that don't know means that it will be a short lived disaster.  I firmly believe that Vista will far surpass Me in success, however I think it still is not going to be very long lived.  I think Vista is a bridge OS in terms of hardware.  I think it is a stop gap while hardware shifts from 32-bit to 64-bit in the mainstream.  I am going to go over a bit of history to give context to my thoughts on Vista, many will know the history already and may want to skip down a page or so.

If you look back at Windows starting with the original release of 95 on August 24, 1995 you can see some trends.  (I will be skipping Windows NT 3.5-4.0 since they were not targeting at the broader consumer market at all.)  Windows 95 was the first hybrid 32-bit Microsoft OS for consumers.  It had a great deal of legacy 16-bit code and to some extent sat atop a 16-bit base.  There were some problems with the approach 95 took but it was the first step in a transition from 16 to 32 bit as well as from DOS to windows.  There were many versions of 95 available in various forms each improving on the last.  Then came Windows 98 on June 25, 1998 and 98 Second Edition on May 5, 1999.  Most people I think would agree that 98: SE was the pinnacle of this branch of the Windows family and even today more than 8 years since 98: SE was released there are still countless millions of machines running this OS.  All of the 9x and Me were known as some version of 4.x.

The next transition was to be to NT 5.0, which was renamed to Windows 2000 during development and prior to release.  Windows 2000  was released on February 17, 2000 was not looking good for consumers and as a result Windows Millennium Edition was rushed out on September 14, 2000.  There were many things wrong with Me and it is best forgotten.  It is really unclear how 98: SE was so broken in going to Me but it was.  Windows 2000 was meant to be the big push to get consumers onto native 32-bit code top to bottom.  The problem was that Windows 2000 didn't have nearly the consumer side support that 98 maintained through most of its life.  Windows 2000 was a huge success in the enterprise market but a total flop in the consumer market.

Windows XP was released on October 25, 2001 and was in essence a merge of Windows 2000 and Windows 98: SE from a consumer standpoint.  It shows its roots by its version number of 5.1.  By the time it was released there was sufficient support for a native 32-bit OS that XP quickly began replacing both 98 and 2000 in the consumer space.  Today XP has mostly replaced 2000 even in enterprises.  Due to XP being the second attempt at a native 32-bit consumer OS and allowing for sufficient time for support to build up it had much greater success.  Shortly the third service pack will be released for XP making it a fairly reliable and stable platform, likely SP3 will be the last SP for XP.  On April 25, 2005 a 64 bit edition of XP was released, it along with Windows Server 2003 were known as version 5.2.  This was the beginning of the bridge between 32-bit and 64-bit on the consumer OS side.  For the most part this edition is mostly unknown and has seen very limited use.

Now onto Windows Vista which was released for general availability on January 30, 2007 and is known as version 6.0.  Vista had a tumultuous development.  There was an initial version being developed based more so on the prior Windows XP 5.1 codebase.  However somewhere during the beginning part of 2005 the development was reset and began again based on the Windows 2003 SP1 5.2 codebase.  Some will argue how much of a reset it is, but it was reset.  This had the result of causing Vista to take much longer than originally planned for release and began the downward spiral of bad PR.  I personally think it was a good thing that this reset happened and as a result the delay.  It allowed hardware to catch up and some regards surpass the Vista requirements.

Vista is the first Microsoft consumer OS to ship in both a 32-bit and 64-bit edition.  Unfortunately unlike the transition from 16 to 32-bit this time there are two distinct versions of Vista for 32 or 64-bit.  Also Vista has introduced a large suite of new security protections.  The protections are very obviously a first attempt and will I am sure be much refined in the future.  I think Vista will eventually become the next Windows 2000.  Vista's biggest forward looking feature will be 64-bit but that won't be an advantage due to lack of support in the short term in the consumer space.  However I think after SP1 or possibly SP2 enterprises will begin to adopt Vista for the enhanced control and security.  Quite possibly the enterprises will only deploy Vista 64-bit since they will have the hardware to support it.

This brings me back to the idea that Vista has the unfortunate position of being a bridge OS between 32-bit and 64-bit.  I think XP will continue for quite awhile in the consumer space with Vista slowly growing market share on new machines.  It won't be nearly the success that XP has been in the long run.  This will be spun as a failure for Microsoft I am afraid and they will simply have to weather the storm in the meantime.  There are a lot of new ideas in Vista that haven't had time to gel fully just as there were in Windows 2000.

The next release of Windows (known as 7 for now) which will most likely be out in 2009 will be the big step forward.  I am pretty confident that it will be 64-bit primarily with potentially a limited 32-bit version for parts of the world.  This will succeed since by 2009 64-bit processors will have been mainstream for 5 years and Microsoft can safely assume a sufficient user base to rely upon 64-bit.  Windows 7 will be and do for Vista what Windows XP did for Windows 2000.

I end with a SAT favorite
Windows 95 is to Windows 98 : SE as Windows 2000 is to Windows XP as Windows Vista is to Windows 7

I have been testing the semi-public releases of Vista SP1 since late September.  Today I downloaded what is supposed to be the final RC1 build on the way to a RTW in Feburary I would guess.  I noticed quite a large size decrease from the first preview bulid to the Pre-RC1 and now Rc1 builds.  Hopefully it was removal of debug code and not other fixes or features.

9/17/07 - 687 MB

11/8/07 - 434 MB

11/30/07 - 436 MB

1/2/08 - 436 MB

1/19/08 - 434 MB (Final)

Just for comparison here is Windows XP SP3 beta sizes.

9/1/2007 - 334 MB

10/30/2007 - 336 MB

12/27/2007 - 311 MB

1/26/2008 - 315 MB

4/14/2008 - 316 MB (Final)

These are all for the English language versions.

Update (1/25/2008): I fixed some of the dates above based upon the digital signature dates on the original files.  Those dates are when MSFT actually built the file rather than when they were released.  I also added the RC Refresh 2 for each of them which were just released to testers even though the dates are a bit older.  Hopefully the final versions will be out very soon.

Update (2/8/2008): I added the final SP1 installer.

Update (4/25/2008): I added the final SP3 installer.

I have had three iPods as I mentioned here.  At the beginning I used some older Sony headphones and then later I used the ER6i ones I mention here.  The only problem with the ER6i for me is that my first pair started having issues with the left headphone and then eventually both stopped working.  I bought a second pair since I liked them so much and they have also broken.  The second pair was under warranty so I sent them in for repair (replacement).  In the meantime I have had to use the Apple provided headphones, particularly the ones that shipped with the 3rd gen nano.  These headphones are HORRIBLE.  They don't fit my ear at all so as a result they both fall out and hurt my ears.  Secondly they have no sound isolation at all so you have to turn them up much louder than you should need to.  I can't wait to stop using them and go back to a decent pair of headphones.  I will say one thing in the headphones defense is that they are thrown in basically for free with iPods that sometimes cost less than the headphones I use.  Still they are BAD, VERY BAD.

Apple recently released iTunes 7.5 and the 1.03 firmware for the 3rd gen nano.  I am not sure which fixed this problem so I mention both.  My previous Minis would sync and then prepare for disconnect and only draw power from the USB.  The nano on the other hand would sync and they stay connected, thus forcing you to have to press eject in iTunes to allow you to properly remove the device.  The only downside to these upgrades was that they essentially reset my iPod and all of its previous settings.  I had to go back in and configure the music, podcasts and pictures tabs.  I also didn't get my status of podcasts synched back to itunes and had to manually update which ones I had listened to.  Hopefully a one time occurrence but still annoyance.