Recently in Home Theater Category

Over the weekend I made a post (that has now been removed at the request of TiVo) about a survey I did.  I thought it was cool and wanted to share so I posted it to TiVo Community.  That was on Saturday afternoon.  There were a handful of comments but not much action.  Then sometime late Sunday afternoon it started showing up other places.  Here are just a few (in chronological order as best I can):

Gizmo Lovers

Gizmodo

PVRblog

Engadget

TiVo Blog

There were even a few Digg submissions:

Digg link to Gizmodo Story
Digg link to my blog
Digg link to Engadget Story

The other cool thing was my server running Movable Type with MySQL on Windows Server 2008 via a Verizon FIOS 20/20 connection seem to survive without a hiccup.  I will look at logs to see how much traffic I did, should be interesting.

Hopefully what was seen will some day make it to reality.

Now that the HD optical disc wars are over and Blu-Ray has won I have been wondering why Blu-Ray players continue to cost so much.  Arguably one of the best and most versatile Blu-Ray players is the Playstation 3 and interestingly it is almost always the least expensive.  This begs the question is Sony losing hundreds on every PS3 made or are all the other Blu-Ray makers (including Sony) making hundreds in profits on each player.  I am going to compare the new soon to be released 80 GB PS3 (old 40 upgraded to 80), Panasonic DMP-BD30, Panasonic DMP-BD50 and Samsung BD-P1500.

Anyone have any guesses on why Blu-Ray players are still so expensive?  Hopefully the player makers will wake up soon and realized to expand the market they need to reduce prices.  Also if you compare the two Panasonic players where is the $200 worth of upgrades?  All I can see is the addition of an Ethernet port, a little more flash ram and the ability to decode Dolby TrueHD and DTS:HD MA.  Is that really worth $200, I don’t think so.

Back in November I decided I wanted to do some upgrades to my home theater system.  I had a few goals that I wanted to accomplish with the upgrade.

1. End to End HDMI 1.3a support.
2. Ability to play HD-DVD and Blu-Ray in same player as well as DVD.
3. Ability to transmit and decode Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD HR / MA.
4. Ability to transmit and display 1080p with 24fps support.

To accomplish these goals I bought three new pieces for my home theater system.

1. Sanyo PLV-Z2000
2. Onkyo TX-SR705
3. Samsung BD-UP5000

I accomplished 1, 2 and 4 immediately after I got the new equipment.  3 was more of a problem because the Samsung BD-UP5000 wasn't able to properly output the new advanced sound codecs.  It wasn't until 5/30/2008 when the 6 month late firmware update came out that the 5000 was able to send out the new sound formats.  At this point all the upgrades are working together quite well.  With them I have the highest quality video and sound available currently in consumer level equipment.  All on a 106" screen with 100 watts of power per channel.  If you want more details on the upgrades you can check out my Home Theater Blog.

With the increased abilities of home theater receivers (AVR) comes increased complexity and the possibility of bugs.  Most current mid-range to high end receivers have HDMI 1.3a and can internally decode Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD-MA.  What this means is they have very advanced DSPs (limited purpose computer chip) in them.  The DSPs run software just like a computer and that software had a few bugs, one of which could in theory destroy speakers under very specific conditions.  As a result just like most other modern consumer electronics it can be upgraded.  The cool thing in this story is how.  There are actually two pieces of software that run my AVR, the main firmware (operating system) and DSP firmware (drivers).  The main firmware is updated in a fairly standard way via an attached RS232 (serial) cable from a computer.  The DSP firmware however is updated through the optical digital in port from a CD player.  Yes you play a music CD (well it is made like a music CD, you wouldn't want to listen to it) and the DSP goes hey that is an update and starts loading the "music" as an upgrade.  It was quite a painless process and was quite impressive.  The bad thing about modern consumer electronics is they are so complex they have bugs.  The good thing (at least with some) is that those bugs can be fixed after you buy them for free usually.  One might say why didn't they prevent these bugs, well the main reason is there was nothing to test the DSPs with until recently since nothing fully used them.  Many companies developed toward a specification that detailed how to encode, decode and transport data.  Somewhere along they way it didn't work 100%, which is somewhat to be expected when you have nothing to test against before selling the product.  Hopefully the problems are fixed and I can enjoy my AVR without worry now.

Last November I upgraded my Sanyo PLV-Z4 720p projector to a Sanyo PLV-Z2000 1080p projector.  I thought it was an amazing deal at the time.  It was $2495 as a base price with a $300 mail in rebate for a net of $2195.  Just recently I was reading some comments on the projector and realized the price has fallen through the floor.  The projector now has a base price of $2195 with a $600 mail in rebate for a final cost of $1595.  That is just crazy, trimming 37% off the cost in 3-4 months.  If you want a 1080p projector I definitely recommend this one, especially at the new lower price.  I am not sure how long the mail in rebates last however.

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.

I was looking at the User's Manual for the soon to be released Samsung BD-UP5000.  On page 7 I found this bit of text:

Restrictions on Playback

• This player may not respond to all operating commands because some Blu-ray, HD DVD, DVD, CD discs allow specific or limited operation and features during playback.
  Please note that this is not a defect in the player.
• Samsung cannot assure that this player will play every disc bearing the Blu-ray, HD DVD, DVD or CD logo because disc formats evolve, and problems and errors may occur during the creation of BD, HD DVD, DVD, CD software and/or the manufacture of discs.
  This player also operates differently than a standard DVD player or other AV equipment. Please contact the SAMSUNG customer care center if you have questions or encounter difficulty in playing Blu-ray, HD DVD, DVD, CD discs in this player. Also, refer to the rest of this Manual for additional information on playback restrictions.

I think the key bit is "Samsung cannot assure this player will play every disc ... because disc formats evolve, and problems and errors may occur during the creation of ... software and/or the manufacture of discs."  That is just crazy I think.  The idea that a player for a given format cannot play those discs.  Ah the joys of modern consumer electronics.

I have been watching the issues with both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray since their respective releases regarding features and firmware. It has made me question if both were released too soon and not allowed to mature sufficiently in development? I have an almost 10 year old Sony DVP-S7000 DVD player that still plays every DVD I have tried on it. This player was one of the first ones released and still works with discs with all the latest features. Sure it is missing progressive, DTS and upconverting but those weren't really in the original DVD spec as far as I know and aren't required to get discs to work.

With HD-DVD it seems the players were at least hardware feature complete on day one. However from a firmware and software feature standpoint the HD-DVD players still appear to be under development. The first gen Toshiba players are on the sixth firmware release it seems and the second gen on third or fourth. Some of the updates being bug / compatibility fixes and others adding / enabling features that seem to have been in the original spec and should have been in the players.

Blu-Ray is in an even worse position it seems. The first gen and even 1.5 gen players it now seems aren't even hardware complete. Missing features such as dual video decoders and Ethernet which appear to be part of the newer 2.0 Blu-Ray spec. Also as with HD-DVD there have been various firmware updates for most (all?) players to fix bugs and add features that were part of the spec but weren't in the shipping box. The whole confusion around BD-J seems to be a mess as well, such as when it is required and when it will be implemented in software.

What happened this time around? Were the specs not done? Did the manufacturers not properly implement the spec? Are the software producers making discs out of spec, possibly because they couldn't really find out what the spec is? Was it the race between the two camps to get out the door first?

I am sure some will point out that early DVD players had issues as well, especially first and second gen Toshiba. However the fact that some players from that era did work I tend to think it was Toshiba's fault in design / manufacturing.

I am also wondering when this will all be ironed out so those who don't read AVS (and those that do I guess) can feel safe in buying a player that fully supports the spec and won't need upgrading? I look forward to that day.

I currently have the HD-DVD drive for the Xbox 360 so I am already enjoying HD discs.  Also I am looking forward to seeing how the new Samsung UP-5000

Almost six months ago in early May I posted my predictions for the HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray format war. The original list can be found here. I wanted to update a few of my predictions that have come true and others as false. I will do another update in January once sales numbers for CY06 are finalized.

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 will be released in Mid-Nov for $199.99.

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. - This one looks like it won't happen, it may yet happen next year.

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. - Well I wasn't quite right on this. There will shortly be available a Windows XP based computer that contains both drives and thus enabling a single device dual format player. It will be released by Vidabox. At this point it would be much cheaper to buy standalones.