BluRay Vs HDDVD

[da.bell]

wonder when xbox will get blue ray compatability

6 months from now IMO.

[CP3]

wonder when xbox will get blue ray compatability

[dogbert]

Sony and the term fair market practice in the same sentence is an oxymoron.

[spharis]

Netflix also made the announcement they figure rental prices will go UP once the format is no longer subsidized. Apparently Blu-Ray is cheap to produce b/c Sony is getting good funding and they are writing off millions. Thus far Netflix has stated pricing on BluRay is low due to the competition being bred by the HD format offerings.

I say they both need to stay. Competition breeds advancement.

[Lucky 275]

When companies start deciding what the consumer wants, is when it all goes wrong. If they stop carrying HD DVD, I'll stop carrying my subscription with them.

I did find out that you can pick up HD DVD imports for exclusive USA blu ray titles. That'll be a plus at least for a little while.

[da.bell]

Well, looks like there might have been a decission made.

[ragboy]

Another big nail in the coffin from NetFlix:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/11/n...n-hd-dvd-soon/

[spharis]

Some more news from betanews (betanews is a software discussion forum). Nice interview if anyone cares to read.

http://www.betanews.com/article/Inte...tay/1200951636

[spharis]

Doom9.net is a dvd backup resource. They follow all things dvd related.

Following Warner's announcement to abandon HD DVD there have been more editorials than you'd care to know. It started out with painting doom and gloom, then came Paramount's statement they wouldn't give up, followed by Universal's statement they'd stick with HD DVD and finally Toshiba has reacted: They have slashed prices on their players - now the list price for the entry level model is just $149 and the list price for the more advanced model just $200 - so below $100 suddenly seems within reach. Toshiba will also be launching a major PR offensive and one of the focus point will be that those not so expensive players are also great upconverting players for your standard DVDs. I wonder how long it takes for the Blu-ray camp to slash prices on their 1.0 players (which you really shouldn't buy). Speaking of profiles, the BDA has come up with some fancy marketing terms for the profiles: Bonus View is profile 1.1 and BD Live is profile 2.0. But the kicker is the admission by the Blu-ray camp that basically if you have gone Blu in the past, you should've known what you got yourself into (with a standalone player that is... even today the PS3 despite its noise and the remote situation remains the best solution - unless you are looking at PC playback where an upgrade to BD Live is also only a question of when, and not if). And finally, it seems to dawn that Blu-ray was indeed rushed out to compete with HD DVD.

Admits the doom stories also came some questions about the future - if HD DVD falters, can Blu-ray become the dominant player or will download options become more prevalent in the future? One serious contender in the diskless area is Apple: They have just announced high def rentals for $3.99 to $4.99 (per 24h), have all major studios on board, and they already have the standalone player to go with it: Apple TV 2.0.

By the way, even though Sony has yet to call itself the winner of the format war yet again, they're already looking forward to the next format war and have come up with their own wideband short-range wireless standard.

[dogbert]

I hate Sony...they truly are a bunch of sleazy bastards.

[spharis]

I read an article today discussing that MS had backed HDDVD to basically force the format war to help XBOX live and dl-able media out in the long run.

[ragboy]

http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/22/b...rner-went-blu/

[ragboy]

Article out today, that gives more details, and talks about the sums of money that changed hands.

http://gizmodo.com/346783/the-truth-...hd-dvds-demise

[da.bell]

Are you familiar with how Apple's DRM works? It hasn't been broken unless by digital recording (virtual card to card) and Sony's BD+ works very similar if I understand it correclty. The idea on Blu is that the players are updated along with discs, so while the old disc may be broken, new releases are not. Unbreakable, of course not, but a major pain in the *** that cost comsumers more money for every purchase made...you bet. Why support it? 50 years ago this crap would never have worked for a company.

Not familiar with Apple's DRM but from experience nothing is unbreakable. However, they are making it hard to obtain illigal copies of the file but again, "if there is a will, there is a way!"

[ragboy]

Whether or not something gets cracked, has only to do with how bad people want to crack it. Bluray AACS is not completely hacked, but it will be, too many people want that one.

Apple iTunes DRM has been cracked and relocked several times by apple. I have used some of them many times. I don't pirate, but I hate the 5 machine rule. However, now with apple tv and drm free music, I don't even care about apple drm.

Apple DRM was removable by a program called HYMN, then JHYMN, and now it is called QTFairUse.

AudioHiJack is an example of a program that reads the audio stream to the soundcard, like spharis mentions, so its not true drm removal. Because it decodes the protected AAC to soundstream, then would have to reencode back and you would lose some quality.

However, QTFairUse does NOT lose quality, and does remove DRM with its unique approach. You can read how it works here, which does a pretty good job of explaining.

http://www.chaosmint.com/macintosh/a...s-itunes.shtml

The short of it it, apple drm has been cracked, for a long time, it is only til just recently, iTunes 7.6 has come out, that it is broken, but they have always come out with an update to fix it.

I don't think anyone has made any serious attempt to hack apple drm'd movies, but there has been no reason too. You can just rip the dvd with handbrake. Now that apple movies will be of full SD and HD quality, and HD with 5.1, that may be another story.