Blu-ray, HD DVD Target of EU Antitrust Probe 173
rfunches writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that EU antitrust regulators are turning up the heat on the Blu-ray and HD-DVD format consortiums. The European Commission has demanded evidence of Hollywood studios' communications and agreements on the new generation of DVD formats. From the article: 'The European Commission, the European Union's executive body, appears to be particularly interested in the activities of the Blu-ray group because of its dominance in Hollywood, according to people familiar with the situation. The commission is investigating whether improper tactics were used to suppress competition and persuade the studios to back their format.' The article points out that all of the major Hollywood studios except Universal are backing Blu-ray; Universal is backing HD-DVD. It also notes that while one industry watcher believes the first format to have an installed base of two million homes will come out on top, there were millions of Betamax units already sold when VHS won out in the format wars of the 80's."
Bad write up... This is a blu-ray witchhunt. (Score:2)
For there to be a winner (Score:5, Insightful)
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That page shows images from "The Lord Of The Rings: Fellowship of the ring" from the DVD version and from the HD-DVD version downscaled to the same resolution as the DVD version (480p Widescreen).
You should be surprised that even after downscaling to DVD resolution the HD-DVD images are still obviously better.
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You should be surprised that even after downscaling to DVD resolution the HD-DVD images are still obviously better.
DVD compression (MPEG2) uses 16-pixel blocks. So, I would expect HD-DVD's to be about 4 or 16 times higher resolution.
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He didn't upscale the DVD to HD and then downscale it back to DVD, he kept just kept the original DVD capture. Nowhere does he say anything about downscaling the DVD. Scaling it up and then back down to the original would have been stupid, though with any good scaling algorithm (and he does say he used bicubi
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Looking at the images, I see no interlacing problems, so either dvds are stored in progressive, they use the common conversion of 24/25fps film to 50/60fps interlaced that a decoder can detect and restitch, or his decoder has a immensely good deinterlace algorithm.
The quality of an interlaced picture is very near that of a progressive picture (especially for film whose source was half the framerate), so it's close enough to get a progressive still
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HDTV penetration has to be much higher in all markets.
Apparently three in 10 US households [dealerscope.com] now have an HDTV set, and the HDTV market will exceed 50 million units [nikkeibp.co.jp] by 2008.
Likely by the time HDTV penetration is high enough, another format will emerge, or hybrid players will be very common.
Video on Demand? and Hybrids are already here! so I think it's gonna be an interesting competition, hopefully the end result would be best for us consumers.
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http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/med_tel-media-t
Re:For there to be a winner (Score:5, Insightful)
Count me as one of those people who won't own an HD set until he's forced to. I just spent $400 on a 32" CRT TV, and I'm not about to go out and spend $700+ on a similarly sized HDTV. I don't watch sports or movies all that often, so what will this get me? My wife will be able to see every pore on the face of some reality TV tramp? I'll be able to make out the birthmark on Katie Sackhoff's shoulder? It doesn't add to the plot or production quality, and can often get in the way of it.
Let me put it this way: Until HDTV gives me something other than sub-microscopic picture quality, there's nothing I can't get from it that I can get from my video iPod.
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That's a different story altogether. More monitor space increases productivity. I use a computer professionally. I can't think of anyone who watches TV professionally.
That's nice. (Score:2)
So you're complete
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One of the first articles I read about digital broadcast said that they could have ten times as many channels broadcast over the air. It would be like getting standard cable (the kind without the box) without paying for it. Why, for example, can't I get Discovery or Sci Fi over the air if there's so much more room for them? When it can save me money by letting me get the content I want over the air rather than having
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Good point, then. Sadly, it'll never happen. I don
The $400 32 inch LCD HDTV (Score:2)
Tiger Direct has a $400 special on a 32 inch wide screen LCD. ATSC tuner. 720p. HDMI, component video, etc. Weight 57 pounds.Niko SV3206 32" LCD HDTV Television [tigerdirect.com]
Your hernia-in-a-box CRT will need a converter for broadcast reception in two years. You paid $400 for 4:3 video and analog audio and you call this a bargain?
It doesn't add to the plot or production quality, and can often get in the way of it
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And I'm sure that's just as high quality as my Sharp CRT.
Thankfully we have options other than broadcast television. And, thankfully, I don't have super hearing that causes me to shriek at any
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As I understand it, Japan has a much, much higher per-capita HD installed base. Why do American companies hate the rest of us so much?
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I for one am... (Score:3, Funny)
We all benefit from Free Markets because we get to choose between super-hd-blue or blue-super-hd. Why do we need regulators?
Re:I for one am... (Score:4, Insightful)
Beta vs VHS history (Score:2)
VHS ruled because 6 hour miniseries and price outweighed quality.
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Even at the end of its life cycle, Beta tapes were 5 hours at slowest recording speed (Beta III). This is almost certainly less important to the eventual death of the format than the original tape length which was one hour, when RCA provided a four hour VHS tape. X2 recording got Beta up to two hours, but four hours vs. two hours is the difference between recording an American baseball/football game and not, or between recording a long movie
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However, I clearly remember Beta tapes going 5.5 hours.
Wiki supports that memory here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCR [wikipedia.org]
Sony made thinner tape and still slower speed to allow *over* five hours,
And I remember at the time that the 6 hour VHS tape was critical because people wanted to record 3 nights of 2 hours o
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I suspect Wikipedia may not be the definitive source in this instance.
In any event, you may well be right about 5.5 hour tapes (though I don't recall them), but I still think Sony never recovered from the initial difference in (temporal) tape lengths. By the time you get to five hours or six, it's a fairly small set of television that will be supported by one but not the other.
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I suspect the sports issue affected a lot of people but I was not aware of it because I entered the market a couple years later when longer tapes were standard and I was not a sports fan.
I will say one other thing on the 5.5 hour issue. It was a problem since most network movies (with commercials) ran 2.0 hours back then (8pm to 10pm cst). You could fit 2 movies and then you were screwed. So you had to watch it and pause it during commercial breaks. It was likewise a problem on HBO because movies te
It won't matter in the future... (Score:2)
and HD-DVD's become HHDDVVDBVD's.
Sarge is my HERO. RVB Forever!! http://roosterteeth.com/ [roosterteeth.com]
Once hybrids hit $400, the "race" is over. (Score:4, Insightful)
Umm (Score:3, Insightful)
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How is this antitrust? (Score:2)
* (a DRM scheme exclusive to Blu-Ray which relies on executable code that modifies the video stream to make it viewable. This is as opposed to the scheme HD-DV
I choose DIVX Ultra. (Score:2, Insightful)
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2+2: Universal + MS (Score:2)
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The EU is only trying to protect the consumer here, why would any consumer be against that?
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Re:EU regulators out of control (Score:4, Informative)
Re:EU regulators out of control (Score:5, Insightful)
But regarding the Blu-Ray and HD DVD there are storage size and other technical differences, which various studios might find useful depending on the situation.
Not to mention those pesky licensing fees. Why license both? If you do, you have to raise prices, and what consumer wants that? heh.
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Re:EU regulators out of control (Score:5, Insightful)
Just my 2p.
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One word:
Cartel
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Re:EU regulators out of control (Score:5, Interesting)
HDV camcorders are dirt cheap now. The people buying these camcorders want to be able to send grandma a HD copy of little stevie banging his head on the concrete and trying to poke out the cat's eyes. Whatever format that makes this easy for Joe and Janet blow will win.
Right now Indie film makers are embracing the standard DVD players that support Divx 6 pro HD codecs. Giving you full 1080i HD pleasure on a standard DVD disc and on a player that costs around $99.00 and honestly does a fantastic job at it.
BluRay has no plans for supporting a consumer created Disk format. HDDVD can in theory be burned at home and played on standalone players but nobody has their hands on a HDDVD player yet to try it. All of these consortiums are intentionally ignoring the home and indie user and that is incredibly dangerous.
it leaves a giant window open for a 3rd party to come in and take control almost overnight from both of them. Free and open HDDVD standard with no royalties and high popularity? the studios would be all over it.
Actually, for Indie filmmakers... (Score:3, Informative)
Since HD DVD can be written on a DVD-5 or DVD-9 media for shorter content, doesn't require AACS for replicated content, and has cheaper and more readily available replication, it's proving to be a much more prosumer-friendly format for authoring.
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please, please never say that again.
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Re:Actually, for Indie filmmakers... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:EU regulators out of control (Score:5, Informative)
BluRay has no plans for supporting a consumer created Disk format. HDDVD can in theory be burned at home and played on standalone players but nobody has their hands on a HDDVD player yet to try it. All of these consortiums are intentionally ignoring the home and indie user and that is incredibly dangerous.
It truly saddens me that so much disinformation gets 5 points.
First of all, almost NONE of the DVD players that support Divx support Divx in HD. To imply otherwise is just wrong. There are a very few expensive ($200 US minimum) DVD/media players that support the format such as the Avel I-O Link Player and some Helios players, but ZERO players under $100 US that can play HD Divx files. Right now, you can count on one hand the number of standalone players that are even capable of playing the format.
Secondly, while you may not know anything about people with HD-DVD players burning and playing their own discs, people on the Doom9 forums have reported being able to burn HD-DVD format to burnable media (usually DVD-9 as HD-DVD media is very expensive) and play them back correctly on HD-DVD players. And there certainly are plans for BluRay to be supported as a consumer format. There are recorders available right now, but they are very expensive.
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Assuming they're not using nasty tactics.
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1) The average person cannot know all there is to know about everything, as such, most people don't know most of the things there is to know about what they buy. This means that the providers have a major advantage if they want to rip off or swindle someone. Unfortunately what the EU is doing is one of the more effective ways to prevent this, and thus could be considered necessary for people to
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Sauce for the goose (Score:5, Insightful)
US vs M$ Anti Trust - good thing
EU vs Hollywood Anti Trust - bad thing
Or am I missing something here?
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Boy, you are missing a whole lot.
Re:Sauce for the goose (Score:4, Insightful)
Two morons is coincidence
Three morons is enemy attack, Mr Bond
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Re:EU regulators out of control (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree - the regulators are ... regulating.
They are investigating whether the manufacturers of players have engaged in anti-competitive practices when doing deals with the movie studios and other content providers. If it turns out that one or other of the consortia have strong-armed or bribed many studios into supporting their format exclusively then then there isn't a proper free market in next-gen players and the best interests of consumers are not served - consumers will choose to buy the players for the format with the most content available for it, regardless of whether that is the best format for consumers when judged on a level playing field.
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I'd rather spend $9 on a movie [I buy them when they're in the bargain bins] than a day downloading a rip that MIGHT actually be done properly, only to find out I have to burn it to a disk to keep it [storing movies on a HD is annoying over the long run].
Tom
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A need existed and a business model appeared to fill that need.
I bet this is not the kind of "invisible hand of the market" that the industry lobbists have in mind when demanding less regulations
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Tom
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Tom
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And just because you don't have money doesn't mean you shouldn't pay money for the movi
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That way your guaranteed choice, citizen!
Re:I'm happy with my DVD still but... (Score:4, Informative)
Tom
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You'd be right, if HD-DVD survives that long.
For the market to grow beyond home theater enthusiasts and console gamers, a dominant format has to emerge. (Or dual players need to become ubiquitous and cheap enough to make the format war a mute point). Most people aren't going to invest in a new format until they know it'll be around a while.
Right now, Blu-ray seems t
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Beta lost because it was expensive and wasn't competing. That there wasn't porn for it is moot, suffice it to say most people who bought vcrs for their families weren't sitting down to watch porn with the kids.
Tom
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So does Disney. So does extended play.
Beta's superior video scarcely mattered when almost no one had a set that could display it. Blu-Ray enters a market where HDTV is taking off like a rocket.
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Yes, a lot of people are buying HDTVs. But even with an HDTV, most people can't notice any difference in quality between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. That's what matters; if Blu-Ray does offer some quality increase over HD-DVD, due to its greater capacity, it's not noticeable.
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Greater capacity means more room for soundtracks, dialog tracks, interactive content, and other marketable extras.
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Yeah, but how are you ever going to foist unwanted DRM on the consumer that way?
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RCA spent enormous sums of money developing black and white and color TV for the American market. The committee crawls on all fours. The entrepreneur takes the ball and runs.
Compare the state of HD radio in the U.S. with DAB in Canada. In this border town, there are sixteen HD channels available now vs. one experimental DAB broadcast by the CBC.
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If the company A is making a product, and in collusion with product from company B....in say, the US. I would think that anti-trust laws and suits could only be filed and prosectuted in the US. How can anti-trust violations in one country be prosecuted or punished by a country (or countries) where the violations aren't even taking place?
I mean, just for sake of argument. Company A is guilty of anti-trust with company B...which is the Hollywood, CA USA movie
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PAL vs. NTSC (Score:2, Informative)
One of the differences between PAL and NTSC is the frame refresh rate. And that is based on the line frequency of electricity being delivered to the consumers in the various countries. So even if everyone used PAL (or NTSC), you would still have different products based on the different frames per second.
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The grandparent post is also not to the point. It is not really the NTSC/PAL difference the problem any more. Many DVD play
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In practice, all the mass-market HD DVD and BD discs I know of are either 24p or 60i. 25 Hz appears to have begun its long fade-out.
They only used 50 Hz in the first place because they use 50 Hz power - same as the USA with 60/60. Better power shielding has taken away the reason all this matters a long, long time ago
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Newsflash for trolls (Score:3, Informative)
United Kingdom != European Commision.
Secondly, where's the evidence to back up this serious allegation? Thirdly states that make up the EU are sovereign, if companies want to sell their products there they have to abide by the rules. If not, they can take their wares and go home.
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MOD Parent up. (Score:2)
All the "the EU is attacking our beloved movie studios" posts didn't seem to understand that a barrier to entry is anti-competitive. If a small (in this case European) company wants to come along and start to produce content for the media (lets say the BBC). How easy will it be to do? If the HD/Blu-Ray groups make it too prohibitive by acting together as a