AfterDawn: News

Major movie studios back HD-DVD format

Four major movie studios Warner, Paramount, Universal and New Line Cinema have endorsed the HD-DVD format according to the discs co-creator Toshiba. The 4 studios represent a huge 45% of the major studios' DVD output in the United States. However, it will take at least a year before pre-recorded HD-DVD's will be available. Sony are also promoting their new Blu-ray format. Both technologies use blue laser technology instead of the current red laser technology. Blue light's shorter wavelength means that the 'spots' on the disc's surface used to encode digital data can be smaller. For this reason it is easier to fit higher capacities of data onto a 12cm disc.

HD-DVD offers 20GB a disc, but Sony's Blu-Ray format beats it by 5GB more, offering just around 25GB of data on a 12cm disc. However, the main difference between the two formats is that one would require more change than the other. The Blu-Ray is on the downside because it would require the need for new disc production lines. As for HD-DVD, all it would require is existing DVD pressing rigs to be retooled rather than replaced. Sony will be using Blu-Ray technology in their upcoming Playstation 3 console.



Sources:
The Register
Investor's Business Daily

Written by: James Delahunty @ 29 Nov 2004 7:52

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• 10 comments

• Ghostdog

  And here I was thinking that HD-DVD still used red-laser optics. I could have swore that I had read that somewhere.

  29.11.2004 10:15 #1

• djscoop

  I didn't know that HD-DVD used blue lasers either. But whats the main difference between the two, besides blu-ray requiring a new production line. Is it similar to DVD-RAM vs. DVD-R?

  29.11.2004 10:25 #2

• Ghostdog

  Well that´s what got me wondering as well. I thought that Blu-Ray required new production hardware because of the fact that it uses blue laser instead of the older red, and that HD-DVD was basically going use the same discs as before and utilize a new codec.
  
  From the glossary:
  
  "HD-DVD
  
  Format has not been fully specified yet!
  
  This is a proposed name for a next generation DVD-Video disc. Currently (spring 2002) industry is fighting over the specs of the standard -- there are two suggested specifications for the standard which are competing:
  
  -suggested by most technology companies is the spec which would continue using MPEG-2 as a video format for the discs, but start using next generation blue-laser discs instead of old red laser discs
  
  -other proposal suggests that companies continue to use the existing DVD media which holds appx. 4.36GB of data per one layer per one side, but start using MPEG-4 as a compression format instead of currently used MPEG-2."
  
  So I guess they finalized it and I just haven´t taken notice of that. Well, blue-laser is the future, so I suppose HD-DVD using blue-laser as well will be good for everyone.

  29.11.2004 10:50 #3

• djscoop

  Very interesting. What is the compression differences between mpeg-2 and mpeg-4? Are the qualities the same? Not that it really matters, but right now I'm favoring the blu-ray, because its already being produced, and its by Sony, which in my opinion is the best electronic company on the planet. Can anyone shed some more light on the differences between HD-DVD, and Blu-Ray.

  29.11.2004 11:10 #4

• diabolos

  Why don't they use MPEG 4 standard with the Blue Laser? I have read so many different things about HD-DVD.
  
  
  Microsoft is getting into the game. I assume that there HD-DVD discs would use red-laser optics with there new compression scheme, WMV-HD, like the MPEG-4 idea?
  http://www.wmvhd.com/
  
  I found a nice page that lists alot of mile stones in the developement of the HD-DVD!
  http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#6.5
  
  I think this is the whole news article from above?
  http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20041130/tc_nm/tech_japan_toshiba_hollywood_dc_6
  
  This is the MPEG home page. It talks about the differnt MPEG standards (in great-detail).
  http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/
  
  MPEG 2 is the standard for high quality video ant very high bitrates and is used in DVD(-Video). MPEG 4 is allot like MPEG 2 but was created to be scalable, offering high quality video and audio at very low and very high bitrates. For that reason it was based on Apple's Quicktime standars (audio and video codecs).
  http://www.apple.com/mpeg4/

  29.11.2004 17:30 #5

• djscoop

  according to the artible above HD-DVD uses blue laser, not red

  29.11.2004 17:39 #6

• Soulreave

  hmm. as more and more formats of dvds are being made i hope that the drive manufacturers find some form of laser that can read everything.
  
  if those of you thought dvd+r and dvd-r discs were a problem here comes blue-ray, hd-dvd and also pioneers 500gb per side disc

  30.11.2004 10:00 #7

• steve7059

  Sony and other computer hardware manufacturers are backing the blu ray technology. Maybe this is why the movie studios are backing a different format? Maybe they figure that it will make it take just that much longer for the computer hardware manufacturers to make a drive we can use to write to the new format if they've already started down a different path.

  1.12.2004 04:58 #8

• big_rob32

  Of course they are heading down the differant path to throw off the people that use drives to record stuff. They know it will take awhile for the company's to come up with a hd-dvd drive that can do it all, and if they do it will be very expensive at first.

  1.12.2004 10:39 #9

• SGSeries2

  Anytime I've seen word about hd-dvd, it's always been with 20 gb or so, and you can't really fit that onto today's dvds very well, unless you're going dual-layered, dual-sided. I'll stop buying movies if they do somthing rediculous like that. I absolutely detested that about Pearl Harbor. I had to stop and fiddle around with the dvd player in order to watch the last part of the movie. Go Blu-Ray! I'm behind you, Sony! That's all that matters. hehe...

  2.12.2004 09:40 #10