In the latest chapter of the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD saga, Microsoft and Intel have announced their backing of Toshiba's HD-DVD standard. Stephen Balogh, Intel's director of optical media standards and technologies, stated "We (Intel) wanted to choose the format that has the highest probability of this market taking off." Toshiba plans on releasing HD-DVD players in Japan and the United States later this year.
While the announcement is very big for HD-DVD, it is far from a death knell for Blu-Ray. Major Hollywood studios are supporting Blu-Ray, and Sony will have a very large customer base with the launch of its Playstation 3 video game console next year.
View: Full Article @ Reuters
While the announcement is very big for HD-DVD, it is far from a death knell for Blu-Ray. Major Hollywood studios are supporting Blu-Ray, and Sony will have a very large customer base with the launch of its Playstation 3 video game console next year.
View: Full Article @ Reuters
Features at a glance:
* Multiple simultaneous downloads
* Smart bandwidth usage
* File level priorities
* Configurable bandwidth scheduling
* Global and per-torrent speed limiting
* Quickly resumes interrupted transfers
* UPnP support (WinXP only)
* Supports popular protocol extensions
* Typical memory usage less than 4 MB
* Incredibly small: 83 KB
Changelog:
- Fix: Use the downloaded value instead of completed, when computing the ratio.
- Fix: Changes in tracker communication, is it right now?
- Feature: Detect if disk can't keep up with the download and limit download speed.
- Fix: Show "select() error" in status bar if an incompatible firewall is being used.
- Feature: Added option to select if uTorrent should be activated or not when adding a file.
- Fix: Remove Quota columns from peer view, they wern't useful.
- Feature: Added Peer download speed; shows the estimated download speed of the peer.
- Fix: Fixed one issue with x64 DEP (no-execute) protection.
- Fix: When using the no-default-save option, start browsing in the directory specified in preferences.
- Feature: Open torrent properties if you double click a torrent.
- Feature: Options to show/hide torrent info and status bar.
- Feature: Added option to autostart µTorrent when Windows starts.
- Feature: Added option to disable sending statistics to uTorrent.com.
- Feature: Sort jobs in disk queue. Might improve disk performance a little.
- Feature: Controls to setup the size of the disk queueing.
- Feature: Files listview is now sortable.
- Feature: Ctrl-A in a listview selects all.
- Feature: Ctrl-C in a listview copies to clipboard.
- Fix: Lower connect timeout to 20 seconds.
- Fix: If a tracker didn't return peer ids, it wouldn't work.
- Change: If scraping is off, never get the scrape url.
- Fix: Always show updating... when connecting to tracker.
- Fix: Columns in Pieces view didn't display right if some were hidden.
- Fix: When closing to tray, minimize it too, to lower mem usage. (Only works if you have both close to tray and minimize to tray enabled).
- Fix: Reset generals tab if you deselect the torrent.
- Fix: Don't allow "Do you want to exit µTorrent" to be shown twice.
- Fix: Sorting by port in peers listview didn't work.
Please let Blu-Ray win! I want my 8-layer 200 GB Blu-Ray disk!
estimated cost of retooling for the HD DVD format ...a DVD mastering system can be upgraded for US$145,000.
Source: http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/har...ext-gen-dvd.ars
Looks like going for Bluray would be an expensive transition.
(...)
The surprise entry in Microsoft's and Intel's list of failures is disc storage capacity. On paper, Blu-ray appears to have the advantage. But the two companies looked beneath the paper: Capacity, said Ribas, "used to be the biggest advantage of Blu-ray, and we believed it. We thought, they'll get 50 GByte BD-ROM discs working, but it's not happening, and it's nowhere in sight. There are not even pilots. It's only in the lab that they are building these discs." With regard to demonstrated capacity, he told us, HD DVD-ROM actually leads BD-ROM by a score of 30 GByte to 25 GByte.
The final entry is interactivity standards. Although Microsoft and Disney jointly developed the iHD interactivity layer, based on XML - which is the glue that holds together the "Vista vision" of Microsoft's future Windows platform - and even though Disney is a Blu-ray proponent, the Association chose instead to endorse BDJ, an implementation of Sun-s Java Mobile Edition. Ribas told us that the major studios - either publicly or quietly - are opposed to BDJ, citing its relative complexity and its lack of compelling new features compared to iHD. An optional commentary track for videos, for example, that superimposes the speaker's image on-screen as well as providing audio, is one key iHD feature that BDJ will support only as an option, maybe. "Which means nobody will use it," said Ribas.
Silly exec, "copy protection" and functionality do not belong in the same paragraph, let alone the same sentence.
HD-DVD can also be upgraded to much higher storage capacity.
granted they're ready to make HVD players and disks alrleady today, so in reality neither BR or HD-DVD should be considered.
but too much money have been put into research for these to formats from the inventing corps to let them die unusued, they need them on the market to make back their investment. hence they railroad the HVD alternative wich isn't only better, but hasn't used nearly as much money on research.
Believe what you want, but it's the truth. A lot of it depends on what format the pornography distributors wish to back. They even mention it in a back-issue of Maximum PC a few months ago.
Amoi Electronics and Sichuan Changhong Electric, two top manufacturers of DVD players in China, have voiced support for the HD-DVD format for next-generation blue-laser DVD players, according to China-based CCID Consulting as quoted by Taiwanese makers of optical disc drives.
This means that the HD-DVD group, led by Toshiba, has won the first round of competition with Blu-ray, another blue-laser standard being pushed by the Blu-ray Disc (BD) group led by Sony, these Taiwanese makers pointed out. One key selling point of the HD-DVD format is that it was developed from existing DVD formats and therefore should incur lower production costs and product development should take a shorter time to market than Blu-ray, the sources indicated.
Source
Then the rest of the DVD player manufacturers supporting HD-DVD would have a shared customer base.
Intel is a lot bigger than AMD and they do more things.
let's not ever know wat we're talkign about before we talk...
Seems that, not only has somebody lost the plot, but that they're not even reading the same book hehe.
I, for one, would have no problem paying an extra $100ish to upgrade to an HD-DVD, but I fear it may be a higher hurdle. We can always hope.
Hell Windows XP doesn't support either DVD plus or DVD minus format and that was decided by the consumer and the combo player.
Welcome to hardgiants dream world, where reality is not as it seems.
Which pretty much means that it does not back up your argument at all. Now if XP had natively supported one or the other, we could have used it as a basis for how much influence they have. As it is though your just talking nonsense. Windows XP doesn't support VHS either so I guess your right, Microsoft has no influence at all.
as HD-DVD actually contrary to what the article indicates, has a slightly bigger part of Hollywood supprting them.
Well if you consider 5-10 years soon then I guess so.
OLEDs are coming before these discs (1-2 years) so you can wait on your terabyte discs...
OLEDs are already out and Holographic storage format is slated for next year.
And so the Blu-Ray wars continue. Wake me up when we get to a dominant next-gen format, will you please?
I for one, fell the a company, such as Microsoft, who is in the position they are in, should not be choosing which format to back, but rather support both.
And very few realise that.
How so? Sony makes computers. Sony makes drives. Sony makes movies (which will eventually be sold on some type of DVD). Microsoft does none of these things.
Microsoft makes the XBox. Guess that little fact slipped your mind.
I personally think that its ridiculous and it only bring confusion to everyone
In addition to that the only clear advantage over Bluray that HDDVD has is the cost in transitioning their equipment. There is debate over anti piracy in Blu ray also, many people will tend to shy away from it.
Many movie companies however support Bluray, a small sign of this is the support of Sony's UMD discs for movies. Sony is making a calculated risk, so is Nintendo (with their controller), and so is Microsoft. Will be there be a winner?
As someone once said, the winner will not be based on the technical superiority, rather whichever format the porn industry adopts.
Crazy DRM features is why Hollywood supports Blu-Ray. They know that Sony will do everything to protect their 'rights' and limit consumers to theirs, because Sony has its feet deep in the entertainment industry, therefore Sony is just like them. They don't give a damn about the fact that consumers would need to buy new Blu-Ray players, etc (which obviously would cost a fortune, no more $29.99 for a cheap Chinese make in Wal-Mart). HD-DVD would offer a much smoother transition in this case. And again, id Blu-Ray wins, we all would end up with a Sony format, and we all know what that means: Sony format would make you buy only Sony (ATRAC, MemoryStick come to mind). This is a big bid for Sony, since none of their above mentioned technologies has gone big, therefore they would do everything to make sure it goes their way now. And for those who want a bigger storage - get yourself a portable HDD (I use my iPod for that).
Blu-ray is EVERY ELECTRONICS MAKER EXCEPT: Toshiba, NEC, Sanyo.
Sony is one of the biggest.
Articles that make out that Sony is the ONLY thing behind Blu-ray is stupid.
Is Panasonic a little bitty company? Philips?
HD-DVD is a BS format by Toshiba. Vaporware on the order of the Phantom Videogame console. It is a "smoother" transition in the same way having SuperVCD (based on CD technology) instead of DVD.
Anyone who supports HD-DVD over Blu-ray is not reading all the facts.
I could have told you 3 months ago that Microsoft were backing HD-DVD....their own console is using it.
....and having a history of Sony's price unfriendly proprietary formats, this is great.
It's NOT Sony's proprietary format.
PANASONIC. HITACHI. JVC. MITSUBISHI. PHILIPS. SAMSUNG. APPLE. HP. DELL. PIONEER. TDK.
Ring a bell? All of these companies (and more) are part of the Blu-ray Disc Association. Most of these are EXCLUSIVE.
The ONLY major electronics makers that support HD-DVD are Toshiba, NEC, and Sanyo.
This press rellease is just desperate propaganda on the part of Toshiba who will LOSE any format war. They have almost NO support from the electronics industry.
Intel doesn't make playback hardware. Or software. Microsoft doesn't make hardware.
Do some research before making such statements in public.
Intel will present a very important step in Digital Home Media by introducing a platform called VIIV. Also You have not read analysis from Tom's hardware and the real state of Blu-Ray format. I am well aware of who is backing which format, but If You have no1 and no3(wild guess, but close one) company in the world backing certain format it is very, very deceptive how will things evolve in future.
About who is the owner of Blu-Ray read here: http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/03/18/bluray/index.php?pf=1
small quote from that site: "That draws the battle line—whichever format does the most for consumers will probably win. Sony invented Blu-Ray and supports it not only in electronics but through Sony Pictures, Sony Television, and other properties it owns (including Columbia, Tri-Star, and now MGM Studios). Dell, HP, and now Apple have all thrown their support behind Blu-Ray, and you’ll be able to buy drives not only from Sony but also from a variety of other manufacturers listed above."
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