Apart from quality and integrity, it seems.
It is informative to read Disney boss Bob Iger's presentation to the financial wizards of the Deutsche Bank this month. There's a major change of thinking in what he says about the way we consume entertainment media and it's going to have a profound impact on the future of our industry.
"There's confusion out there about what digital technology and high-def is," Iger told his audience, "and Blu-Ray and what Blu-Ray is. And I think that contributes a little bit to the hesitancy that you see in the marketplace to buy the new formats, even though the format is very compelling."
In a nutshell, that is the problem. What is Blu-ray? If you ask around, you'll find many people just don't know. Challenge them and they might tell you it's a 'better DVD' or 'a cool feature in my PS3' but rarely do they appreciate the benefits of lossless audio, high data rates or web connection.
To listen to the HDTV over the web guys, you'd pretty quickly believe that all HD is born equal. You want 720p from YouTube? You got it. 1080i over your ADSL broadband connection? No problem. Seen on your flat screen plasma display and from around 15 feet away it's "awesome" whether it was encoded at four or fourteen megabits. And tell me why I need Blu-ray again, when I can download all this stuff from the web? It's hard to counter these propositions.
A physical disc is easy to play whenever and wherever you want, which is what has sustained this business for the past few years. People like to build libraries; give discs as presents; let the children choose their own entertainment from a pile of DVDs, without having to go online. Blu-ray was supposed to pick up sales as DVD declined, adding quality, usability and interactivity to take us into the second decade of the 21st century. But connectivity could be its Achilles heel.
Bob Iger told his audience "The average home in the United States that owns a DVD player already owns 80 DVDs; there are many with well over 125. So in the last decade we saw a fair amount of growth in library building." What he said next is worrying. "Once you own 80 movies, I believe no matter what the economy is, you're going to be more selective about movies that you buy."
The answer to the decline in packaged media sales is not to be found in new blu shiny discs. As far as the mouse is concerned, the computer is the way of the future, an entertainment platform in its own right. Rather than the purchase of single, high value Blu-ray discs, consumers will be wooed by online entertainment, enticed to regard the web site as a 'destination' and visit often. If you can sell the occasional BD to collectors when they are passing, that's great, but all the extras, all the social networking, all the interactive features will be online, 'free' at the point of access. In exchange for this, advertising, appropriate sponsored links and other revenue-generating activities will be alongside the fun stuff.
It's a compelling vision of the future and it is not one that is restricted to Bob Iger, even though he may be the first to articulate it in such detail. Broadband video has changed the paradigm. It is now economic to do exciting things with Java and Flash on the website that cannot be financially justified on a Blu-ray disc. The result is a raft of plain vanilla BD titles that are audio-visually impressive but interactively lacklustre. In some recent releases, the DVD is far more exciting than the BD as a result of long production lead times and the version confusion in the Blu-ray player market.
Just as this truth becomes apparent, a further digital spanner is thrown into the works. A number of dedicated HD media players have been launched to bridge the gap between TV and PC, such as the Seagate FreeAgent Theater. A 500GB hard drive that docks with the computer and the TV, this unit emulates DVD playback, reading the VIDEO_TS file to display menus perfectly while upscaling SD to 1080i. It's robust enough to be given to the kids and big enough to store fifty or more ripped DVDs on a single drive.
It gives added emphasis to Bob Iger's words: "The computer is a very, very important place to entertain people."
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
The news from VUDU, the Californian HD on demand outfit that offers 1,400 HD titles in its online rental catalog will cause consternation in some quarters. As of now, download-to-own goes mainstream since the company announced deals with independent studios, including First Look, Kino and Magnolia, to go Day and Date with the DVD release of their new titles.
HD titles for sale in 1080p format include the 2009 Academy Award-winning Man on Wire along with Transiberian and War, Inc. from First Look. Viewing requires the $149 VUDU box and a broadband connection, after which consumers are charged between $13.99 and $23.99 for the download. After that, they can watch as often as they like, for no exta charge - rather like a DVD in fact.
The end of packaged media has been oft predicted over the past ten years but could this be the final nail in the jigsaw of video home entertainment? [Or is a just a piece in the coffin...]
The answer might lie in the Press Release. "VUDU is the only service to offer both instant start HD and HDX, the highest quality on-demand format available anywhere," it says. "HDX with VUDU's TruFilm™ technology features a virtually artifact free 1080p picture."
Weasel words can conceal a wide difference between expectations and delivery and whereas Blu-ray can offer an 18-20 Mbit stream of almost perfect video to the largest of screens, the highest quality on-demand format will struggle to exceed 2Mbits. Or if it does, ISPs across the planet will be screaming at the supplier. Anyone comparing a well-encoded upscaled DVD (at 7 or 8 Mbits/sec) will quickly see the difference. Those betting that the downloaded HD will look better should see their optometrist soonest.
It's good news that someone cares enough to invest in any form of HD distribution and for the casual viewer, the VUDU service will no doubt look better that any clip on YouTube. However, speaking as someone who has just lost a hard drive and most of its contents, for $13.99 I would rather have several dozen lumps of polycarbonate than an inert metal box that once contained my movie collection.
HD titles for sale in 1080p format include the 2009 Academy Award-winning Man on Wire along with Transiberian and War, Inc. from First Look. Viewing requires the $149 VUDU box and a broadband connection, after which consumers are charged between $13.99 and $23.99 for the download. After that, they can watch as often as they like, for no exta charge - rather like a DVD in fact.
The end of packaged media has been oft predicted over the past ten years but could this be the final nail in the jigsaw of video home entertainment? [Or is a just a piece in the coffin...]
The answer might lie in the Press Release. "VUDU is the only service to offer both instant start HD and HDX, the highest quality on-demand format available anywhere," it says. "HDX with VUDU's TruFilm™ technology features a virtually artifact free 1080p picture."
Weasel words can conceal a wide difference between expectations and delivery and whereas Blu-ray can offer an 18-20 Mbit stream of almost perfect video to the largest of screens, the highest quality on-demand format will struggle to exceed 2Mbits. Or if it does, ISPs across the planet will be screaming at the supplier. Anyone comparing a well-encoded upscaled DVD (at 7 or 8 Mbits/sec) will quickly see the difference. Those betting that the downloaded HD will look better should see their optometrist soonest.
It's good news that someone cares enough to invest in any form of HD distribution and for the casual viewer, the VUDU service will no doubt look better that any clip on YouTube. However, speaking as someone who has just lost a hard drive and most of its contents, for $13.99 I would rather have several dozen lumps of polycarbonate than an inert metal box that once contained my movie collection.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Which version of the firmware are you using?
The firmware on my Sony S-350 has just been updated. A simple concept for some folk but incomprehensible to the many who grew up with VHS (or Betamax) or even early DVD players. Back in those happy days, towards the end of the last century, you bought a consumer electronics device and whether it worked or didn't, you were pretty much stuck with what you had. There was no program of constant updates over the internet, if it was broken when they made it, it was broken when you used it.
I've just been wrestling with a Sony Lasermax player, trying to get audio and video from ten Laservision discs that I produced in 1985 and turn it into usable digital data. All those frustrations that I remember from 20+ years ago came back to haunt me. The fact is that you could do nothing without the remote (with a set of new batteries), that the SCART socket on the back is only partially configured, that it is a struggle to get what now seem to be giant discs in and out of a slot. What little firmware it had inside the box was set in silicon at the time of manufacture and updates involved buying the latest generation player.
Despite the clunky feel of Laserdisc it looked and sounded (with digital ausio) pretty good. I remember being told that DVD was an upstart, that it would never take over from LV since the sound and picture quality just wasn't good enough. Well that argument was soon lost and at least the DVD player had a small amount of intelligence and memory inside it. Too little memory, it turned out, even when compared with the short-lived CD-i format, and as a result the layer break was (is) usually far from seamless.
So I was very pleased when my new upscaling Philips DVD player proved to be a star on the layer break stage. Problem discs were played without interruption and the picture quality at 1080i demonstrated just what a good MPEG-2 encoder could do at 8 Mbps. It was also the first DVD player that I had owned that benefited from consumer updates to the firmware. A persistent bug vanished after the first of these updates and things could only get better.
Which they did with the move to the S-350. From an AV point of view, anyway. Great pictures and sound from both BD and DVD but s l o w, s l o w, s l o w to load and search. Then there was the fact that previously perfect DVDs started to reveal problems that had not been there before. What could have been logic errors in menus appeared, were it not for the fact that only the S-350 showed them. Worst of all, the delay at the layer break on some DVD-9s was more of a still than a momentary freeze frame.
A firmware update seemed to be the answer - though finding it on the Sony support site was far from easy. Download a disc image, burn it to CD, insert into player, wait 25 minutes and voila! Some of the problems had been resolved. The layer change it still obtrusive but the menu bug is gone and the player may be slightly more responsive.
Apart from the obvious question "Why is a 2008 player less able to handle the layer break than a Panasonic A100 designed in 1996?", how many consumers even know that revised firmware is available? DVD was designed as a simple CE product - put the disc in and play. The latest low-power computers with an optical drive, packaged as Blu-ray, are a far cry from the basic rule of Consumer Electronics - Keep It Simple Stupid.
And now I'm off to upgrade the firmware on the toaster.
I've just been wrestling with a Sony Lasermax player, trying to get audio and video from ten Laservision discs that I produced in 1985 and turn it into usable digital data. All those frustrations that I remember from 20+ years ago came back to haunt me. The fact is that you could do nothing without the remote (with a set of new batteries), that the SCART socket on the back is only partially configured, that it is a struggle to get what now seem to be giant discs in and out of a slot. What little firmware it had inside the box was set in silicon at the time of manufacture and updates involved buying the latest generation player.
Despite the clunky feel of Laserdisc it looked and sounded (with digital ausio) pretty good. I remember being told that DVD was an upstart, that it would never take over from LV since the sound and picture quality just wasn't good enough. Well that argument was soon lost and at least the DVD player had a small amount of intelligence and memory inside it. Too little memory, it turned out, even when compared with the short-lived CD-i format, and as a result the layer break was (is) usually far from seamless.
So I was very pleased when my new upscaling Philips DVD player proved to be a star on the layer break stage. Problem discs were played without interruption and the picture quality at 1080i demonstrated just what a good MPEG-2 encoder could do at 8 Mbps. It was also the first DVD player that I had owned that benefited from consumer updates to the firmware. A persistent bug vanished after the first of these updates and things could only get better.
Which they did with the move to the S-350. From an AV point of view, anyway. Great pictures and sound from both BD and DVD but s l o w, s l o w, s l o w to load and search. Then there was the fact that previously perfect DVDs started to reveal problems that had not been there before. What could have been logic errors in menus appeared, were it not for the fact that only the S-350 showed them. Worst of all, the delay at the layer break on some DVD-9s was more of a still than a momentary freeze frame.
A firmware update seemed to be the answer - though finding it on the Sony support site was far from easy. Download a disc image, burn it to CD, insert into player, wait 25 minutes and voila! Some of the problems had been resolved. The layer change it still obtrusive but the menu bug is gone and the player may be slightly more responsive.
Apart from the obvious question "Why is a 2008 player less able to handle the layer break than a Panasonic A100 designed in 1996?", how many consumers even know that revised firmware is available? DVD was designed as a simple CE product - put the disc in and play. The latest low-power computers with an optical drive, packaged as Blu-ray, are a far cry from the basic rule of Consumer Electronics - Keep It Simple Stupid.
And now I'm off to upgrade the firmware on the toaster.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Beyond the third dimension
James Cameron is a fan of 3D and so is Yoshi Yamada of Panasonic. How do we know? They were saying as much at CES this month, when Yamada-san announced that Panasonic will soon have a 3D Blu-ray authoring system installed in its Hollywood lab. Meanwhile, Cameron is in production with Avatar, which will be shot entirely in 3D.
It's a pattern that Panasonic knows well. Ensuring that DVD production tools were right there on the Universal lot from 1996 onwards, under the wise stewardship of Jerry Pierce of DVCC, helped to make the format acceptable to both creatives and accountants in the film industry. Without this on-the-spot demonstration of the format's potential (along with the decisive support of Warren Liebefarb of Warner Home Video and Koji Hase at Toshiba) DVD could well have fallen at the first hurdle.
At CES in January 1997, it was hard to avoid being hit by giant DVD posters and flags, which fluttered over non-working mock-ups of what DVD CE products might be like if ever the consortium members could finally agree common standards. The 3D video being shown at CES in 2009 is threatened by a similar lack of agreement on how to implement 3D in the home. Lack of agreement held back DVD and the fruitless battle between HD DVD and Blu-ray put off all but determined early adopters of HD packaged media. Format squabbles could prevent investment in the 3D content which is needed to make it a success and everyone involved should fight against this possibility. The home entertainment industry needs to wake up to reality.
3D glasses will be with us for some time yet, which some may think to be a disadvantage, although it adds a sense of occasion to the viewing experience. Pseudo-3D, as demonstrated by Philips and others, is fine for watching short-term - at right angles to the screen - but tiring and ineffective for long-term viewers. Dolby and Quantel go for the polarized approach: surely this must be the route to success at the present state of the art.
Disney's cartoon Bolt, featuring the voice of John Travolta, was released in Disney Digital 3D 'in select theaters' in mid-December and it looks great. As a showcase for the full 1080p 3D home system of the future (2010 onwards?) it is hard to beat. "It's not a gimmick" says Cameron and he's right. You quickly come to think of the screen as an open window, with nothing between you and the movie characters.
Bolt, Avatar and as many additional productions as can be assembled, could well be the catalyst Blu-ray requires to establish its identity as a 'must-have' item in the cash-strapped home. When the potential for 3D Games is added to the attraction of 3D movies and music titles at last the format has a USP that will put it ahead of the pack. Will a 3D animated dog turn out to be Blu-ray's best friend? Coming soon to a three-dimensional home near you...
It's a pattern that Panasonic knows well. Ensuring that DVD production tools were right there on the Universal lot from 1996 onwards, under the wise stewardship of Jerry Pierce of DVCC, helped to make the format acceptable to both creatives and accountants in the film industry. Without this on-the-spot demonstration of the format's potential (along with the decisive support of Warren Liebefarb of Warner Home Video and Koji Hase at Toshiba) DVD could well have fallen at the first hurdle.
At CES in January 1997, it was hard to avoid being hit by giant DVD posters and flags, which fluttered over non-working mock-ups of what DVD CE products might be like if ever the consortium members could finally agree common standards. The 3D video being shown at CES in 2009 is threatened by a similar lack of agreement on how to implement 3D in the home. Lack of agreement held back DVD and the fruitless battle between HD DVD and Blu-ray put off all but determined early adopters of HD packaged media. Format squabbles could prevent investment in the 3D content which is needed to make it a success and everyone involved should fight against this possibility. The home entertainment industry needs to wake up to reality.
3D glasses will be with us for some time yet, which some may think to be a disadvantage, although it adds a sense of occasion to the viewing experience. Pseudo-3D, as demonstrated by Philips and others, is fine for watching short-term - at right angles to the screen - but tiring and ineffective for long-term viewers. Dolby and Quantel go for the polarized approach: surely this must be the route to success at the present state of the art.
Disney's cartoon Bolt, featuring the voice of John Travolta, was released in Disney Digital 3D 'in select theaters' in mid-December and it looks great. As a showcase for the full 1080p 3D home system of the future (2010 onwards?) it is hard to beat. "It's not a gimmick" says Cameron and he's right. You quickly come to think of the screen as an open window, with nothing between you and the movie characters.
Bolt, Avatar and as many additional productions as can be assembled, could well be the catalyst Blu-ray requires to establish its identity as a 'must-have' item in the cash-strapped home. When the potential for 3D Games is added to the attraction of 3D movies and music titles at last the format has a USP that will put it ahead of the pack. Will a 3D animated dog turn out to be Blu-ray's best friend? Coming soon to a three-dimensional home near you...
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Blu Branding
When you have a product that is as clearly superior as Blu-ray and which has a clear USP – HD Video, lossless audio, Web connectivity and so on – why on earth would you allow the marketing department to undercut the product profile by using the 'Blu' prefix for a marginally better way of writing data for a disc format that is over twenty-five years old?
Launched by Sony in Japan on December 24th, 'Blu spec CDs' can be played in existing CD and DVD players; which is hardly surprising, since the replicated discs are no different from any other CD made since 1982. The Red Book audio standard is the bible of CD production, defining exactly how the disc should be read by the laser in the CD player and nothing changes with the new (more expensive) discs. The fact that a blue laser is used to burn 'higher definition' pits is of absolutely no concern to the consumer, apart from the fact that the 'Blu' CDs are 20-25% more expensive. Instead of spending more on the discs, audiophiles would be better off saving the premium to pay for improved speakers, amps and drives, which in most cases would lead to noticeably improved sound quality for every disc in their collection.
Blu-ray players offer a unique way to experience higher quality sound and vision in the home. Whatever the engineering challenges that Blu-spec CDs have been able to resolve, the techies should never have been allowed to stick a Blu label on what is still a red laser product.
* According to research on the Christmas 2008 CE market, carried out by LG Electronics, 74% of consumers are still confused about Blu-ray. LG polled 1,000 people over the age of 16 in the UK.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
When better compression comes along
It seems that Pioneer has mastered the 16-layer Blu-ray and we'll soon have 400GB discs on which to store our HD movies, with maybe a Terabyte to come. (dvd-intelligence). It's just what the market has been waiting for, particularly since those friendly Holographic folk in Longmont seem to have dropped the ball (several times). But do we really need more space?
Whenever you talk to lovers of IPTV and other internet-delivered wonders, the mantra is always the same: "Sure, we're having a job squeezing 1080p into 2Mbits right now but you've got to understand that compression technology is getting better all the time. By the time we roll out our service there'll be no problem." Next stop Super Hi-Vision on dial-up?
I was there when fractal video was the answer to video on CD, when the audience applauded Star Trek on CD-i, when VoD was going to replace DVD "by the end of the century". At nearly every step the compression algorithms were directly related to the bandwidth and storage space available. Isn't it time we separated the needs of the Video Home Entertainment market from the demands of IT?
Let's face it, Blu-ray audio and video is 'good enough' for the consumer demands of today and tomorrow (and probably the day after that) and the 50GB of a dual-layer disc is more than enough for most entertainment applications. Good though some modern compression methods may be, it will be a long while before the current crop of codecs are superseded. More people are more concerned about locking down the profile version and dealing with AACS than adding extra capacity.
Where does that leave 16-layer technology if not in the hands of the Hollywood Studios? Innovation is a wonderful thing but committing several hundred Gigabytes of precious data to a single plastic disc seems as crazy as losing a laptop with the records of 25 million people on it. And anyway,when the new data compression strategy comes along, I'll be able to put it all on a USB Key.
Whenever you talk to lovers of IPTV and other internet-delivered wonders, the mantra is always the same: "Sure, we're having a job squeezing 1080p into 2Mbits right now but you've got to understand that compression technology is getting better all the time. By the time we roll out our service there'll be no problem." Next stop Super Hi-Vision on dial-up?
I was there when fractal video was the answer to video on CD, when the audience applauded Star Trek on CD-i, when VoD was going to replace DVD "by the end of the century". At nearly every step the compression algorithms were directly related to the bandwidth and storage space available. Isn't it time we separated the needs of the Video Home Entertainment market from the demands of IT?
Let's face it, Blu-ray audio and video is 'good enough' for the consumer demands of today and tomorrow (and probably the day after that) and the 50GB of a dual-layer disc is more than enough for most entertainment applications. Good though some modern compression methods may be, it will be a long while before the current crop of codecs are superseded. More people are more concerned about locking down the profile version and dealing with AACS than adding extra capacity.
Where does that leave 16-layer technology if not in the hands of the Hollywood Studios? Innovation is a wonderful thing but committing several hundred Gigabytes of precious data to a single plastic disc seems as crazy as losing a laptop with the records of 25 million people on it. And anyway,when the new data compression strategy comes along, I'll be able to put it all on a USB Key.
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