Microsoft settles the HD war: you both lose.
Posted on 17/06/07 17:13 by chas0039                             
Microsoft settles the HD war: you both lose.

Microsoft's manager for Media Entertainment Convergence, Richard Doherty, said both HD DVD and Blu-ray will be obsolete in 5 years.  Speaking at the annual Digital Hollywood conference, Doherty said,

“I don’t know that high definition will be delivered on an optical disc in five to 10 years. At Microsoft, we’d rather HD wasn’t on a disc.”

He feels, as do others, that downloading will be the access portal of the future, combined with very large hard drives.

Netflix is already testing downloadable viewing at no charge for their subscribers, and it seems clear that at some time in the future, most of what we want could well be on someone's servers, just waiting for us to access it.  This has been happening gradually ever since Sun announced Java.  The more we depend on our computing on line the more providers will be able to lock us in as a consumer and it makes sense as a business model.  It will be an interesting future.

 

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By Truman, Sunday 17 June 2007 17:25
TrumanHmm, I think until we all get unmetered downloads and also super fast connection. I mean how long does it take to download an 8GB file (that's only DVD). Frown Sky's by broadband service have their content downsized to around 400MBs - not comparable quality. Even so, that takes about 1hr to download with their service.
This message was edited at: 17-06-2007 17:28
By neo1918, Sunday 17 June 2007 18:59
The trend now is to lock downloaded content to a single device. Your machine broken? Re-buy all the content. You want to take something to a friend's house and play it on his machine? Tough luck, buddy.
By applegodel8, Monday 18 June 2007 00:59
i want put my 2 cents on this one. I feel downloading is good but i have better idea, the way i do things is i like physical optical media to buy your content on, then rip and store in the computer. The media serves as back up. But you get the convenience of easy computer access. Then if they wanted to go downloads, this is how it should be done. Large media cards, go to the store on a kiosk and download from there what you want, for those who cant or dont have high speed internet like me. take the bought content to your computer and through it on your hard drive, and make a optical back up on your computer. the limits are endless, but music needs to be offered in uncompressed form, and not that lossless compression either, total uncompressed, and let us compress to the format we chose, and use a low compress video format and do the same from there. Giving consumers there computer fun and control they want. theres other thoughts i have too, but my back hurts and i cant type no more.
By DukeNukem, Monday 18 June 2007 14:50
DukeNukemDownloaded video uses high compression rates and that means artifacts. Thanks, but I'll stick with HD DVD.
By drunkndisordly, Tuesday 19 June 2007 02:32
Microsoft is thinking of profit from technology they own and can licence.They can't make money from Blu-ray or that other format.I'll stick with Blu-ray for gaming and movies.
By LambChop (guest), Tuesday 19 June 2007 05:58
I agree with Microsoft this time. The internet speed is getting faster and faster. There are 1Gb/s and unlimited download quota in some places. i.e. if your HD is fast enough (perhaps solid state HD in a few years later), it takes about 1 minutes to download a 8GB DVD. Also remember a fact, the download speed, cpu speed are double in a 18-24 months while DVD to Blueray HD-DVD takes at least 5 years to prevail on the market. Majority of people are hesitate and sick to change their dvd players too often but a super fast internet access will be the utimate solution. On the other hand, from the mp3 sale over the net, I think the movie companies are not happy to sell the movies on line without DRM which will hinder the spread this download movie technology.
By Dolphinius_Rex, Tuesday 19 June 2007 18:06
Dolphinius_RexI thought it was obvious that MS's intentions were to bolster HD DVD enough to keep both HiDef disc formats as niche products so that their download service would take over in a few years...
By WishfulThinking (guest), Tuesday 19 June 2007 20:43
8 Gig in a minute? Dunno where your based Lambchop, but that kind of speed in the U.K is about 20 years away puke
By jvr (guest), Sunday 24 June 2007 05:52
clown this guy is a clown man who can afford the server to run the needed software at around $10,000us.... Wake up an earn a real dollar not a million a year.....
By LambChop (guest), Tuesday 26 June 2007 09:53
Hi WishfulThinking, hope you still can read this mail. I am in Hong Kong. 1000M broadband has already been in HK for a couple of years. It costs about $1000 per month or 64.1 bristish pound. Optical fibre connects straight into your home. Check this website. www.hkbn.net and the website is in chinese and you can ask any of your chinese friends to tell you that I am telling the truth. If you have some friends from HK, you can ask them to confirm what I am telling you.
By LambChop (guest), Tuesday 26 June 2007 10:03
Also check this subpage, http://www.hkbn.net/bb1000/opt_fibre.html
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