I just read a report that 25 million households have HD television sets. Which actually suprised me.. I expected the figure to be much lower. Then I read on. The report goes further to say only about 10 million of those sets are fed HD programming. 9.8 million seems more reasonable a figure to me. They state some of the people just purchased the TV because even SD programming looks better on it. Many weren’t willing to pay the extra monthly fees to get HD programming. I feel there are other issues as well…

Many people dont realize that even in small markets, a $50 conversion box will get them OTA (over the air) HD freely broadcast from their local networks. Some may already have converters built into the TV. Of course if the person has cable, It is a chore to switch to OTA but its there for them.

I was recently at a local Walmart and they had a display of 4 large HD TVs in a display and they were all being fed by a $20 DVD player! Not even an upsizing one. Anyone buying the TV on the strength of the display alone will be just buying it because the pricepoint is good for such large TVs. Not because of the HD potential. (The DVD in the player was an awful quality homemade Walmart promo DVD.)

HD wont take off until 1.) Bluray players are reasonable. And I dont mean reasonable for what they can do, but reasonable compared to DVD. I dont think people will ever see they are 4x better and be willing to pay 4x as much. Price will have to be comparable to DVD. 2) People are forced to DTV in 2009. They will get HD without asking for it. 3) Studios just stop releasing SD content. This wont happen until 1 does however.

What are your thoughts?

source (http://broadcastengineering.com/hdtv/hd-service-fewer-hdtv/)

The format war is officially over (rumours aside.) Toshiba officially announced it is out of the HD game.  (All prior reports were just rumours, including reuters, until Toshiba itself announced it http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2008_02/pr1903.htm ) They are cutting their losses.  They also announced they do not plan to make a bluray player.  While it appeared bluray was on the road to being the winner,  its a shame the door was slammed on Toshiba as left with only being able to sell from amazon.com they had no choice to concede.  Not much of a war at that point.  In years to come the EU will probably investigate and fine Sony some money and it wont mean squat as Sony will have plenty of money to pay the fines with their Bluray income.

My son is 6 years old and has autism.  By the time I fully accepted it, it wasn’t a sad thing to know.  Not to say I wouldn’t love one day for him to turn around and behave like an average six year old.  Today I am optimistic about his future, while not ignoring the hurdles he has to face.  It took me 6 years to get here.

When my son was an toddler (say 1 to 1 and a half years old) He still wasn’t speaking.  While it was concerning,  I was told I didn’t talk until I was three so I could rationalize not panicking.  When he played with cars, he wouldn’t push the car around, he would just spin the wheels.  He’d be content to do this for long periods of time.  This too was not in itself a guarantee of a problem.  Those things and others together where red flags of autism.  My wife actually worked with autistic children and voiced the concern to me.  Not understanding fully what autism was,  my gut feeling was the child is fine.  He is smart as a whip.  He cant be autistic.  And he is very smart.  He could solve puzzles fairly quickly at a pace someone his age should.  So this assured me all was well. 

                As time went on and he still wasn’t really speaking, our doctor suggested he may be autistic.  Still linking autism to mental retardation I was certain it wasn’t the case.  He was potty trained very earlya (day trained by a year and a half old) and did so many things well I just couldn’t believe it.  At this point he was 3 years old.  We began him on speech therapy as his limited speech sounded a little babyish and also.. well.. was very limited.  We worked with him at home as well trying to improve his speech.  I read more online about autism, and while still not admitting it, the seeds were planting.  I realized autism itself isn’t mental retardation and many autistic children excel in non social endeavors and were very smart.  They could just not communicate, and to varying degrees, accept communication as well as the rest of us do.  At this point I felt, on the small chance he was autistic, that at least he was getting the speech therapy.  The speech therapist gave traditional speech therapy at first.  My son would go entire sessions only saying a few words, sometimes protesting loudly.  He was prone to inconsolable tantrums which was another sign.  After a few months, my son was fairly accustomed to the therapy and the therapist commented he spoke fine.  This is only relating to repeating words back which is traditional speech therapy, not forming original sentences.  The therapist began to tailor the program into what I later learned was elements of early intervention .  Teaching logic behind speech and appropriate responses to questions.  For example if you asked him did he want cake,  he would say ‘want cake’, as opposed to just saying ‘yes.’  I am grateful to the man as this early help, I believe set the groundwork for my sons later accomplishments.

I worked with him at home as well.  At this point following advise and teaching aids I found on websites made by parents of autistic children.  Even then not admitting he was autistic but really just treating what were only ‘coincidently’ parallel symptoms.  All the while learning more of this increasingly common disability.  Next blog I’ll recount more of how my ignorance was broken down and how my beautiful son progressed from then until now.

Its not over ’til its over. Just remember that. Things do not look good for Toshiba and the Hddvd format but its just not over. Toshiba is firing up a marketing campaign to get people fired up about HDDVD. People will surely see commercials as a sign the format is alive and kicking. HDDVD has over 900 titles available. The least expensive players are HDDVD players and that matters alot to a budget minded public. As long as any movie company is releasing movies in this format there is a chance. The fact Toshiba has put hddvd videos on sale is to sell more, not to empty inventories. Bluray is running similar sales.

Toshiba has to ratchet things up. And they are. Get more players in more homes. Get more titles in consumers media cabinets. Make it obvious that a battle is not the war.

THEY ARE TOSHIBA!

or something.

Tell me your thoughts on the format war and who’ll prevail…

So I bet you’ve spend hours thinking to yourself… how do they get so much movie into to these tiny disks. Well, I’ll briefly explain some of the important stuff. HDDVD, Bluray and DVD all use lossy codecs. Lossy means details are removed to make size smaller but yet visually look close to the original. Lossless compression is also used. A codec is the compression scheme that is used. Most codecs are very similar using the same basic concepts.

Mpeg-2 is used in DVDs and early Bluray disks. It is the oldest of the HD approved video codecs. It was the replacement for Mpeg-1 and added variable bitrate encoding. Variable bitrate allows the amount of bits allocated to a video segment to be lower when the scene is slow and add more bits to fast motion scenes where more bitrate is needed yet not cause problems with the video buffer. Mpeg2 does quite will on high definition material and is still the most used compression technique for streaming HD. Its large macroblocks are a problem and can sometimes be seen in fast scenes as a blocking effect especially in streaming video. Other formats are replacing it for streaming.

H.264 is part of the Mpeg4 family. It includes better lossless and lossy compression, and smaller macroblocks (which lessens perceived blocking) and many more advanced features. Macroblocks are smaller sections of video that are put together to make the picture. It is used in streaming now as well. It also includes advanced deblocking to further avoid block effect. H.264 is so complex that it requires many times more processing power to compress and decode as Mpeg2. Now that processors are more up to the task, and demand for more HD content in less bitrate is high, h.264 is now a much more viable replacement. Recent Bluray disks tend to use this codec the most however VC1 and Mpeg2 are still used.

VC1 is another mpeg4 derivative. It was made by a group of companies, led by Microsoft as a replacement for Mpeg2. Many of the same companies back h.264 as well. It has many of the features of h.264 but is a leaner version. Its call to fame is it is decoded easier than h.264. The encoder (software that takes the original uncompressed video and compresses it) implementations for VC1 made by Microsoft focused on sharpness of picture and improving the quality of black areas that lossy codecs are notoriously bad on. VC1 is the most used codec on HDDVD.

Well there you have it. I could go into way more detail but it would be tmi honestly. There are great resources online to find out more detailed information but this will get you started. Have fun until next time.

Well… Its been a long battle. At least in tech years. HD-DVD seemed to have alot of things going for it. It seems Blu-ray has more. HD-DVD’s physical format is closer to DVD so it was a little cheaper to upgrade fabrication facilities. This also made set-tops cheaper. For Bluray, format specifications aside, Sony has released a slew of recent movies to cinema and of course had every intention to release these movies in their format. The third profitable studio 2007 was BV/Disney which was Bluray only. The second biggest studio Warner Bros. was also releasing software in Bluray format. While they also released in HDDVD, for a consumer, the choice was not to just choose from Harry Potter or Pirates of the Caribbean, it was either to just have Harry Potter with HDDVD, or have both with Bluray. Then the ‘X’ factor. The PS3. The biggest reason i originally gave HDDVD a chance was the other X factor, Its SONY format curse.

Bluray:

Sony has been notorious for producing new formats yet having them fail. Betamax, SACD, UMD… With that track record, I think its reasonable to ask them to prove themselves winners before i go out to buy a player.

Advantages: With Bluray, Sony had the better format (capable of higher max bitrate and larger capacity.) The larger capacity doesn’t necessarily equate to better quality as the size of HDDVD is sufficient to hold a movie and extras at high quality, but perceptively it looks better on an advertisement. Bluray has the software as stated earlier. Just like with games, a high powered machine can get beat by a lesser machine that has better games. As far as studios, Bluray has Sony (which includes a bunch of smaller studios with hits), Warner Brothers, NewLine, BV/Disney which represents a wealth of kids movies and recent blockbusters. and FOX. I’ll leave gaming console advantage for later.

Disadvantages: Bluray players are more expensive than HDDVD players.

HDDVD:

Advantages: Less expensive set-top players. Early reviews of VC1 encoded HDDVD disks reviewed with better quality over Blurays mpeg2 releases of the same movies. Although few recent releases are in mpeg2 . The adult movie industry has seemed to have adopted HDDVD as its choice. Sony denies not allowing adult content on its disks and there are movies in both formats. Movie studios backing HDDVD are Paramount/Dreamworks which represents the highest earning studio of 2007, Warner Brothers/New Line which is second highest but until recently released disks in both formats, Universal and a few others.

Disadvantages: Smaller capacity. Lower max bitrate. A red herring but perceptually a loss. Less (and lessoning) Studio support.

Gaming consoles: The biggest weapon Sony has is the PS3. Some predicted that the expense putting a Bluray drive into the console would scare people away. And perhaps it has. But not enough to prevent giving Sony impressive numbers to quote for Bluray capable players sold. Perhaps not everyone with a PS3 plays movies on it, but they own software for it and this all helps the numbers for a perceived win and sometimes thats all that matters. The XBOX 360 could have helped the HDDVD format by including a HDDVD drive internally, but Microsoft didnt have anything to gain from losing XBOX sales due to the higher expense and delay waiting for the technology would have caused. Sony had more to gain with a win so it bet the house on this one and they had to go all out to protect that bet.

Now with Warner Brothers and New Line dropping HDDVD, and with Paramount with a big out clause that allows them to dump HDDVD at any moment if Warner Brothers drops the format, things dont look good at all. Sony learned from its past mistakes and got studio support early and put all the might they have behind this format and it looks like its paying off. Im still rooting for HDDVD. There will be sub $100 HDDVD players probably before the end of 2008 but it wont matter if there isnt anything to play on them. Bluray players under $300 are now available making price less of an issue. But I’ll hold out hope. I’ll watch Paramount careful before making a purchase decision. And heck, maybe dual format machines will drop in price enough that both formats can exist. I fear, however, the sentiments coming from Warner Brothers executives about consumer confusion will cause the remaining Studios to join the popular format.

Maybe Sony finally joins the Red Sox and finally gets the rid of their curse.