I want to complain about AnyDVD's release notes

[jinx]

Blu-Ray vs. Hd

What Makes The Difference Slysoft Has Always Been There For Us And I Believe They Always Will be, On Both Formats. Their The Best,And That's A Fact.

 

[Webslinger]

Question:
if HD DVD is such a perfect media format, then why aren't they trouncing blu ray sales everywhere?

Sales do not necessarily imply that something is superior to something else. Sales is typically a weak indication of quality; huge sales numbers are sometimes indicative of the lowest common denominator (especially as it applies to art consumption).

I don't really care about the argument of whether Blu-ray is worse (I already know Blu-ray is, currently, the more restrictive format; arguing about it is pointless). But I just want to point out that sales tends to be an indication of popularity--but not necessarily an indication of quality.

 

[joakim_46]

I understand why SlySoft recommends using HD-DVD instead of Blu-Ray. No doubt Blu-Ray has some nasty unfriendly protections over HD-DVD. We can buy relatively cheap HD-DVD players, and I can even buy an single layer HD-DVD for 6€ against 18€ which is the cost of a single layer BD-R disc.
This is all very nice until this point. But when we start talking about PC drives (readers and burners), HD-DVD lies down. I can't even buy a single HD-DVD burner, but I have plenty of Blu-Ray burners in shops.
This is a very problematic issue. HD-DVD can not win only by having movies and standalone players.

 

[bk1987]

Question:
if HD DVD is such a perfect media format, then why aren't they trouncing blu ray sales everywhere?

i still cant ignore the attach rate of hd dvd to blu ray and i can only believe that when HD DVD has as many players as bluray, blu ray will go the way of betamax remember bluray has around 4.5 to 5 million players in the ps3 compared to around 500,000 hd dvd players like 9 to 1 bluray but they only sell 1.75 to 1 in disk sales in my world that does not look to good for blu ray or am i missing something

 

[bk1987]

Not only that - AnyDVD HD can and will support HD DVD better, because the iHD navigation can easily edited (and, btw, is documented).
Everybody can remaster any commercial HD DVD *without copying it* using AnyDVD HD. This isn't and won't be possible with Blu-ray.

For me AnyDVD's strongest feature is and always has been the real time remastering (skipping over studio logos, removing UOPs, subtitle transparency .... adjusting subtitle size & position would be a nice feature, too ) because I want to *watch* the disc the way *I* want. YOU CANNOT DO THIS WITH BLU-RAY. I only think it is fair to inform AnyDVD customers who are thinking about which HD format they should buy into.
If they still want to buy Blu-ray, they can do, but they have been warned.
From a political point of view, I believe it is very dangerous to have state & church combined. (Sony is major content provider, major CE manufacturer, major IP provider, major copy protection provider, major duplicator, ... there is actually no step where they aren't heavily involved).

I feel sorry for anybody who doesn't understand how dangerous this is (well, dangerous for other studios and CE manufacturers, duplicators ... as well).

After I said that, buy as many Blu-ray titles as you want. But don't tell me later, you haven't been warned.

well said:agree:

 

[Defiant2TheEnd]

OKAY. I believe we're done here!

Personally, who ever put Star Trek in high def wins the war anyway.

 

[SamuriHL]

OKAY. I believe we're done here!

Personally, who ever put Star Trek in high def wins the war anyway.

The Original Series in HD is on HD DVD. Since Star Trek is Paramount, you can bet you're going to see most of the movies released on HD DVD, as well.

 

[Defiant2TheEnd]

There you go. We have a winner.
Slysoft, stop any further development on cracking BD+. Everyone will stop buying BR since Star Trek is only on HDDVD.

Come on, people are not that gullible. We know Sony has a better product. We all bought a HDTV ready Sony XBR series TV back when Sony told us that it will play all high definition movies, tv, etc. A year later, "what do I need? HDCP. What the hell is that? "H" How, "D" - Deep, "C" - Can, - you take up the "P" - Pipe. And, yes, we're going to screw you again.

 

[Jeshimon]

'just say no'

I watched friends get hooked on beta and suffer withdrawal for years. All I can tell you is 'just say no' to blue ray so you don't suffer the same fate they did.

 

[TM2-Megatron]

OKAY. I believe we're done here!

Personally, who ever put Star Trek in high def wins the war anyway.

I love Star Trek, but as big a fan as I am I refuse to pay Paramount's outrageous prices, just as I refused to pay them when the various shows were released to DVD before.

Star Trek is probably the most frequently aired show (between all the series) on Earth... without any really fancy cable packages, I could see at least 2 different episodes of TNG thru Enterprise daily if I were so inclined. Paramount's already made it's money back on every Trek series at least 20x over (and a hell of alot more so for the older series), and I'm not going to help line their pockets any more by paying $150 CDN per season for it on DVD, and I'm certainly not going to pay $200 or whatever it costs for a single season on HD-DVD. Paramount can shove it. Considering the fact there are around 28 combined seasons of Star Trek in total (not counting the animated series), Paramount managed to cheat a good number of people out of thousands.

The way Paramount takes advantage of the show's fans by charging nearly 3x the price of any other show (mostly because it's a sci-fi series, and the stereotypical sci-fi fan will pay any price for merchandise) per season makes me sick, and I'd rather buy the chinese bootlegs off eBay for 10% of the price and do my part to cut into Paramount's profit.

 

[Defiant2TheEnd]

New strategy.

Slysoft,

Come up with a software that can up-convert standard DVD movies for PCs. We'll just stick with standard DVD.

 

[DonCarlos]

I would like to add something to the topic that HDDVD is more consumer friendly. Thoshiba invented as we all know the triple layer HDDVD with 51GB space, according to some news it is very unsure if those discs can be played back in todays HDDVD standalone players or PC drives. If this becomes true and the studios won't act the way they say we don't need this 51Gb disc than HDDVD would kill all the players out there and a lot of costumers would have lost much money.That isn't that consumer friendly if you ask me?!And the specs aren't that rock solid as already told in this forum. I like HDDVD and do not hope that this scenario is going to happen because I do not like BD+ and this stuff, but I have to say Hitachi has invented a 100Gb Blu ray and this(according to news) should be playable in all Blu ray drives and standalones which are on the market,they are planning to be able to produce this discs during the next couple of months.
But we have to see what is going to happen if the studios will use the 51Gb HDDVD or not and if the 100GB Blu ray is used or not.
At the moment I totally hope that the HDDVD will win this war.

 

[SamuriHL]

Just because they are unsure that it won't play in existing players doesn't mean it won't. I've read reports that say it will, but, it hasn't been confirmed. Disney is one of the backers of this new format, so, there's a possibility that Disney could switch to the 51gb HD DVD's for its movies. That would be a HUGE nail in the coffin of Blu-ray. However, this is ALL speculation at this point. Until it's confirmed one way or the other whether the 51gb discs are compatible with existing players, we won't know what the impact is going to be. If it IS compatible, Blu-ray's "we have more space" argument goes right out the window. Yea, Blu-ray is working on 100gb discs, but again, those are not currently guaranteed to play in existing players, either. Besides that, Blu-ray is going to piss off some people who bought pre-1.1 players when the new discs come out. Those discs will still play just fine in those players, but, the new PiP special features won't work. HDi works on all existing players, so, that's a boon for HD DVD. I've said it before and I'll say it again...I personally feel this "war" has no conclusion. I think we'll be stuck with both formats from here on out. This concept that the war can be "won" by either side...I doubt it. That's just MY opinion.

 

[ivanX]

As a matter of fact, AnyDVD does and will support HD DVD much better than Blu-ray.
E.g., AnyDVD removes user prohibitions like forced french subtitles from import discs, lets you skip over studio logos (I don't want to see the 30 seconds Universal intro anymore), lets you jump directly to titles.
And you have AnyDVD's "magic file replacement(tm)", which allows you to remaster HD DVDs to your liking *without* the need to copy them to harddisk first.
AnyDVD is a very strong tool to give consumers the freedom to watch a movie the way *they* like it. But it only does this for HD DVD discs, not Blu-ray.

There is no denying that AnyDVD (and its HD brother/sister) are great tools. Mind you, this "skipping" studio logos sometimes happens imperfectly hence the warning screen when you try to enable it.

In any case, we've steered away from the matter. I don't mind James or peer telling me that HD DVD is better than Bluray on the forums. I guess for this sole purpose James added a disclaimer to his sig to say that what he says on the forums is his own opinion. Fair enough. Modifying that philosophy means that what Slysoft mentions in the release notes is actual company's stance.

To sum up, I'm slightly puzzled that Slysoft decided to support Bluray and now it is trying to encourage (let's be frank about this please) people not to buy BD stuff. Irrespective of which format is better, which is still a matter of opinion, Slysoft must not sway either way. If you support both then stay neutral in the release notes.

 

[Adbear]

but I have to say Hitachi has invented a 100Gb Blu ray and this(according to news) should be playable in all Blu ray drives and standalones which are on the market,they are planning to be able to produce this discs during the next couple of months

What they actually said was that they 'believe' it should play in most players with just a firmware update, that doesn't sound very reassuring to me. Also with the high failure rate on production of dual layer Blu-ray, I can't see them getting any better rates with these, and it would also mean duplication houses having to completely retool their new Blu-ray equipment to be able to produce these in mass quantities, again I can't see them wanting to shell out the money for that when companies aren't even using dual layer disc that much at the moment

 

[DonCarlos]

No I you understood me wrong. I just wanted to point out that for me HDDVD isn't that format for me they lost a little bit of their reputation because of that they do not really care that they might throw thousends of players into the trash just to get the same space as Blu ray. I didn't think they would do something like that I would expect Blu ray does something like that not HDDVD. But lets see what is going to happen.

 

[SamuriHL]

No I you understood me wrong. I just wanted to point out that for me HDDVD isn't that format for me they lost a little bit of their reputation because of that they do not really care that they might throw thousends of players into the trash just to get the same space as Blu ray. I didn't think they would do something like that I would expect Blu ray does something like that not HDDVD. But lets see what is going to happen.

Why do people believe this nonsense? If the 51gb discs aren't compatible with the existing players, they will NOT be used for movies. Period. The existing HD DVD spec was finalized before the first player was ever released. They're not going to jeopardize the existing market to release movies on a disc that won't play on existing players. This notion that they're going to force people to "throw players in the trash" is ridiculous at best.

 

[deaacs]

Simply put HD is more consumer friendly due to its less heavy-handed mechanism for reducing Fair Use. That simply cannot be argued or debated. It's a fact. Don't even waste your breath trying to convince me otherwise.

No it isn't, it's an opinion - one that I share, and other people hold other opinions. What it all boils down to is the more technical "facts" that many of the forum members are forgetting, facts like:

HD-DVD does not contain region coding, does not contain BD+ and doesn't force you to update your player. These are things that directly effect the consumer. There are many more that directly effect Slysoft, and consumers who break restrictions, these include:

BD can force players not to support BD+ on unencrypted discs. This is a huge problem for BD fans, one that cannot be ignored. It means transcoding into other formats will be more difficult, down-sizing will be more difficult, re-authoring will be more difficult - all these things are impossible at least in the short term.

As James mentioned, it's more difficult to remove PUO's, Jump straight to movie, etc on BD as it is on HD-DVD. This support may never be fully complete - or as good as it is for HD-DVD (James says it will never be so for BD).

People claimed that records are better quality then CD's - which is rubbish. Most of them accepted the technical superiority of CD's, but then claimed that records produce sounds more pleasing to the human ear - which is also rubbish.

In Hollywood there are directors claiming you can get better quality and higher detail filming on film then on digital - which is rubbish - and you have other directors claiming you can get better quality and higher detail filming in digital then on traditional film - which is also rubbish. You then have directors claiming film looks better on the big screen - which is rubbish, and directors claiming digital looks better, which is rubbish.

You had people claiming that LD was better quality when DVD was release (which was partially true at the time), and you have people who today still claim betamax was better quality then vhs - which was rubbish, is still rubbish, and was only ever "partially" true for short periods of time. Being the first to include stereo hifi sound, Sony claimed it was impossible to achieve on VHS - which was rubbish, and then took away that advantage beta had achieved.

People have claimed NTSC is better then PAL - which is rubbish. Most people don't know that the NTSC signal becomes corrupted when broadcast, whereas PAL is stable. People have claimed that non-pitch corrected PAL audio is noticeable - which is rubbish - whereas the "pulldown" system used by NTSC is of a far more noticeable quality. Hell people have claimed that buying a TV series that has been converted from the NTSC format to PAL is lower quality then the NTSC - which is also rubbish (and even more-so today when everything is shot in HD anyway). On high quality calibrated equipment the technical differences between PAL and NTSC is not noticeable. Hell if you're the 1 in 1000 that can't listen to non-optimised PAL (does it even exist today?) you could just lower the pitch by about 60 to 70 cents on your equipment, no one claims the difference isn't audible - it just isn't readily noticeable.

People are claiming quality is better on HD-DVD then on BD - which is rubbish. Other people are claiming quality is better on BD then HD-DVD - which is also rubbish. The things that matter are where the differences do lie - availability, price, player features, load times, can you import movies, copy/back-up movies, etc. In the meantime people will claim or say just about anything which holds no factual basis in reality.

 

[James]

There is no denying that AnyDVD (and its HD brother/sister) are great tools. Mind you, this "skipping" studio logos sometimes happens imperfectly hence the warning screen when you try to enable it.

With HD DVD, it works perfectly (and there is no warning screen, either).

 

[James]

People have claimed NTSC is better then PAL - which is rubbish.

At least PAL's resolution is higher than NTSC's.