http://arstechnica.com/business/new...cs-outsell-blu-ray-by-3-1-margin-in-china.ars this is some of the news about chinese blue high definition disc or cbhd. seems to be based on the old hd dvd loser in the tech race. no royalty fees mean a lower player price. shinco and tcl have released players for about $292 american. currently cbhd movies in china are selling for $5-7 dollars each. gome.com.cn sells the units. was going to buy a blu-ray, but the movies are expensive. export will probably come fast. if i can locate a chinese supplier of cbhd movies, i am going to try to buy one of these players. from what i have read, cbhd is outselling blu-ray in china by a good bit. more to research.
new dvd format, blu-ray to be dinosaur?
- Thread starter spock
- Start date
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would be nice but the studios and blue ray are so much bent on greed they wouldn't relent an inch their profit margins to allow cheaper HD movie format/prices. I have a feeling that movies will be burned on 32 gig memory sticks before blue ray takes over the US market at the current rate/pricing vs standard dvd formats
Tekno_Cowboy
Flashlight Enthusiast
I don't know about anywhere else, but BluRay here is only about $2-$5 a movie more expensive than DVD here. I've even seen players as low as $100, and I saw a BR-ROM on sale for $80, if you use a computer, like I do.
The biggest limiting factor for BluRay as a media format is it's excessive content protection. Unless the content protection is revised to make it more compatible with a broad range of systems, I see internet distribution or flash overtaking it within 5 years or so.
Another thing to remember is that, with the right encoding, you could fit a 1080p video on a standard DVD with no distinguishable loss of quality over BluRay.
The biggest limiting factor for BluRay as a media format is it's excessive content protection. Unless the content protection is revised to make it more compatible with a broad range of systems, I see internet distribution or flash overtaking it within 5 years or so.
Another thing to remember is that, with the right encoding, you could fit a 1080p video on a standard DVD with no distinguishable loss of quality over BluRay.
PhantomPhoton
Flashlight Enthusiast
+1
I agree. I'd flash memory storage will be cheap enough within a couple years to compete with optical data storage. I know that holographic storage is in the works for further increasing storage density but flash memory may end up beating it out before it gets anywhere near the market.
I think a lot of the greedy movie studios will go toward streaming over the internet, due to their delusions of control. M$ Silverlight may end up a popular choice for them as M$ kowtows to DRM garbage and will make it a pain for people to rip from the stream. Which in turn will make it difficult for many to view the content anyway due to all sorts of updates and conflicts. Eventually the uninformed masses will shun it, but not before hollywood has made it's money.
LEDninja
Flashlight Enthusiast
Remember over there wages are 1/5 what it is over here. I was told by a visitor that food and rent is about the same as here. Which leaves very little money for discretionary spending.
So cost is a major factor. The most common format is still VCD and BOOTLEG DVD which at $1-$2 is still cheaper than cbhd.
One of the reasons for those annoying region codes on DVD and Blue Ray is so the Studios can license a disc for USD $30 here and for Yaun 30 over there. To prevent the Chinese copies from being reimported cheap over here the discs sold over there has a different region code and won't play in North America. Unless you hack your DVD player.
With licensing cbhd over there and Blu Ray over here you can not hack your Blue Ray player to play illegal cbhd discs over here. Makes it a lot easier to identify and prosecute illegal imports too.
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Do not be so sure 'flash' distribution won't be copy protected. It will probably come in ROM - read only memory. The early Radio Shack Color Computer programmers found an easy way to protect their game cartridges. Every so often they added code to write gibberish all over the program. In the ROM cartridge nothing happens - it is read only not read write. But if you are trying to run the program in memory or off floppy the gibberish writing would make the program destroy itself and be unusable.
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iTunes downloaded a copy of Mamma Mia The Movie instead of taking the digital copy from the DVD.
Did not like the iTunes player so I copied it on to the Desktop to use Quicktime Movie Player. Guess what?
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The movie studios are spending ridiculous amounts of money to make a movie. So they have to charge us moviegoers ridiculous amounts of money to watch them. And protect them to the hilt to prevent illegal copying.
They have used region codes, different formats, limited languages, registered computers and now 3D.
To see the 3D special effects you have to go down to the movie theater and shell out a fortune. Because nothing in your home will display the special effects properly.
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As to whether cbhd will kill blue ray, I do not think so.
Before DVD there was VCD over there and VHS over here and PAL in Europe. VCD did not kill VHS so I do not think cbhd will kill blue ray.
By simply releasing cbhd in Mandarin/Cantonese only and North American blue ray in English/French/Spanish only means a lot less stuff sneaking across the Pacific. It is much more effective than Region Codes.
So cost is a major factor. The most common format is still VCD and BOOTLEG DVD which at $1-$2 is still cheaper than cbhd.
One of the reasons for those annoying region codes on DVD and Blue Ray is so the Studios can license a disc for USD $30 here and for Yaun 30 over there. To prevent the Chinese copies from being reimported cheap over here the discs sold over there has a different region code and won't play in North America. Unless you hack your DVD player.
With licensing cbhd over there and Blu Ray over here you can not hack your Blue Ray player to play illegal cbhd discs over here. Makes it a lot easier to identify and prosecute illegal imports too.
-----
Do not be so sure 'flash' distribution won't be copy protected. It will probably come in ROM - read only memory. The early Radio Shack Color Computer programmers found an easy way to protect their game cartridges. Every so often they added code to write gibberish all over the program. In the ROM cartridge nothing happens - it is read only not read write. But if you are trying to run the program in memory or off floppy the gibberish writing would make the program destroy itself and be unusable.
-
iTunes downloaded a copy of Mamma Mia The Movie instead of taking the digital copy from the DVD.
Did not like the iTunes player so I copied it on to the Desktop to use Quicktime Movie Player. Guess what?
-----
The movie studios are spending ridiculous amounts of money to make a movie. So they have to charge us moviegoers ridiculous amounts of money to watch them. And protect them to the hilt to prevent illegal copying.
They have used region codes, different formats, limited languages, registered computers and now 3D.
To see the 3D special effects you have to go down to the movie theater and shell out a fortune. Because nothing in your home will display the special effects properly.
-----
As to whether cbhd will kill blue ray, I do not think so.
Before DVD there was VCD over there and VHS over here and PAL in Europe. VCD did not kill VHS so I do not think cbhd will kill blue ray.
By simply releasing cbhd in Mandarin/Cantonese only and North American blue ray in English/French/Spanish only means a lot less stuff sneaking across the Pacific. It is much more effective than Region Codes.
Good points in this thread. One thing to take note of is that region free DVD players are a dime a dozen. You don't have to hack anything. Just search for region free DVD player.
PhantomPhoton
Flashlight Enthusiast
DRM will be attempted on flash memory, for sure. But just like Blu Ray's "protection" it will be broken weeks if not days from when it hits the market.
ROM type memory doesn't stop people from playing copies of Nintendo, GBA, DS, and old skool Genesis games. We simply rip all the data from the ROM and emulate everything in software. I could play my pokemon just fine here on my laptop if I felt like finding the ROM.
I agree 3D is a very good way to prevent bootleg cams from leaking movies out to the file sharing networks. But it won't stop sharing once the DVD/ BD comes out.
ROM type memory doesn't stop people from playing copies of Nintendo, GBA, DS, and old skool Genesis games. We simply rip all the data from the ROM and emulate everything in software. I could play my pokemon just fine here on my laptop if I felt like finding the ROM.
I agree 3D is a very good way to prevent bootleg cams from leaking movies out to the file sharing networks. But it won't stop sharing once the DVD/ BD comes out.
LEDninja
Flashlight Enthusiast
I think the studios are aware secret codes are not so secret after all. That is why I think they will use ROM. They cannot use the write all over itself trick in read/write flash.
Those games are not protected. The few Color Computer protected game cartridges WRITE ALL OVER ITSELF. If I load it in memory (a simple Basic poke switches from ROM to the unused 32K bank of memory) WRITING ALL OVER ITSELF just erases all data from the computer memory. so the game stops playing and crashes. Notice there is no emulation of Color Computer games.
There are so few people emulating a wii (uh how do you get your computer to read that wii remote) that nobody bothers to protect the programs.
The movie people are aware people will try to copy the movies so will go the ROM route and release the movies as an application instead of a data stream. Then they can have the application self- distruct if played in anything but ROM.
BTW you did not mention playing wii games on your laptop.
But you will only be able to see the movie in 2D. TVs and computer screens do not work in 3D.
To get the 3D special effects you have to go down to the movie theater.
Those games are not protected. The few Color Computer protected game cartridges WRITE ALL OVER ITSELF. If I load it in memory (a simple Basic poke switches from ROM to the unused 32K bank of memory) WRITING ALL OVER ITSELF just erases all data from the computer memory. so the game stops playing and crashes. Notice there is no emulation of Color Computer games.
There are so few people emulating a wii (uh how do you get your computer to read that wii remote) that nobody bothers to protect the programs.
The movie people are aware people will try to copy the movies so will go the ROM route and release the movies as an application instead of a data stream. Then they can have the application self- distruct if played in anything but ROM.
BTW you did not mention playing wii games on your laptop.
But you will only be able to see the movie in 2D. TVs and computer screens do not work in 3D.
To get the 3D special effects you have to go down to the movie theater.
