[Update 20aug05: now Audio|Video Revolution has a headline that reads “HD-DVD In Trouble As Blu-ray Gains Momentum”]

Up to now the rhetoric has always been in terms of a war with two combatants. Blu-ray vs HD-DVD. Companys X, Y, and Z behind one and A, B, and C behind the other. Which will win? Which will lose? Gosh we really see problems here with two formats on the market. VHS vs Betamax etc etc etc.

But the mainstream press has always shied away from predicting an actual winner or loser. Like everything in society today, it’s not a good idea to take a stand. It’s better to be wishy-washy than to ever be wrong about anything. Sure, there was some obvious bias one way or the other, but still no predictions are really being made.

So it’s with interest that I read a headline over at ArsTechnica. Of course, ArsTechnica isn’t mainstream like CNN, ABC, or Fox. But in internet computing circles, I think that ArsTechnica has always been viewed as an impartial source of information.

Their recent headline reads “Blu-ray wins two more backers, while HD DVD looks doomed”. Gosh, are they predicting a Blu-ray victory? Well, not quite. They did put that word “looks” in there. But they got awefully close.

Personally, I think not only that Blu-ray should win, but that it will win. It’s a technically better format supported by more electronics industry players, and the PS3 will make it quite common. What’s not to like? Personally, I think the Xbox 360 should go Blu-ray as well, it would make everything so much simpler.

ArsTechnica - Blu-ray wins two more backers, while HD DVD looks doomed

Lions Gate Home Entertainment announced yesterday that they will be releasing content for the BD (Blu-ray Disc) format. LGHE will be releasing new films, TV programming, and “other titles” when BD hardware launches in North America.

You may recognize some of LGE’s movies:

• Punisher
• T2
• Rambo
• Total Recall
• Stargate
• Dirty Dancing

More details about which exact titles will get the BD treatment and when are forthcoming. And we can probably expect their support quickly once BD players ship: “The studio was the first after Sony to support the UMD format, the first to release product on DVD-9, DVD-18, DVD+CD, the first to utilize Microsoft Windows Media 9 and one of the frontrunners in acquiring VOD rights throughout its catalog.”

One of the reasons Lions Gate mentioned for supporting the BD format was the existence of BD support in the PS3.

This is great news for the BD format and its supporters. Hopefully more studios will announce support for BD.

PRNewswire - Lions Gate Entertainment to Support Blu-ray Disc Format

OpenTV is a company that sells to other companies like Foxtel in Australia, British Sky Broadcasting in England, and the Dish Network in the States. They create middleware products for cable and satellite companies to use and provide to their customers. It’s the same kind of thing Scientific Atlanta does for my cable provider, Rogers.

Thomas Hawk and Davis Freeberg recently got a chance to interview Marc McCarthy, Vice President of Corporate Communications and Wesley Hoffman the General Manger of the North American Cable Division at OpenTV.

OpenTV’s 2.0 PVR supports HDTV, live stats, interactive weather reports (does this mean I can change the weather here?), karaoke, and interactive gaming. That’s the cool stuff. The scary stuff is that they can take your profile and use it to replace commercials with more highly targetted versions. For me that would mean lots of Coke, Star Wars, F1, gaming, and car commerials. All the more reason for my wife to ask me to please fast forward them!

OpenTV
Thomas Hawk’s Digital Connection - OpenTV: TiVo, We’re Not in Kansas Anymore

Okay, okay, I know this is old news, but sometimes I just don’t get around to posting about things right away. But when Sony releases some HD PVR’s, I just can’t let that lie no matter how old the news is.

PVRBlog mentioned way back on July 25th that Sony has some new HD DVR’s, in 500GB and 250GB sizes for $999 and $799, respectively. They even have CableCARD slots, which is amazing. So once your cable company supports CableCARD, you can get rid of any other STB you may have and buy one of these things. PVRBlog also mentions that Sony has a nice guide to HD recorders

PVRBlog - Sony’s new HD Digital Video Recorders.

BenQ has thrown it’s hat into the bull ring and hopes it won’t get trampled by the continuing bull fight. BenQ has fallen on the side of Blu-ray in the next-gen HD disc battle, and says that they’ll offer BD computer drives in the first or second quarters of 2006.

Although the result of the competition between Blu-ray and HD DVD to set the industry standard for next generation optical drives has yet to be decided, BenQ is wagering on Blu-ray for the time being, Tsai indicated.

Alpha Tsai is the associate vice president for the company’s Storage Business Unit.

DigiTimes - BenQ wagers on Blu-ray

CTV announced yesterday that they have begun broadcasting HDTV signals over the air in Toronto and Vancouver. Toronto and Vancouver are the two largest English Canadian markets.

CTV’s HD signals, identified as “CTV HD East” and “CTV HD West,” are now being transmitted from Toronto’s CN Tower and B.C.’s Mount Seymour respectively. Viewers in those cities who have an HD-capable television equipped with a digital tuner and antenna can pull the HD signal off air.

CTV West is the first HDTV OTA station in Vancouver while CTV East becomes the third digital station available OTA in Toronto. The first was CityHD followed by the CBC affiliate in Toronto.

Digital Home Canada - CTV begins OTA broadcasting in HDTV in Toronto and Vancouver

Just yesterday I was bemoaning Sony’s fall from grace as the king of television. And what do they do? Announce a couple new televisions that could really turn the company around.

Sony’s Qualia 006 is an SXRD HDTV that’s been highly praised in the press, often being cited as the best RPTV ever made. Now Sony is introducing some RPTVs based on the same kind of SXRD technology.

The new sets are both 1920 x 1080 designs based on Sony’s 0.61 inch SXRD panels, three of which will be used in each set.

The panels produce a contrast ratio of 5,000:1. An “Advanced Iris” combines with the three panels and Sony’s Cinema Black Pro mode to maximize contrast ratio up to 10,000:1 based on overall light levels of the original signal. The result is exceptional brightness and sharp contrast. Additionally, the aperture of the iris shutter has been reduced in size, resulting in more faithfully reproduced blacks, the company said.

The new models feature a CableCARD slot, dual HDMI inputs, three iLink/Firewire/IEEE1394 inputs, and PC (VGA?) input, and Memory Stick viewer. Could those dual HDMI inputs mean that they can accept a 1080p signal, making these sets PS3 compatible to the highest degree? I don’t know, but I’m crossing my fingers. It’s about time display manufacturers starting supporting 1080p.

The televisions will retail for about $5,000 and $4,000 for the KDS-R60XBR1 and KDS-R50XBR1, respectively, come September. If these sets are anywhere near as good as the Qualia 006, consumers will be snatching them up at those prices. Maybe this is the beginning of a comeback for Sony. We can only hope.

Link: PRNewswire - Sony Expands SXRD Rear Projection HDTV Line With 50 and 60-Inch Grand WEGA Televisions
Link: Audioholics - Sony Introduces 1080p SXRD Grand WEGA HDTVs (with pictures)

You know DVD. I know DVD. Most people you know probably know DVD. DVD is a CD, but for movies.

I know HD. You know HD. Most people you know probably don’t know much about it. Yet. But as it becomes more popular, people will start to ask themselves if there’s an HD version of DVD available. They walk into Best Buy and see HD-DVD. There you go, that’s it! I want an HD-DVD player. BD you say? What’s that? A foot disease? No thanks. I’ll take that HD-DVD, thank-you.

There’s power in a name, and that power is working for Toshiba as it brings HD-DVD to market late this year. It’s really as simple as that. No use saying it fourteen different ways.

So the real question is: can Sony push the BD so hard that people are actually aware of it when it comes time to purchase an HD disc player? When they see an HD-DVD player at Best Buy, will the ask the salesman about that other format? You know, the foot disease one?

One thing that can only help is Sony’s inclusion of BD drives in the PS3. Millions of people will buy th PS3, giving BD instant recognition by those folks. Gosh, wouldn’t it be a good idea for Sony to enlist Microsoft into putting the BD into the Xbox 360 as well? Sony needs moves like this to raise BD’s profile, or it’ll never make it against HD-DVD.

Mindshare. It’s called mindshare.

Link: MacWorld - HD-DVD claims the brand advantage

You’d expect Samsung’s new 72-series of plasma displays to include a 72″ model, right? Wrong. The 72 series of displays just use the number 72 in them. So maybe they shouldn’t call it the 72-series. Maybe they should just call it their “new” series. Or “high-end” series. Or “elite perfomance”, “stunning design”, or “specialty A/V retail” series. Because all those adjectives would have been a little bit more descriptive.

This new series of plasma displays come in 42″, 50″, and 63″ flavours: the HP-R4272, HP-R5072, and HP-R6372, respectively. They feature a gloss-black cosmetic design, side a/v inputs, 10 speakers, and a 2 year warranty. Also included are a built-in tuner, an HDMI input, and CableCARD connectivity.

The part that got me about these displays is the support for 549 billion displayable colours. That’s 13bits each for the red, green, and blue components. As far as I know, DVD colour information is stored at 24bit, for a total of about 16 million colours. How do these sets get 549 billion colours? Does it do some fancy interpolation when upconverting DVD images to HD? What happens if you’re already starting with an HD signal? There’s nothing to interpolate. I’m not questioning the 13 bit technology, I’m just wondering how it’s applied.

Link: Widescreen Review - Samsung’s New Plasma TVs Target Specialty A/V Retailers With High-End Design
Link: Samsung - Plasma Displays

When I first saw the headlines I thought they were talking about Universal the movie studio, and I almost squealed like a stuck pig. Universal! Movies! On Blu-ray! Yippee! Maybe there won’t be a format war after all!

Dang misleading headlines.

Universal Music Group (UMG) has decided to back the Blu-ray format. If you’ve bought a U2 album, you’ve lined UMG’s pockets, just for a frame of reference there. But since UMG is already a member of the BDA (Blu-ray Disc Association) this is really not news at all. I wonder why they announced it. Oh! Yeah! They’re not announcing membership, they’re announcing support. Uh…. I mean. They’re backing Blu-ray. Mmmm. That’s no different either. Okay…

Anywho, UMG will be doing the whole music video etc thing using BD, not HD-DVD. That’s the important part, I guess.

Link: Reuters - Universal Music backs Sony’s Blu-Ray

Update: Oooh! I think I have it. Over at Blu-ray.com they welcome UMG as a “contributing member”. That must be it. Instead of just being a normal member, they’re now doing some contributing!

Optoma makes a great looking DLP RPTV. And by “great looking” I mean the physical set. You know, when it’s turned off. The set is called the RD50A, and it looks great. You may scoff, buy I like my televisions to be handsome. It’s one of the reasons I like my Hitachi 57T500. It looks great even when I’m not watching it.

Unfortunately, this seems to be the only state in which the Optoma RD50A does look good, at least according to PC Magazine. They did a review of the set and found it a bit wanting:

Our objective measurements confirmed that the RD50A’s color accuracy was less than ideal, with yellow shifted toward green and magenta shifted toward blue.

And:

Red, blue, and green intensity levels were less than optimal, with red tracking 40 percent below target. The RD50A’s average contrast ratio of 177:1 was the highest among the RPTVs we have measured using our 9-point spot test. But this admirable result was tempered by high black levels that prevent the RD50A from producing a convincing black.

Now they didn’t seem to actually calibrate the set to 6500K, so my guess is that you’d see a lot better results if you actually did that. It would be a shame for such a good-looking set to look so terrible.

Link: PC Magazine - Optoma RD50A
Link: Optoma - RD50A

Plasma technology is great for making big flat-screen displays. And Fujitsu is big on plasmas. They are releasing two new displays in the UK, the P55XHA40 55″ and P63XHA40 63″ displays.

They both feature resolutions of 1366 x 768 and AVM II (’Advanced Video Movement-II’) (whatever that means). They both have HDMI/HDCP, component video, S-Video, composite video, DVI-D (data only), and VGA inputs, so it’ll be safe with almost any video source you have.

The P55XHA40 will retail at £5,995 and the P63XHA40 for £11,995.

Link: AVReview - Fujitsu expands Plasmavision range

TV One has announced several DVI products, all of them HDCP compliant.

One is a DVI repeater, ensuring long lengths of DVI cable can be run, up to 40′ or more. Up to three repeaters can be cascaded to reach your display into your neighbour’s back yard. TV One also announced distribution amplifiers for displaying one signal on multiple displays. And they also have switchers for one display to choose among several sources. HDCP information is kept through the switching process, so you don’t have to worry about your copy-protected material with these devices.

Link: TV One - NEW DVI PRODUCTS OFFERED FROM TV ONE

The CEA says that there is no evidence to justify moving up the DTV tuner inclusion date for sets sized 13 to 24 inches. The FCC wants to move up the date by half a year from July 1st 2007 to December 31st 2006. At this time, all 13″ and larger televisions will be required to include an over-the-air DTV tuner.

In their filing, CEA and CERC cautioned that the accelerated date would be extremely difficult for manufacturers to meet. Manufacturers Philips and SHARP provided the FCC with very specific factual data as to why it is simply too late to modify product, production, financial and personnel resource cycles to incorporate DTV tuners in all TV receivers 13-inches and above any earlier than March 1, 2007.

Frankly I have no idea if Philips and SHARP are telling the truth. But we’re talking about including DTV tuners in television sets to go on the market a year and a third from now. Surely that’s enough time to do something. Personally, I think that these companies realize that a DTV tuner is a useless feature that consumers won’t care about, so they’re trying to make as much money off the current television sets as they can. They have to do this before they have to include a DTV tuner that will cut into their profit margins and potentially raise the price of these TV’s, much to consumers’ chagrin. And hey, it’s a free world, they can do what they want. But I won’t believe them when they say they can’t deliver until March 1, 2007. How do you really know something that specific about a year and a half away? How can they say March 1, 2007? What about February 28th, 2007? Is it not conceivable that they’d come out a day early? What about two months?

Link: CEA - NO EVIDENCE JUSTIFIES AN ACCELERATED DIGITAL TUNER MANDATE, SAY CEA AND CERC

As I’ve mentioned before, I love my 35″ Sony XBR direct-view CRT television. It has the best-looking picture I’ve ever seen from a non-HD set. But last year when I went shopping for an HDTV, Sony just wasn’t in the picture (sorry). I had decided to go with a RPTV CRT for two reasons: cost and picture quality. It’s strange that the best-looking HDTVs currently available are also the cheapest. I don’t like flat screen so much that I’m willing to pay more for inferior picture quality. Researching the sets available, Sony just never came out on top. Mitsubishi televisions aren’t available here, so in the end I had to choose between Hitachi and Toshiba. And I wanted to go with sets with the higher quality lenses, so I had to go for last year’s televisions instead of the new 2005 models. I finally chose the Hitachi 57T500, mainly because I could find one.

It seems that I’m not the only one with such an experience. Keith Kaplan, profiled by an LA Times article, was also a Sony fan but bought a Panasonic set when it came time to buy an HDTV. The Panasonic was a plasma.

“I couldn’t find any Sony TVs I liked,” said Kaplan, who plunked down $3,500 at the Best Buy in West Los Angeles for the 42-inch plasma set. “This one just had the best picture, and it was a good price.”

It looks like Sony’s rivals are making inroads into what used to be Sony’s bread and butter:

“Sony’s products have always commanded a price premium because it was Sony,” said analyst Michelle Abraham of In-Stat, a market research firm in Scottsdale, Ariz. “But consumers’ willingness to pay that premium is eroding…. You can no longer assume that the other brands aren’t going to be as good. It’s an ongoing issue that Sony will have to face.”

That’s a dramatic shift from the days when Sony’s Trinitron sets garnered as much as 50% of the high-end television market and represented about 20% of all TV sets sold, according to market research firm Envisioneering Group in Seaford, N.Y.

Sony is investing heavily in its LCD and SXRD operations, and I hope that pays off. I love my Sony set, and if they can start making beauties like that one again they’ll surely make a great comeback.

Link: LA Times - Rivals Blurring Sony Distinction