Warner and Paramount sign up for movies on SD cards
By Steven Kim 
posted Jan 10th 2009 3:49PM
posted Jan 10th 2009 3:49PM
posted Jan 10th 2009 3:49PM
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sansa fuze?
Engadget writers approve of something Toshiba is backing/putting out? wtf? What has the world come to?
Hey, it's a new year, everyone deserves some wiggle room! ;)
There's nothing wrong with being a staunch supporter of one format, as long as you keep enough subjectivity to understand when good relevant products or ideas are coming down the pipeline.
Your 'presuming' the rest of enghd writers approve, I notice this article it isn't written by Darren Bluray Murphy or Ben Sonylovin Drawbough, there's still plenty of time for them to kick it in the guts.
HD should be along shortly when they can actually have some margin on 16gig SD cards. Right now, the studios would probably pay $20-25 wholesale for just the card, not to mention slapping a profit margin on there. As soon as 16gig cards hit $10 wholesale (like 4gig are now) we will see HD.
We will also see nearly indestructible media. No more skipping, scratching, or cracked discs. I can imagine Netflix would see quite the reduction in shipping costs as well.
Right.. Panasonic just announced 64gb SD cards
Store up to 100 HD movies on a single HD card - New SDXC format holds 2 Terabytes of data
http://www.techradar.com/news/portable-devices/portable-media/panasonic-plans-64gb-sd-card-499548
The studios don't buy the cards, you do. Instead of thinking in terms of a 16Gb card for $10, think in terms of, say, a 128Gb card for $50. That's enough storage space for 64 480p24 movies, 32 cable/AppleTV quality 720p24 movies, 16 720p24 movies with likely no visible artifacts and a really high quality sound track, or 8 HD DVD/BD quality movies. All you have to do is choose the movies (not all at once) and have them copied to your card by a "trusted" (by Hollywood) copying device.
I think this technology is a potential winner, assuming we start to see high capacity cards of the type I just mentioned in the near future, and assuming they do go ahead and support HD. The nicest feature - that, in my view, makes it compelling over disc based media, is the flexibility:
* Pick a video quality, pick the soundtracks you want in the quality you want, pick any extras you like the look of, and send it to the card.
* Get content from anywhere. Download it from the Internet - you may need a "trusted" Internet appliance for this, but given the limited functionality of such a thing, it's hard to see that being expensive. Get it copied to you at a kiosk. Mail cards back and forth to Netflix and back.
* Seriously cheap players: It's cheap to make TVs that incorporate this technology. Most HDTVs already decoded MPEG2 and the commodity chipsets that do almost certainly will include H.264 capabilities in the near future anyway, if they don't already. I suspect most do, because Europe's HDTV standards have already gone H.264. Portable SD card players are almost certainly cheaper to make than portable DVD players.
There is a downside. It's a big one.
Toshiba is involved.
Toshiba is the company that came out with HD DVD players that didn't support any of the major special features of HD DVD that made it different from Blu-ray (or at least, Profile 2.0 BD.) There are still people posting here who think HD DVD was intended to only ever work from discs, because Toshiba didn't work to get the online capabilities of HD DVD going.
And so it's quite possible that for the next five years, this technology will revolve around kiosks and crappy 480p movies with stereo sound and no extra features.
Let's hope they've learnt from their mistakes.
@squiggleslash
While I don't agree with you about it blaming Toshiba for the studio's failure to leverage special feature, I also don't blame the BDA or the CEs that design Blu-Ray players when the studios release a Blu-Ray disc with excessive DNR, edge enhancement, poor BD-J or BD-Live features.
You do bring up a good point though. What kind of menus or interactivity will SD based movies have? There's no reason they could leverage HDi or BD-Java, but unlike codecs, they would require additional software & hardware.
WebDev - what was there for the studios to leverage? The Toshiba HD DVD players didn't support managed copy and never had online storage or HD DVD burners anyway. I don't believe LGs or Samsung's had either, and while the X-Box 360 was technically capable, I don't believe the software was ever released.
I have a gut feeling the entire situation would have been different last January had there been players supporting the online movie distribution systems of HD DVD been in wide circulation. At the very least, I'd have expected Universal and Paramount to "go along" with Blu-ray-only disc distribution but keep open online stores for HD DVD owners who wanted to buy, download, and perhaps burn movies through the Internet.
As the strongest supporter of HD DVD, Toshiba should have been building players that really took advantage of the format.
Interesting idea. The MOD web site goes beyond just SD cards, so I wonder if the studios who have signed up are looking at trying to branch to a specific gaming console that is owning the market (yet only does 480p). I see no references to Nintendo and MOD doing anything together, though.
The other issue, of course, is that no one is going to buy flicks through a kiosk at a store when they can do it online from home. Why drive to the store? Granted, it means that bandwidth won't be taken up at home... but will most people think of that?
I think it's more because they want to protect retail business too. I have no issues with that. Let's say this is what's going to replace optical which is great btw, some people won't be able to get high speed internet fast enough to get Blu-Ray like quality in the near future so SD cards like this and new high speed cards will allow them to go to the local retail store like Best Buy and buy movies directly there. They bring their SD card or get a movie as a package on SD card and take them home to their (let's say new Samsung HDTV) that will read all modern codecs and just put the SD card in and there we go. Instant playback, no discs, no players..
This is very good news in general. It's the future that's very close.
[quote]Let's say this is what's going to replace optical which is great btw, some people won't be able to get high speed internet fast enough to get Blu-Ray like quality in the near future[/quote]
Wait what? So now it's not blu-ray you support the reasoning behind keeping physical media in stores? Hypocritical much?
You realise that people who already own HDTV's without SD card slots would be required to buy some player of some kind? So tell me, other than the size how does this justify moving away from an already existing HD format (blu-ray).
Also, why are you even allowed back on this website (Nifinity)
Nonsense Dr. Cheese.
Look around yourself and you will see that devices already support SD cards and Samsung along others have embedded support for reading them. It will only take firmware update to support new codecs probably in the next decade.
and grow up.
Most TV's? What? Very few pre mid 2008 HDTV's have SD card slots. I highly doubt the majority that do have anywhere near the amount of CPU power required to support certain codec's either.
And telling me to grow up? That's rich coming from you.
Building the functionality into most modern HDTVs should be cheap. HDTVs generally contain decoder chips for MPEG2 and Dolby Digital (AC3), however with Europe adopting H.264 as the HD video standard, it's likely that most HDTVs will incorporate commodity chipsets supporting both MPEG2 and H.264 in the near future.
What we're really looking at is adding a dollar or two per digital television to add the SD card slot, and suitable firmware to read from the slot. Given the low risk associated with doing all this, it's not difficult to imagine this being standard equipment a year from now, especially given the HDTV makers can justify it by adding functionality above and beyond the movie service - like, say, adding DVR functionality that records directly onto the SD card.
Didn't they already try this with music? Yeah, we all know how that went over.
This is great news IMO, especially with prices going down as much as they are. I'm pumped mostly from the fact that just imagine how small a player will be able to be!! Plus the players will have no moving parts!! If this takes off I'd bet that one of the next gen consoles would use this since it would make a huge difference in the size of it.
Bozster, no firmware update for a TV would allow SD content to be played. for at least 2 reasons:
1. not enough processing power
2. More importantly, tv's are non-programmable CPU's, much like a graphics card they will only process pre-programmed functions (quickly) and are unable to perform the functions a programmable CPU.
They would need new decoding equipment either way.
They have it.. this is the new wave of TVs.. most devices won't as older TVs might not be able to do it due to lack of SoC chip but those who are Cell based on for example DVD players or Blu-Ray players or PS3s or Xbox 360s they all have the capability to decode by updating firmware. Even if you don't have SD slot, you can get an USB to SD adapter to get it. Look here on EngadgetHD a few pages back. You will see Samsung TVs supporting all kinds of codecs, but the case is similar with LG TVs, Panasonic etc. Panasonic developing new high speed SD cards that will support 2tb within 5 years is also telling you that it will be in their interest to push this as well in their TVs.
As we have seen from this CES, almost all manufacturers are having TVs that will support this since they are internet connected and allow playback either from Netflix or directly supporting containers and codecs.
It is the future and it seems that the whole industry is going that way. It is the most present thing this CES. A lot of CE companies have invested huge money into producing solid state storage and decoding chips. In the near future you really won't need anything else but a new TV and probably AVR that can process quality audio for example unless you want to listen to it on your TV.
SD support is important in retail is important because in the future, retail business would be hurt by purely relying on digital downloads delivery so having the ability to go let's say to a store and browse a catalog of movies you want to get on their computer or kiosk and then pop in your SD card and just get them will allow them to continue making money but taking much less space as most optical media does these days. Not to mention it will be so much easier for you for example to go and find movies you want instead of browsing through endless isles hoping to spot what you want.
And this is just the beginning. I especially love the fact that as the capacity increases you really won't need to buy new SDs like discs because they are highly rewritable and fast, so you can keep reusing stuff you already have. So even if it's more expensive then $20-$30 it has a value that's higher then buying a disc over and over again with different movies.
Studio support for these kiosks, even if it's SD right now is significant because it is just a matter of time as well, before they start releasing HD content on SD cards as well.
It's a bright future. I've been holding an SD card in my hand and it's absolutely fantastic that such a small thing could be holding 100 full HD movies and you just pop it in your TV, take your HDMI out to reciever and enjoy it.
Maybe ultra hd will be on cards but by the time sd cards are cheap enough to support an hd movie there will be $49 bd players and movies will be cheaper, not to mention bd will probably account for over 30% of movie sales.
Exactly! Eventually movies will be distributed on some form of solid state tech but by the time the cost/benefit to consumers is cheap enough, BD will be well established and old hat. SS tech has to be cheaper or provide marginally more features/reliability than pressing plastic discs...frankly, I don't see that happening anytime soon.
The point is, with blu ray itself only a tiny niche at this stage, there is all ready a potential challenger that is 'new technology' starting up, and it has massive mass main stream potential as soon as prices are low enough, and the way SD costs are coming down it wont be long.
The massive potential for this to gain traction, IMO, is it's simplicity and convenience. It's like taking the SD card today and selecting and purchasing the photos you want in a kiosk, just do the same for your movies, great idea.
Everyone always seems to say 2012 is when blu ray will reach it's potential, if this does get traction, 2012 may be too late. Maybe the Samsung exec who said blu ray had 5 years knew something we didn't.
Ah Mike, once the rabid HD DVD fanboy, how times have changed.
Side show,
I was never a HD DVD fan boy... as I said then I am a money fanboy. Now if Warner had stayed with HD DVD and BD...then there would have been $49 HD DVD players this Christmas and $99 BD players. But the movie studios decided for us and I spent $150 this past fall for Samsung 1500.
Now I just want to grow my BD library while not spending much money...and buying HD SD players in 3 years does not support my cause of saving money.
.......
History channel says 2012 is when the world ends...but if BD is around 15% of movie sales now and Christmas 09 will bring plenty of 2.0 players under $79 it will easily be around 30% this year. I would figure BD near 50% in 2012 so why would anyone want to buy a new format that has the same resolution and sound as BD but with less support? Probably 3000 BD movies out by then too.
Just keep the prices down. Don't try to sell me a movie I can get on DVD for $5 for $15-20 just because you put it on a silly memory card. This is a good route to take. But, spiking the price to some ridiculous just because you don't want to upset retailers is ridiculous. Consumers are the ones who buy the movies, not retailers.
I am with you, this is just a silly way to sell memory cards. if i need a movie digitally, i can rent a movie digitally.
though on most films to own, i prefer Blu-Ray, with its higher capacity, extras and quality it is just alot better than some dvd quality or compressed hd on an SD card with no extras or high end sound.
How is Blu-Ray higher capacity?
SD cards this year will be 64gb and they will be faster then readers in Blu-Ray players. It's instant playback. And what does compressed quality means? You can put the same Blu-Ray movie on an SD card. SD card is just a vehicle to replace ancient optical media. You buy an SD card once and store you movies on your home media center or external drives. The idea with the SD card is to allow people to go to the retail store and browse movie collection which can very well be ripped Blu-Ray version and put it on SD card and take it home while paying with the credit card there. Plus SD card will allow you to play that movie in pretty much any SD devices that can decode the codec for the file which will most likely be AVC or VC1.
Optimistically with SD card you would not have to pay for packaging, replication and similar every time you buy a new movie. You just pay for the license and copy the movie to your SD card. Similar to what you do now when you take your SD card to Walgreens to develop photos.
No difference.
Bozster @ Jan 10th 2009 11:05PM
"How is Blu-Ray higher capacity?"
I think he just meant it's a higher capacity than any cards currently in its price range. Sure, you'll be able to buy 64GB cards in the near future. However, with the 32GB cards still hovering around $150 range, there is something to be said for how long it'll take the larger cards to drop to a price that can compete with Blu-ray -all while Blu-ray (hopefully) continues to drop in price.
imagine if stores have something were you take your sd memory card, pay for the movie and get it, 2 terabyte memory cards are coming out, those would be enough for all the movies youd want.
Yeah, imagine being able to dump all those bulky discs for a handful of neat little 2tb SD cards.
Audio & movie.
My wife for one would be so happy to ditch all the racking and storage cabinets.
Very cool developments IMO.
sd card will be hella more expensive than a blu-ray replicated disc. anyway i just dont see a need for the format to be used as a distribution device. thats just me.
Ask yourself a couple of questions.
How many facilities manufacture Blu-Ray discs?
How many facilities manufacture SD Cards?
How many Blu-Ray players have been sold and what's the maximum size of disc they can read?
How many SD card readers have been sold and what's the maximum size of card they can read?
If I buy my own SD card and bring it to Blockbuster or to a Red Box so I can load a movie on to it the studio doesn't have to spend anything on replication. I could see studios using SD as a medium for distributing movies that they don't think are worth replicating 50k-100k Blu-Ray discs. They master and encode the movie (hopefully 1080p with a decent bit rate and either lossless audio or DD+ @1.5mbps) send it to the Blockbuster/Red Box kiosks and call it a day.
There are not that many fabs for SD cards, especially the high capacity ones we are talking about.
As it is today, the movies studios pay for the disc and packaging and whether it's them or someone else in the chain, write off loses for unsold or unwanted old stock.
With SD cards, at least for rentals anyway, there isn't any packaging or old stock for manufacturers or retail suppliers, the retailers don't need to outlay $thousands in stock, and the consumer purchases an endlessly reusable card that he can put movies on.
The entire supply chain can reduce costs and increase profits, yet somehow people can't see a future for this?? That alone should guarantee it's success, greed usually wins out in these things as we all know.
I guess a lot will depend on how the final scenarios work out, there are many possibilities as to how this could work, but if this gets widespread support, it's potential is enormous.
Stop making sense! ;)
Hard to imagine Sony or any of it's subsidiaries supporting movies on SD cards in any way shape or form.
If only they could mail it to me.
cheaper, with fast startup , HD recorders with near perfect pictures (none of this blu ray-error correction)
The only problem is it won't be around for a couple of years at a comparable price point to blu ray
I forgot to say smaller. In fact small enough to add directly into a tv or AV reciever without the need of a seperate box. Probably greener too with a lower power consuption that a spinning disc no noise too !
Um, what exactly is the point of this?
You can't jut say we have a new format and have it take off. You also have to have a critical mass of devices on which to play the format and make it desireable for customers to buy these devices. Last time I checked very few people have SD card slots anywhere near their TV (and that's assuming these movies aren't going to be encoded with some new DRM). This means mainstream customers who still mostly watch movies on their TV's are going to shrug their shoulders at this idea.
So I guess what's left is the mobile market. And since people watching movies on their cell phones and laptops are a fairly tech savvy group I'm not sure I understand why they would bother going to a physical kiosk to buy an SD movie when they can already get the same thing (or better) via the net.
This is just a bizarre idea. It sounds like it was cooked up by an overzealous engineer with no marketing sense (or common sense) at all. I predict it won't even do as well as Sony's failed UMD system.
My only questions are...
Price?
Resolution?
Audio Quality?
Requirements should be...
Under $25
720p
5.1 DD+
I understand that these won't be Blu-ray quality for awhile as prices for cards/movies would be astoundingly high... Lets have a happy medium with these specs and increase them as time/technology goes on.
As far as DRM is concerned, none is the best, but give me 5 "licences" and I will be happy.
We can already see that 32gb & 64gb SD cards & flash drives are going to get really cheap this year
(16gb have just reached that point and 32gb are already less than £1/$1 per gb)
2tb SD cards & flash drives with a much faster transfer/bandwith (300Mbps) coming soon.
http://www.canada.com/topics/technology/news/gizmos/story.html?id=27082709-6a60-4b87-a7c5-9502bc528b30
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/accessories/0,39101000,49300513,00.htm
Blu-ray was all just too little too late, here comes the end of the line for Blu-ray's expensive & old fashioned discs.
When will these neanderthals get it? Digital. Mobile entertainment is DIGITAL! We have our SDHC cards in our phones, ready to go! We have 120gb hard drives on our PMPs!
I'm not buying a damn disk. Until you get it, everyone will continue to pirate the media you won't make available to buy in a digital download!
When are -you- Brian (and people like you) going to get that this SD card business is downright stupid ?
Not only is a SD card far more expensive than a disc on a $1/ Gb ratio (and due to the nature of the product, likely to stay that way), but I should go to a local kiosk to stand there, possibly wait in line, and wait for the transfer to occur (imagine a HD movie, not even the size of a BR), when I could actually Download the movie at home if I wanted to?
A SD card more durable? Yeah, electric shock or strong magnet anyone?
This is the dumbest thing -ever- imo.
If I want to buy something physical, that I can build a collection with, with the best quality, I'll go BR. The prices are falling (and they seem to be headed way south, cf fulyl featured Vizio plyaer for $199), but if I want something small to go aroudn with, I can download on whatever bazillion services are already in place (from Itunes and Amazon to the PSN store).
I think its funny that the very same posters who routinely claim Blu-ray is dead in the water because:
1. It's a tired old physical format soon to be killed by downloads
2. It's too expensive to manufacture and buy
3. Doesn't have a good enough installed base
4. Has intrusive copy protection
are now championing the idea of movies on SD cards. Movies on SD cards will be:
1. A tired old physical format soon to be killed by downloads
2. Even more expensive to manufacture (and presumably to sell) than BD's.
3. Has almost NO installed base (at least around a TV where the majority of people still want to see movies)
4. And give the state of other digital sales, will likely have even more obnoxious DRM and copy protection than BD+ could ever hope to have.
Sounds like a winner to me!
1. Downloading an HD movie encoded at a decent bit rate with lossless (TrueHD/DTS-MA) or high bit rate (DD+ @ 1.5mbps) audio isn't going to happen anytime soon.
2. SD has a lot more companies manufacturing them than there are BD replicators and have wider markets than just movies and games.
3. Have you seen the CES coverage? If so I guess you missed the part about connected TV. The card reader doesn't need to be directly connected, just accessible. Of course if you want full HD picture and sound, there will probably be a device with HDMI involved.
4. SD already has copy protection built in. CPRM anyone?
Now the things you didn't cover
1. Studios don't need to replicate, package, store and ship discs.
2. Retailers don't need to dedicate floor space or stock discs. They will have to have room for kiosks, but they can be used for movies, tv and music. Ever see the Anime section at Best Buy or Circuit City? If they had SD Kiosks, the selection could rival Amazon and Netflix. Same goes for every other type of media.
3. Customers can either buy and SD Card on the spot, or bring their own.
4. Customers can choose the resolution, audio and extras they want and pay accordingly.
It's not a done deal, but the combination of environmental impact, reduced cost to the studios and retailers and infinite selection sure are enticing.
The potential IS there, but can anyone capitalize on it in time for it to be relevant? Who knows.
1. A tired old what?
2. Prices are plummeting, and there's no limit to capacity. We generally see a halving in price of SD media every four to six months.
3. This is true. However, it'd cost $200 to add Blu-ray to new HDTVs today, and will probably not drop below, say, $50 within the next five years. However, it'll cost a dollar or two to add SD card readers to HDTVs even today, and any HDTV intended for European use already has all the rest of the decoding hardware needed. It is, today, cheaper to make an all-in-one portable SD card reader than it is to make a portable DVD player.
4. I doubt anyone's rushing to repeat the disaster of BD+. Except Fox, perhaps. What we'll see is the same damned DRM that has pretty much been standard since DVD. An encrypted stream, with keys for the volume stored encrypted by various player keys. There's no reason to suppose it'll be worse than that, and, well, if it is, then it's not going to go anywhere. In the meantime, unlike Blu-ray, DRM will likely be optional.
Sounds like something that has considerably more chance of success than Blu-ray to me. But that's damning it with faint praise.