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.
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.
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.
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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.