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How much will it take to end the war?

PostPosted: Tue May 08, 2007 1:32 pm
by dolphinius_rex
It's a simple question really.

How much of an advantage does a format need, and for how long, before people and the supporting companies just get over themselves and bring this format war to an end?

PostPosted: Tue May 08, 2007 1:39 pm
by dolphinius_rex
And here are some more current graphs, just because it's nice to see the broader scope of things I think :D

Pictures courtesy of Merlins and Fozziwig over at Highdefdigest.com :)

PostPosted: Tue May 08, 2007 2:24 pm
by Wesociety
I still don't understand how the HD DVD camp is sitting around doing little to nothing while they are getting creamed by Blu-ray.

PostPosted: Tue May 08, 2007 3:00 pm
by CowboySlim
Well, Wes, maybe there is nothing that they CAN do?

Similarly, one could say: "Geez, I still don't understand how the General Motors camp is sitting around doing little to nothing while they are getting creamed by Toyota."

A nice paraphrase if I do say so myself! :D

Sometime it's over but you refuse to listen to the Fat Lady singing.

Kodak?
Amtrak?
Polaroid?
Who has my Commodore Amiga?
Who pulled the plug on my Digital Equipment VAX?

Slim
Who really did own a Studebaker. :P

PostPosted: Wed May 09, 2007 7:41 am
by redk9258
CowboySlim wrote:-snip-
Similarly, one could say: "Geez, I still don't understand how the General Motors camp is sitting around doing little to nothing while they are getting creamed by Toyota."

A nice paraphrase if I do say so myself! :D
-snip-



A Japanese company (Toyota) and an American company (Ford) decided to have a canoe race on the Missouri River . Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race.

On the big day, the Japanese won by a mile. The Americans, very discouraged and depressed, decided to investigate the reason for the crushing defeat. A management team madeup of senior management was formed to investigate and recommend appropriate action.

Their conclusion was the Japanese had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, while the American team had 8 people steering and 1 person rowing.

Feeling a deeper study was in order, American management hired a consulting company and paid them a large amount of money for a second opinion. They advised, of course, that too many people were steering the boat, while not enough people were rowing.

Not sure of how to utilize that information, but wanting to prevent another loss to the Japanese, the rowing team's management structure was totally reorganized to 4 steering supervisors, 3 area steering superintendents and 1 assistant superintendent steering manager.

They also implemented a new performance system that would give the 1 person rowing the boat greater incentive to work harder. It was called The 'Rowing Team Quality First Program,' with meetings, dinners and free pens for the rower. There was discussion of getting new paddles, canoes and other equipment, extra vacation days for practices and bonuses.

The next year the Japanese won by two miles.

Humiliated, the American management laid off the rower for poor performance, halted development of a new canoe, sold the paddles, and canceled all capital investments for new equipment. The money saved was distributed to the Senior Executives as bonuses and the next year's racing team was outsourced to India .

Sadly, The End..Sad, but oh so true!

Here's something else to think about: Ford has spent the last thirty years moving all its factories out of the US, claiming they can't make money paying American wages. Toyota has spent the last thirty years building more than a dozen plants inside the US

The last quarter's results: Toyota makes 4 billion in profits while Ford racked up 9 billion in losses. Ford folks are still scratching their heads.

PostPosted: Wed May 09, 2007 7:49 am
by Ian
Part of it I think is that Toshiba needs to recoup their development costs. They've invested a lot of money developing and promoting the format and if they throw in the towel now, they won't get any of that back.

PostPosted: Wed May 09, 2007 9:10 am
by DrageMester
Ian wrote:Part of it I think is that Toshiba needs to recoup their development costs. They've invested a lot of money developing and promoting the format and if they throw in the towel now, they won't get any of that back.


If you have made a bad investment, and I'm not saying they have although it looks that way, then it's a bad strategy to throw good money after bad money rather than cutting your losses.

There's probably also a lot of prestige and pride riding on this decision.

PostPosted: Wed May 09, 2007 10:25 am
by Ian
DrageMester wrote:There's probably also a lot of prestige and pride riding on this decision.


Most definitely. If Toshiba was a Chinese or American company, that probably would have given up months ago.

PostPosted: Wed May 09, 2007 12:11 pm
by Wesociety
Ian wrote:Most definitely. If Toshiba was a Chinese or American company, that probably would have given up months ago.

Maybe, but it appears that HD VMD hasn't given up either! :lol:

About the lack of response from Toshiba: I think that many people are surprised that Toshiba & HD DVD has not been more aggressive in trying to push their format or reveal a launch date for the "alleged" cheap Chinese HD DVD players. With both Blu-ray and HD DVD players depending upon the same supply of PUH's, it is looking more and more unlikely that HD DVD will have a significant cost advantage in the standalone player market...

PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2007 4:53 am
by vinnie97
why is all this Blu-Ray gloating necessary?

Dolphin, your recent post about being unable to avoid Sony products altogether may be correct but one can still do their part in avoiding the usual BMG release and Sony-manufactured product as much as possible.

The main reason I don't want to see Blu-Ray win is due to it bolstering the PS3 and the utter arrogance that Sony has displayed since well before launch about how great the device will be and what everyone WILL do for one. It's the kind of thing for which I'd like to see Sony go down in a fiery explosion (I still wouldn't mind using Blu-Ray for data storage, though. :lol: For movies, nevar!).

PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2007 11:56 am
by dolphinius_rex
It's not so much Blu-Ray gloating as it is frustration that the industry can't come together on one format. I'm a Blu-Ray supporter, but if Sony was the only studio supporting Blu-Ray, and every other studio only supported HD DVD or was neutral, I would be petitioning Sony to get off their ass and end this war. However, that isn't the situation. Instead, we have Universal in that position.

My point is, we need to have one format or else consumer adoption will never be wide spread. Some people say dual format players are the answer, but they aren't seeing the big picture. If the HiDef formats don't get adopted quicker then they are currently, then they will be dropped. And all we'll do is encourage the flash memory market to take over optical media faster.

HD DVD is not capable of "winning" this war. They haven't been in a position to since February at the latest. They attempted to buy off suppliers and customers by doing everything at losses, but in the end couldn't win over enough studio support. The best they can hope for now is a stalemate, and in the end, that could cause the death of both HD DVD *AND* Blu-Ray.

What bothers me is the number of people who take this *SO* personally that they would rather both technologies go down in flames, rather then see Blu-Ray succeed. I think that's very sad though, that people become so jaded and bitter over something so inconsequential.

PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2007 5:56 pm
by vinnie97
OK, I see your logically sound points and agree overall!

"And all we'll do is encourage the flash memory market to take over optical media faster. "

This isn't a good thing? LOL

PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2007 7:09 pm
by dolphinius_rex
vinnie97 wrote:OK, I see your logically sound points and agree overall!

"And all we'll do is encourage the flash memory market to take over optical media faster. "

This isn't a good thing? LOL


Well, I might have a biased opinion on that one.... I *LIKE* optical media. For many many reasons. I don't think I could have nearly the resources with flash memory as I do with optical media also.

PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2007 8:07 pm
by vinnie97
Blu-Ray (perhaps even HD DVD) may go a ways in remedying the problems inherent to optical media for the past decade plus (quality degradation and scratch susceptibility in particular) but flash media should render these concerns moot, which is why I'm excited for a flash or holographic-based future!

PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2007 9:39 pm
by dolphinius_rex
vinnie97 wrote:Blu-Ray (perhaps even HD DVD) may go a ways in remedying the problems inherent to optical media for the past decade plus (quality degradation and scratch susceptibility in particular) but flash media should render these concerns moot, which is why I'm excited for a flash or holographic-based future!


Well, I know a few people who have had flash drives die on them quite easily. Flash memory needs to carry a charge in order to keep the data (if I recall correctly), so it's not a great format as it is. A few things still need to change for it to take over. But it's not far off.

PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2007 9:54 pm
by Ian
Flash is a great alternative to RW media but for long term and/or write once storage, optical media is still the way to go.

PostPosted: Tue May 15, 2007 1:00 am
by vinnie97
Yea, haven't had much experience in the area but my cheap pair of Microcenter flash drives (1GB and 2GB respectively) are proving to be just what I need coupled with a car head unit with its own USB input. The RW capability is definitely trumping my CD-RW/DVD-RW media experiences. Showing no signs of failure either...

PostPosted: Tue May 15, 2007 11:53 am
by dolphinius_rex
vinnie97 wrote:Yea, haven't had much experience in the area but my cheap pair of Microcenter flash drives (1GB and 2GB respectively) are proving to be just what I need coupled with a car head unit with its own USB input. The RW capability is definitely trumping my CD-RW/DVD-RW media experiences. Showing no signs of failure either...


The problem with flash drives is they don't give signs of failure before failing... at least from my experience. Perhaps others can chime in with their experiences?

PostPosted: Tue May 15, 2007 12:09 pm
by Ian
dolphinius_rex wrote:The problem with flash drives is they don't give signs of failure before failing... at least from my experience. Perhaps others can chime in with their experiences?


Sorry.. I usually crush, break or lose mine before they fail.

PostPosted: Tue May 15, 2007 1:18 pm
by dolphinius_rex
Ian wrote:
dolphinius_rex wrote:The problem with flash drives is they don't give signs of failure before failing... at least from my experience. Perhaps others can chime in with their experiences?


Sorry.. I usually crush, break or lose mine before they fail.


:o

Never had that happen to any of mine before... and I start the life of each of my units by running it through my washing machine. If it survives, it's ok to use :wink: (so far none have failed this test though :P )

PostPosted: Tue May 15, 2007 3:22 pm
by Wesociety
dolphinius_rex wrote:... and I start the life of each of my units by running it through my washing machine. If it survives, it's ok to use :wink: (so far none have failed this test though :P )

Now now, you wouldn't do that with optical media! [-X

I don't think I've had any flash memory fail on me yet, but I did do a lot of upgrading to newer units and giving away older ones. That being said, I have had my Verbatim 2GB flash drive on my keychain for at least a year. It's holding up strong and has proven to be an invaluable tool !

PostPosted: Tue May 15, 2007 4:11 pm
by Justin42
I see quite a few flash drives at work (university IT) and while we don't see dead flash drives all the time, it happens enough that I really don't trust flash drives for any sort of critical data. It usually happens that a student brings in a drive and our machines won't recognize it. They say it worked fine that day at home, so we tell them to try it at home and let us know if it worked there before we go nuts troubleshooting-- and usually the drive is dead.

One recently did give the user problems for a day or two before it died, but normally they go very fast and without warning....

The weirdest failures I've seen, though, are when files start corrupting themselves for no apparent reason-- a student brings in their drive, goes to make a class presentation, and the file is totally scrambled (or like a 4k Powerpoint presentation or something). That's sad...

PostPosted: Tue May 15, 2007 7:29 pm
by DrageMester
dolphinius_rex wrote: The problem with flash drives is they don't give signs of failure before failing... at least from my experience. Perhaps others can chime in with their experiences?


Out of 7 USB Flash drives I've had, one died on me and I didn't even use it that much.

I mostly used it for testing purposes such as different filesystems, making it bootable and stuff like that. Then suddenly I had problems formatting in on my laptop and had to use my desktop pc to format it, and shortly after it wouldn't format on the desktop either.

It was a cheap 512 MB Micro Memory drive so I just threw it out and bought a bigger and faster drive.

So Flash drives can certainly fail just like optical media can fail, and they can fail all of a sudden without any warning.

PostPosted: Wed May 16, 2007 12:09 am
by vinnie97
So it would seem there are usually warning signs with flash drives as well fortunately (though not always). :P *knocking on wood for his flash drives*

PS. In the case of the college kids USB' devices failing, you have to wonder how well the little buggers were treated. If not treated with care, any media will see failure sooner or later.

PostPosted: Wed May 16, 2007 12:40 am
by SithTracy
dolphinius_rex wrote:HD DVD is not capable of "winning" this war. They haven't been in a position to since February at the latest. They attempted to buy off suppliers and customers by doing everything at losses, but in the end couldn't win over enough studio support. The best they can hope for now is a stalemate, and in the end, that could cause the death of both HD DVD *AND* Blu-Ray.

What bothers me is the number of people who take this *SO* personally that they would rather both technologies go down in flames, rather then see Blu-Ray succeed. I think that's very sad though, that people become so jaded and bitter over something so inconsequential.

Part of me hopes death comes to both. As a consumer, I am sick of being treated like a criminal when it comes to fair use. I think it is ridicules to pay $15 - $20 for a movie that forces you to watch advertisements for other movies and coming soon crap when I just want to watch the movie. Put that crap on the extras disc. On top of it all, these corporations feel the need to protect their content by investing tons of money into encryption schemes, that to date have been defeated. These additional costs are passed on to consumers. If they just drop the useless encryption and lower the prices I believe they will sell more.

Consumers need to make a stand. That said, right now, DVD is fine for my data backup. It's cheap, but I don't have faith in the medium for long term archives (digital photos ,home movies, etc. -- what I consider timeless data, the stuff you want to look back on should you be fortunate enough to have a long life). Flash is not the answer right now, but I think that is the direction we are heading as it improves. Sure, right now I see HD-DVD and BluRay as having more storage capacity, but how will the write once discs hold up over time and with the changing elements (i.e. Climate change/Global Warming)? I see it as no different than DVD or CD media. Corporations that manufacture these discs are cutting corners. I look back at some of the better CD media producers (Mitsui and Kodak), they could not compete with those that made the cheaper "acceptable" media. That media was outstanding and now they don't make it anymore.

I'm not saying I won't bend in the end... but right now, I'm not interested in this spitting match between Sony and Toshiba. I'll just sit back and see what happens. No hurry here.