The HD-DVD release of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix offers a revolutionary new DVD feature called “Live Community Screening”:
Gather your own army of fellow wizards for a live community screening party. Invite other owners of the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix HD DVD to simultaneously watch from their own internet-accessed players and text with your remote, PC or cell phone. When you host an invitation-only viewing, you control the film by pausing and playing the feature on everyone’s machine. You can chat live with your friends as you watch.
But the question is, will anybody actually use this feature? It requires all parties to own the HD-DVD disc, and a HD-DVD player with internet access features.
Meanwhile, Transformers director Michael Bay is at it again, this time he is spouting off conspiracy theories about how Microsoft is trying to sabotage the High Definition DVD format war:
“What you don’t understand is corporate politics. Microsoft wants both formats to fail so they can be heroes and make the world move to digital downloads. That is the dirty secret no one is talking about. That is why Microsoft is handing out $100 million dollar checks to studios just embrace the HD DVD and not the leading, and superior Blu Ray. They want confusion in the market until they perfect the digital downloads. Time will tell and you will see the truth.”
I don’t think Bay is seeing the big picture. Microsoft has more to gain from the success of HD-DVD than they do digital downloads (but the truth of the matter is they have much to gain from both). I do believe that this format war will have no winner, and digital downloads and on demand will triumph.
So what do you guys think:
- Would you use the “Live Community Screening” feature?
- Is Microsoft trying to sabotage the HD format wars?
December 5th, 2007 at 4:22 am
IMO, it is a freaking joke that the studios are trying to force consumers to replace their DVD collections with HDVD and Blue Ray, when digital downloads are clearly the future, just like itunes, bit torrent and oink/waffles are the future of music.
With the American economy doing so poorly, neither one of these formats will/should catch on with the mainstream. Anything physical for media is dead in my opinion. Movies will end up being traded with the speed, steal and appetite of music on the net. Just look at Mininova.org. It’s inevitable, unless corporate interests try to corner internet providers about consumer downloading levels. (Try it punks).
To me, Netflix will lead the way. As soon as they begin pushing digital downloads in their TV campaigns, the game is going to change and the mainstream will fully catch on. Digital downloads mean people can view an infinite selection of films they never could with physical copies, from anywhere in the world. No matter what Wal-Mart or Best Buy or Amazon tell you. Hollywood needs to catch on or face the dire future of the music industry. We want it all, right now.
December 5th, 2007 at 4:59 am
As a former insider to the HD-DVD standardization process, I can assure you that Bay is on the right track. MSFT promoted its own DRM very heavily in the early stages of HD-DVD, and when the studios opted for *slightly* more open DRM technology, MSFT started trying to sabotage the standard. However, I don’t think they are doing much to sabotage Blu-Ray, Sony can handle that all by themselves.
December 5th, 2007 at 6:40 am
I would much rather have a physical disc than a digital copy. You never know when a motherboard will fry or anythign crazy liek that. I also like having a good movie that I can tell everyone about and let them borrow the movie.
As far as HD DVD goes… I don’t know why Microsoft would want HD DVD to fail seeing as their microsoft xbox has one of the cheapest setups to play HD DVDs. I think Microsoft genuinely suppports HD DVD like I imagine Sony supports Blu-Ray…
December 5th, 2007 at 6:46 am
want to learn something about HD-DVD (like it’s based on a microsoft codec)? check out this little run down of Lo-Def vs. HD:
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2007/12/04/why-low-def-is-the-new-hd/
it’s a long article as it explores some history but overall, eye opening.
December 5th, 2007 at 7:47 am
Faced between having a digital copy of a movie or a physical copy, I’d chose the physical. Same goes for music. Downloading may be more and more widespread, but it sucks, it takes a lot of space (if you really want a really good quality for your movie, that’s more than 4 Gbs, and that’s still not as good a quality as the HD discs), and yeah your computer can fry anytime and then what?
And I don’t see why Michael Bay would lie, but why would Microsoft send “100 million dollar checks” to studios when said studios invest and generate more money than that with their movies?
December 5th, 2007 at 9:00 am
I would use the Live Community feature… If I had the urge to watch Harry Potter again. Also, I would need more friends.
As far as Bay’s theory about Microsoft — who knows. I want to know what Steve Jobs wants to do about this situation, then I can make my decision. If Jobs wanted internet downloads, we do internet downloads. How hard is that to understand?
December 5th, 2007 at 9:35 am
BLAH BLAH BLAH HD-DVD. BLAH BLAH BLAH BLUE RAY DISC. BLAH BLAH BLAH DRM, BLAH BLAH DIGITAL DOWNLOAD BLAH BLAH.
BLUE RAY IS BETTER THEY HAVE BIGGER STORAGE SPACE AND BETTER RESOLUTION.
I’M STUCK WITH HD-DVDS FOR A WHILE BECAUSE I HAVE AN XBOX THERE NOT THAT BAD BUT CLEARLY INFERIOR
I DOWNLOAD MOVIES ALL THE TIME BUT ITS HARD TO SHOW OFF A COLLECTION WHEN ITS ON A HARD-DRIVE SO HOPEFULLY DISC WILL STAY AROUND FOR A WHILE.
THAT NEW FEATURE ON THE HARRY POTTER DISC IS COOL, BUT I DON’T THINK I WOULD EVER USE(ESPICIALLY SINCE ITS ON A GAY MOVIE)!
December 5th, 2007 at 10:55 am
I totally agree with your opinion on the ‘community screening’. I tried and tried and could only come up with a few limited uses of that feature as a whole, let alone on the Harry Potter DVD.
In the future, I’d love to see some movies take creative advantage of this feature. But for now, I certainly don’t see it as a sticking point in the Blu-Ray v. HD DVD wars.
If you want, check out more of my opinions on the matter here
December 5th, 2007 at 10:56 am
Well personally, I can’t even look at CDs any more. They make me want to puke, as do record stores. They’re pointless. Like Trent Reznor said, why should he go to Best Buy, when he could hop on OiNK and find the rarest shit and the mainstream stuff with better audio quality than itunes? That’s why he leaked NIN’s records to OiNK to be illegally downloaded by his fans and cut his career-long ties to Interscope.
Also, just because a movie is digital doesn’t mean you have to download it per se. Netflix already has a streaming program with a good selection of titles that you can play at anytime on your PC, no extra charge. Also, hard drives will continue to get larger, externals will continue to gain popularity, and movie files will shrink.
December 5th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
Quite frankly, good ol’ DVDs are good enough for me. I mean, how damn crystal clear do we need the sound and picture to be?? Since when did the world become so anally obsessed with this?? DVDs give beautiful picture and sound, there’s nothing to complain about.
December 5th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
I don’t know if MS is or isn’t. But I hope digital downloads become better in the very near future, I’m loving them.
December 5th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
“Downloading may be more and more widespread, but it sucks, it takes a lot of space (if you really want a really good quality for your movie, that’s more than 4 Gbs, and that’s still not as good a quality as the HD discs), and yeah your computer can fry anytime and then what?”
I’m going out on a limb and guess no one backs up there stuff here… Storage for computers are cheap nowadays. Glancing at newegg.com you can pick up 750gb for 150$. That’s almost 200 movies on one hard drive, if you average 4gb per movie. Let’s face it, things happen to your dvd’s just like they would to your computer. Having it all digitally makes it a lot easier to backup and store than having 200 dvd’s stacked somewhere in your home taking up physical space. Transporting those dvd’s would be a pain in the ass. Why not just carry them all on a hard drive that takes up the same sq. inches as 1 dvd case.
I agree with TheDohDoh. Files are getting smaller and smaller and the quality is also getting better. For example, a Micosoft 2003 Word document with nothing in it would be about 48kb, but now with 2007 a word document will be around 25-28kb. That’s almost cutting the file in half. Granted they are using a different format, but I am sure there will be some other kind of format besides mp3, wav or whatever, that will accomplish the same thing taking your 4gb movie to about 2gb or smaller.
As far as this new Harry Potter feature… I don’t see it coming into play and being used for some time.
December 5th, 2007 at 5:30 pm
My personal feeling about this is that I’m tired of compression. Its making me ill. I can’t look at DIVX files and I can’t really listen to mp3s unless I’m doing something else like walking or running or working.
In the mean time, I don’t need one format to win. No one does. If there’s two formats, and there’s two players that are both affordable (BR, I’m looking at you), why do I need to choose? It is only the news media and the owners of the two respective technologies that have made the case for there being only one. There’s no angle on selling players unless you’re rooting for red states or blue states, er I mean red jerseys or blue jerseys, dammit I mean red snap cases or blue cases. Who cares? I have an HD-DVD player - I like it fine. I would buy a BR player too if one would drop below $200. I would be buying more content than I am too.
On another note, I’m very sick of BR proponents being absolute a-holes in forums. Its clear to me that Sony has hired online promoters to argue for BR and I wish they would just chill out. Also, Michael Bay, sit down and shut up. No one looks to you for insight. Given that your films have all of the character development of the average Family Circus comic strip, no one regards you as being a terribly insightful voice for anything.
December 5th, 2007 at 7:31 pm
I don’t think it has anything to do with digital downloads. With MS pushing HD-DVD, it comes down to one thing:
Xbox 360 vs PS3
Do you blame them? I’m guessing Blu-Ray is dumping the same amount of money.
December 5th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
the HD-DVD cases look bland. Blu-Ray cases look cool blue. I saw Mission Impossible 3 on Blu-Ray, one of the best things I ever saw (visually, on a screen).
Why would I want to wait for someone to be ready to watch a movie, even if it’s Harry Potter, when I want it now!
December 6th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Ok Mercutio, you give some arguments, let me reply. First of all, yes stuff also happens to DVDs and stuff has happende to some of mine, but a lot more crap happened to my computers than to my discs. iTunes supposedly offers a video quality of 480p, which is as good as standard DVD. However, I’ve watched iTunes content and it certainly doesn’t compare to my discs. I’ve watched illegal movie downloads with better quality than iTunes content. As for streaming content, guess what: it’s only available to US residents (which only represent a fraction of the world, let me remind you) and from what I’ve seen, the quality is pretty crappy. BR/HDDVD offer a picture quality of 1080p which is amazing, and yes it really does make a difference. The picture quality is amazing and deserves to be seen.
Also, from what I know digital downloads are for the actual movies…Whatever happens to all the bonus features/collectibles? These to me represent a big part of the appeal of DVDs. I used to be satisfied with the VHS until I realised DVDs had bonus features.
Finally why would I pay MORE for LESS? Yes, me paying for digital movies and storage would end up costing me more than buying discs. I have a catalogue of more than 750 movies and I regularly buy more, and at a very cheap price too: 2 DVDs for 5 bucks. And not crappy movies either: merely second-hand copies in really good shape of everything from Alfred Hitchcock to Michael Bay, along with Spielberg, the Coen Bros, the latest teen flick….anything, really. But with all the bonus features, the Collector’s Edition, etc… iTunes has just decided to up the price of their movie to 15 bucks. So I should pay 10 to 15 bucks for ONE movie, with NO SPECIAL FEATURES, no nothing whatsoever, and shell out a few hundred bills for a high capacity storage external hard drive when for the same price I can get 4 to 6 movies, WITH SPECIAL FEATURES, WITH BETTER QUALITY, etc… People complain about how expensive movies are, but if you look around, there’s always cool deals and cheap second-hand stores. But there’s no second-hand in the world of digital downloads.
PS: A lot of the same stuff can be said about MP3s, CDs and the music industry.
December 6th, 2007 at 11:05 pm
There is no denying that 1080p is highly superior to 480p. I am not going to even pretend to know anything about iTunes or their store, because I don’t use it, but from browsing their trailers, I notice they do offer all sorts of resolution from 480 - 1080, an example of which, found here http://www.apple.com/trailers/newline/thegoldencompass/
Why a 1080p version of an entire movie is not available in their downloads, I don’t know. But realize 1080p is available to download and not something specific to HD-DVD media. Data is data… that HD-DVD you have in your living room came from a computer before it was put on that DVD. And if I had the choice to buy a HD-DVD vs a download of the same HD quality… then it would be the download hands down.
So, I guess I don’t understand what your argument is. You are comparing a 480p download, which you said was of dvd quality, to a BR/HD-DVD of 1080p which is of HD quality. Well of course your dvd is going to win for better quality, it’s a higher res. You seem to be arguing about manufacturing/distributing of a product and not the concepts… So let’s argue about that for a minute.
Keep in mind that DVD’s have been around for about 15 years, and they have pretty well established themselves and consumers know what to expect from them. But even DVD distribution has it’s quirks. Most recently posted here on /film would be that of Transformers and the many flavors you could buy, all with a different special features. Poor Pete would need to buy three copies to get all of those special features to tell us about them. But the nice thing about that is… if you don’t like the selection at BestBuy… then go to Target.
On the other hand, downloading videos is a relatively new concept becoming very popular. There aren’t very many places where you can legally download movies and those that do, don’t seem to offer downloads in HD or with features. You get your choice of iTunes (legal)… or the Piratebay.org(illegal, unless you live in Sweden).
“Hollywood needs to catch on or face the dire future of the music industry. We want it all, right now.” (TheDohDoh) We do want it all right now… and like you said, we want those features and for it to be in HD and for it to sing us to bed at night and cook us dinner and if movie distributers don’t give us what we want… then I think they will find themselves in the same boat as Record Labels. Which is not a good position for us or them. One major reason for us being the quality of the product you are receiving not being up to snuff… such as to a HD-DVD.