Microsoft Strategy On High-Def Unclear

**ps3rules** · 06-05-2005

The world might at last know the identity of Watergate's Deep Throat, but Microsoft's intentions toward the high-definition DVD business still remain a mystery.

Many high-def watchers had expected Microsoft's Xbox 360 game console to be equipped to play HD DVD discs, using a blue-violet laser, when the next-generation machines are released later this year. But when the Xbox 360 was unveiled in May, on the eve of the annual E3 tradeshow, the DVD drives were red-laser only.

That seemed to leave Microsoft at a disadvantage to Sony, whose PlayStation 3 console, unveiled a few days later, is built around the Sony-developed Blu-ray Disc high-def format. Sony hopes PS3 console sales will help build the installed based of Blu-ray playback devices and boost the format's appeal as a high-def movie format.

In turn, Blu-ray's success as a movie format will boost the appeal of PS3 as a home entertainment platform, helping Sony's game business.

Meanwhile, though Microsoft doesn't have the sort of direct interest in HD DVD that Sony has in Blu-ray, its decision not to include a comparable blue-laser-based high-def movie option in the Xbox 360 was puzzling to many. More mysterious still has been Microsoft's continued coyness over just what sort of playback the 360 will support.

According to the company, Xbox 360 consoles will be capable of outputting high-def signals to a TV set. That will allow users to play high-def games stored on conventional DVDs.

The boxes also will playback standard-definition games and movies, again using conventional, red-laser DVDs. But Microsoft also is the developer of the Windows Media Video/HD format, which uses high-level digital compression to squeeze a high-def movie onto a conventional DVD.

Windows Media/HD playback software is now routinely bundled with Microsoft's Windows XP operating system on computers with at least 2.4 GHz of processing speed. But the company has not yet disclosed whether WMV/HD will be baked into the Xbox 360 operating system as well.

The mystery hasn't yet attracted great attention in the ongoing debate over high-def DVD formats, but the Microsoft format could become a significant wild card.

Although only a few movie titles have been released in WMV/HD in the U.S.--mostly from Artisan Entertainment prior to its acquisition by Lions Gate--more are available in Europe, including a number of titles released here by major studios. Should either or both of the contending blue-laser formats have trouble gaining traction with consumers quickly, the field could be open for the red-laser-based WMV/HD to become the high-def standard by default.

Aside from being available now, it would be significantly cheaper to implement.

WMV/HD-equipped DVD computer drives sell for less than $250 retail, far less than the $800 to $1,000 list prices expected on the first HD DVD or Blu-ray drives.

In fact, one reason for Microsoft's soft-pedaling so far in the U.S., sources who have negotiated with the company say, could be a desire not to antagonize the forces behind the two blue-laser formats.

Microsoft is a partner with Toshiba and Sony in the Advanced Access Content System, which both Blu-ray and HD DVD plan to use for copy-protection.

Both camps also are expected to include Microsoft's Windows Media Video as a mandatory compression system in their format's formal specs. That gives the software giant an interest in giving the blue-laser formats a chance to succeed.

Microsoft also is keenly awaiting final approval from the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers for adoption of its VC-1 video codec for use in high-def film and TV production and distribution.

But implementation of the VC-1 codec would also tap technology developed by Sony, which would need to license its use to Microsoft.

Antagonizing Sony now could prevent the software giant from securing the licenses it needs for VC-1, said sources close to Microsoft.

For the present, talks between the blue-laser camps on a unified format remain stalled. Both sides are expected to spend the next several weeks focused on completing work on AACS.

http://www.videobusiness.com/article...7&catType=NEWS

Mod edit: You need to put articles in quotes as well as a link to where you found them.

Don't capitalize everything the the thread title. It's annoying.

**ishould** · 06-05-2005

Personally, I think it is a huge mistake for not includeing HD-DVD, Blu Ray, or some other form of next-gen media for the 360. Some people say they're not being realistic because no one can use more than 10gb for a game. Guess what? When the first PS came out with CD's, everyone said that theres no way anyone is going to be able to fill 700mb of data. I think with the next generation graphics there will need to be more than 10gb, more like what sony and the Blu Ray can hold.

Not just the storage, but the data rate from the disc to the console. It doesn't matter how fast the console is if it bottlenecks at the disc drive

**orbital123** · 06-05-2005

It isn't a mistake. You think that Sony is including Blu Ray for games? They are doing it for movies, very few games will use more than a dual layer dvd. The things that take up space on a disk are movies and textures. There are compression methods for both that allow for them to fit on a dual layer disk. With next generation graphics you don't need movies for the storyline you can use the ingame engine and models. People who think that huge disk space will lead to huge games have no clue about programming or game development.

As for data rate. If the blu ray drives are 2x which they most likely will be, since 6x isn't even in production yet, and 2x are just coming out next year for pc and home use, then it will be slower than 16x dvd drives for read times. Who cares about room when you have slower read times? 2x optical drives for the PC are going to start at 1000 dollars a drive. You know how much 6x is going to cost? And who knows when that would be ready.

Personally I wouldn't be too excited or worried about blu ray going into the ps3. I think MS did the right thing not jumping on a new format that hasn't been decided yet. Sony did it only because it's their format and they want to push it. MS will most likely offer a blu ray drive in future console if that is the format for the future, but it will only be for movies not for games.

**vg132** · 06-05-2005

Is a DVD X equal to a Blu-ray X? I know a DVD X is about ten times more then a CD X (150kb/sec and 1400kb/sec).

/Viktor

**IonCannon** · 06-05-2005

It isn't a mistake. You think that Sony is including Blu Ray for games? They are doing it for movies, very few games will use more than a dual layer dvd. The things that take up space on a disk are movies and textures. There are compression methods for both that allow for them to fit on a dual layer disk. With next generation graphics you don't need movies for the storyline you can use the ingame engine and models. People who think that huge disk space will lead to huge games have no clue about programming or game development.

Again I find it laughable that people can totally discount what might happen in 3 or 4 years time. You don't know how big games will be in 2010, nor what features they will include in them at that time??? As I said in another thread no PS3 owner will be complaining in the future that they have a blu-ray drive, why do 360 fans constantly put it down?

If blu-ray wins we will have a HD-compatible console, and irrespective of that we will have high capacity discs that could contain all manner of data. I'm not against Microsoft having DVDs as they media of choice, but why all the negative remarks regarding blu-ray? Besides a short-term price hit, we as consumer will only win by having it included.

**phobia** · 06-05-2005

Originally Posted by orbital123

It isn't a mistake. You think that Sony is including Blu Ray for games? They are doing it for movies, very few games will use more than a dual layer dvd. The things that take up space on a disk are movies and textures. There are compression methods for both that allow for them to fit on a dual layer disk.

Compression can lead to bad quality. Not only that but it has to be decompressed wich can have an impact on performance so thanks but no thanks

With next generation graphics you don't need movies for the storyline you can use the ingame engine and models. People who think that huge disk space will lead to huge games have no clue about programming or game development.

So where did you get that experience? No huge disk space won't lead to huge games but huge games will need huge disk space. Perhaps some people like those movies IN FACT maybe developpers like a few movies in their games, perhaps not. But they will certainly have the option!

As for data rate. If the blu ray drives are 2x which they most likely will be, since 6x isn't even in production yet, and 2x are just coming out next year for pc and home use, then it will be slower than 16x dvd drives for read times. Who cares about room when you have slower read times? 2x optical drives for the PC are going to start at 1000 dollars a drive. You know how much 6x is going to cost? And who knows when that would be ready.

Those numbers are unofficial stop using unofficial numbers to state your arguments please as they confuse people who don't know about it.

**kingarthurivvi** · 06-05-2005

compression was included in 360 why else would they say it can freeup 3gb just in audio alone in halo2 ! this is sonly's attempt to win in a battle being fought in entertainment business but not in the game business . this isnt needed by anone but sony its not a mistake its just sony trying to corner the market yet again on another sony only product so they can get licensing fees. game developers movies and all donot need blue ray. i have a funny fealing hd-dvd blue-ray will both give to wmv/hd compression.

**phobia** · 06-05-2005

compression was included in 360

It was included? As far as I know the system isn't even out yet...

why else would they say it can freeup 3gb just in audio alone in halo2

link? Cause I heard something else.

this is sonly's attempt to win in a battle being fought in entertainment business but not in the game business.

I think games fit right in entertainment. I don't just want to play games on it and don't say you want a console that only plays games because you will also like it you can play cd's and dvd's on your xbox360.

this isnt needed by anone

Since when are you capable of speaking for everybody, speak for yourself please.

game developers movies and all donot need blue ray. i have a funny fealing hd-dvd blue-ray will both give to wmv/hd compression.

Since when can you speak for game developpers? You don't know how big games will get in filesize and don't whine they can use in game instead of fmv because they can also use ingame on blu-ray but it still gives them the freedom to also use fmv.

i have a funny fealing hd-dvd blue-ray will both give to wmv/hd compression.

Very reliable.

P.S. please check your spelling before posting next time

**bustabusta196** · 06-05-2005

Quote:
why else would they say it can freeup 3gb just in audio alone in halo2

link? Cause I heard something else.

It was in a J.Allard interview about the X360.. saying that with Windows media accelerator or w/e its called they can compress the audio of a game such as halo2 and gain about 3 gigs of space.

**phobia** · 06-05-2005

Oke, does anyone know how big halo 2 is ? Because if the 'uncompressed' sound already takes 3 gig I wonder how badly they will need to compress entire games to fit on a 9 gb dvd.

**bustabusta196** · 06-06-2005

it fits one disc so most likely smaller then 5.7 or 4.7 whatever the size of it is.

**phobia** · 06-06-2005

Oh yeah so you got a game of less then 4,7 GB, where you can compress the audio to save 3 GB wich means the sound before compression was more then 3 gb because even after compression there should be something left (example 3,5 gb - 3gb= 0,5gb).

Why don't I believe that ? There's no way that the sound of a game takes more then 3 gb especially if the game is less then 4,7 gb.

**ishould** · 06-06-2005

I just don't like the fact the microsoft isn't even thinking about the future at all. I look at it like this:

PS1: CD's 700mb space
PS2: DVD's 4700mb space, almost 7 x's bigger
PS3: BD's 25000mb (possibly 50000mb) space 5 x's bigger

xbox: dvd's 4700mb space
xbox 360: dvd's DL 9600mb space

I just think we need to be able to look towards the future with a positive aspect. I don't think ANYONE can say that there is no way games would ever be able to use that much space. Unless they had a time machine, but I digress. People said the same thing with CD's and DVD's, but look how wrong they were.

I would rather pay an extra 50 bucks for blu-ray and be ready for the future than jsut get a DVD DL and maybe be covered for the next year or two. Developers have some vivid imaginations if we could just give them plentyof room to work...

**siren** · 06-06-2005

The largest issue is that MS is launching this year. Blu-Ray and/or HD-DVD is just not feesable to include in a console right now.

1) They are still fighting over the standards
2) The drives are still not small and/or affordable by any stretch of the imagination.

As it is, when Sony launches the PS3 in Spring '06 BD-Roms will be just starting to get down to a reasonable price. But there is no guarentee that what they put in the PS3 will be able to support playback of all Blu-Ray movies.

As an example, if the PS2 had released just 1 year earlier when DVD-Roms and decoding techology was as new as Blu-Ray will be next year, they would have been incompatible with all modern DVD movies. This is due to the difference between the original iDVD controls and iDVD2 controls which were not supported until just before the PS2 started manufacturing.

**ishould** · 06-06-2005

which is exactly why I'm going to be waiting for a couple of months after the PS3 release to buy it. The prices will have gone down and a bunch of major bugs should be fixed

**venomman** · 06-06-2005

prices wont go down on ps3 until over a year.

**ishould** · 06-06-2005

Well maybe not but the price of HDTV's hsould go down a little and I'll have more time to save up my money. I don't like putting something on a credit card unless I have the cash to pay it off in full in two or three months

**Aquanox** · 06-06-2005

Developers could use all that extra space to store enormous photo-realistic texture files, but that's not likely, because PC video cards and consoles simply don't have the memory or bandwidth to take advantage of that kind of detail. That leaves the possibility of using the extra room to store other types of game content, like levels, characters, and items. However, coming up with that much art and other assets would add immensely to development times and costs. The most likely scenario in the foreseeable future is that the additional space will be used to store full-motion video and additional soundtracks, much like the first CD-ROM-enhanced games did. Whether this comes in the form of high-definition cutscenes, extended video tutorials, or other types of content is up to the developers. But adding a lot of noninteractive multimedia is by far the easiest way to fill a lot of available storage space.

Source: http://hardware.gamespot.com/Story-ST-x-2077-x-x-x

According to this, BluRay will not mean any significant improvement in gamming.

Given this, we can start over talking again. Personally, I'm happy that MS put all their efforts in gamming matters, and not in a standard race, fact that will happily affect the retail price of the X360.

**mckmas8808** · 06-07-2005

Oh, so if gamespot says it then its right.

pfft, yeah ok.

So what speed did gamespot have to hit to go into the future? 88 mph or 100?

**cyto** · 06-11-2005

Originally Posted by phobia

P.S. please check your spelling before posting next time

Don't go bashing people's spelling when you have numerous grammatical and spelling errors in your posts. Some people aren't great spellers and others just slip when typing. Let's try to avoid the hypocrisy here by not commenting on another person's spelling unless it relates to the post given somehow or if it's just so horribly bad that you can't understand what they are trying to say and it looks like a kindergartner wrote it (there are a few of those in these forums).

Originally Posted by phobia

Compression can lead to bad quality. Not only that but it has to be decompressed wich can have an impact on performance so thanks but no thanks

That's why there is such a thing known as "lossless encoding" which is a term describing a data compression algorithm which retains all the information in the data, allowing it to be recovered perfectly by decompression. MS owns several of these algorithms.

Originally Posted by Aquanox

Source: http://hardware.gamespot.com/Story-ST-x-2077-x-x-x

According to this, BluRay will not mean any significant improvement in gamming.

Given this, we can start over talking again. Personally, I'm happy that MS put all their efforts in gamming matters, and not in a standard race, fact that will happily affect the retail price of the X360.

Originally Posted by mckmas8808

Oh, so if gamespot says it then its right. Confused pfft, yeah ok.

So what speed did gamespot have to hit to go into the future? 88 mph or 100?

Since when did you have to go into the future to understand the technology and the implementation of such today? It doesn't matter where the information on a ROM based structure comes from, be it CD-ROM, DVD-ROM or BD-ROM. The processor reads and interprets it just the same thus, no performance increase. In fact, the adoption of new standard formats has been shown to decrease throughput, thereby giving diminished performance. The main advantage to BD is the room for HD content added to games through cutscenes or as bonus material such as 1080/24p making of the game documentaries or having uncompressed textures, which really isn't that big of a deal due to lossless encoding procedures. They spoke of these exact things when referring to the "foreseeable future."

Originally Posted by ishould

Personally, I think it is a huge mistake for not includeing HD-DVD, Blu Ray, or some other form of next-gen media for the 360. Some people say they're not being realistic because no one can use more than 10gb for a game. Guess what? When the first PS came out with CD's, everyone said that theres no way anyone is going to be able to fill 700mb of data. I think with the next generation graphics there will need to be more than 10gb, more like what sony and the Blu Ray can hold.

Not just the storage, but the data rate from the disc to the console. It doesn't matter how fast the console is if it bottlenecks at the disc drive

As Siren said, it is just not feasible for MS to include one. It would make the system cost a lot more money and MS would probably take a larger loss on each system sold which would result in higher prices on software to even out the losses.
Look at Nintendo's N64 and their 64Mbit carts. They managed to make a lot of money while still using smaller game files in that generation and they had several disadvantages that MS does not. MS can include DL DVD's, lossless encoding and even additional DVD's which wouldn't work with a cart too well. J. Allard already pointed out that when they went to developers and asked them what they really wanted in the next generation consoles to help them make better games, they didn't ask for more storage space. They wanted better throughput, better tools (XNA) and better royalty fees and such to help cut production costs.