Has Blu-ray won the war?

[greggobridges]

According to Variety (http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117978760.html?
categoryid=20&cs=1), Universal is no longer backing exclusively HD DVD
and Paramount may not be far behind after WB has chosen to back
exclusively Blu-ray.

[carl]

I Hope so!

[Viktor Klang]

I was rooting for StingRay - the number one solution for Steve Definition media

On Jan 10, 2008 10:34 PM, carl <carl....@gmail.com> wrote:

I Hope so!

       /lift/ committer (www.liftweb.net)
     SGS member (Scala Group Sweden)
 SEJUG member (Swedish Java User Group)
\_____________________________________/

[Duncan Wild]

I think this may have more influence :)

http://www.t3.com/news/blu-ray-porn?=35064

On Jan 11, 8:08 am, "Viktor Klang" <viktor.kl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I was rooting for StingRay - the number one solution for Steve Definition
> media
>

> On Jan 10, 2008 10:34 PM, carl <carl.qu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > I Hope so!
>
> --
> _____________________________________
> /                                                                 \

[greggobridges]

Desperation is setting in. Toshiba has cut the prices of it's HD DVD
players by 40-50%.

[robilad]

On Jan 12, 2:52 am, Duncan Wild <duncan.c.w...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think this may have more influence :)
>
> http://www.t3.com/news/blu-ray-porn?=35064

I am waiting for the avalanche of pr0n 2.0 GUI generator toolkits for
the JVM.

[JavaSnake]

It seems that it did : Report: Toshiba May End HD DVD Format -
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iTHHXJdHiSuq8n1753HbYdPYHbKwD8URS5400

[Casper Bang]

Not really a fan of Sony's consumer-rights-crippling technologies but
this is a good thing for consumers, not having to buy two players. The
market will expand, prices will drop and players can be had for less
than 300 euro. It's all good... unless you are Toshiba.

/Casper

On Feb 17, 11:25 am, JavaSnake <zeevb.pub...@gmail.com> wrote:
> It seems that it did : Report: Toshiba May End HD DVD Format -http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iTHHXJdHiSuq8n1753HbYdPYHbKwD8URS5400

[Chris Adamson]

It would be a huge mistake to read too much into this from a Java
point of view (as we are wont to do), as only about 30 of the 600-some
Blu-Ray titles available in the North American region use BD-J
(compare lists of BD-J enhanced titles <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
BD-J#BD-J_Enhanced_Movie_Titles> to lists of all titles, like <http://
www.blu-ray.com/movies/movies.php?show=nowavailable>, and it looks
like about 5% of Blu-Ray titles are BD-J [about 30 out of 600 by my
rough count]).

It's actually possible to read this story in a way that's very
negative for Java. Given the choice between BD-J and the simpler HDMV
scripting, 95% of authors are picking HDMV. Also, at the Blu-Ray
sessions I've gone to at JavaOne and MEDDs, presenters were also quite
frank in admitting there were pretty serious compatibility problems
between players. In a "Chicken Little" BD-J demo at J1, they said
they had to do workarounds for essentially *every* model.

This could actually have "fiasco" written all over it if BD-J doesn't
get more reliable and easier/cheaper to develop for, and soon.

[Peter Becker]

I would suspect that authoring a new medium is enough of a change to begin with and that people will tend to take the easy way first -- i.e. not using BD-J. Once authoring a Blu-Ray disc is a normal thing to do, more people might adapt the more complex solutions -- adoption will also depend on the authoring tools and if the marketing departments figure out a way to sell the extra features.

But I personally don't think that Java played a major role in making Blu-Ray popular either -- there are many other aspects that seem more relevant. OTOH: I don't really have a clue nor a Blu-Ray player :-)

  Peter

[Hitesh]

Why can't both co-exist?  I'm sure they can make DVD players that play both BlueRay and HD DVD...

Hitesh

[Casper Bang]

On Feb 18, 6:04 pm, Hitesh <hiteshwork...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Why can't both co-exist? I'm sure they can make DVD players that play both
> BlueRay and HD DVD...

For the benefit of whom? Dual-players exists but it's radically
different technology and thus very expensive. There is precedence to
this in the VHS vs. Beta-max war in the 80's.

/Casper

[Michael Neale]

"Given the choice between BD-J and the simpler HDMV
scripting, 95% of authors are picking HDMV. "

Yet more evidence that the argument that Java is simple, east to
learn, is bogus or at least a straw man. Why people are using that
argument as a reason to avoid fixing the language is beyond me.

On Feb 18, 9:25 pm, Chris Adamson <invalidn...@gmail.com> wrote:
> It would be a huge mistake to read too much into this from a Java
> point of view (as we are wont to do), as only about 30 of the 600-some
> Blu-Ray titles available in the North American region use BD-J
> (compare lists of BD-J enhanced titles <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

> BD-J#BD-J_Enhanced_Movie_Titles> to lists of all titles, like <http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/movies.php?show=nowavailable>, and it looks

[Casper Bang]

> Yet more evidence that the argument that Java is simple, east to
> learn, is bogus or at least a straw man. Why people are using that
> argument as a reason to avoid fixing the language is beyond me.

Agreed. I expect people will reply to you that's it's about
readability yada yada. Yet,it's rather gruesome to think of how much
reading would be be required to achieve the same in Java as this
simple LINQ expression:

string[] query = from file in Directory.GetFiles("/usr/local/tomcat/
logs/", "*.log")
from line in new LineReader(file) let entry = new LogEntry(line)
where entry.Severity = Severity.Critical &&
entry.DateTime.Equals(DateTime.Now.Date)
select entry.Message;

(Even Java only people should be able to infer that the previous code
scans a folder for log files, extracts the message of all log lines
which are critical and were logged today)

/Casper

[Christian Catchpole]

Yeah, and if I see "string = string + char" in a read loop, one more
time, I'm going to scream.. :)

[Dick Wall]

You're right - we should all write .NET C# code to run on Blu-Ray.

Oh wait, it doesn't run anywhere but windows ;-)

Thinking my reasoning to stick with Java over .NET is looking pretty
good right now....

Cheers

Dick

[Jess Holle]

I'd also be willing to bet that lack of BDJ adoption has more to do with lack of audience appropriate tooling, portability assurances, and the like than language features per se.

The LINQ bit below is "cute", but wouldn't get me to use language X over Y -- at least not given other, more critical considerations, e.g. portability.  [And, no, Mono, etc, does not count.  Microsoft will ensure that this is always far behind and far marginalized as compared to their offerings.]

--
Jess Holle

[Michael Neale]

Well, the point is more to do with:

"Given the choice between BD-J and the simpler HDMV
scripting, 95% of authors are picking HDMV. "

So given a presumably rich api, and well defined language, most people
(95% !!) chose some proprietary probably wierd script just cause its
easier and good enough to get things done.

Java is not simple, its not a scripting language. Any arguments that
start out with the assumption that it is to "keep things easy for
beginners" is flawed.

[Christian Catchpole]

Easy - make all Blu-Ray players Windows Boxes... haaaaang on a minute.

On Feb 20, 11:49 am, Dick Wall <dickw...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Casper Bang]

On Feb 20, 2:49 am, Dick Wall <dickw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> You're right - we should all write .NET C# code to run on Blu-Ray.
> Oh wait, it doesn't run anywhere but windows ;-)

Yes I miss the C# language constructs, but the issue was that of
"simplexity" and getting things done-ness which appear to have been
abandoned a long time ago in Java. I realize it smells of thread
hijack so I'll stop it here, nobody is talking about .NET on blueray
or the horror story of making players Windows boxes. The example was
written in MonoDevelop btw.

/Casper

[Michael Neale]

hehe yes indeed - but we keep coming back to it.

Dicks comment would have been more relevant in 2002 I think. Java as a
cross platform solution is great. That has been proven, solved. What
has not is anything like ease/simplicity/decent language design (which
is what we gripe about, platform is great).

[Chris Adamson]

Well, having read some of the public docs on blu-raydisc.com... and
no, there aren't nearly enough of them, and I'm not paying $15K to
license the spec either... I'm not sure this is entirely the right way
to see the situation.

I'd be inclined to make the analogy that HDMV is to BD-J as static web
pages are to servlets (and literally servlets, nothing on top of
them). Not because these technologies are particularly similar, but
in terms of what they're used for. When my kid's school posts the
month's lunch menu on their web page they do so with static HTML.
It's simple, understandable, toolable, and cheap... and therefore the
right choice for the problem domain. You could write a servlet every
month to do something like request.getOutputStream.write("<title>Lunch
Menu</title>"), but that would be fricking stupid, right?

OK, now consider the needs of a Blu-Ray disc. Most of the time, the
interactivity is limited to navigation. If a simpler markup-and-
script API can get the job done, that's probably going to be the right
choice. You need BD-J only when you go furher: you want picture-in-
picture functionality or internet connectivity or game-quality
interactivity or other high-end features.

It's possible that with Blu-Ray's small install base, spending the
money on this richer content, and the more difficult development it
entails, just isn't worth it yet. Also, I spoke with an independent
studio that does high-def discs for the big studios, and they said
that in some cases, they had to adopt a "lowest common denominator"
approach for content that needed to be developed and work more or less
the same way on both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD.

So there *might* be more interest in using BD-J as the install base
grows and the need for dual-platform development subsides with the end
of the format war. Also, the difficulty of developing BD-J content
could be alleviated through middleware (imagine, say, a scene graph
and animation framework written atop BD-J). But it's also possible
that the novel functionality exposed by BD-J will prove not worth the
time and money to develop for -- people may not want to buy a player
based on fancier menuing or vague promises of rich interactivity. The
fact that there are apparently severe compatibility problems across
players is also a major worry for BD-J going forward.

And of course, the big problem as far as most of us are concerned is
that BD-J is a locked down platform, completely impractical to develop
for as an independent or hobbyist developer (or "tire kickers", as
this group has been described on the hdcookbook forum). That lock-
down is something I initially predicted in a blog years ago, only to
have readers insist no, Blu-Ray will be cool, and so I opened my mind
to the idea that it would be neat if it were a means of distributing
arbitrary ME code with a decent UI to living room TVs. Only to have
it turn out to really be locked down after all. Despite the potential
of Blu-Ray, the format's owners may really only care that it be a
great Hollywood movie player and nothing else.

I kind of go back and forth on Blu-Ray, and right now I'm thinking
there are things to spend my time on that have more users, more
dollars, and more practical points-of-entry for the independent
developer.

--Chris

[Alexey Zinger]

Admittedly, I know nothing about BD-J, so forgive my ignorance. But what do
you mean by BD-J being a closed platform? Are you saying there won't be
commercially available Blu-ray burners or drivers for them? What else will
stand in the way of someone coding for the platform?

The other aspect of this that I'd touch on is that I think this expectation
that movie studios are gonna be hiring Java developers in droves to design
better menus for their product is a false one. Or even games. I would bet
that the natural tendency will be for Java houses to develop authoring tools
and frameworks to work on top of BD-J that will allow actual content producers
to slap their content on top of it. Kinda like how lots of non-geeks on
myspace hunt for free as well as non-free CSS "plug-ins" to change the look of
their profile pages and only the geeks do it themselves.

Alexey
2001 Honda CBR600F4i (CCS)
1992 Kawasaki EX500
http://azinger.blogspot.com
http://bsheet.sourceforge.net
http://wcollage.sourceforge.net

____________________________________________________________________________________
Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page.
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs

[Chris Adamson]

Closed in that there is no public SDK for BD-J. To get the org.bluray
classes to compile against, you need to be a Blu-Ray Disc Association
(BDA) licensee, which costs thousands or tens of thousands of dollars.

There are third-party burners already, and you can burn data with
applications like Toast 8. What's not practical/possible/welcome is
creating BD-J applications, which you would then burn to the disc.

At JavaOne, Sun's rep said there was a feeling that the BDA had to do
something to reach out to indpendent and hobbyist developers
interested in BD-J, but so far, there doesn't seem to be any action on
that front, and Sun's people over on the hdcookbook forums are trying
to explain that opening up to developers is something that Big Old
Media has a really hard time getting comfortable with.

--Chris