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As we write this (and probably Feedback Cinema Future High-Res Discs as you read this), the format battle for the next silver audio/ video disc is still on. Yes, it will affect audio as well as video. Let’s recapitulate. On one side are Toshiba, NEC, and — perhaps more important — the DVD Forum, the consortium that set the standard for the existing DVD. Their project is HD DVD, the “HD” of course standing for “high definition.” It is read with a blue laser, which has a shorter wavelength than the red laser used in existing DVD and CD players. In other respects the disc itself is similar to the existing DVD, and can be produced in existing plants (though presumably with a lower yield of flaw-free discs). The advantages of this DVD-like format are obvious. The discs will be cheaper to produce and the saving can be passed on to consumers (hey, we’re just reporting the official line). And the system can be brought to market faster. Target launch: Fall of 2005. Wait a minute…2005? In fact Toshiba’s first HD DVD player, the HD-XA1 (shown at lower right), was launched on March 31, 2006, and only in Japan. Its eventual US price was listed as $799 (the HD-A1, announced earlier, which was supposed to be cheaper, was not mentioned). The price is mostly theoretical, since at launch time there was not a single film available in the format. So much for coming to market faster. It did, however, beat its competitor to market. The competitor is Blu-Ray, backed by Sony and Matsushita (Panasonic), but not the DVD Forum. The Blu-Ray disc also uses a blue laser, as its name implies, but its structure is different. The polycarbonate layer covering data side of the disc is ten times thinner than that of the DVD, allowing a better view 0 ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine Cinema and therefore more data density. Making Blu-Ray discs will require retooling factories, but that is of course only a transitional drawback. As in a shooting war, the two camps have scrambled to gather allies. Toshiba has powerful partners, such as Microsoft and Intel, and more importantly Hollywood studios: Warner, Universal and Disney. The Blu-Ray camp has the support of Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Apple, as well as Sony Pictures (of course), MGM (which belongs to Sony) and 20th Century Fox. The first Blu-Ray player was due for launch about now too, and one was shown by Samsung at the Montreal show in late March, but it has been…(surprise!) delayed (to May 23rd, but keep your eyes open for more news). If and when they are released, Blu-Ray players will be about double the price of the Toshiba player. Take those prices with a grain of salt, however, because with no available software neither player will be available for sale in any store. Movie studio support On the face of it, having the studios on side is vital, because only they can supply software. But if it’s possible for the studios to help, it’s just as possible that they can choose to stop the development of tomorrow’s discs dead in its tracks. The industry got badly burned with the DVD, whose CSS encryption was supposed to make copying impossible. Breaking CSS turned out to be trivial, and there are plenty of shareware and even freeware programs for defeating it. Hollywood doesn’t want t hat to happen with a much better resolution disc. Are the anti-copying systems of HD DVD and Blu-Ray done? And will they really be more robust? We believe they are not finalized, and if that is true no usable player can truly be launched. We might add that it seems unlikely a more robust anti-copy system can resist reverse engineering. That’s because anyone who makes a player needs to have the keys. Someone is going to forget the key on a store counter somewhere. Lest we forget, that was how CSS first got breached. Come to think of it, are the studios ready to abandon DVD’s zone system, which prevents discs from one part of the world from being played in another? Of course that system was compromised years ago, but is Hollywood ready to go with worldwide release of a single disc? Or is this one more thing that needs to be straightened out before the first player is sold to the public? Though the studios have chosen sides, no one is interested in making films for a player no one buys…nor in having productions absent from a system that becomes popular. Beyond the posturing, the studios are hedging their bets. They will release films for whichever is the winning system. And the winner will be decided by large store chains, not by consumers. What about audiophiles? Whichever system wins out, the vast space on the disc might make it possible to make more space for sound.
That could just mean more channels (8.1 channel surround is one of Blu- Ray’s options), or it could also mean less compression. Or no compression. But here we’re talking about the video disc. Could one of the new formats also be tomorrow’s higher fidelity audio discs? Sony believes it can, and that seems to be the reason for its lapsing interest in its own SACD format. Of course SACD lives on thanks to audiophile labels, but Sony Music has its eye on something else: Direct Stream Digital on a Blu-Ray disc. Sure enough, DSD, the audio format of SACD, is one of Blu-Ray’s options. So will the Blu-Ray disc replace SACD, prompting audiophiles (and videophiles) to buy yet another sort of digital player? Not so fast! Though Blu-Ray looks like the probable winner of the battle because of its larger capacity, the DVD Forum has its own plans. The DVD Forum is, you may recall, the guardian of the other super disc, DVD-Audio. That disc was made possible by Meridian’s MLP (Meridian Lossless Packing) compression system. Is MLP one of the standards for HD DVD? Well, duh! But who needs it? Film lovers want a disc with the greatest possible capacity, in order to get the best possible picture. However audiophiles would seem to have all they could want already. Either DVD-A or SACD can give you an hour and a quarter of high resolution 5.1 channel surround sound. Who needs a disc with 15 Gb of space? Or 30 Gb? Or more? We can get a clue by looking at another of the DVD Forum’s formats, the Dual-Disc. DVD-A had been done in by its incompatibility with other audio players, so why not (belatedly) bring out a hybrid disc? SACD had gone to hybrid CD/SACD formats by using a dual-layer disc, and that has become the norm for Super Audio. The DVD Forum has brought out its own hybrid. Think of it as a DVD-A disc and a conventional CD glued back to back. Just put it into the player the right way up, and you’re good to go. Unfortunately the thicker Dual- Disc jams in many players, and some manufacturers warn that playing one will void the warranty. Jamming in a car player is all but guaranteed. However a new format won’t have that problem. Not surprisingly, manufacturers mainly don’t care about the audiophile world, and for the most part they’ve used the Dual-Disc format for something else: a CD on one side, and a video DVD on the other side. Clearly, the consumer gets more than by downloading the music with BitTorrent or eMule. There’s reason to expect similar products on either Blu-Ray or HD DVD. By the way, hybrid video/audio discs already exist. Some music DVDs have both Dolby Digital (compressed) surround sound and the option of uncompressed PCM sound that is literally CD quality. With the extra space on tomorrow’s discs, both picture and sound could potentially make a great leap forward. Just don’t expect to find a player for sale in a real store for a while. ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine Feedback Cinema
Page 1 and 2: No. 76 $6.49 ISSN 0847-1851 Canadia
Page 3 and 4: Issue No. 76 Cover story:A new look
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Page 41 and 42: complicated things. Here’s how we
Page 43 and 44: THE UHF CLASSIFIEDS Run your own ad
Page 45 and 46: THE ANNIVERSARY COLLECTION: Issues
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Page 55 and 56: that, with the right equipment, the
Page 57 and 58: 55 THE AUDIOPHILE STORE TWO CABLES
Page 59 and 60: 57 THE AUDIOPHILE STORE CLEANER POW
Page 61 and 62: 59 THE AUDIOPHILE STORE Just Like L
Page 63 and 64: 61 THE AUDIOPHILE STORE Burgos, who
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Page 71 and 72: You know you’ve always wanted the
Page 73 and 74: paying for it, a detail that subseq
Page 75 and 76: large orchestra and a choir of 150
Page 77 and 78: On the other hand, he was able to h
Page 79 and 80: Is hi-fi — or consumer electronic
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LOUDSPEAKERS: Does the Totem Mani-2 still rate as one of the ...

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