BluRay wins?

It's done then, the last major HD-DVD partner jumps off the sinking ship.

Xbox to stop making HD DVD add-on

Microsoft has decided to stop making the HD DVD add-on for its Xbox 360 games console after Toshiba abandoned the high definition DVD format.

Toshiba estimated last week that about 300,000 of the add-ons had been sold.

Microsoft was one of the key backers for the HD DVD format, competing with Blu-ray, which was the format available in Sony's rival PlayStation 3 console.

Microsoft said it would continue to provide warranty support for the $130 (£115 in the UK) HD DVD add-on.

Last week, Toshiba said it would stop production of HD DVD players and recorders after major film studios decided to back Sony's Blu-ray format instead.

Toshiba said the tipping point came last month when Warner Brothers decided to release its movies only in Blu-ray.

The Xbox add-ons sold represented 30% of the one million HD DVD devices that were sold worldwide.

That compares unfavourably with the 10.5 million PS3s sold by Sony, which come with a built-in Blu-ray drive.

RIP!
 
The Financial Times says that

Sony, Microsoft discuss Blu-ray for Xbox 360

By Chris Nuttall in San Francisco
Published: March 6 2008 18:50 | Last updated: March 6 2008 18:50

Sony is in talks with console rival Microsoft about offering a Blu-ray drive for the Xbox 360, according to a senior executive.

The Japanese electronics maker has until now touted Blu-ray as an advantage its PlayStation 3 holds over Microsoft’s console. Microsoft has backed Toshiba’s HD-DVD format and offered an HD-DVD drive that can be plugged into the 360.

But after Sony’s victory last month in the high-definition DVD format war, Stan Glasgow, Sony Electronics US president, said the two sides were now talking about Microsoft adopting Blu-ray.

A Blu-ray drive in a 360 would make Microsoft more competitive with the PS3, but it would also mean extra revenues for Sony’s electronics division. It would also add further cost to the 360, meaning a premium edition of the console could be necessary.

A Blu-ray drive could be incorporated in its top-of-the-range Elite Xbox, or Microsoft could again offer a drive as a plug-in peripheral.

Mr Glasgow, speaking at a media dinner, added that discussions were also taking place with Apple, which has not offered Blu-ray drives on any of its computers so far and has focused on digital media via downloads and streaming through devices such as its Apple TV.

The Sony president said he did not believe Blu-ray would be overtaken by high-definition content becoming available over the internet. Bandwidth limitations meant it was still available to only a few, he said, and consumers favoured disks they could own.

“Downloading will build over time, but this will be over a period of years,” he said.

On Blu-ray pricing, Mr Glasgow expects prices of players to drop to as low as $299 by the end of the year. They currently cost $399 and higher. He feels the price of a player could fall to about $200 by the end of 2009.

The prices of Blu-ray players are not expected to fall as precipitously as they did with regular DVD players. The Blu-ray Association, the group controlling the standard, has yet to license it to Chinese manufacturers, who would be expected to drive down prices.

Financial Times Article

Interesting.
 
Blu-ray sales rise 300%

In a beneficial turn of events for the home entertainment industry, Blu-ray sales continue to rise drastically despite the staggering U.S. economy.

As DVD sales decline, Blu-ray has been filling in the gap, generating more than $200 million in the first half of 2008. This is in stark contrast to the same point last year, where Blu-ray earnings were less than 33% of current figures.

“We are trending 8% Blu-ray sales [per title], and at the end of the year, we will be between 10% and 12%," stated Mike Dunn of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.

Lori MacPherson, general manager for Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, North America contributed her thoughts.

“I think people are becoming pickier on what they spend their money on, but home entertainment always represents a good value. Thirty dollars for a Blu-ray movie that you can watch over and over again is still a great value,” she commented.

As Blu-ray production costs begin to drop, savings will be passed on to consumers and, in return, Blu-ray will take an even more prominent place in people's homes. With HDTV penetration higher than ever, Blu-ray may very well overtake DVD prior to 2012, the previously accepted prediction.

Who said Blu-Ray wouldn't catch on?
 
Would Blu-ray on the 360 only be offered as an optional add-on, or will it be used for gaming reasons to incorporate more disk space for 360 games. If so then Hideo Kojima will start the 360 port of MGS4 lols.
 
s'pose bill told you this right?

Maybe he's simply using his common sense? What would be the point? They've already burnt their bridges with the HD-DVD add-on and are moving towards the downloadable content model. You would not be able to play games off it, as you couldn't with the HD-DVD player, even though it could read DVD disc, and it would push the price of the whole setup much higher than PS3. I'm sure that the Blu-ray association would give them a licence, but under what terms? Blu-ray might not be Sony's property alone, but they are the ones that took all of the risks getting it into the market and seeing off HD-DVD, the others just sat by and produced very small numbers of stand-alone players at $1000 a pop. Sony got something back for doing this; for all we know they could hold the exclusive licence for the use of BD for games on a console. Even for movies, XB360's HDMI at v1.2 doesn't comply with BD specifications and Microsoft have no intention of sticking Java in their machine.

Whatever people say about no physical optical media in the next XBox, it will need something. They could use HD-DVD or some other niche format for all we know, it would help stop piracy, that's for sure. But by then PS4 will be using 400GB BD discs, a standard technology.
 
Maybe he's simply using his common sense? What would be the point? They've already burnt their bridges with the HD-DVD add-on and are moving towards the downloadable content model. You would not be able to play games off it, as you couldn't with the HD-DVD player, even though it could read DVD disc, and it would push the price of the whole setup much higher than PS3. I'm sure that the Blu-ray association would give them a licence, but under what terms? Blu-ray might not be Sony's property alone, but they are the ones that took all of the risks getting it into the market and seeing off HD-DVD, the others just sat by and produced very small numbers of stand-alone players at $1000 a pop. Sony got something back for doing this; for all we know they could hold the exclusive licence for the use of BD for games on a console. Even for movies, XB360's HDMI at v1.2 doesn't comply with BD specifications and Microsoft have no intention of sticking Java in their machine.

Whatever people say about no physical optical media in the next XBox, it will need something. They could use HD-DVD or some other niche format for all we know, it would help stop piracy, that's for sure. But by then PS4 will be using 400GB BD discs, a standard technology.

:eek:
 
Microsoft will need to be very careful with the next XBox, because the costs to produce PS4 will be minimal. All of the foundations are in place, all the R&D is done, and it will be launched at a very attractive price point.
 
They have probably been working on it for the last 2 years though...

Do you think these two will come out around the same time, or will sony give Microsoft the advantage of releasing their console earlier again?
 
They have probably been working on it for the last 2 years though...

Do you think these two will come out around the same time, or will sony give Microsoft the advantage of releasing their console earlier again?

What I meant was that PS4 will simply be a basic evolution of PS3. For example, Cell in PS4 will probably be 4 PPU and 32 SPU instead of in PS3 where it is 1/8. BD will be used again. The only thing they will need to probably do is again modify an off the shelf nVidia GPU for Flex/IO (the connection of the GPU to the Cell), increase the memory and its bandwidth, and bingo. What I'm saying is that all the R&D is done, and IBM are already working on Cell 2.

Microsoft is in a very different position. They didn't have a totally custom CPU designed for them, and IBM will not be updating that chip. The memory sub-system will need a redesign, and they have difficult choices to make about optical media.

As for releasing at the same time. I think that Sony if they so wished could release first this time around, as all of the R&D is done on the foundation level. There will be no more waiting for blue laser diodes either, and costs will be very low. However, I do not see either of them even thinking about it for a long time yet. Both Microsoft and Sony (they need PS3 to have a 10 year life) need to recuperate costs, they both need serious profitablity in the computer entertainment divisions. Wii 2 will come first this time around I feel.
 
Microsoft will need to be very careful with the next XBox, because the costs to produce PS4 will be minimal. All of the foundations are in place, all the R&D is done, and it will be launched at a very attractive price point.

Thanks for the input Nostradamus, can you also tell me how much itll cost and what titles itll be released with at launch?
 
I only understood half of that!

But I get what you mean, Will Microsoft not of been researching all this already though, as they new this was the future even after releasing the 360?
 
Thanks for the input Nostradamus, can you also tell me how much itll cost and what titles itll be released with at launch?

Don't get funny with me, he who thinks that Microsoft can do Blu-ray without an add-on. You arse. :lol:

PS4 will be an upgraded PS3, nothing more, nothing less. All PS3 titles will run on it with minimal fuss. I would expect launch at 250 quid or there abouts.
 
Microsoft will need to be very careful with the next XBox, because the costs to produce PS4 will be minimal. All of the foundations are in place, all the R&D is done, and it will be launched at a very attractive price point.

thanks mystic meg:rolleyes: anyway according to sony the ps3 has a 10 year life span and well if the next xbox was to come out it'll come out in the next few years so it'll be in competition with the ps3.
 
Sony have constantly stated the PS3 is a 10 year cycle so the absolute earliest I think we will see PS4 is 2014, or perhaps late 2013.
 
Don't get funny with me, he who thinks that Microsoft can do Blu-ray without an add-on. You arse. :lol:

PS4 will be an upgraded PS3, nothing more, nothing less. All PS3 titles will run on it with minimal fuss. I would expect launch at 250 quid or there abouts.

ps4 for £250:eek::eek: Like how all ps2 titles are running on the european ps3s with minimal fuss?:smirk:
 
Don't get funny with me, he who thinks that Microsoft can do Blu-ray without an add-on. You arse. :lol:

PS4 will be an upgraded PS3, nothing more, nothing less. All PS3 titles will run on it with minimal fuss. I would expect launch at 250 quid or there abouts.

£500, at least, inflation and all that... ;)
 
Don't get funny with me, he who thinks that Microsoft can do Blu-ray without an add-on. You arse. :lol:

PS4 will be an upgraded PS3, nothing more, nothing less. All PS3 titles will run on it with minimal fuss. I would expect launch at 250 quid or there abouts.

Who said anything about an add-on, im talking about a completely new console.

But seriously though, you're future goggles must be awesome - can you tell me if England will eventually win the world cup within the next century?
 
I only understood half of that!

But I get what you mean, Will Microsoft not of been researching all this already though, as they new this was the future even after releasing the 360?

Yes, I expect that Microsoft are researching it, or rather that they and their partners are. But it will have to be a total redesign. Also, Microsoft are at the disadvantage that they do not have their own electronics factories or fabs as they call them. Most of PS3 is built at Sony or Sony/Toshiba joint venture fabs (including Cell and RSX), which is one of the reasons that they have been to get the cost of the PS3 down far faster than Microsoft have with the XB360.
 
Sony have constantly stated the PS4 is a 10 year cycle so the absolute earliest I think we will see PS3 is 2014, or perhaps late 2013.

The ps3's potential is far far from untapped even now, just look at how long it took the ps2 to really use itself to maz capactiy. The only reason sony would bring out the ps4 that early would be if the power of the next xbox is unmatched by the ps3.
 
The ps3's potential is far far from untapped even now, just look at how long it took the ps2 to really use itself to maz capactiy. The only reason sony would bring out the ps4 that early would be if the power of the next xbox is unmatched by the ps3.

The PS2 never achieved its true potential, or so I've been told.

Rich coming from you :lol:

My comments are unrivalled on this forum:D
 
Who said anything about an add-on, im talking about a completely new console.

But seriously though, you're future goggles must be awesome - can you tell me if England will eventually win the world cup within the next century?

Would Blu-ray on the 360 only be offered as an optional add-on, or will it be used for gaming reasons to incorporate more disk space for 360 games. If so then Hideo Kojima will start the 360 port of MGS4 lols.

Ok!

You're being silly, I'm not predicting the future, I'm again using common sense. If you cannot see that IBM are working on Cell 2 then you need to take your goggles off. Sony stumped up around half a billion dollars for the development of Cell, and the idea is not to use it in PS3 alone (it's going to go into everything they make, and into much of what Toshiba make). Go and find the roadmap for Cell, it might help you.
 
How will the Cell improve their laptops Weaste?

I'm looking for a new one, use a Vaio at present, worked great for me for the last 3 years, but is getting a bit slow due to the amount of stuff I have on it and general use, is it worth waiting or should I get one of the ones out now?
 
Yes, I expect that Microsoft are researching it, or rather that they and their partners are. But it will have to be a total redesign. Also, Microsoft are at the disadvantage that they do not have their own electronics factories or fabs as they call them. Most of PS3 is built at Sony or Sony/Toshiba joint venture fabs (including Cell and RSX), which is one of the reasons that they have been to get the cost of the PS3 down far faster than Microsoft have with the XB360.

:eek:

That shocks me, I'd of thought the size of microsoft they would of had their own factories, so do they design the product then sub-contract all the different bits out to developers?

Hence the price been pushed up for R&D?
 
The only reason sony would bring out the ps4 that early would be if the power of the next xbox is unmatched by the ps3.

I agree with you here. The PS3 will not be able to match a new XBox with an up to date GPU on the pure graphics level (pixel pushing), and the new XBox will be able to do 1080p with ease. However, it depends on how the developers can use the Cell to assist the RSX, the graphics system of PS3 is not RSX on its own.

Here is something, an abstract if you will, for a Microsoft talk that will go on at a conference for developers. It's about XB360.

Microsoft Directions in Parallel Computing and Some Short Term Help:
This talk focuses on the native task scheduler being announced by the Parallel Computing Platform group in Microsoft this spring and offerings that are available in the XDK. The scheduling of tasks within games can improve resource utilization, load balancing, and performance. For games targeting the current generation of PCs and the Xbox 360 console, we discuss an interim solution. Previous talks given on this topic laid the foundation for using tasks to move work required by the engine from an over-utilized hardware core to an underutilized core. A progression of task and scheduler designs is presented that start with simple implementations and move to more complex designs that have low-overhead. The simple implementations are satisfactory for a small number of tasks but impose a prohibitive amount of overhead when the number of tasks grows. Finally, we present the work-stealing algorithm that pulls work from one core to another in the low-overhead scheduler.

Multi-Threaded Rendering for Games:
One core is just not enough for graphics anymore—rendering tasks often have to run in parallel to hit the target framerate and hide latent operations. This talk includes best practices, pitfalls to avoid, and a range of design patterns for implementing multithreaded rendering on today’s platforms, including Direct3D 10 and Xbox 360. We cover everything from batch submission to resource management and discuss future plans for greater flexibility and higher performance when rendering on multiple threads.

At Least We Aren’t Doing That: Real Life Performance Pitfalls
As we move towards second and third generation Xbox 360 games, the majority of titles are CPU, rather than GPU bound. This presentation draws on the unique perspective of Microsoft’s XDC proactive engineering group to present an across the board survey of the CPU performance issues even the very best developers run into, how you can find those problems, and how you can fix them. Applicable primarily to Xbox 360, this set of mini-case studies forms a next-gen post-mortem that will help developers decide where to focus optimization effort, and ultimately, reassure you that you’re going the right way.

Wow, so even on XB360, they think that they are not using the CPU enough and they are not using the GPU enough. There is one hell of a lot of potential still untapped in the XB360 which is quite a simple system in compariosn to PS3.
 
Wow, so even on XB360, they think that they are not using the CPU enough and they are not using the GPU enough. There is one hell of a lot of potential still untapped in the XB360 which is quite a simple system in compariosn to PS3.

So basically, there is a lot of life left in both consoles and room for improvement with a lot of potential? So all this internet arguing about which is best becomes a little silly, as its down to personal preference...

For both R&D and production. Microsoft is not a consumer electronics (read hardware) company.

Cheers.
 
How will the Cell improve their laptops Weaste?

I'm looking for a new one, use a Vaio at present, worked great for me for the last 3 years, but is getting a bit slow due to the amount of stuff I have on it and general use, is it worth waiting or should I get one of the ones out now?

Cell is not actually used in anything apart from PS3s and IBM server blades (processor boards) - it's too large, too hot, and too expensive yet. It is not going to take over the PC space. It's what it known as an embedded processor, it's not a full blown processor - it doesn't run the show if you like. Sony are waiting for the micro-cell and mini-cell before it starts going into TVs and other things. What it will be used for as times go on however is as helper hardware to do multimedia tasks, and the most concrete example is what Toshiba is doing with their SPURs engine. It isn't actually the full Cell Broadband Engine that Sony and IBM use, bust a custom system with 4 SPUs. I'll get you a link, and also one for the Cell roadmap.
 
Here is the Cell (Sony and Toshiba) roadmap.

1027sce_cell_roadmap.jpg


SOI is for the full chip. Bulk technology is for consumer electronics such as TVs, Blu-ray players/recorders, set-top boxes, mp3 players, mobile phones, etc. Probably lacking the PPU.

Multi-core under SOI is Cell 2.

This is IBMs version for the current processor.

cellroadmapxk3.jpg


The full processor (Cell BE) is currently on 65nm. IBM have their 8eDP version.
 
This is the Toshiba SPURs engine...

Scaled-down Cell CPU beats Intel’s quad-core chip in video transcoding

Hardware
By Theo Valich
Monday, June 09, 2008 00:30


Taipei (Taiwan) – During Computex 20008 we had a chance to visit Corel's suite at the Grand Hyatt hotel, which featured, at least as far as we know, the first third party demonstration of Toshiba’s SpursEngine 1000 (SE1000), an accelerator board based on the Cell BE processor. Despite the fact that Toshiba has trimmed down the chip, the performance potential is impressive.

Corel demonstrated the SE1000 on a special and Cell-optimized version of its DVD MovieFactory application, transcoding 1080p H.264 video to a smaller resolutions such as 480p. The SE1000 board was one of Toshiba’s sample boards, which were announced in April of this year.

The PCI Express x1 card houses a 65 nm Cell BE processor running at 1.5 GHz (compared to the 3.2 GHz in the Playstation 3) as well as four active SPE units (PS3: 8) and 128 MB XDR DRAM memory (PS3: 256 MB). Essentially, the SE1000 has about half the resources of the Cell engine in the PS3.

coreltoshibatranscode02.jpg


However, the demonstration results were quite spectacular. The video transcoding process takes about half as long on a SE1000 than on a 3 GHz Intel Core 2 Quad CPU. Keep in mind that this is a very specialized application, while the Core 2 Quad is a much more universal chip, but the simple performance potential is impressive nevertheless. Especially if you consider the fact that the accelerator consumes only 10 to 20 watts.

coreltoshibatranscode.jpg


So, how much does this board cost? We don’t know. Following a first demonstration of the SE1000 last September, the product has been sampling including a middleware kit for an undisclosed amount since April. Don’t hold your breath that you will be able to buy this board sometime in the future: Toshiba so far said that it is only targeted at consumer electronics applications for now.

In February of this year Sony announced that scaling the Cell BE chip to 45 nm is underway, with the die-size of the chip expected to shrink by about 34%. The smaller chip is also expected to consume about 40% less power.

Toshiba have said that it will go into their laptops.
 
That has just confused the hell outta me! :lol:

I'll take it as the laptops are sound enough to buy now! What are the minimum specs I should be looking at? In layman's terms! I know how to use the technology, but how it works I'm completely baffled!