New HD DVD Features Allows Consumers To Edit And Upload Video

As Blu-ray and HD DVD continue to battle it out over which format will dominate the market, last week, HD DVD released its first title that incorporates new user features that involves online video. These new features allows anyone who connects their HD DVD player to the Internet via a broadband connection the ability to download trailers to other movies, change menu styles and download other subtitles.

But the most interesting feature is that it will allow anyone to re-edit the movie, arranging the scenes as they want and then allow them to upload their edited video to a server hosted by the studio, in this case to Warner Brothers, for the movie 300. The other users can download that version of the movie to their HD DVD players and watch the re-edited video. What I'm trying to find out is what the technology is behind this, what compression is being used and how large of a file is the user uploading from their house to the studio. And where is the file saved that is being downloaded? To some sort of drive in the HD DVD player or to the disc itself? I can't find any technical details on the HD DVD site.

All of this seems like a bit of last ditch effort for HD DVD which clearly is not getting the market penetration over Blu-ray. Yes, from the data I have read, more HD DVD players have been sold than Blu-ray, but it's all going to come down to what content is available. The content will dictate which format wins. And the announcement by Blockbuster two weeks ago that it would not stock HD DVDs when it expands the high-definition section in its 1,450 stores next month and will only stock Blu-ray, is another bad sign for HD DVD.

I say good, let one of these formats fall by the wayside and lets get some standards when it comes to something in U.S.

Comments

[Steve Bowbrick]

I'm just going to take a wild guess that you don't upload or download anything in this set-up. It would make sense if what you uploaded to the server was just the *edits* you've made. Likewise, other users probably download your edits and the system will apply them to the scenes stored on the disc. There's even a standard format for these edit lists (used in post-production) so the system might use that.

[joe]

No video is actually uploaded. Only a small text file is shared with the in/out points that the user selected.