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You've done an excellant job with your FAQ. Nothing I could begin to critique, but wanted to forward a few thoughts that might interest & provide a few related topics that might warrant exploration.
My opinion anyway, is that whomever makes home recording easy & most economical might win any popularity contests. Hollywood may have their preferences, but at the end of the day they have to make money, especially with theater receipts dropping rapidly. It's not uncommon for them to make more from DVD and cable then in total theater income. If the market, even for a relative short term says they can make money distributing another format, they'll do it, so I wouldn't discount any alternatives too heavily.
If the discs themselves are interchangable for playback that would seem to eliminate concerns, but here I'm also concerned with the picture size itself, and flexibility of the format's specs. 1) Can a consumer easily record anything from a sporting event to a movie to something off the "Food Network", easily store it for later viewing, and play it at original quality on at least one device in their home? 2) Can they also watch (at that same quality) recorded movies they buy or rent, without having to buy & learn a separate set of hardware?
There are the number of (so-called HD) TVs sold, ones that will continue being sold for some time, that are not fully compliant, can't handle 1080, don't have HDMI, or always have dvi for that matter. I suspect for many folks, anything close to HD content is going to be viewed, if at all, via their PC's lcd or crt monitor. In the US everything video is in flux, with personnel having to learn new hardware, & content providers having to upgrade hardware. Cable & sat companies have to upgrade, decide on methods, formats, compression. What is going to be aceptable for archived, existing content? How many people will upgrade just to watch a new DVD format, if everything else they see from sat or cable is lower resolution? Especially without the thousands of titles.
In all this I think there's a very real possibility that 1080 will be out in the near future, at least in the sense of the mass-market, and without some dollars flowing into their pockets, the Hollywood folks aren't going to risk converting that more content. Downsampling to 480 i is fine, as long as it doesn't cost extra, but to be meaningful at least 720 &/or maybe 480 p has to happen, you need a noticable quality increase.
What fills the void could be as simple as a modification of any standard's specs, or a product (or set of products) might enter the market and take it by storm. One thought out of many, if Microsoft and Intel get along, work on Intel's new platform, agree with the FDD folks on a format useable with something like today's Media Center PCs, on hardware that handles current DVDs, might do some incredible numbers. Record whatever you want to disc, at the same time filtering/upconverting old broadcast recieved via cable, all on the same device you use to email the kids -- think a lot of people would lay down some cash.
My opinion anyway, is that whomever makes home recording easy & most economical might win any popularity contests. Hollywood may have their preferences, but at the end of the day they have to make money, especially with theater receipts dropping rapidly. It's not uncommon for them to make more from DVD and cable then in total theater income. If the market, even for a relative short term says they can make money distributing another format, they'll do it, so I wouldn't discount any alternatives too heavily.
If the discs themselves are interchangable for playback that would seem to eliminate concerns, but here I'm also concerned with the picture size itself, and flexibility of the format's specs. 1) Can a consumer easily record anything from a sporting event to a movie to something off the "Food Network", easily store it for later viewing, and play it at original quality on at least one device in their home? 2) Can they also watch (at that same quality) recorded movies they buy or rent, without having to buy & learn a separate set of hardware?
There are the number of (so-called HD) TVs sold, ones that will continue being sold for some time, that are not fully compliant, can't handle 1080, don't have HDMI, or always have dvi for that matter. I suspect for many folks, anything close to HD content is going to be viewed, if at all, via their PC's lcd or crt monitor. In the US everything video is in flux, with personnel having to learn new hardware, & content providers having to upgrade hardware. Cable & sat companies have to upgrade, decide on methods, formats, compression. What is going to be aceptable for archived, existing content? How many people will upgrade just to watch a new DVD format, if everything else they see from sat or cable is lower resolution? Especially without the thousands of titles.
In all this I think there's a very real possibility that 1080 will be out in the near future, at least in the sense of the mass-market, and without some dollars flowing into their pockets, the Hollywood folks aren't going to risk converting that more content. Downsampling to 480 i is fine, as long as it doesn't cost extra, but to be meaningful at least 720 &/or maybe 480 p has to happen, you need a noticable quality increase.
What fills the void could be as simple as a modification of any standard's specs, or a product (or set of products) might enter the market and take it by storm. One thought out of many, if Microsoft and Intel get along, work on Intel's new platform, agree with the FDD folks on a format useable with something like today's Media Center PCs, on hardware that handles current DVDs, might do some incredible numbers. Record whatever you want to disc, at the same time filtering/upconverting old broadcast recieved via cable, all on the same device you use to email the kids -- think a lot of people would lay down some cash.