Interview with Andy Parsons
This month at CEDIA EXPO in Denver I had a chance to interview Andy Parsons, the Senior Vice President of Advanced Product Development for Pioneer Electronics (USA), a spokesman for Blu-ray Disc Association and a veteran of the the optical disc industry for nearly 25 years. We talked about the Blu-ray player from Pioneer, about the features and advantages of the new player and the Blu-ray format in general, about dual-format players and about problems and challenges that Blu-ray format faces in the Format War. I asked a lot of questions, including some tough ones, and Andy answered them all! Here is the transcript of that interview. -Ilya.
Andy: [At CEDIA EXPO 2006] we are showing our new Pioneer Blu-ray Disc player, the BDP-HD1 Elite. This is the final version. We are showing a pre-production sample but it has the final look about it.
What we are doing is we are feeding 1080p signal: true 24 frame-per-second 1080p directly from the player to the monitor via HDMI 1.2. What’s nice about that is that we are not doing any 3:2 pull-downs or any kind of modification to the video to convert it to 1080p60 or something: if you do that you get motion artifacts because of the 3:2 pull-down. We are actually taking each frame and putting it up on display three times at 72 frames per second. You are looking at extremely smooth video without any flicker just like in a movie theater.
The other thing is that this is a true 1080p display with 1920x1080p native resolution. In my experience most people have never seen a true 1080p video on HDTV, especially with 24 fps input: the best of both worlds.
Ilya: So this will be the first player on the market that can do 1080p24, right?
Andy: So far I haven’t heard of anyone else doing that.
Ilya: How soon will this be available?
Andy: We are hoping to ship it in October timeframe, but it could be a little bit later depending on how things look at that time. We don’t want to ship until it’s absolutely ready to go. You rather do it right than you do it quick. It’s an Elite player and Elite buyers expect the player to work well and from day one.
Ilya: What's the price?
Andy: The final price is $1500.
It also has a home-networking feature, a dlna-compatible network, so that if you have a computer that has pictures, photos, audio or video, this can actually receive that over the network put it up on the display or through your audio system. It has a user interface for that purpose. You can actually browse all your content on your computer and decide what you want to play or look at, and this player will put it up on the screen. That’s a unique feature. It has an Ethernet port on the back for that purpose. It’s also unique, I don’t think anyone has it. We are pretty pleased with it. The response is very positive.
Ilya: We have some questions to you as a representative of the Blu-ray Association from our SatelliteGuys.US forum members who are interested in Blu-ray.
It’s no secret that many people were disappointed with the initial wave of Blu-ray releases, compared to HD DVD. Do you know if this was a fault of the Samsung player or of the first titles?
Andy: I guess I am not really ready to say that I agree with the statement that there is a big problem. I think some people expressed opinions about what they saw, but I don’t know anything about what kind of display they were using; whether or not the film they were looking at was specifically encoded to look as much like as the original film was supposed to look. So, there are a lot of variables there and I can’t really say this or that was good or bad. I think, looking at it at a little bit higher level than that, it’s important to look at the fact that we just started with a handful of titles. And there will be many more titles coming to the market very soon. I’ve seen some samples of them, and some looked absolutely spectacular. So, I think that initial reaction that some may had will quickly fade away, because they will start seeing how some of those new titles look like, how gorgeous they look. It’s not a question of Blu-ray vs. HD DVD any more…
Ilya: One of the common discussions on our forum and on other Internet forums is about the choice of MPEG-2 encoding and single-layer discs for the first titles. What was the reason, why was it decided to go with single layer and MPEG-2? Was it a technical difficulty or was it considered to be good enough?
Andy: It’s not a difficulty issue, it’s a question of starting a brand new format. Like DVD, when the DVD was first launched, every title came on a single layer, no exception, right? Dual layer did not really start permeating into the market until a bit later. The first thing you do: you walk before you run. It’s no doubt that a dual-layer disk is more complicated to make, and it takes time to get the process all framed out and everybody comfortable with the yield rate and everything. In a relatively short order, we’ll start to see dual-layer discs coming out, as the expertise is gathered over time as far as how to make a dual-layer disc and the replicators’ yields become satisfactory. It’s a natural process.
Ilya: That’s understandable, but why not use, say, VC1 or MPEG-4 encoding?
Andy: There are many considerations. Those other advanced codecs don’t have real-time encoders, first of all. So, if you are looking to increase your throughput if you are running an authoring facility and you want to get a large number of titles done fairly rapidly, adding a large asymmetry on the time is a disadvantage. Because, you can get a lot more titles through if you can do it in real time on the encoding side, than you can if you have to take, say, six-to-one on the encoder. It is a consideration. It is not the only consideration, but it is a consideration. MPEG-2 is capable of delivering very-very good quality video, spectacular video. Some of the video that you are looking at in our booth is MPEG-2, but it looks very-very nice. So, it’s not a question of one codec being better than the other: it’s a question of using the right one for the circumstances that you are in. If you assume that a studio has a quality level that you are trying to achieve, then you can achieve that with any of the three codecs: they are all three perfectly capable of delivering very good results. It’s a question of bit budgeting and the throughput on your actual output processor that makes you determine what you want to do. So, there are many factors, and I think it has been mischaracterized by some people out there that somehow MPEG-2 is inferior, or that it was a huge mistake to use it, or anything like that. It’s something that I think is perfectly legitimate.
Ilya: So, in your opinion, is MPEG-2 sufficient even for a single-layer disc?
Andy: It really depends on what you are encoding, what kind of film it is, how long it lasts, what kind of bonus features you want to have on the disc, what kind of audio choices you are going to make. It’s just like DVD, you have to budget for allocation of bits on the disc and say, this is what I want to do.
The first handful of titles should never be used to determine what a format is capable of. If you look at the first titles on DVD, and if you go back and look at those titles today, as what could’ve been done even a couple of years after the launch there is a pretty big difference. I would just say, give it some time, wait for more titles from every studio and I think it will be very obvious that Blu-ray is capable of very spectacular video.
Ilya: Why is that Blu-ray is so much more expensive than HD DVD? Looks like feature-wise both formats are comparable, but the price difference is twice at least. Why is that?
Andy: The price is different, but not the cost. There was actually a study done by an analyst called iSuppli who did a tear-down analysis of the Toshiba player, the $499 player. And I believe they estimated that the bill of materials costs approximately $200 more than the retail price. That’s the bill of materials, that’s just the cost to put the thing together. So, that means that it is really not any cheaper to make it than a Blu-ray player. It’s just that they have chosen to price it much lower. But it’s not correct to say that there is some inherent advantage of HD DVD over Blu-ray with respect to the cost to produce something like that.
Ilya: Does it mean that we should expect a few months from now to see Blu-ray players for say $400?
Andy: If a company decided that that’s the price they want to sell the product at, they are certainly free to do that, but the question is are they making any money when they do that or not. What I’ve learned from my own experience in this business, and I have been doing this from 1980, from the launch of laser discs, way back when, that there is an adoption curve. What we’ve found is that at very early stages after the launch most people are mostly interested in performance, technology, as we just discussed about the full 1080p24 (Pioneer player), than they are in just the price. Price will come along in its own good time. But you have to build the demand first, before you can really start attracting people just based on price. If the kind of person who is looking for a $500 player doesn’t even know what this thing is yet, what good does it really do to price it at that point, especially if you are losing money on it.
Ilya: So what’s your prediction or expectation on how the price will change over a year or two? Should we expect a $200 Blu-ray player or is it impossible because of the production costs?
Andy: No-no, it’s all the question of time and volume. Over time the demand begins to pick up, so you make more and more of them, and as you do that, the price always comes down because the cost goes down: as you make more of anything, you can do it more efficiently and therefore the cost comes down. That’s very natural to expect that the price will lower down as it did with DVD. The first DVD players were around six hundred and over one thousand dollars, and we can get them now for under $50.
Ilya: That’s DVD, but there is another example of laser discs that never became a mainstream product. Do you expect Blu-ray to go mainstream?
Andy: Absolutely! We believe Blu-ray will become a mainstream product.
Ilya: Which means it has to come down in price!
Andy: Of course! Remember, we are all competing against each other. That’s healthy. That’s good for the consumer. Because what you compete for is the price. Not just feature content, but also if I can do it for less money, therefore I can charge less and it means more demand, but it has to go over time. It’s a natural process that happens. Absolutely, we all believe that this will be eventually a mainstream product. It’s just like DVD: it started off like a high-end product, it didn’t take off from day one. We didn’t have all studios on board for DVD for 18 months after the format launch! We had a very level adoption curve, very typical for high-end products and only around 1999-2000 things really started to take off. So, if we do that again, we will be very happy. What is really different is that this time we have Play Station 3 coming into market, much sooner in this adoption curve than ever before. So, we will have an injection of a huge number of Blu-ray players in a very short time period, very early in the format’s life. So that should help increase the demand more rapidly because you are going to have almost like a content vacuum: a lot of people will have Blu-ray players and not enough content to satisfy them. And studios will probably respond to that demand.
Ilya: Initially Blu-ray is a product for home theater enthusiasts, but PS3 seems to be a completely different target market.
Andy: Remember, it’s not all or nothing. Anyone buying a PS3 is most likely buying it to play games, but if you take some percentage of that, say 30% of those people will also want to watch Blu-ray movies – that’s still a huge number at the early adoption stage.
Ilya: Speaking of PS3, it seems to be much cheaper than all other Blu-ray players. Are they cutting any corners? Is there something that we are losing going with PS3 as a Blu-ray player?
Andy: No, I don’t think so. Remember, that they (Sony) have a very different business model than companies like my company – Pioneer. They also sell game software – we don’t. We sell hardware and that’s all we sell. So, they have a very different business model, they always have, in terms of Play Station cost vs. what they sell it for, as they also sell content.
Ilya: What would you name as the main advantage of Blu-ray over HD DVD, today, not in the future. For someone buying it next month, what would be the reason to go with Blu-ray?
Andy: Very simple: That is the promise of much more content availability than the other format can offer. We have seven out of the eight major Hollywood studios committed to Blu-ray Disc. The other camp has three, two of which also support Blu-ray. So, remember, if you are a home theater enthusiast, you care a lot about technology and you care a lot about things like 1080p and all that, what you care about most is the content. You originally bought this [HDTV] because you want to watch the movies that you really like. You want to have a content, your favorite movies and you want to see them in High Def. We have a huge advantage in a sense that we’ve got so many more studios supporting us. And we also have many more hardware companies supporting us. We have more choices as far as the kind of product you want to buy. So, content and the hardware gap that we see between Blu-ray and HD DVD should give the buyer greater comfort that he is buying the format that will be around for a long haul. Just look at the brands behind this. On the hardware side we have companies like Sony, Panasonic, Philips, Pioneer, LG, Samsung, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Sharp; we’ve got computer companies like Dell, Apple and HP buying into this as well. It’s enormous hardware support and enormous content support. If I am buying a player, I’ve got to look at that, right? Sizing it up: which of these two formats is going to be for a long haul: the one that has virtually everyone supporting it, or the one that has just a couple of very good, very reputable, but a very small number of companies supporting it. And I think that what it all comes down to.
Ilya: Is it possible at all to have a dual-format player? Two-three companies have announced their plans, but then sort of stepped back. Even Pioneer was rumored to have plans for a dual-format player at some point…
Andy: No, that was a complete mistake that was made, it was a misquote that was widely misunderstood. We have no intention supporting HD DVD in our player products.
Ilya: Is there something in the licensing that would prevent dual-players on one side or another.
Andy: Nope, quite the opposite! If you read our charter available on the Blu-ray web site it clearly states that any company has a right to pursue other technologies in research and development of other formats and there is really nothing to stop it. So, there is nothing to stop it, but I would say that think about what it means today to have a dual-format player: the only real advantage it has, is that you would be being able to play Universal titles.
Ilya: It would shift the decision from title availability to the format’s quality. It sounds like the titles may decide the format war. Don’t you think it would be better even for each camp to have all studios support both formats and to just fight it out at the format level, let consumers make their decision based on quality, features and price, not just title availability?
Andy: I think almost everybody wants one format to prevail.
Ilya: But the reality right now is that the two formats will have to co-exist for some time.
Andy: For some period of time, I think you are right. However, remember, every studio except for one supports Blu-ray. So, it’s not the question of Blu-ray movies vs. HD DVD movies. The only studio that does not support Blu-ray is Universal. So, if you assume that all studios will support both formats equally, then by definition, the difference between a Blu-ray player and a dual-format player is the ability to play Universal films. That’s today. That’s it. The cost of doing that in terms of having both formats in your product and being able to license all the technologies... it doesn’t seem like it’s going to help us to resolve the format war if that’s the only difference that it brings to the table. So, from the marketing analysis, and I am speaking primarily on behalf of Pioneer right now, we just don’t see that this is going to be a long term solution because if you have both formats coexisting, that means you will have to stock all these titles twice if you are a retailer. That’s not a very desirable situation. And also, it’s a burden on the studios: they now have to create two versions of every film for the foreseeable future, they also don’t want that, I suspect. So, it’s not desirable for anybody to have two formats coexisting for a long time. During an early launch phase that we are in right now, certainly you can understand why you may have more than one format, but eventually that will not be the case. So, dual-format player doesn’t offer that much as a solution.
Ilya: One more question, since SatelliteGuys is primarily a satellite discussion forum: Do you think that Blu-ray, and HD DVD for that matter will put pressure on satellite and cable companies as far as improving video quality?
Andy: That’s an interesting question! To be fair, DVD is still the highest quality you can get for the standard definition video, correct? Meanwhile you’ve got satellite systems, whose SD picture quality is not as good as DVD, but they still coexist quite nicely. So I think packaged media typically have the reputation and almost a responsibility to put out the very best picture quality we can achieve with the technology that is available. There is a lot behind a thing like this (Andy points at the Pioneer Blu-ray Disc player), where you’ve got fairly huge bandwidth: 48 Mbps for the audio and video, which is the maximum you can do with Blu-ray. It’s pretty tough to justify that for a satellite company where you are primarily concerned about offering many different channels and a lot of options. We have one option, because you have chosen that title already. So we have that luxury of bandwidth on the packaged media that you don’t have on broadcast media where you try to cram as many titles or channels to a transponder as you possibly could. So, to be fair, we have an advantage of having one single channel to worry about. And we put as much effort into it as we could to squeeze the very best picture out of it. So it’s a different dynamics, a different economics model, everything is different...
Ilya: Well, at least we’ll now have a good reference point!
Thank you very much for the interview!
Copyright(C)2006 www.SatelliteGuys.US
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