Brian Smith Posted August 20, 2007 Share Posted August 20, 2007 Saw this one coming...funny how history sometimes repeats itself. http://www.dvdtown.com/news/breaking-news-paramount-and-dreamworks-today-announced-exclusive-support-of-hd-dvd/4677 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted August 20, 2007 Share Posted August 20, 2007 Game over? I just read a survey that had Blu Ray movies outselling HD-DVD 2 to 1... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Smith Posted August 20, 2007 Author Share Posted August 20, 2007 Game over? I just read a survey that had Blu Ray movies outselling HD-DVD 2 to 1... Sure...but that's because of the PS3. The PS3 owners account for the vast majority of blu-ray disc sales and certainly there are a lot of PS3 owners to make the blu-ray sales start off well. But PS3 was never going to be a deciding factor to the winning format, because the number of PS3 owners versus the potential high def movie buyers is tiny. There was a big independent survey last month that stated that 40% of the PS3 owners had no idea that the PS3 even played blu-ray movies. It's all economics and the fact is, hd-dvd has always been about half the price of blu-ray, for the exact same quality. The only hope for blu-ray, as i saw it, was that enough movie studios would stay exclusive to blu-ray long enough for the price to come down to mass market levels. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted August 20, 2007 Share Posted August 20, 2007 I saw that survey also. It said 40% of owners of new video game consoles didn't know the PS3 plays Blu Ray, and the youngest respondents were 6. Anyway, I'm just saying, it's not game over. The total disc sales so far, both formats included, are only about 3.7 million - nobody's got the market dominated because so far there's no market. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrianKitts Posted August 20, 2007 Share Posted August 20, 2007 just came across this.... a scorecard if you will of the studios and their supported formats currently.... http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-entertainment/state-of-high-definition-whos-winning-the-studio-support-war-291361.php Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hazdaz Posted August 22, 2007 Share Posted August 22, 2007 I am sooo sick of this format war. Not sure which one has been going on longer - the battle for Hi-Def supremacy or the quagmire in Iraq. Enough already. I personally rather see HD-DVD win out simply because it's cheaper and it's not a SONY product, but what gets me is how people think that BluRay is somehow a superior format simply because it holds a little more storage - that's absolutely false, since both formats use the same codec and tests have proven that the 2 formats are essentially indistinguishable. OK, so if the products perform the same, then why not go with the cheapest one? HD-DVD for me... that is if I wasn't holding off until after the war was over. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sawyer Posted August 22, 2007 Share Posted August 22, 2007 What they need is a poll to see how many people would have bought one of the two if there wasn't this lame ass format war. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Smith Posted August 22, 2007 Author Share Posted August 22, 2007 I am sooo sick of this format war. Not sure which one has been going on longer - the battle for Hi-Def supremacy or the quagmire in Iraq. Enough already. I personally rather see HD-DVD win out simply because it's cheaper and it's not a SONY product, but what gets me is how people think that BluRay is somehow a superior format simply because it holds a little more storage - that's absolutely false, since both formats use the same codec and tests have proven that the 2 formats are essentially indistinguishable. OK, so if the products perform the same, then why not go with the cheapest one? HD-DVD for me... that is if I wasn't holding off until after the war was over. My point exactly... which is why i was pretty sure this war was over before it began. Same product, half the price. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Nelson Posted August 22, 2007 Share Posted August 22, 2007 I thought blu-ray was higher def because it outputs in 1080p and hd-dvd is 1080i. I'm too lazy to actually look it up, but is that false? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Smith Posted August 22, 2007 Author Share Posted August 22, 2007 hd-dvd is also 1080p...at least all but the cheapest model i believe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted August 22, 2007 Share Posted August 22, 2007 Do you own stock in Toshiba or something? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nils Norgren Posted August 22, 2007 Share Posted August 22, 2007 Here is an interesting detail to this latest announcement, http://slashdot.org/articles/07/08/22/0252242.shtml Apparently Paramount and Dreamworks were PAID 150 million to support HD-DVD. For the record I stand by my original prediction that this will not end anytime soon, as both formats have some valid strengths and if one becomes the movie standard the other well may become the high-density computer storage media. I have no preference, we burn and play HD-DVDs (to normal dvd-r media) but would burn Blue-ray if we could. -Nils Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vince Paske Posted August 22, 2007 Share Posted August 22, 2007 Another interesting article. I guess the reasons are a little deeper than just the cash. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070822-reasons-financial-and-technical-lurk-behind-paramounts-hd-dvd-coup.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CRD Posted August 22, 2007 Share Posted August 22, 2007 We just bought the Adobe CS3 Video Suite and it says it will support authoring Blu-ray, but says nothing about HD-DVD. I wonder if that will have any sway in the arch viz community where Adobe is so popular? Also, our IT group is thinking about getting a Blu-ray burner for archiving becuase it's the bigger format. Has anyone else compared them on a data burning level and not video? I'm all for the cheaper format at home, but buisness wise I'm leaning toward Blu-ray. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Smith Posted August 22, 2007 Author Share Posted August 22, 2007 Do you own stock in Toshiba or something? Actually, I bought sony and toshiba stock in early 2003, and lost money on sony and gained money on toshiba. sony took a nose dive in 2003 (for many reasons) but i gained it all back and then some with toshiba...so yeah i kinda dont like sony for my own twisted reasons Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vince Paske Posted September 7, 2007 Share Posted September 7, 2007 Looks like studios are releasing "blue-ray only" titles on hd-dvd overseas. Interesting read.... http://www.audioholics.com/news/editorials/blu-rays-dirty-little-secret Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ray Posted September 7, 2007 Share Posted September 7, 2007 Something new: http://www.betanews.com/article/New_Chinese_Involvement_Could_Trigger_HD_DVD_Price_Plunge/1189196071 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Smith Posted September 8, 2007 Author Share Posted September 8, 2007 I'd be willing to bet that this format will be over by spring...in time for the results of the holiday shopping season sink in. one thing is for certain however...if warner bros. goes exclusive to hd-dvd, blu-ray will have no chance to recover. hd-dvd would have exclusivity to >80% of blockbuster movies (universal, paramount, dreamworks, warner) i dont see either format being a viable alternative for storage...the discs are extremely slow to burn, have far less reliability and durability, and hard drives are very cheap these days this article says it all... http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/rob/?p=145 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted September 8, 2007 Share Posted September 8, 2007 I'll take that action. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hazdaz Posted September 8, 2007 Share Posted September 8, 2007 This war could easily drag out to the point where both formats become obsolete. In a few short years, movies are simply gonna be downloaded straight to a PC/TiVo-type device, totally forgoing the need for a physical copy. Regular DVD-qualities movies are quite large, and Hi-Def ones will be even larger, but there will be advances in download speeds that will make downloading XX GBs of data seem like nothing. Just rewind a couple of years and music was the same way - now downloading songs is a billion dollar industry. Of course there is the whole holographic storage medium that is an order of magnitude larger in capacity than anything out there now. That medium could be coming on strong in a few years, so Blu-Ray and HD-DVD camps better get their act together or this war would have been fought all for naught. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted September 8, 2007 Share Posted September 8, 2007 This war could easily drag out to the point where both formats become obsolete. In a few short years, movies are simply gonna be downloaded straight to a PC/TiVo-type device, totally forgoing the need for a physical copy. Regular DVD-qualities movies are quite large, and Hi-Def ones will be even larger, but there will be advances in download speeds that will make downloading XX GBs of data seem like nothing. Actually, that's already available for preorder. It's got 5000 movies licensed, uses a Bittorrent like P2P and has a system for caching the beginnings of movies it thinks you're likely to download. You're supposed to be able to start watching the movie you want immediately. Pretty kickass but I think it needs to come down in price a bit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Smith Posted September 8, 2007 Author Share Posted September 8, 2007 This war could easily drag out to the point where both formats become obsolete. In a few short years, movies are simply gonna be downloaded straight to a PC/TiVo-type device, totally forgoing the need for a physical copy. Regular DVD-qualities movies are quite large, and Hi-Def ones will be even larger, but there will be advances in download speeds that will make downloading XX GBs of data seem like nothing. Just rewind a couple of years and music was the same way - now downloading songs is a billion dollar industry. Of course there is the whole holographic storage medium that is an order of magnitude larger in capacity than anything out there now. That medium could be coming on strong in a few years, so Blu-Ray and HD-DVD camps better get their act together or this war would have been fought all for naught. yes it certainly could drag out, but i dont think that it's possible if warner goes exclusive. blu-ray hardware makers need to be able to sell enough drives to be profitable, just like the ps3 game makers need enough ps3's bought to make the games profitable. as far as downloading, that's a tough one. i do stat checks on my site and each month i see that about 1/3 of everyone that comes to my site is still using dial-up. a good number of the population does even have cable as an option...not to mention an enormous percentage of the world population. dvds have really only been around in mass for 10 years, so it's certainly possible that the war may not be won, but things can change very quickly like a bunch of dominoes falling Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted September 8, 2007 Share Posted September 8, 2007 The part of the population that has broadband access surely has a very strong correlation to the part of the population that has HDTV. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hazdaz Posted September 9, 2007 Share Posted September 9, 2007 ^^ Yea, exactly. The demographic that is still stuck on dial-up, probably won't even have an HDTV, so Hi-Def media is probably not a top priority for them. However, here is a news story that I thought was interesting: http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20070908/tc_pcworld/136977;_ylt=AuZvfHY8KDGmO2kRyyed95dkM3wV Basically it's a new Hi-Def format that uses a red laser (like just a regular DVD) to allow the drive to cost only $150, and the discs are about the same price as a regular DVD. Now in all honesty, I don't expect this format to gain much ground at all... at least not in the US, but I could see it gaining some traction in places like China and India - possibly even South America and Europe. When it comes to a format, content is king, and so far this format has no real content, but when the players are that cheap, I could see some independent studios deciding to hedge their bets and support it just for the heck of it. I am sure that the studios are just as sick of this war as consumers are, and if they see an ultra cheap alternative, they just might decide to help them out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vince Paske Posted September 10, 2007 Share Posted September 10, 2007 Actually, that's already available for preorder. It's got 5000 movies licensed, uses a Bittorrent like P2P and has a system for caching the beginnings of movies it thinks you're likely to download. You're supposed to be able to start watching the movie you want immediately. Pretty kickass but I think it needs to come down in price a bit. This looks very interesting and it seems like Vudu did a lot of research. Personally, I can see downloading as a replacement for renting. However, I like collecting movies and having hard copies. There's currently a quality issue as the movies you download aren't HD - yet, and I'm skeptical that given the large files sizes of HD content, the technology wouldn't be a replacement to just running down to Best Buy and picking up the HD disc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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