is the bluray hddvd war over?

http://www.cnbc.com/id/22507036/site/14081545.also i here apple went with bluray

Hi Raggie,

I'm still taking the wait and see approach. Although it doesn't look good for HD.

When Blu-Ray player prices get to the $150 level I'll bite. Same thing was said when Paramount/Dreamworks went HD-DVD exclusive last year.

The format war never even began. People don't care about the new formats, and the cram-it-down-our-throats approach of the powers that be is having surprisingly little effect. You can't have a war without soldiers.

I'll still wait. Same applies to the LCD/plasma screens. When the change hits, I'll buy then. By then they will be at an even lower price point.

I have an HD-DVD player, but no HD-DVDs. We get all our movies from Blockbuster online, so they are all DVDs for now. I paid a little under $100 for it, so it was basically just a DVD player that could upconvert to 1080p through HDMI for me.

That said, I also bought a PS3 about a month ago. That one hasn't even made it out of the box yet.

I think both formats still have quite a bit of life left in them. If the PS3 sold better, then maybe Blu-Ray would be it.

I think that having Warner go with bluray exclusively (after having supported both formats equally up to this point) says a lot - it means for them, their movies were moving off the shelves faster in the blue case than in the red case.

The HD-DVD method of giving away the player and charging out the butt for the movies isn't working - they're marketing it to people who won't spend money on the movies (see above post by lumiphile - no offense).

People who are willing to spend $300 on blu-ray players are spending money on the movies - and this is why the format is winning

and just as an fyi for anyone looking to get into the hi-def game, with all the recent deals my average per-movie price of blu-ray movies has been about $13 with all the sales that keep going on - usually cheaper than the same movie on DVD.


(and I also own the $100 hd-dvd player, just so I could watch transformers :thumbsup: )

myk said:

I think that having Warner go with bluray exclusively (after having supported both formats equally up to this point) says a lot - it means for them, their movies were moving off the shelves faster in the blue case than in the red case.

Click to expand...

Or, WB (and others) got a pile of money to go Blue-Ray only...

I'd been hearing rumors for months that Warner Bros had been offered in the neighborhood of $250 million for "promotional consideration" to go exclusively with HD-DVD. Less lavish but still big payments already had been offered and accepted by the HD DVD side to both Paramount (I was told $50 million) and DreamWorks Animation (I was told $100 million) for "promotional consideration". (And yet director Michael Bay, whose Transformers was a big lure in HD-DVD, still is flip-flopping by publicly questioning the wisdom of choosing that format over Blu-ray.) A source for another studio in the Blu-ray camp explains the Warner Bros decision to me as a "marketplace realization". "Their decision creates overwhelming momentum for Blu-ray as the only format that could possibly win in this battle. HD DVD is as good now as it will ever be. Blu-ray will continue to grow and evolve."

Click to expand...

For now, I am a cheap stick in the mud and happy with DVD format. Works with my portable DVD player (any portable HD/Blue-Ray ones yet?), plus many DVD players can be switched to all region code devices which is handy for the international movies my wife and kids watch.

-Bill

I'd also recommend waiting to buy a player if you don't want to deal with not-ready-for-prime-time tech gear.

I have a Sony Blu-ray player (BDP-S300). I just got Black Hawk Down, a Sony Pictures movie, from Blockbuster online rentals 2 days ago. After turning on the player, which takes I don't know maybe about 1.5 minutes (!!) because it must be booting up and the drawer doesn't open until the player has fully booted, I popped in the movie and it reported "cannot play this disc." This is a Sony movie on a Sony disc in a Sony player hooked up to a Sony TV and it ain't working. Plus, that's not an error message that really added any information to the situation since when the player didn't play the disc I could see that the player didn't play the disc. The disc looked new (as they all have since I guess not many folks rent these yet) so no scratches or defects that I could see.

Anyhoo, after a text chat with Sony tech support they had me download a firmware update, which was a .exe file that needed to be burned to a CD then put into the player. The .exe didn't work by itself under Vista Ultimate or WinXP as it was supposed to, but after I saw that it extracted to a .ISO I knew what to do and burned it.

After the firmware update the disc played, but had a buggy error in the menus that made a terrible sound that sounded like a short circuit when I switched among the options of "Play Movie" "Scene Selections" etc.

In the end though, when the movie played it looked absolutely stunning. The player even makes regular DVD's look fantastic, so there are definitely some advantages to using it. It's just that there are some tradeoffs to consider.

BB said:

Or, WB (and others) got a pile of money to go Blue-Ray only...

Click to expand...

or Maybe they didnt get a pile of money

and did it because, on the SAME movies, completely apples-apples playing field, blu-ray was outselling their hd-dvd counterparts? =)

For now, I am a cheap stick in the mud and happy with DVD format. Works with my portable DVD player (any portable HD/Blue-Ray ones yet?), plus many DVD players can be switched to all region code devices which is handy for the international movies my wife and kids watch.

-Bill

Click to expand...

oddly enough a lot of hd-dvds and blu-rays are not region coded - seems to be different by studio and movie, i'll see if I can find you the link to the list of movies (on both formats) that are coded that way if you're interested

as for portables - only ones I know of currently are laptops

-Mike

MYK,

Thank you for the kind offer--but it is really not necessary. HD/Blue-Ray is just not of interest for me right now (The one's my wife enjoys are Chinese/Korean TV shows which I doubt are on HD/Blue-Ray).

In any case--waiting a year or two until the fallout is complete (and hardware/software compatibility has been achieved), will be OK with me.

-Bill

I really don't care for either. Most TVs that can actually display a noticeable difference versus an up-converted DVD are way too expensive for me. The whole "war" thing has me completely turned off, as does the incessant use of DRM which makes so many things 10 times more complicated and further adds unneeded expenses. I'll stick with the internet and buying DVDs until the industry grows up and learns to play nice with the customers.

Slightly off topic, but I'm just tired of letter boxes. Use an aspect ratio that fills the screen. Rant number two: I'm bored with any and all "conversions". Pick a standard. ANY standard. Sorry, I can't believe what a mess they've made out of HDTV and HD dvds.

NA8 said:

Slightly off topic, but I'm just tired of letter boxes. Use an aspect ratio that fills the screen. Rant number two: I'm bored with any and all "conversions". Pick a standard. ANY standard. Sorry, I can't believe what a mess they've made out of HDTV and HD dvds.

Click to expand...

I prefer letterbox because I hate knowing that the movie isn't on my screen as it was originally shot. I can handle 16:9, but 4:3 pan and scan is almost unbearable. You can always tell when only one character is on the screen when, in the theater, there were two characters visible.

I received a PS3 when they first came out and I'm lucky to have a 1080P tv. The picture is as most say un-real. But I have seen my friends HD-DVD player on a 1080i tv and it looks pretty darn good.

To my eye, I see a difference only on certian things like nature (Planet Earth) for starters. Hopefully the war will be over soon between HD and Bluray but only time will tell.

IF, and i say IF one will survive definately it will be BLU-RAY besides that the picture quality looks better than HD-DVD, (lets set the technology aside) SONY owns BLU-RAY (lets talk business, after all its all about the money right?) Just to remind you that SONY owns all of the big Picture MAkers such as: DREAMWORKS, PARAMOUNT and so on to name a few.... Its a no brainer that all of those quality movie will be made in BLU-RAY. another one will be PS3. How many PS3 is sold in the USA? let alone the entire world. Also, BLOCKBUSTER all rents STRICTLY BLU-RAY only.
just my .02 cents

SaVaGe said:

IF, and i say IF one will survive definately it will be BLU-RAY besides that the picture quality looks better than HD-DVD, (lets set the technology aside) SONY owns BLU-RAY (lets talk business, after all its all about the money right?) Just to remind you that SONY owns all of the big Picture MAkers such as: DREAMWORKS, PARAMOUNT and so on to name a few.... Its a no brainer that all of those quality movie will be made in BLU-RAY. another one will be PS3. How many PS3 is sold in the USA? let alone the entire world. Also, BLOCKBUSTER all rents STRICTLY BLU-RAY only.

Click to expand...

Sony introduced the Betamax VCR format too, and poured $millions into it in the format war vs. VHS.

The picture quality on Betamax was better than VHS, the tapes were smaller in size, they were more responsive (fast-forward, freeze-frame etc) and the critics and technical experts at the time were almost unanimous that Betamax was the better format.

Guess which won? Yep, VHS.

SaVaGe said:

I Just to remind you that SONY owns all of the big Picture MAkers such as: DREAMWORKS, PARAMOUNT and so on to name a few.... Its a no brainer that all of those quality movie will be made in BLU-RAY.
just my .02 cents

Click to expand...

First of all, Paramount and Dreamworks signed an exclusive agreement to produce only HD-DVDs last year. Have you tried buying a Blu-Ray of Shrek or Transformers...

If anyone is serious about this topic please go to the AVSforum for a plethora of information. As an early adopter of of HD-DVD since 4/06, I've watched this technology evolve to it's current state and the marketing strategy from both sides.

Basically, both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray offer comparable PQ. Early on HD-DVD was significantly better as Sony's initial discs were subpar (e.g. 5th Element) and later reissued. At this point the consensus is that to the average user neither format has a PQ advantage, it's all marketing strategy and consumer perception.

I have a handful of HD-DVDs and have rented via Netflix from the start to take advantage of the fantastic detail, clarity and audio experience this format provides. Since HD video is a hobby of mine I will probably pick up a Blu-Ray player if they drop to the $150 level and movies continue to be produced. But I'll only rent, unless something a classic (or great concert) I must have comes along.

Unless you are a HD video fan like myself, I'd advise sitting this one out as it's unclear if technology advancements may obsolete this format before it grows enough to survive.

SaVaGe said:

Also, BLOCKBUSTER all rents STRICTLY BLU-RAY only.

Click to expand...

No, that's not right. Blockbuster rents both HD and Blu-ray from their online rental. They're poised to deliver either or both. Boston doesn't have either format in the brick & mortar stores yet. I don't know about other cities, but maybe they're also waiting to see.

[edit] After re-reading my post I realized that the tone is ambiguous -- Sorry! I wasn't harping on you. My correction was aimed at Blockbuster or the news outlets but I can't write very well. I've read in lots of news that same thing about Blockbuster and the "exclusively Blu-ray" rentals. Maybe that's for brick & mortar, but either way it's totally misleading since their online sells both and no article I've read yet mentions a distinction between online & brick store. I think that's really strange that there's tons of news about "exclusive" when it doesn't seem to be that way.

binky said:

No, that's not right. Blockbuster rents both HD and Blu-ray from their online rental. They're poised to deliver either or both. Boston doesn't have either format in the brick & mortar stores yet. I don't know about other cities, but maybe they're also waiting to see.

Click to expand...

The Blockbuster in my town of about 30k residents has Blu-ray, but no HD-DVD, the format I use.