HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray Battle Over? Warner Switches to Blu-Ray

[CWallace]

Anyone think a new AppleTV with a blu-ray players?

I'd love to see it, however I expect the fear from the studios about the tv being hacked to allow it to rip HD content from such a player might just keep it out of the next generation.

Of course, not like a Mac can't do it either, but these are the studios we're dealing with.

 

[carlgo]

Blu-Ray sounds way k00ler than HD-DVD anyways

Always true for me and BR players often have attractive blue decor while HD DVD players, a horrible name as possible, are only offered in scientific black

Either format is good enough for me, but having a winner will move things along. Now we can have BR in our Macs and others as you wish.

Just hope that HD DVD just surrenders and lets everyone move on asap.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

The issue with Blu-Ray is that there are NO deals at all to be had for the players let alone a player with disks deal. That pushes my buying decision back months and months till the prices drop and the deals begin.

You aren't looking in the right places then. Over X-Mas there were tons of free BD movie deals (there still is a 5 free movies deal: http://bluraysavings.com/ ) and stores like BestBuy and CircuitCity were throwing in additional disks. Also lots of buy 1, get 1 and buy 2, get 1, and half prices promotions were going on. Stay tuned to sites like fatwallet and slickdeals if getting a deal is your thing.

That said, the real issues with Blu-Ray are that 1) it's a changing standard by design, yet few players have anyway for users to update via firmware. I think the PS3 might be the only one. And 2) the movies are too expensive. If the back catalog had a street price of $15 and new movies $20 they'd be selling players like gangbusters.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

Just hope that HD DVD just surrenders and lets everyone move on asap.

The reality is HD DVD = Toshiba. They will either surrender or bleed cash. I think they realize no format can survive with the support of only two major studios. HD DVD will be gone by year end. Guaranteed.

 

[K.B.]

You aren't looking in the right places then. Over X-Mas there were tons of free BD movie deals (there still is a 5 free movies deal: http://bluraysavings.com/ ) and stores like BestBuy and CircuitCity were throwing in additional disks. Also lots of buy 1, get 1 and buy 2, get 1, and half prices promotions were going on. Stay tuned to sites like fatwallet and slickdeals if getting a deal is your thing.

That said, the real issues with Blu-Ray are that 1) it's a changing standard by design, yet few players have anyway for users to update via firmware. I think the PS3 might be the only one. And 2) the movies are too expensive. If the back catalog had a street price of $15 and new movies $20 they'd be selling players like gangbusters.

But look at the choices of the 5 free disks... not exactly titles to make me drop my hesitation instantly. Geez.


Good point about the standard... how the hell they can't have locked it down by now is beyond me but to have players that can't be updated is just plain pissing in the wheatees of your customer base.

 

[Hattig]

The story going around is that the BRA gave WB about 500 million in "insentives" to come over exclusively:

I think it would be highly illegal for the Warner President to lie about this.

The source of the $620m incentive rumour was a blog. On a HD-DVD fansite. With no links, proof or anything. It was conjecture by a fanboy.

 

[K.B.]

I think it would be highly illegal for the Warner President to lie about this.

The source of the $620m incentive rumour was a blog. On a HD-DVD fansite. With no links, proof or anything. It was conjecture by a fanboy.

I was quoting the story that said 500 million, I've never seen anything mentioning 620. I've seen the 500 mil in numerous places around the web but in the end you know as well as everyone else that there was an "incentive" deal made for a LOT of money just like was done with Universal and the others. Everyone knows there was a deal made and for a lot money.

It's a moot point at this moment because this was the last straw for HDDVD in just about everyone's opinion that I've read and with the strong rumor that Apple will start Blu-ray support shortly that really nails it down.

 

[ocifersven]

Blu ray is soo much nicer than hd dvd..

What makes it nicer? The second layer they can't fully utilize yet? The 24P that most BD's utilize over HD-DVD's 60i (both support 60i, but BD's aren't using it as much yet). What makes it nicer? I have to know. This is important.

 

[ocifersven]

The problem is, how many companies will continue to support HD-DVD if content is no longer actively produced in that format (should the other studios eventually support Blu-Ray)? Pioneer offered combination LD+DVD players for a few years in the US, and then a few more in Japan, but now I believe no consumer LD players are manufactured. When my decade-old CLD-704 finally dies, my remaining LDs go into the landfill.

I see your point there. But laserdiscs were the size of dinner plates. There was that physical handicap there. While BD's and HD-DVD's are of the same size, weight and shape, and both utilize a blue laser technology. It's mostly between the use of BD-J and HDi.

 

[Hattig]

I was quoting the story that said 500 million, I've never seen anything mentioning 620. I've seen the 500 mil in numerous places around the web but in the end you know as well as everyone else that there was an "incentive" deal made for a LOT of money just like was done with Universal and the others. Everyone knows there was a deal made and for a lot money.

It's a moot point at this moment because this was the last straw for HDDVD in just about everyone's opinion that I've read and with the strong rumor that Apple will start Blu-ray support shortly that really nails it down.

Right. So we have Warner: No money changed hands. It was because we want to go with one format that will win, and thus be best for our bottom line in the near/medium future.

Internet Conjecture: A lot of money passed hands, c'mon, y'know it!

The format war was costing them money, not in supporting two formats, but because uptake was slow because people were waiting to see who won. By forcing the issue by picking to be exclusive with the product that is selling the most media by miles they'll get what they want, which will be a return far exceeding a few hundred million dollars. Maybe they worked out Microsoft's plans for online downloads which would have removed a lot of control from them, and realised sitting on the fence wasn't going to help them get enough HD players on the market to secure ten years of physical media sales.

Apple joined the Blu-Ray Disc Association in 2005 and they pay to be one of the 18 board members (out of several hundred members). The idea of them going HD-DVD after that was ludicrous, unless the format crashed and burned early.

 

[CWallace]

I see your point there. But laserdiscs were the size of dinner plates. There was that physical handicap there. While BD's and HD-DVD's are of the same size, weight and shape, and both utilize a blue laser technology. It's mostly between the use of BD-J and HDi.

That should help, since it will be much easier to create a dual-mode player since they can leverage the similarity of mechanisms and technology so you don't have the additional costs you did supporting digital video with DVD and analog with LD.

However, my real fear is that if (major) studios stop shipping new content in HD-DVD, the "replacement market" for HD-DVD or hybrid players will shrink to the point that it is no longer worth manufacturing, as it did with Pioneer/LaserDisc and Sony/Beta. So those with major investments in HD-DVD might eventually find that they have nothing to play them on, though eBay will likely help offer a lifeline to folks in terms of machines and content.

 

[mflender]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/3B48b Safari/419.3)

FYI. Blu-Ray does not have a storage advantage over HD DVD. a dual layer blu-ray holds 50gigs. A triple layer HD DVD can as well.

Granted, there is no one producing them yet, but the standard IS set.

Triple layer HD-DVD isn't shipping yet. That means current space on HD-DVD is 30 GB. Triple layer HD-DVD would be 45 GB when it ever ships. Lets stick to real products, not vaporware. I'm sure once studios start maxing out 50GB Blu-ray media they will come out with a larger disc. Also, HD-DVD has been slow to support 1080p in their players where as Sony has tried to support this from the outset on Blu-ray.

 

[nljackson87]

Are you kidding yourself?

Guys, Guys , Guys,

NONE of this matters... Warner, FOX, Disney? They're not going to decide this issue!

What really matters is what the PORN industry decides.

Not kidding....

I am so tired of this argument. With the internet, no one cares what format production porn goes into. Who in their right mind would pay for high definition porn when they get their rocks off for free on the internet.

Not to mention that HD porn is pretty counter intuitive, seeing as most porn actors are only so-so looking in SD, can you imagine what they would look like in HD?

Yuck.

 

[CWallace]

Not to mention that HD porn is pretty counter intuitive, seeing as most porn actors are only so-so looking in SD, can you imagine what they would look like in HD? Yuck.

Yes, I am sure folks are going to love to see the heat-rash in 1080p on a 70" display.

 

[zap2]

I'm not even sure why Toshiba is still planning HD DVD now....they'd need to start paying studios to jump to HD DVD, and do it fast.


I've thought this format war was pointless before, but didn't really care who won. I disliked Sony for forcing Blue Ray on PS3 owners, and I disliked MS for pushing HD DVD just to slow HD players......so who ever won was fine with me.

Now its pretty clear Sony is going to win, the only reason HD DVD has any studios left is because they payed them big bucks.

Rap it up Toshiba, stop being MS's tool, and leave HD DVD behind

 

[brkirch]

That said, the real issues with Blu-Ray are that 1) it's a changing standard by design, yet few players have anyway for users to update via firmware. I think the PS3 might be the only one.

Actually most (if not all) Blu-ray players allow for firmware updates. This list shows that at least 18 different Blu-ray drives support firmware updates, and already have firmware updates available. If you can't connect the Blu-ray drive to the internet or a computer you just burn a CD with the firmware update.

 

[SevenInchScrew]

I am so tired of this argument. With the internet, no one cares what format...

You could have just stopped right there. You made the right point, and didn't even know it. Porn may or may not have decided the VHS v Beta battle back in the day. But the fact that they do much of their content delivery online now, and yes in HD as well, shouldn't be overlooked.

To steal a little comparison from Jeremy Clarkson, Porn is like the Mercedes S-Class of the video media industry. The technology that shows up on the S-Class will, more-or-less, be what normal production cars have in 10 years or so. And in the video world, Porn does what everyone else WILL be doing in a few years. Unlike Old-Media, who tries to tell the consumer what they should buy, the porn industry is ruled by it's consumers. They vote with their dollars, and lots of them, as to what works and what doesn't. And when they move to the internet for their content delivery, everyone should take notice.

The "winner" of this disc-based war will have a short lived victory, in my opinion. With services like Xbox Live and Vudu showing what can be done even today, in 2-5 years I feel we won't be talking about who won or lost the war between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. We will be talking about who won or lost money by investing $$$ in either.

 

[CRAZYBUBBA]

Rap it up Toshiba, stop being MS's tool, and leave HD DVD behind

Isn't MS supporting blue-ray too?

edit: Thanks psychofreak

 

[72930]

Isn't MS supporting blue-ray too?

Not really, MS is clearly a supporter of HD-DVD, some think because they knew it was bound to failure and wanted to give a less stable marketplace for internet downloads to take the power in.

 

[bigbossbmb]

What makes it nicer? The second layer they can't fully utilize yet? The 24P that most BD's utilize over HD-DVD's 60i (both support 60i, but BD's aren't using it as much yet). What makes it nicer? I have to know. This is important.

Check your facts noob and stop reading articles from 2005/06.

1) Blu-rays are absolutely using the second layer and have been for a while now. Go look at the Disney releases for the last year.

2) 24P is better than 60i in terms of accurately reproducing a film. TV manufacturers are starting to create 120hz TVs so that 24p material can be shown without interlaced filler frames as is done with current sets. Those 60i HD-DVDs that you are talking about (which I highly doubt they are doing btw) would be bad because they have the interlaced filler frames embedded onto the disc.

3) Blu-ray has a higher max bitrate (54Mbps vs 38Mbps IIRC) which leaves plenty of room for the jump to 12-bit color (aka "deep color"), which is the next step in better picture quality for home viewing.

Yeah, I'd say it's nicer. There isn't really a single thing that HD-DVD has over Blu-Ray at the moment. Maybe Batman Begins and the Matrix, but those are coming in the next few months. Thanks WB.

 

[LxTxNx]

Guys, Guys , Guys,

NONE of this matters... Warner, FOX, Disney? They're not going to decide this issue!

What really matters is what the PORN industry decides.

Not kidding....

Blu-Ray already has porn on board with them

try DVDEMPIRE.COM

 

[ocifersven]

Check your facts noob and stop reading articles from 2005/06.

1) Blu-rays are absolutely using the second layer and have been for a while now. Go look at the Disney releases for the last year.

2) 24P is better than 60i in terms of accurately reproducing a film. TV manufacturers are starting to create 120hz TVs so that 24p material can be shown without interlaced filler frames as is done with current sets. Those 60i HD-DVDs that you are talking about (which I highly doubt they are doing btw) would be bad because they have the interlaced filler frames embedded onto the disc.

3) Blu-ray has a higher max bitrate (54Mbps vs 38Mbps IIRC) which leaves plenty of room for the jump to 12-bit color (aka "deep color"), which is the next step in better picture quality for home viewing.

Yeah, I'd say it's nicer. There isn't really a single thing that HD-DVD has over Blu-Ray at the moment. Maybe Batman Begins and the Matrix, but those are coming in the next few months. Thanks WB.

"Shaun Of The Dead," "Hot Fuzz," & "Heroes - Season 1" are some of the reasons I went HD-DVD. Sadly (but proudly), so is "Army Of Darkness." "The Matrix" looks like crap in HD, I have to say. Every sub-par special effect really stands out. And the pimples on Trinity's neck are... well... let's play it safe and say fantasy killer. Anyway, that's besides the point.

As far as BD's "use" of their second layer (as I'm told by my friends in the Disney camp), it's used only for a PIP approach. Granted, the times are going to change with v1.1. But, as we stand today, BD25 is used more from a direct practical standpoint than BD50 is. While HD30 is being used across the board.

On the note of 24P vs 60i, HD-DVD's have been using 60i via h.264. And it looks sharp. To me, and everyone I brought around to help me test equipment, HD-DVD had the image quality over Blu-Ray at the time. Not by much. But it looked better. And I was prepared to buy a Blu-Ray player at the time, had it looked better. And while Blu-Ray has a larger bit stream and TV manufacturers are "starting" to make 120Hz units, it isn't standardized yet. You rich Pasadena folk may be able to throw out your old TV each year every time a new format emerges. But to the rest of the world, 720P is still HD. And we're now noodling in the 1080P realm with HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. I have a 47" 1080P unit, and I love it. However, I don't think the rest of the world cares like everyone in this forum does about bigger, better and more. Most of them will slightly care, but will usually pick the cheaper format to upgrade into when that time comes. That's why VHS won last time. It was cheaper than Beta. And to the Average Joe end user, it did the same thing for cheap.

Blu-Ray is ahead of its time. And beyond that, as I've said before, Blu-Ray going to introduce a massive amount of problems with policies, seeing as Sony (a movie studio, record label, hardware developer) is heavily invested. It's going to give the MPAA an ungodly amount of power over the consumer, which is what they're frothing at the mouth over. Right now, the prices of the discs are usually the same as HD-DVD. The players are far more expensive, but are coming down. They have to, as Blu-Ray is in a fight with HD-DVD. They have to gain an edge to lure more people into drinking the Sony Kool-Aid. But if HD-DVD shuts down, it's on with the proprietary measures. There's no format for them to compete with. You just wait and watch. You'll see. New releases will get more expensive than they are now. And they'll have more control over how you use it.

Economically, HD-DVD still makes more sense due to the high quality the end user gets for the lesser expensive price point. Plus, it keeps a movie studio out of hardware standardization. But Sony did a remarkable job including a Blu-Ray player in their PS3, taking a price hit for each unit sold just to get that standard in place. It put a player in homes, even without HDTV's installed. The PS3 was the one thing that really propelled Blu-Ray ahead of HD-DVD.

And c'mon now.... What is this "noob?" Are you 16, from 2003? You're sweet. But I work in this industry as well, and deal with this stuff daily. Go back and play with your RedCam and prepare to preach 4K. And close your Wikipedia window while you're at it.

 

[Schmoe0013]

Triple layer HD-DVD isn't shipping yet. That means current space on HD-DVD is 30 GB. Triple layer HD-DVD would be 45 GB when it ever ships. Lets stick to real products, not vaporware. I'm sure once studios start maxing out 50GB Blu-ray media they will come out with a larger disc. Also, HD-DVD has been slow to support 1080p in their players where as Sony has tried to support this from the outset on Blu-ray.

this has been discussed in later posts after mine. And FYI, a triple layer HD DVD is 51 gigs.

Just touching upon this fact, not your opinions on the feasiability or availability of the new specs.

 

[jnc]

The pie chart pleases me, and makes a ps3 purchase a little less unsettling. Shame about paramount- stupid, stupid move. Oh well, I know what a torrent is, so they shot themselves in the foot there.

 

[janstett]

DVD sales are actually still rising in double digits percentages

the DVD hasn't even reached it's peak yet

What is your source for data? Bill Hunt of The Digital Bits has been citing DVD's decline for at least two years, and claims it's one of the reasons both HD formats were released before they could compromise on a single format.

DVD is saturated and has almost 100% penetration of the market, and the big movie releases aren't selling in the numbers they did a few short years ago.