All over but the crying?

[Feba]

Re: All over but the crying?

You don't need to buy a new TV, just a converter box, and there's at least one gub'ment program out there that will give you some money towards that: https://www.dtv2009.gov/

There's also a fairly good chance your TV already supports it.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: All over but the crying?

Kitten: The format war certainly wasn't helping. Will BD take off and supplant DVD's? Can't know for sure right now. Its possible. Are we still years and years and years away from downloadable HD movies being commonplace? Damn straight.

That is, of course, assuming that its the leaders of the industry that are going to make the leap for us.

Since when has that happened?

Based on the original Napster, iPod and YouTube, I have some serious doubts about that. I'm pretty sure there's some geek out there that will make HD streaming come a lot faster and we'll see a repeat of Industry vs Napster/YouTube soon enough.

[Caspian]

Very true, a good portion of the revolutionary leaps in techonology aren't from the big boys but from some kid in his garage. The kicker is making "super broadband" standard. I'm sure someone else here would know better than me, is the current technology (fiber optic phone lines etc.) even capable of streaming at the speeds necessary to make digital downloads worthwhile? (Basically 50+gbs in 5-10 minutes)
On top of that you have hard drive limitations. I personally own a few hundred dvds, while I certainly own more than the average household, I'm by no means the record holder. I really wouldn't want to have to keep downloading movies I've already purchased simply because the hard drive isnt big enough to hold them all.
Lastly, while it seems stupid, a lot of people like the physically holding their movie. Its something you actually own and if you want to go to a friend's house and watch it, just grab the disc and walk out the door. Do they give you an account so that you could go to your friend's house and sign in and download a movie you've already purchased which your friend hasn't? Or does your friend have to pay to download a movie just to watch it once? That adds all kinds of software development issues to keep piracy at a minimum. (One of the big reasons BD was heavily favored out of the gates, its much more difficult to rip than HD-DVD).
While I'm sure we'll eventually reach a point of digital downloads, I'm just not sure its the next step and personally I'd rather not wait several years to watch my favorite movies in HD.
Fyi, CES started last night. Bill Gates was apparently originally supposed to discuss HD-DVD for atleast 30% of his speech, but he didn't touch on it at all. The rest of CES should be interesting and I'm sure we'll see more interesting developments in the weeks after. Btw, BDA execs were asked about maybe helping out HD-DVD supporting consumers by either offering trade-ins for the same title, getting a BD of a title you already own on HD-DVD, or possible price reductions on players for people who bought an HD-DVD player before the end of the year. Could potentially help ease the illwill thats developed over the least year and a half.

EDIT: Apparently Paramount has an escape clause with HD-DVD that if Warner goes BD exclusive, then Paramount can get out of their contract and go BD, too.
Rumors are also saying Paramount will go BD exclusive probably this week, with Universal to follow later this week or next. This format war could be over by the end of this month. Retailers are rumored to be scaling back their HD-DVD sections and giving BD more space. All this is still just rumor, but was leaked by studio insiders. The studios themselves haven't made anything official yet, but I doubt its that far off.

[Caspian]

Re: All over but the crying?

New take on Toshiba's decision today to further price slash their hardware.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/...leID=205604607

Only one thing:

While continuing its battle, Toshiba could see an increase in sales of its entry-level HD DVD player. That's because the lower price puts it in position to compete against standard DVD players. The advantage of the HD DVD model is that it can play a standard DVD at near high-definition quality, which Blu-ray players can't do. Consumers looking for a standard DVD player could find that feature attractive. "That was clever on their part," Greeson said of Toshiba.

Thats not true, BD players upconvert just like HD-DVD players.

Another theory on why they're doing this is because retailers are pressuring them to so they don't get stuck with truckloads of unsold and fairly useless players.

[Omniblast]

Re: All over but the crying?

I saw a sale on a bunch of random titles for blu-ray & HD-DVD up to 30% off on Amazon.com if anyone's interested. Not sure when that sale is over.

Also, by 1/31/08 the 5 free BD disc offer will expire. Is HD-DVD doing a similar tactic?

[Caspian]

Re: All over but the crying?

If HD-DVD is doing the same then I haven't heard about it. I already sent in my request for the 5 three movies, unfortunately there are only a few good ones to choose from and I think I'm only gonna end up replacing 1 or 2 that I already owned before they were stolen.
Only like 6 more weeks before I get them in the mail. ><

[TheGrandMom]

Re: All over but the crying?

Also, by 1/31/08 the 5 free BD disc offer will expire. Is HD-DVD doing a similar tactic?

I know they are doing it with the 360 HD-DVD add on. I bought my godson one for Christmas and the offer for 5 free movies came with it. Poor kid didn't like any of them though. lol

[Caspian]

Re: All over but the crying?

I know they are doing it with the 360 HD-DVD add on. I bought my godson one for Christmas and the offer for 5 free movies came with it. Poor kid didn't like any of them though. lol

Yeah, the BD selection sucked. The only good movies were all in the same group so you could only choose one of them. The only movies I'll actually watch that I'm getting for free are Pirates 1 and The Patriot. I decided not to opt for "The Devil's Rejects"

[jwalton]

Re: All over but the crying?

http://gizmodo.com/344680/the-real-r...r-went-blu+ray

[Omniblast]

Re: All over but the crying?

boo site is blocked at work. I guess I'll have to remember to read that when I get home.

[Caspian]

Re: All over but the crying?

So according to the source site (which Gizmodo butchered in reposting) WB was going to go HD-DVD if Toshiba could steal a studio from BDA. Fox was looking like they were going to, then backed out. So WB went BD. Assuming its true, they're more than vague on sources, I still don't care. It puts an earlier end to the format war and helps establish a clear winner.
As for the writer for the Post-Gazette, he recommends HD-DVD because players are cheaper? Pick the format with fewer studios and titles because you can get a player for $100 less? He then sites the fact that many HD-DVDs were sold in December. Congratulations, so did DVD and BD. Its the holiday season, everything sales better. The truth is HD-DVD picked up at most 1 or 2 points on its sale ratio compared to BD. But tbh, there's not a lot of difference between 65:35 and 63:37. You're still getting smoked nomatter how you look at it.
I don't know how much it really affected sales, but I also heard nothing but horror stories about HD-DVD's combo discs. Would it really have killed them to sell the DVDs separate from the HD-DVDs?

[jwalton]

Re: All over but the crying?

The combo discs were an awful idea. The concept was to ease consumers into the HD generation by selling discs that were HD-DVD on one side and DVD on the other, so that when they'd finally get an HD-DVD player, they wouldn't have to buy all-new discs. Unfortunately, they lost the memo on the concept of transferring the savings to the consumer and not to the manufacturer, and charged a fair bit more for those discs, making HD-DVD look like the more expensive option in its early days, probably a strong part of why it was slow to be adopted even though it was first. Consumers are not going to pay near $50 for a movie.

[Caspian]

Re: All over but the crying?

Also heard of a LOT of problems with them not working properly. Something to do with basically gluing the backs of two discs together. I think I recall hearing Sony did that on a BD with the same results.

[Icemage]

Re: All over but the crying?

Also heard of a LOT of problems with them not working properly. Something to do with basically gluing the backs of two discs together. I think I recall hearing Sony did that on a BD with the same results.

Wasn't Sony. Actually I think it was Panasonic or JVC who were trying to develop a BD-Twin disc format where you could have a disc that acted as a DVD OR a Blu-ray on the same side. They eventually gave up on it as being not economically feasible, however.

Combo discs for HD DVD ride that line hard as well - the failure rate is absurd. Even with the testing they do, the estimates I've seen just from random polling indicates ~10% of combo discs fail, which is just stupidly high for a mass market product.


Icemage

[Caspian]

Re: All over but the crying?

Moral of the story: Glueing two things together and sticking them in a machine to spend at super high rpm's isnt the best idea in the world.