All over but the crying?

[Caspian]

Re: All over but the crying?

Found this commentary in reference to the link jwalton posted.
Most notable is the quote from Fox's VP.

As it happens, I've actually spoken about this today with Fox's senior VP of corporate and marketing communications, Steve Feldstein, who echoed something Warner's Ron Sanders has also said in recent days: "The kind of money they're talking about [in these stories] isn't worth jeopardizing a multi-billion dollar business." In other words, payoffs would not have impacted Fox and Warner's decisions. Feldstein also told me that when The Pittsburgh Post Gazette piece broke, he contacted Lindich immediately to let him know that he was being misled by someone. When Don posted the same piece on his own blog, it was edited to reflect this. Specifically, the references to $120 million and $500 million payoffs were gone - something that's worthy of note

[TheGrandMom]

Re: All over but the crying?

Consumers are not going to pay near $50 for a movie.

Wow, I remember back in the day when VHS/Beta/Laser movies were $50+. God, I'm old.....

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: All over but the crying?

Really should pay more attention to the format war; it totally took me by surprise that there are multiple version of Blu-ray now. (1.0, 1.1, and now, 2.0.)

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...f-player.html:

This is quite the odd turn of events: it was assumed when the PS3 launched that the gaming system would be the Trojan horse that brought Blu-ray into the homes of the mass market. Now? The inexpensive and future-proofed Blu-ray functions of the PS3, matched with the high-quality upscaling the system brings to normal DVDs, may be the Trojan horse bringing gaming to home theater enthusiasts.

PS3 is the best Blu-ray player on the market, apparently, being the only BD2.0 player there is. ._. Nice bonus that it can play a few games, too. (Then again, wasn't PS2's launch success partly due to its popularity as a DVD player in Japan domestic market? I suppose history is just repeating itself.)

[Caspian]

Re: All over but the crying?

Sony's done really well keeping up with the firmware updates on the ps3. 2.0 players should be coming out in the coming months.

[Caspian]

Re: All over but the crying?

I wonder how long before the shareholders start putting the squeeze on Toshiba to end this stupid thing.
Toshiba profit drops, wary on chip outlook | Reuters

25% loss....ouch.

[Feba]

Re: All over but the crying?

Then again, wasn't PS2's launch success partly due to its popularity as a DVD player in Japan domestic market?

I'm pretty sure it was DVDs that succeeded in Japan because of the PS2, not the other way around.

[Caspian]

Re: All over but the crying?

NetFlix is discontuing HD-DVD rentals.
Best Buy will start recommending BD to all customers in early March.

Toshiba keeps releasing statements telling people not to rush to any conclusions about only selling 25% of hi def discs while BD has the other 75% of the market.
For the love of God, Toshiba, just stop. Its embarrasing.

[TheGrandMom]

Re: All over but the crying?

I was just in Best Buy on Sunday and they have B1G1F HD-DVD's. With all these bits and pieces, someone cue the ending theme song.

[Yellow Mage]

Re: All over but the crying?

someone cue the ending theme song.

In before Ray:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p--8CPT738]YouTube - The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya ED Theme: Hare Hare Yukai[/ame]

[Caspian]

Re: All over but the crying?

Michael Bay makes me laugh.
Home Media Magazine - Bringing Digital Entertainment To You

[Caspian]

Re: All over but the crying?

Toshiba to drop HD DVD, sources say
Hoping this is true and it will all be over soon.

[Feba]

Re: All over but the crying?

Eh. Even once this is over, BD has a much much larger fight against DVD.

Personally, the only real benefit of BD is storage ability, but I haven't seen any series take advantage of it, especially not ones I'm interested in. Honestly, by the time BD starts to be used to replace DVD boxsets, I'll probably have stopped caring.

[Caspian]

Re: All over but the crying?

Eh. Even once this is over, BD has a much much larger fight against DVD.

Oh, most definitely. But the format war has threatened to kill it before the BD v. DVD fight even began.
I think at first you'll have a hard time getting people to enjoy watching older movies on BD. Increasing the resolution of the original films accentuates the grain and imperfections. Initially, a lot of people will be turned off by this. The thing is, it really is cool seeing those things in films. BD is about recreating the movie going experience. And those small imperfections are part of that.
Ofcourse, it is possible that that fact alone never allows BD to expand beyond the cinemaphile's home.

As far as storage space goes, I've heard the new HD-DVD combo release of American Gangster is pretty retardedly done. The extended cut is only on the regular DVD side and both sides are overcompressed to fit them on a single disc for the format, causing lots of compression artifacts and other blemishes.
That is one thing BD gets right. And this format is less than two years old, there's still a lot that can be done and I'm interested to see how far it goes.

[Feba]

Re: All over but the crying?

American Gangster

Never heard of it.

As to the format, I don't really see what advantages it has over DVD besides just being larger. DVD already had a lot of content packed onto a disk, games, fluid menus, pretty much anything I've heard of BD doing. BD might do it with higher resolution, more stuff, faster, but I still don't see how it's a huge leap like VHS to DVD was.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: All over but the crying?

Never heard of it.

As to the format, I don't really see what advantages it has over DVD besides just being larger. DVD already had a lot of content packed onto a disk, games, fluid menus, pretty much anything I've heard of BD doing. BD might do it with higher resolution, more stuff, faster, but I still don't see how it's a huge leap like VHS to DVD was.

Neither do consumers.

Neither BD or HD-DVD were a threat to DVD, its always the other way around. The "old way" is still pretty damn modern. VHS died off because it was its time to do so and the consumers decided that.

Consumers still buy DVD and there are no signs of DVD fading away.