Blu-ray vs. HD DVD Discussion Thread

[ROAD_DOGG33J]

Couldn't Microsoft have designed the 360 so it could utilize HD-DVD in the future?

 

[Kryz11]

Couldn't Microsoft have designed the 360 so it could utilize HD-DVD in the future?

microsoft dont think ahead.. they only think what will happen in one or 2 years...

if they did have the HD DVD it would be popular, but do to less content it would die in one more year..

already the single layer HD DVD struggle to have more then 2 hours of HD movie and special features.

 

[YSSMAN]

Well, I'm calling "BS" on that one... Generally speaking, HD-DVDs have more content baked-in than Blu-Ray movies despite the fact that they have this ungodly amount of data that can be placed on them. Rumors are rumors, and I understand that, but both formats have their clear advantages and disadvantages.

Kevin and Alex had an interesting discussion about the "EPIC FAIL" of HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray on the most recent episode of Diggnation (episode 133), which although full of anecdotes, it made a lot of sense.

- In theory, HD-DVD has a name that would have done better with the public. "HD" and "DVD" being very recognizable names as compared to "Blu-Ray."
- That being said, somehow people who care little about technology are more aware of Blu-Ray (Kevin's story about buying his Dad a player, call from his sister)
- Both agree that Sony hasn't been too nice about pushing their format, and the same with Microsoft and Toshiba with theirs
- Hints that Microsoft could add a Blu-Ray player via USB on the X360 are afloat, and if thats the case, thats the end of HD-DVD altogether...

 

[V1P3R]

 

[FoolKiller]

Personally speaking, I just don't see how many people are going to be clamoring for HD content in movies just yet.

I agree. Upscaling is enough for the average Joe. But I think when HD content prices lower and you can a one-disc BD for the price of a two disc DVD set it will begin to swing over more.

I still don't know that many people who have HDTVs (I have two, which is odd, and one is used as a computer monitor), and furthermore, those who do, usually don't have progressive scan DVD players etc.

Those without have 53 weeks. I am counting it down. The whole bit about loosening the date from 2006 killed me. I had expected to be buying $200-$300 decent sized (32") HDTVs by now. Not these 19" 720p generic brands.

[/quote]After 2009 I think we'll see things change a bit, but yeah, sad that it had to go down this way. I do feel for the HD-DVD folks who adopted early and ended up getting screwed in the end. Kinda reminds you of Laser Disc...[/QUOTE]
Trust me the screw isn't as big as the Beta adopters because early Beta players were attached to a TV. Sony proprietary push in its infancy.

Well, I'm calling "BS" on that one... Generally speaking, HD-DVDs have more content baked-in than Blu-Ray movies despite the fact that they have this ungodly amount of data that can be placed on them.

HD-DVD players have more abilities than current Blu-Ray, but with Blu-Ray 2.0 that should be changing a lot. Of course, the question is how do early Blu-Ray adopters get their firmware upgrades? If I read correctly the PS3 is the only first gen player that can go online. If Sony is smart they would be sending out discs or something. Even if it is just take it in to your electronics store and their service department does it for you in like 15 minutes, they should do something.

- In theory, HD-DVD has a name that would have done better with the public. "HD" and "DVD" being very recognizable names as compared to "Blu-Ray."
- That being said, somehow people who care little about technology are more aware of Blu-Ray (Kevin's story about buying his Dad a player, call from his sister)

I will preface my comment by saying that I had the same assumption. Name recognition seems like it should win out.

However, hindsight is 20/20 and I believe I know what happened there. HD and DVD are both already common names, but hoping someone will recognize something based on an already common name is hoping that naming your son John will make him stand out. If you want a kid to stand out you name him Ahmet or Dweezil, and your daughters Moon Unit and Diva Muffin. New term = new technology. People see HD-DVD and think it is just an upgrade to DVD. More like DVD9 than what it really is. But when you give them a whole new term, that quite frankly is catchy sounding, they perk up and say, "What's that? Sounds cool."

Heck, the term HD-DVD may pass through people's heads without them realizing they just heard about something new.

- Hints that Microsoft could add a Blu-Ray player via USB on the X360 are afloat, and if thats the case, thats the end of HD-DVD altogether...

Well, if Michael Bay is telling the truth (considering Pearl Harbor that may not be possible for him) then Microsoft just did HD-DVD to create confusion until disc formats became obsolete from digital distribution.


Either way I will bet that when HD-DVD dies you will see Microsoft put a huge amount of money into digital distribution not long after. Microsoft is prepared to be the market leader there. The irony: Many of us will use our PS3s, or next gen PS systems, to play digital movies.

And I bet the next XBox will be setup to be the market leader in digital download players as the PS3 is for Blu-Ray.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that by that point this DRM nonsense will be gone. I refuse to have a different box for each studio or company. Which means that I will most likely be using whichever formats are supported by the next Playstation.

 

[YSSMAN]

I completely agree with everything you said there... A good write-up!

Although, I saw this on Digg, and it was very interesting:

Most people have already declared Blu-ray to be the format war's victor—even us, begrudgingly—and our recent talks with Toshiba and Universal seem to suggest that the HD DVD camp might be ready to pull up stakes. Back at CES, so many moons ago, Microsoft said HD DVD was over when Toshiba said it was. Ken Graffeo, Universal's Executive VP and Co-President of HD DVD promo group, told us the exact same thing: "If Toshiba says it's over, it is over." Our impression? Toshiba knows it's over. The crazy part is this: Just a few weeks ago, it might've gone the other way entirely.

When we talked to Jodi Sally, Toshiba's VP of Digital AV Marketing, she said, "We still feel there's some value in HD DVD, but we're watching the market closely, waiting to see how sales go." Saying there's "still some value" in something is clutching at a reason not to throw it out, like your old bowling ball you haven't rolled in three years, or your dusty Laserdisc collection.

Consequently, we have a pretty good grip on where HD DVD and Universal stand. We think that rumors Universal's contract had expired and they're getting ready to jump are false for a couple of reasons, and not just because Graffeo told us: "Nobody talked to us. Everything that you see out there has never been substantiated."

We've heard on background from several insiders that Universal's contract with HD DVD runs through 2009, and that the contract is null only when the format is declared non-viable. Graffeo repeatedly placing the onus on Toshiba to declare HD DVD dead seems to confirm this. In addition to the above quote, we specifically asked him how HD DVD would react to Paramount jumping ship, and he responded "That's something you would have to ask Toshiba." In other words, everyone is basically waiting for the other shoe (or studio) to drop.

But several weeks ago, before Warner defected, things could have turned out quite different. One reliable source confirmed to us a few days before the Warner/Blu-ray deal went down, a Fox executive called Robbie Bach (Microsoft's head entertainment exec) confirming they were going exclusive to HD DVD, not Blu-ray. And if Fox went, the deal was that Warner would go, according to the same source. At the last minute, Fox decided to stick with Blu, effectively taking Warner with it. Toshiba's total surprise at the Warner shift corroborates that it was an 11th-hour move. Graffeo also confirmed that a bunch of HD DVD execs were on the plane to Vegas when the news dropped, so they had no idea.

So what happened? Don Lindich at the PIttsburgh Post-Gazette says Fox was handed $120 million by Sony to stay put, and Warner received around $500 million for painting itself Blu. BusinessWeek put the Warner number "closer to $400 million," which trumped the $100 million Toshiba was prepared to offer it. In our phone call with him, Warner's Kevin Tsujihara denied that a bidding war was a factor. While we believe money was on the table, we do believe that what Tsujihara is, strictly speaking, true.

Every studio wants the war to end—it's dragging down HD disc and regular DVD sales as people don't wanna buy Betamax 2 or get double-dipped with an HD version in a couple years. Warner Home Video is the biggest player in the video market, with a 19.7 percent market share, so it also had the most to lose with a drawn-out war slowly sapping away profits from both its foundation (DVD) and future platform (HD). Its market clout (plus Fox's follow-me plan) made it the Sandra Day O'Connor of the format war, allowing it tip the scales in favor of whichever side it landed on.

Let's talk about the timing. Another source told us that Warner had actually planned to make its announcement at CES. Making it just before CES effectively cut Toshiba and HD DVD off at the knees, and according to that source, led our man Billy G to chop out a 20-minute (?) portion of his keynote dedicated to HD DVD, in which Microsoft would declare a full-steam-ahead push.

The end result of the early announcement was the effective elimination of HD DVD from the show. Literally, the HD DVD camp canceled its own press event. The biggest beneficiary from the revised timeline was obviously the Blu-ray camp. The nagging detail here is that Warner's incentive to let the cat out of the bag early is seemingly only indirect—what did it directly gain from sucker punching Toshiba versus a slightly later announcement? Or would it have been more humiliating for Toshiba and the camp if Warner had smiled and hugged everybody through the show and then performed its judo chop?

The question of payouts is trickier. Why? Insiders tell us that the purported amounts—in the hundreds of millions, varying by camp and studio—are pittances in what is multi-billion-dollar game. It makes little sense to those in the know (on both sides) that the studios would be swayed to either side of the river by a drop in the bucket, or even a bucketful of money. (There is an exception or two, studios known for penny-pinching and an eagerness to jump at just a sliver of a profit.) More likely the payouts constituted good will or in some cases, just free money, as the commitment itself wasn't as hard as the coin.

We think the real power play, if there was one, came from within Sony, but it's hard to get to the bottom of it, given the number of Blu-ray proponents—i.e. mum cronies—in the CE business.

Where we officially are: The ball is in Toshiba's court, and Universal, Paramount and DreamWorks Animation are sticking with Toshiba until it calls it quits, which it may do if the market" for its players turns sour—according to Toshiba, the most recent price cuts may well lead to a sales bump before any kind of bitter end.

Where we actually are: Blu-ray execs are 100 percent confident they have won—publicly and privately in our conversations with them; dual-format swinger Samsung thinks HD DVD's back was broken on the Hollywood front and will be relegated to personally recorded content; an IDC analyst told us Toshiba may fall back on dual-format players, like Samsung and LG. It could have gone either way just a few weeks ago, but now it really is over for HD DVD.

Studios, execs and insiders: Wanna cut through the cloak-and-dagger BS and set the things straight for us and all consumers? Tell us the score, straight up, on the record.

–Additional reporting by Mark Wilson

 

[FoolKiller]

a bunch of HD DVD execs were on the plane to Vegas when the news dropped, so they had no idea.

Here is the image in my mind (it's cluttered in there):

Exec 1: That was a long flight.
Exec 2: Yeah, hey I got a message on my Blackberry.
Exec 1: Me too.
Execs 1&2: 🤬

 

[Flerbizky]

Personally speaking, I just don't see how many people are going to be clamoring for HD content in movies just yet.

I'm starting to loathe the quality from our DVDs already :-|

After 2009 I think we'll see things change a bit, but yeah, sad that it had to go down this way. I do feel for the HD-DVD folks who adopted early and ended up getting screwed in the end. Kinda reminds you of Laser Disc...

Though I am prepared to ignore the quality issue when watching True Lies on LD :-)

 

[Small_Fryz]

any more updates?

 

[GT4 genius]

any more updates?

Not much on this front recently. Although I think Woolworths decided to go Blue-ray exclusive last week or the week before.

 

[YSSMAN]

Most of the talk AFAIK, has been about what the retailers will be doing in the US. I haven't been in a big-box store in a few weeks, but they're still pushing the HD-DVD hardware for pretty cheap. Or, at least thats what the advertisements leads me to believe.

I'm still not about to buy one yet, the prices on the players are going to have to get down to $120 or less for me to consider it. And even then, I want a newer HDTV that can take advantage of all the "benefits" of Blu-Ray...

 

[WallRunner]

And they are pushing HD-DVD players hard down here "Come to BRANDSMART USA AND GET A $90 HD-DVD PLAYER FOR THE BEST IN HD ENTERTAINMENT" (Not to mention it is going obsolete )

From,
Chris.

 

[a6m5]

After noting the thread titled "Toshiba to drop HD DVD..what does it mean for Xbox?", I had to go confirm it.

While it's not official yet, it does look like the beggining of the end:

The format war has turned into a format death watch.

Toshiba is widely expected to pull the plug on its HD DVD format sometime in the coming weeks, reliable industry sources say, after a rash of retail defections that followed Warner Home Video's announcement in early January that it would support only the rival Blu-ray Disc format after May.
----------------------------------------------------
But in the end, sources say, the substantial loss Toshiba is incurring with each HD DVD player sold -- a figure sources say could be as high as several hundred dollars -- coupled with a series of high-profile retail defections has driven the company to at last concede defeat. "An announcement is coming soon," said one source close to the HD DVD camp. "It could be a matter of weeks."
----------------------------------------------------
This week, two key retailers, Best Buy and Netflix Inc., both got off the fence and threw their support behind Blu-ray exclusively, citing widespread studio support and consumer preference. Both companies said Warner's decision was a turning point in their strategies.


"We've listened to our customers, and we are responding," said Best Buy president and COO Brian Dunn.

Netflix spokesperson Steve Swasey said it appeared the format war had been won by Blu-ray for the benefit of everyone.

"We wanted to put an exclamation point behind that," he said.

Sooner we can move on, the better.

 

[YSSMAN]

Agreed. As soon as Netflix signed on to Blu-Ray it was the end, no way around it. They're too powerful to be able to ignore that fact.

So, the question also becomes, how long until we see Blu-Ray drives for the X360?

 

[Scaff]

Wal-mart goes Blu-ray exclusive from June....

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=980

...now that's a rather big blow (on top of the others) to HD-DVD. It will be interesting to see if this also will apply to Asda here in the UK (who are owned by Walmart).


Scaff

 

[a6m5]

Wal-mart goes Blu-ray exclusive from June....

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=980

...now that's a rather big blow (on top of the others) to HD-DVD. It will be interesting to see if this also will apply to Asda here in the UK (who are owned by Walmart).


Scaff

I heard about this, this morning.

This one is huge, because from what I've read, Wal-Mart was actually was taking Pro-HD DVD stance originally. I hate to look like a hater, but some of the comments from the person in charge of DVD purchasing at Wal-Mart were just so pitiful, I'm gonna have to go find it and post it here:

Susan Chronister, who buys movies for Wal-Mart, announced the chain will no longer offer HD DVD products as of June. Wal-Mart will carry only Blu-ray discs and players, as well as standard-definition DVD players and devices that up-convert standard definition to a higher quality picture on HD televisions.

"So if you bought the HD [DVD] player like me, I'd retire it to the bedroom, kids' playroom, or give it to your parents to play their John Wayne standard def movies," Chronister wrote.

They pushed you the HD DVD format, and now they are telling you this. You gotta love it.

 

[Formula1Driver]

The sooner this whole thing just ends the better, I don't know why they don't just stop now, they are losing alot of money as pretty much everyone has decided to go with BR.

This will be funny for me because a kid at my school bet me $5 that the Format War would end in 4 years (we bet last month) because that is how long the VHS/Beta thing took. That was also after Warner went BR exclusive among others.

 

[Jump_Ace]

This shouldn't even be a discussion anymore its so over. Beta was better, but vhs won. History will repeat itself and I'm glad to see that M$ shot themselves in the foot by offering a system that was less costly initially but will end up costing the same as a ps3 only with more headaches and hassle for the consumer. Walmart is now saying bye bye to toshiba, its done. Now we just wait for the blu-ray burners to drop in price

Jerome

 

[V1P3R]

So, the question also becomes, how long until we see Blu-Ray drives for the X360?

I'm thinking by then everyone's 360 will have died and everyone will have a PS3.

This shouldn't even be a discussion anymore its so over.

Pretty much... Kinda wondering why the thread is still open too. xD

 

[Vonie]

Microsoft was smart, they supported HD-DVD so they sold all those drives. Now, they'll sell a Blu-ray add-on and get more dough from that, too. So they end up getting double the cash.

 

[Nitrof1]

when does transformers blu-ray edition come out?

 

[WallRunner]

I was wondering if Wal-Mart was going to exclusively support Blu-Ray, in our local Wal-Mart, the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray case had two HD-DVD movies in there, compared to over 30 Blu-Ray Discs.

From,
Chris.

 

[YSSMAN]

THE WAR IS OVER: BLU-RAY WINS

Huzzah?

Its nice to have an end to all this madness, but I'm still not happy with the way things were handled. We'll see what comes of it I suppose, but yes, Sony (with the power of the purse) clearly had the upper-hand.

My guess would be that if Warner and Fox would have went HD-DVD exclusive, this war would have gone on for much, much longer...

 

[a6m5]

This shouldn't even be a discussion anymore its so over. Beta was better, but vhs won. History will repeat itself and I'm glad to see that M$ shot themselves in the foot by offering a system that was less costly initially but will end up costing the same as a ps3 only with more headaches and hassle for the consumer. Walmart is now saying bye bye to toshiba, its done. Now we just wait for the blu-ray burners to drop in price

Jerome

Maybe. Or did they?

"What you don't understand is corporate politics. Microsoft wants both formats to fail so they can be heroes and make the world move to digital downloads. That is the dirty secret no one is talking about.

Brad seem to think that Sony won with the dough, but it's actually Microsoft who has more money than god. In retrospect, Microsoft did throw just enough money to sustain HD DVD's life support, but not enough to win. Not the route they took with their Xbox, where they kept throwing money at it.

It's a conspiracy theory, and that's all it is, but one thing is for sure: From consumers to retailers, not many believed in the HD DVD format from early on, and by the end of the year, they pretty much came into an agreement that this war was hurting the sales of high def DVDs(duh).

P.S. To those who are "wondering" why this thread is still open, NHK(kinda like Japanese PBS or BBC) reports that official concession from Toshiba could come as soon as next week. Stay tuned.

 

[ROAD_DOGG33J]

Maybe. Or did they?

Maybe in Japan, but with the way internet service is in the US we are far off from digital downloads, unless Microsoft pumps money into that.

 

[TB]

I saw a commercial for Michael Clayton last night. At the end it showed the boxes for DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray but then they said "Own it this Tuesday on DVD and Blu-Ray." No HD-DVD listed.

Nicely done, Warner. 👍

 

[YSSMAN]

What you don't understand is corporate politics. Microsoft wants both formats to fail so they can be heroes and make the world move to digital downloads. That is the dirty secret no one is talking about.

Actually, that is an extremely valid point. Rumor has it that NETFLIX will be partnering with PSN and XBL to use their systems as distribution devices for their streaming online video service. If thats the case, thats the end of the format stuff altogether.

 

[ROAD_DOGG33J]

Actually, that is an extremely valid point. Rumor has it that NETFLIX will be partnering with PSN and XBL to use their systems as distribution devices for their streaming online video service. If thats the case, thats the end of the format stuff altogether.

It would be if Netflix streamed HD content. Actually if they did that, most people would not be able to get it.

 

[YSSMAN]

I've only heard that it would be the regular streaming video service they already offer, which as I understand it, is not HD. I haven't tried it yet on my subscription, but I want to pretty soon... I have spare time on Wednesday.

 

[ROAD_DOGG33J]

Netflix claims you need 3mbps to get full quality, so make sure nobody is doing any heavy-duty downloading.