HD-DVD v Blu-ray over?

[old.user4556]

Warner Bros back blu-ray exclusively.

Warner Brothers: Going All The Way With Blu-ray - Tech Check with Jim Goldman - MSNBC.com

A lot of the format war followers have been saying that whoever Warner chose to back exclusively would end the format war. Will this be the case? .. and how does this fair for PS3 and 360 chat?

 

[Bodhi]

This changes nothing. The PS3 is still a far better machine than the 360.

 

[soze]

As soon as Universal come in with a Transformers Blu Ray the Format war is over as Transformers HD DVD is the biggest selling HD film.

 

[Ch3tan]

Toshiba will not just abandon the format though, there are a lot of hd-dvd owners that will still want a machine to play their discs on.

Even if all the studios go to blu-ray for future releases, I still think that their will be dual-disc machines available. If made by no one other than Tosh.

And universal do not only have Transformers as a big release on hd-dvd recently. The Bourne Ultimatum is just as important. Will be interesting to see if they make the switch completely.

 

[soze]

Toshiba will not just abandon the format though, there are a lot of hd-dvd owners that will still want a machine to play their discs on.

Even if all the studios go to blu-ray for future releases, I still think that their will be dual-disc machines available. If made by no one other than Tosh.

And universal do not only have Transformers as a big release on hd-dvd recently. The Bourne Ultimatum is just as important. Will be interesting to see if they make the switch completely.

Transformers is the biggest selling though before that the numbers where really high in Blu Ray favor but transformers on its own gained allot of ground back.

 

[Chilly]

surprising, since its a shit film.

 

[ECA]

The PS3 has no momentum though.
It needs a price cut and a flurry of titles and some advertising of blurays ownage for it to win this generation.

 

[Trem]

Warner Bros are whores, all this means is that Sony sucked their cock more than Toshiba, they are just as likely to change their mind back to HD-DVD.

Seen their tricks before and they are quite simply the worst company about in the business.

 

[old.user4556]

It needs a price cut and a flurry of titles

£300 for a blu-ray player and 7th gen console? Price cut?

I do agree with you though that it needs more titles, but it's a fucking bargain at £300 considering it rivals £800 blu-ray players in terms of quality.

 

[inactionman]

I'm a bit annoyed as I recently went HD-DVD and bought an EP-30 (£200 with 7 free titles was a bit of a bargain). It's the most consumer friendly format (no region coding, no stupid additional copyright controls, etc.), and is actually a finished format (no stupid different profiles making your hardware obsolete 1.1, 1.2, 2.0 bollox). Victory for the studios to the detriment of the consumer tbh.

Oh well, I'll see what happens, at worst when the australian firmwares come out it will be a great multi-region upscaling dvd player.

 

[old.user4556]

BBC NEWS | Business | Warner backs Sony Blu-ray format

 

[Manisch Depressiv]

I'm a bit annoyed as I recently went HD-DVD and bought an EP-30 (£200 with 7 free titles was a bit of a bargain). It's the most consumer friendly format (no region coding, no stupid additional copyright controls, etc.), and is actually a finished format (no stupid different profiles making your hardware obsolete 1.1, 1.2, 2.0 bollox). Victory for the studios to the detriment of the consumer tbh.

Oh well, I'll see what happens, at worst when the australian firmwares come out it will be a great multi-region upscaling dvd player.

Even the DVD standards had different versions of their specifications and the framework itself has been extended over time so I doubt that HD-DVD is/was a finished format.

I have a copy of the DVD-Video standard at home, so I know how the DVD Forum and the DVD FLLC released their stuff.

In my opinion everything made by the DVD Forum or Phillips or Sony and so on was never consumer friendly, the standards released by the associations were never open and are only used to partition the market. They have been used to keep small competitors away from the market (ever tried to buy the various DVD CSS, AC3, DTS, licenses in order to develop a DVD-Video player?) and now I am laughing my ass off about the current situation where the big players fight each other at the backs of the consumers while you say one of the formats is consumer friendly.

If people wouldn't want to be early adopters they would have had to come to an agreement to unify the standards. Not that I care much about any of the new formats, I prefer good content in cinema or DVD rips.

 

[Deebs]

geez,

It is NOT Sony's format but a committee of large corporations that make up the BDA (Blu-ray Disc Association). Sony are part of the association WHO share the IP.

There are 3 profiles in the specification (the PS3 can be all 3, the last one is awaiting another firmware update). As for DRM, yes it has DRM but so will any of these so called digital download services. I don't mind as long as the disc I buy will play on any of my players.

Trem, the BDA did not pay Warner any money to swing allegiance, rather they allowed Warner to look at past software sales in Q4 and other merits and Warner made the decision on those merits.

As for Transformers making a difference, sorry but it didn't. Since Blu-ray hit the scenes it has OUTSOLD hd-dvd on software every week. That's the point, not even when Toshiba did the fire sale in December of the sub 100 dollar players (shitty 1080i ones mind) did that make a difference and they shifted over a 100,000. Did they beat Blu-ray software sales? Nope. It is hard to beat a platform which outsells them 9-1 in Japan, 5-1 in Europe and 2-1 in NA.

Dual format players will continue to be made for the people that have invested in the dead format, and if you read the specs, Blu-ray is the superior system, much like Betamax was against VHS. Shame that lost.

Me, I am so glad Warner chose Blu-ray. Now studios have to concern themselves with taking down DVD and moving onwards and upwards. Roll on the rest of the year, there are going to be cracking releases. Everyone enjoy HDM!

 

[dysfunction]

I'm curious why there are even DVD's at all. Why not have a memory card players instead?

Is there any real reason why memory cards are not used instead of DVD's (apart from perhaps an anti piracy type of thing which doesnt really work anyway)?

I would much prefer to have a film on a memory stick than on a DVD.

 

[Tom]

DVDs are a lot cheaper to produce than memory sticks.

 

[Trem]

Nothing will ever be as cheap as torrents/newsgroups.

 

[Opt1]

DVDs are a lot cheaper to produce than memory sticks.

Shame, I like this idea :x

Is there no way they can produce a tri-format player?

That way the player would cover HDDVD, Blu-ray and DVDs - meaning peoples DVD libraries will still be of use years from now.

There's no way am ever wanting to ditch my DVDs - has cost me too much money and I have too many things I like - and it makes sense to have one player unit rather than two..

 

[Ch3tan]

Opti, all the hd-dvd and blu ray players play dvd's as well, and upscale them.

 

[GReaper]

DVDs are a lot cheaper to produce than memory sticks.

What if SD cards or something similar reached a price point where they could store HD movies fairly cheaply? The price of flash memory is always dropping and could become viable in the future.

More people are using mobile devices to play music and an increasing number are using them for video. At the moment it isn't practical to have a portable DVD player in your pocket, but an iPod or some other device is. This is causing severe problems with movie makers who are scared shitless of allowing their content to be copied onto such devices because of their DRM.

Sony tried to sell UMD movie discs, but obviously this was going to be awkward trying to sell a product which you can't play on anything other than the PSP - why buy something you can't even watch on your TV? Now if the next generation format was flash memory card based which could be played on your TV (a DVD style player), on your PC, as well as on a wide range of portable players then it might have some success.

The content creators could put restrictions on it to prevent it being copied, and if the physical media is nice and small people could still play it on multiple devices.

 

[DaGaffer]

I'd be extremely surprised if flash media ever got a point where it was price competitive with Optical media. Never say never, but the economics of producing memory (and all the demands for it) means it's simply more expensive to produce.

But you will get HD movies transferred to memory cards with the studios' blessing; there's a feature coming in BluRay called "Portable Device" which will basically have a copy of the movie you can take off the BluRay and put onto a memory stick/PSP, already formatted so you don't have to fiddle around with rescaling yourself.

As it is, I'm currently using the handy Memory stick slot on my PS3 to watch Heroes because I haven't got TVersity installed on my PC yet. Works great.

 

[Chilly]

The HDDVD does have region stuff, its just not used at the moment. If they were to monopolise the market you'd be a fool to assume they wouldnt turn it on.

 

[Deebs]

Dave,

You are indeed correct and Sony demonstrated that yesterday at CES. Taking the portable version off the blu-ray disc to a memory card and playing it on the PSP.

Yummy. Oh, and Skype too. Looks like Sony are trying to make up for the mistakes made last year with its gaming console.

 

[Opt1]

Opti, all the hd-dvd and blu ray players play dvd's as well, and upscale them.

Bah I R not knowing very much. Ta mate.

What's with all this dual format chat then.. tri-format ftw.

Memory sticks ftw.

 

[Jupitus]

As it is, I'm currently using the handy Memory stick slot on my PS3 to watch Heroes because I haven't got TVersity installed on my PC yet. Works great.

Slightly off topic, but a thumbs up from me in favour of TVersity for media-serving the PS3. Easy to setup and also connects fine with my Pinnacle Soundbridge :england:

 

[Chilly]

Paramount poised to drop HD DVD | Reg Hardware

bye, hd-dvd

 

[inactionman]

I didn't say HD-DVD is consumer friendly, just that it's more consumer friendly than blu-ray, although I suppose it's a bit like a choice between Kang and Kodos!

As for paramount switching to blu-ray, that's already been refuted by paramount: Bloomberg.com: Japan

 

[Jonty]

Hi guys

Slightly off topic, but regarding the memory stick idea: they're certainly nowhere near as cheap as optical discs, but their range of applications is expanding. SanDisk already has plans to produce 1GB write-once memory cards for around £3. The idea being you're out and about and need some extra storage, say for a digital camera, so you pop into a convenience store or petrol station etc. Obviously a HD movie, even scaled and compressed, would require a lot more storage, but memory cards still have untapped possibilities (in all their many formats).

With regards Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD, from a consumer point of view, one standard would certainly speed up adoption. Although there are already multi-format players, much like multi-format PC DVD burners, they're still in their infancy. However, at this rate, I still expect HD downloads to start to become mainstream. Although it requires a fast internet connection, this kind of anywhere, anytime access to all my movies is quite appealing.

Kind regards

 

[old.user4556]

Gates = Vagina.

Microsoft stands behind HD DVD for Xbox 360

 

[Embattle]

I doubt Toshiba will just abandon HD-DVD but I do feel it is getting very close to loosing the format war with Blu-ray.

As for the price of the PS3, in reality if you can use the Blu-ray side with a nice HD TV then I would consider it a great price for what it offers. As a games machine it is shit for no other reason than its lack of quality titles at the moment, but they'll come eventually.

 

[Opt1]

Gates = Vagina.

Microsoft stands behind HD DVD for Xbox 360

but acknowledged the external nature would enable it to ship a Blu-ray drive if Sony's format became the new high-definition standard.

Ahhh

Personally, I am baffled and always have been by this format war.. DVDs suit me fine for now, but if they want to waste their time until settling in one way or another I can't do much to stop them.