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Topic: Anyone consuming HD or Blu-ray?
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Scott Jentsch
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1061
From: New Berlin, WI, USA
Registered: Apr 2003
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posted 06-26-2007 11:46 AM
The last time I was in a Blockbuster store was a couple of months ago to check to see if they were renting HD DVD's yet. They weren't, so I left.
I have some gift cards for Blockbuster that are probably close to expiring too...
Once you have experienced Netflix, places like Blockbuster are for impulse renting only.
On the Blu-ray and HD DVD topic, however, this is a marketing opportunity for the Blu-ray camp. Unfortunately for them, they are better at producing press releases than they are at producing fully-equipped players and releasing major titles.
Until a Blu-ray player is produced that will, at the very least, fulfill the October 2007 requirements, and ideally, actually provide equivalent features to similarly priced HD DVD players, I will not be buying one.
The new Sony BDP-S300 is reported to not feature TrueHD or DTS-HD MA decoding, but perhaps they will fill in that omission with a firmware upgrade like they did recently with the BDP-S1. For a $500 player, I'd like to see at least TrueHD, ethernet connectivity, and full interactivity capability. But alas, even the $1,000+ players do not provide these features.
Of course that could change if some must-have titles were released in the format exclusively, but so far, that hasn't happened. All the press releases from Disney and Fox about A-list titles haven't come true, and Dances with Wolves and Cars are still on indefinite hold.
What I've found is the Blu-ray is high on promises, but low on delivery. HD DVD tends to have a less sophisticated marketing team, but their players have delivered the goods, and the software selection more closely matches my preferences. YMMV.
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David Stambaugh
Film God
Posts: 4021
From: Eugene, Oregon
Registered: Jan 2002
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posted 06-26-2007 07:21 PM
Blu-Ray vs. HD DVD: Game Over
Robin Harris
June 20th, 2007
Blu-ray vs HD DVD: game over
Posted by Robin Harris @ 12:01 pm
Categories: Disk drives, Marketing
The sturm und drang over the Blu-ray vs HD DVD battle has come to naught. After a bit of jostling Blu-ray has taken an unassailable lead over HD DVD. Blockbuster’s Matthew Smith, SVP of merchandising, says “The consumers are sending us a message. I can’t ignore what I’m seeing.” This is what he’s seen:
Blockbuster has been renting both Blu-ray and HD DVD titles in 250 stores since late last year and found that consumers were choosing Blu-ray titles more than 70 percent of the time.
Ghost of Betamax laid to rest
Sony has played this game well. They own a movie studio, and got all but one of the major studios to release on Blu-ray. They put a Blu-ray player in every PS3. And they benefit by the rapid growth of HDTV sales.
Despite the disappointing sales of the PS3, the fact that it includes a Blu-ray player also tilted the playing field. A leading indicator: Toshiba recently reduced its US sales goal for HD DVD players by 40%. The rapid uptake of HDTV in the US completes the content-player-display triumvirate.
It is safe to buy that Blu-ray disk player now
The biggest loser in this is Toshiba. They’ve put a lot of time and money behind HD DVD. Microsoft is also a loser, partly as a supporter and partly because their add-on Xbox HD DVD player sales will tank. The folks who bought one can’t be feeling too good about Microsoft’s judgement.
Intel, another backer, loses too, but they seem to have had the least skin in the game. They probably just went along because of Microsoft.
The Storage Bits take
It is all over but the shouting. Expect to see some closeout sales on HD DVD players and burners, but I wouldn’t buy one. Now that the market has shifted you can expect to see Blu-ray burner prices drop faster. I expect that Apple will be adding on on their next gen Mac Pro, and after that, the MacBook Pro.
In time this may also boost Firewire, which is substantially faster than USB. In fact, USB 2.0 probably can’t handle 18x DVD writers at full speed, and 20x DVD writers are starting to make it to market. Once Blu-ray writers get up to 6x speed, Firewire will be the way to go.
The biggest winners though, are us, the consumers. 50 GB optical storage is good for all digital junkies. Now that we don’t have to worry about the format war, we can get back to rip, mix, burn!
Comments welcome, as always. I’m heading up to the Google scalability conference in Seattle today - and avoiding some 100+ degree weather here in Arizona - so my response times may be more distended than usual.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 06-26-2007 08:03 PM
quote: Scott Jentsch
Of course that could change if some must-have titles were released in the format exclusively, but so far, that hasn't happened.
Some movies like Casino Royale have been released exclusively in Blu-Ray format. I'm sure there's quite a few others. HD-DVD really isn't blowing me away on title availability either. The Matrix HD-DVD box set is one of the few titles currently only on HD-DVD that seems like a big deal.
quote: Robin Harris
It is all over but the shouting.
That's Robin's opinion. Others may share it, but I don't.
Blu-Ray is in the lead, but the so-called "format war" is still far from being resolved (or "won").
Universal Pictures is still releasing their high def movies exclusively on HD-DVD. Paramount's support of Blu-Ray is very scant; they're still very much in the HD-DVD camp. While Warner Bros. releases some titles on both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray formats, they do more to support HD-DVD. The new Matrix box set is being released on HD-DVD months ahead of any Blu-Ray version, and it will probably have more features.
Both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are tiny niche formats compared to something mainstream like standard DVD or dying formats like VHS. Blu-Ray may be out-renting HD-DVD titles by a 70/30 ratio, but the total number of users in that market is relatively small. Neither format is up to anything resembling mainstream market penetration.
Most of the people who have Blu-Ray capability in their homes have it by virtue of owning a Playstation3. They bought that machine to play games. Having HD movie capability was an additional benefit.
I'd like to see the sales numbers of standalone Blu-Ray players. I think they're probably just as dismal as Toshiba's HD-DVD numbers, if not even worse.
In my opinion, it will take studios lining up unanimously behind Blu-Ray and dropping all support of HD-DVD for HD-DVD to be truly ruined. Look at SDDS in commercial theaters. Some can say it's a dead format due to the lack of hardware support, but lots of new 35mm movie prints still feature SDDS audio tracks on them. Lots of theaters are still playing the SDDS audio.
Dual format HD-disc players may become widespread and could keep the HD-DVD versus Blu-Ray issue permanently unresolved. For sales rates of HD movie disc hardware to truly take off in popularity, it may require the availability of those dual format players for it to happen. They may even need to be priced below the $200 barrier as well.
quote: Robin Harris
I expect that Apple will be adding on on their next gen Mac Pro, and after that, the MacBook Pro.
Dell already offers Blu-Ray BD-RW burners as an option in their high end XPS desktop and notebook computers. The drives also support dual layer DVD recording as well.
I'm not sure if very many customers are lining up to buy those BD-RW burners. However, Dell has a number of notebook displays and computer monitors capable of showing the entire 1920 X 1080 video image pixel for pixel. None of Apple's notebooks can do that without hooking up a large external display.
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