Ok, time for me to weigh in after taking a few dozen page hiatus from posting to the thread.
I've been hoping that neither format would win. From the beginning, I've felt that the formats were designed without the consumer's best interests in mind.
We could have easily been watching a next gen format by now, and for the same cost as SD dvds. But instead hollywood had to justify new digital restrictions management. The only way to possible sell that was to increase disc capacity and drop backward compatability.
Consumers would have been better served by a more aggressive codec on the same physical media. Then when the next-gen technology was actually ready, and for a reasonable price, people would be interested in a Super-Duper-HD (but backward compatible) player.
But you're probably not interested in that stance anymore...
If I had to choose one over the other, my original preference would have been for HD-DVD to win. I'm a proponent of cheap hardware.
But at this point, it looks like Blu-Ray has pulled ahead. Why I'm not really sure. From a movie watching standpoint to your average joe, the only difference between the platforms is the price of the players.
It will be interesting to look back and try to figure out how big of a role the PS3 played. Also, it will be interesting to see how the PS3 is perceived. Will the inclusion of an expensive drive stagnate the gaming platform and hurt sony? Or will that be outweighed by their triumph in the next-gen media war?
Granted, at this point, even with Blu-Ray in the lead, it could still easily go either way. Consumers have yet to buy either format in significant volume.
Both formats are backward compatible with standard DVDs.
Both formats are backward compatible with standard DVDs.
Players for both formats are backward compatible. However discs in either format are not. I guess my referral to backward compatibility was too vague.
What I was trying to get at is that many recent dvd players can already play near HD resolution (but lossy) files from home burnt DVD-Rs. Hollywood could have chosen to help standardize and optimize one of those already supported formats. This I would have have considered backward compatible. But backward compatibility is mutually exclusive with a new DRM scheme. For obvious reasons, they went with DRM instead of compatibility.
Consumers would have been better served by a more aggressive codec on the same physical media. Then when the next-gen technology was actually ready, and for a reasonable price, people would be interested in a Super-Duper-HD (but backward compatible) player.
The problem is codecs like AVC are already as efficient as they can be. There is nothing in the foreseeable future that can compress an excellent HD picture with advanced audio codecs onto a regular DVD. Some people claim you can recompress HD content into "near HD quality 720p" rips, but if you've spent $1k+ for a 1080p screen, why would you settle for "near HD quality"? Even if you could create this miraculous codec, it wouldn't be available on current DVD players, so you'd have to buy a new player anyway for this Super-Duper-HD.
Quote:
But at this point, it looks like Blu-Ray has pulled ahead. Why I'm not really sure. From a movie watching standpoint to your average joe, the only difference between the platforms is the price of the players.
The big difference is that there's a better selection of content on Blu-ray. Too many studios being Blu-ray exclusive. Also, you're discounting the PS3 factor. Even if just a small fraction of PS3 owners decide to buy a Blu-ray disc every once in a while, that's a lot of sales. Despite what others like to think here, a sale is a sale is a sale, where studios are concerned.
The problem is codecs like AVC are already as efficient as they can be. There is nothing in the foreseeable future that can compress an excellent HD picture with advanced audio codecs onto a regular DVD. Some people claim you can recompress HD content into "near HD quality 720p" rips, but if you've spent $1k+ for a 1080p screen, why would you settle for "near HD quality"? Even if you could create this miraculous codec, it wouldn't be available on current DVD players, so you'd have to buy a new player anyway for this Super-Duper-HD.
No room for improving codecs? I'll skip that argument even though it is so tempting.
Most consumers haven't spent $1k+ on a TV because they can't. Most consumers also can't spend multiple hundreds of dollars on a new video player. This isn't to say that there is no market for such devices or even that the market is small. The market is huge and will continue to grow. However, the market for $100 near-HD players would have been much larger.
My point isn't that there shouldn't be HD discs. What I'm saying is that we could have had near-HD discs with existing technologies and even some existing players, and that the only reason we don't is because hollywood chose DRM over consumer desires. To many people this is just good business sense and to be expected. To others, it demonstrates a broken market which ill serves the public.
Quote:
Also, you're discounting the PS3 factor. Even if just a small fraction of PS3 owners decide to buy a Blu-ray disc every once in a while, that's a lot of sales. Despite what others like to think here, a sale is a sale is a sale, where studios are concerned.
Did you even read my posts? It seems you're so passionate about this particular issue that you've projected a dissenting opinion upon me and then railed against it.
No room for improving codecs? I'll skip that argument even though it is so tempting.
Most consumers haven't spent $1k+ on a TV because they can't. Most consumers also can't spend multiple hundreds of dollars on a new video player. This isn't to say that there is no market for such devices or even that the market is small. The market is huge and will continue to grow. However, the market for $100 near-HD players would have been much larger.
My point isn't that there shouldn't be HD discs. What I'm saying is that we could have had near-HD discs with existing technologies and even some existing players, and that the only reason we don't is because hollywood chose DRM over consumer desires. To many people this is just good business sense and to be expected. To others, it demonstrates a broken market which ill serves the public.
Did you even read my posts? It seems you're so passionate about this particular issue that you've projected a dissenting opinion upon me and then railed against it.
Your point then seems to be, that a non existant format would be better?
I'm sure it would, or possibly wouldn't. The thread topic is quite clear, and while I welcome your input, it might be best to keep to the two formats that do actually exist.
Your point then seems to be, that a non existant format would be better?
I'm sure it would, or possibly wouldn't. The thread topic is quite clear, and while I welcome your input, it might be best to keep to the two formats that do actually exist.
horse, bolted, door, closed etc.
Wow, that is quite snide of you.
"non existant"? $100 DVD players already play various formats that would have been gobbled up by consumers.
Maybe you want to bury your head in the sand but hopefully most people don't. HD-DVD and Blu-ray don't exist in a vacumn. They're certainly competing with each other to become the next-gen format of choice. Their adoption rate is affected not only by each other, but also by consumer expectations based upon what current players can do.
"horse, bolted, door, closed etc."
Edit: More on the pertainance of the asside that seams to have overshadowed my direct Blu-Ray / HD-DVD opinions...
Competition from normal DVDs and anticipation of potential new formats greatly affects the adoption of both formats. It speaks directly to what the formats offer consumers, relative to real and imagined alternatives. Since consumer desires weren't paramount in designing these next-gen formats, their adoption rate vs SD DVDs has been impacted.
So the question is, which format will reach reach first, a level of penetration that causes adoption to quickly snowball? It still could be either or neither. Yet in my opinion, and contrary to my desires, blu-ray has taken a small lead.
No room for improving codecs? I'll skip that argument even though it is so tempting.
So where are these magic codecs? They don't have to be limited to hardware players, you know. Quicktime supported H.264/AVC long before Blu-ray. WMP supported VC-1 before HD DVD did. If there's a better codec, why isn't it in Quicktime or Windows Media or any other media player software out there like VLC or Mplayer? Nobody ever said there would never be anything better. But for the foreseeable future, AVC and VC-1 are the best codecs available on the market.
Quote:
Did you even read my posts? It seems you're so passionate about this particular issue that you've projected a dissenting opinion upon me and then railed against it.
No, I did no such thing. You wrote that you didn't know why Blu-ray pulled ahead. It's crystal clear why it pulled ahead and that's the PS3 factor. There's no other way to explain why HD DVD continues to claim it has more standalone players yet falls far behind in disc sales. Unless you think PS3 owners never buy discs and Blu-ray player owners buy more than twice as many discs per player (you'll have to argue with Murch about that one) or people without Blu-ray players just buy discs to put on their shelves.
It seems you're so passionate about your argument that you're not willing to follow simple logic.
BCI Home Entertainment has announced that they will release 'Ultimate Force' for Blu-ray on November 13th. The film stars Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) star Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic as an ex-cop who is recruited by a secret government organization to become an assassin. No specs have been announced for the release at this time.
Entertainment in Video (UK) has announced that they will be releasing their first wave of Blu-ray titles on August 13th. Their first seven releases feature three titles already on Blu-ray in the US ('The Departed', 'Phantom of the Opera', and 'Million Dollar Baby'), two HD DVD exclusive titles in the US ('Brokeback Mountain' and 'Lucky Number Slevin') and two titles eagerly awaited for by Blu-ray fans ('Gangs of New York' and 'The Crow').
No specs have been given at this time, but expect a 1080p transfer. Word is that these titles will all be coded Region B, so US fans will have to wait a little while longer. See below for the extra content provided on each title.
Gangs of New York
* Director's Commentary
* Set Design
* Exploring the set of Gangs of New York
* Costume Design
* History of the Five Points
* Discovery Channel Special: ?Uncovering the Real Gangs of New York?
* U2 Music Video: The Hands That Built America
* Making Gangs of New York
* Trailer
The Phantom of the Opera (2004)
* The Making of Phantom of the Opera
* Production: Swarovski Featurette
* Special FX Featurette
* Music/Recording Featurette
* Production Design Featurette
* Costumes/Make-Up Featurette
* Editing Featurette
* Alex Bailey's Production Stills
* ?Behind the Mask?: The Story of the Phantom of the Opera
* The History
* The Music of the Phantom of the Opera Featurette
* ?The Phantom of the Opera?: Steve Harley and Sarah Brightman
* ?The Music of the Night?: Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman
* ?Wishing you were Somehow Here Again?: Sarah Brightman
* Look out for hidden extras!
Million Dollar Baby
* ?Born to Fight?
* Producer's Round 15
* James Lipton Takes on Three
Brokeback Mountain
* On Being a Cowboy: Actors discuss their preparation for their roles
* Directing from the Heart: Ang Lee
* From Script to Screen: Interviews with Larry McMurty & Diana Ossana
* Sharing the Story: The Making of ?Brokeback Mountain?
The Departed
* Additional Scenes with introductions by Martin Scorsese
* Stranger than Fiction: The story of the Boston mob ? The real-life gangster behind Jack Nicholson's character
* Crossing Criminal Cultures: How Little Italy's crime and violence influence Scorsese's work
* Theatrical Trailer
The Crow (Special Extended Edition)
* Commentary by Jeff Most and John Shirley
* Deleted Footage and Extended Scenes
* Featurette
* Profile of James O'Barr
* Brandon Lee's Last On-Screen Interview
* Poster Art
* Production Design
* Storyboard Sequences
Lucky Number Slevin
* Making of Lucky Number Slevin
* Trailer
And in other news, it seems HD DUD has found a new backer...
The Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3) has struck back against the Xbox 360 , outselling the Microsoft console in the first week since its price cut. Sony cut the PS3 price by $100 (£50) and in the week that followed, 41,005 PS3s were sold, as opposed to just 35,084 Xbox 360s.
Predictably the Nintendo Wii is still putting both to shame, clocking up 76,394 sales in the same time period.
Will this renewed PS3 popularity last? It's impossible to tell at this early stage. But Sony has confirmed that it plans to phase out this discounted 60GB PS3 in favour of the more expensive 80GB version, so the status quo could return when that happens.
Universal Studios Home Entertainment is adamant about exclusively offering HD DVD titles, despite protests by enthusiasts during the Home Media Expo here that it should work to end the high-definition format war.
Starting with the first season release of Heroes on HD DVD on Aug. 28, all new releases in the format from Universal will contain Web-enabled features. The interactivity is intended to underscore HD DVD advantages over Blu-ray Disc, whose studio backers have not yet starting offering Web-enabled Blu-ray titles. Most available Blu-ray players do not feature Internet connectivity.
With Heroes, consumers who buy the HD DVD will be immersed in the show?s official Web site, but officials declined to share details, which will be publicly announced during an NBC-Universal session at Comic-Con in San Diego, Calif., later this month.
?We are targeting the MySpace generation,? said Ken Graffeo, Universal executive VP of marketing and head of high-definition. ?We are developing that same community. With Heroes, producer Tim Kring is very involved in letting HD DVD users exclusively participate in the Heroes community.?
Blu-ray players ?don?t have the consistency in their machines to be able to handle this,? Graffeo added.
During a Wednesday session for Home Theater Forum members, Microsoft HD DVD evangelist Kevin Collins gave Home Theater Forum members the first public look at Heroes scenes and showed off some included picture-in-picture interactivity, another feature not yet offered on Blu-ray discs.
During a Q&A session with Collins later in the day, HTF members seemed grateful to hear about the format?s plans. But many still seemed angry over Universal?s HD DVD-only decision.
?I have Blu-ray. When are you going to go Blu-ray?? asked exasperated HTF member Dan Deganis, who recently purchased a Blu-ray-capable PlayStation 3.
Graffeo, Collins and other panelists acknowledged that PS3 owners far outweigh HD DVD player owners. But they argued that Toshiba and Hewlett-Packard are soon releasing a slew of HD DVD drives for notebooks and PCs.
?I don?t watch movies on my computer,? shot back Deganis, which was met with cheers from the audience.
Digital Bits Web site founder Bill Hunt told the panelists about a family friend who bought a Toshiba player quickly after the company reduced prices to $299. The machine was just as quickly returned to the store after the friend?s wife mistakenly bought Blu-ray titles Ice Age and Pirates of the Caribbean, not realizing they were incompatible with the new player.
?The average consumer is just sitting out on the sidelines,? said Hunt, adding that a lot of people are enjoying the advanced quality on upscaling DVD players, not feeling it?s necessary to also buy true high-def players. ?How can this ever be a mass market??
Digital Bits Web site founder Bill Hunt and HTF members also questioned Universal?s and Microsoft?s stance that interactivity gives HD DVD a serious leg up over Blu-ray.
With picture-in-picture, HTF?s Sam Posten bemoaned the complexity, saying ?I can?t even explain this stuff to my mom. It makes it harder to get to the actual [film] feature. Who is going to sit through a movie three times to hopefully see a bug in the corner of the screen??
Hunt chimed in, ?And who is to say that a year from now, Blu-ray won?t be able to add these things anyway??
Graffeo consistently defended Universal?s position, pointing out that outside of the U.S. HD DVD is far more pervasive than Blu-ray. Some Blu-ray studios do not have the international distribution rights to titles, which then are delivered by indie companies to non-U.S. retailers. Many of these indies, including Studio Canal, are choosing to produce in the cheaper-to-replicate HD DVD format.
?In Europe, 80% of the high-def content is HD vs. Blu-ray,? said Graffeo. ?We need to look at this business on a global basis.?
Wow, it was met with cheers from the audience. Speaks volumes when you consider that it was a HD DVD event.
Time for you to go Blu Universal...$hit or get off the pot.
Digital Bits Web site founder Bill Hunt and HTF members also questioned Universal?s and Microsoft?s stance that interactivity gives HD DVD a serious leg up over Blu-ray
Hunt chimed in, ?And who is to say that a year from now, Blu-ray won?t be able to add these things anyway??
.
What a tool.
Yes Billy...let me wait a year and pay more money for something I could have today. Moron.
You make it sound like they surpassed the installed base, while all it was is just for a week of sales. The installed base of Xbox 360 vs PS3 in America:
360: 6.54m America
PS3: 1.62m America
so still awhile outside of overtaking the 360. A long while...
And really why does that matter in the context of Blu-ray vs HD DVD? Sure the PS3 is a blu-ray player at heart, but the 360 alone is not. And not every PS3 is used for blu-ray. Yes, the PS3 has helped (if not saved) blu-ray, but woo-hoo if it beats the 360 for a week of sales. But, since we are troting out sales numbers of video game consoles: This just in, the PS3 is getting <b>spanked</b> everywhere right now:
3rd place in the US (and not even close to 2nd)
2nd place in Japan (not close to 1st being much closer to 3rd)
3rd place in Europe (with about a million behind the wii)
And as Ars says:
Quote:
As you can see from our graphs, Sony needs an upswing in sales before they fall too far behind. The 360 may have begun to level off, though, and this is the time for Sony to press its newfound advantage. While Microsoft's head start in North America is formidable, Sony is still doing moderately well in Japan. This is the time to get aggressive: deeper price cuts, as well as pack-in deals with games and Blu-ray discs would be the simplest ways of making the PlayStation 3 more attractive to price-conscious consumers.
Unfortunately for both Microsoft and Sony, there doesn't seem to be much hope of catching up to Nintendo in Japan; the race right now looks to be one for second place.
If Sony isn't careful, and loses any more exclusives, they could fall to 3rd with no signs of life. But this really doens't matter at all in terms of the hi-def market.
What it is about this subject that causes discussions to so quickly degenerate into flame fests?
There was no flaming involved, only straight questions. It's become way too easy for people to just say, "I was flamed" and leave a topic without having to back up their own points. Don't make a statement if you're not willing to defend it.
If you want to see flaming, see Murch's latest, with his "tool" and "moron" indictments of Bill Hunt. That and his use of the diminutive "Billy" just oozes contempt.
Universal can't seem to do much right nowadays. It doesn't want to get out of sixth place among the major studios. It doesn't want to negotiate with the iTunes store. It owns a big chunk of the third-place broadcast network. It's sticking with HD DVD until the bitter end. It's hard to imagine what they could possibly do wrong next.
Thanks, but I have to give props to Jef @ blu-ray.com for the pic.
You don't like The Crow? I think that movie would be fabulous on Blu-ray.
Well just for equality sake, if it said Blu-ray, I woulda laughed too
The Crow, yeah its a great movie, I saw it on release, I bought the VHS, and recently I bought the DVD, do I want or need to buy it again?
DAMN! don't make me think about it cos you know, once the wheels start turning.. its like a damn itch and I'll "have to" buy it.. no I won't..yes I will.. damn it you've given me a twitch!
Super Multi Blue, Blu-ray, HD DVD, LightScribe, GGW-H20LI, GGC-H20LI -- pay close attention, these are the terms you'll need to familiarize yourself with for this post about LG's latest multi-format optical drives. The $500 GGW-H20LI reads both HD disc formats, and writes at 6x dual-layer BD-R/RE discs (as well as DVD±RW), while the completely differently named $400 GGC-H20LI can read back both formats, but only write DVD±RW and CD-R/RW.
Also in LG hybrid high def disc news, the company is offering 10 HD movies on either Blu-ray or HD DVD for free when you snag a $1,200 Super Blu BH100, but only until July 21st -- that'd be this Saturday. Also of note, LG says we should "stay tuned" for a followup to said BH100, but it isn't prepared to announce further details. Bummer.
Niiiice. By next year these drives should almost halve again and the all important $499 or less Universal player will be here effectively ending the war for many people.
Niiiice. By next year these drives should almost halve again and the all important $499 or less Universal player will be here effectively ending the war for many people.
How is half of $1200 less than or equal to $499? And by next year both formats will below $499 anyway. Blu-Ray R/W drives are $300 retail already. Getting close to the range we may start seeing them as a BTO option on Macs.
Unless there are some Universal titles worth a $200 tax to me there's no real reason to get the hybrid drive is there?
Comments
Ok, time for me to weigh in after taking a few dozen page hiatus from posting to the thread.
I've been hoping that neither format would win. From the beginning, I've felt that the formats were designed without the consumer's best interests in mind.
We could have easily been watching a next gen format by now, and for the same cost as SD dvds. But instead hollywood had to justify new digital restrictions management. The only way to possible sell that was to increase disc capacity and drop backward compatability.
Consumers would have been better served by a more aggressive codec on the same physical media. Then when the next-gen technology was actually ready, and for a reasonable price, people would be interested in a Super-Duper-HD (but backward compatible) player.
But you're probably not interested in that stance anymore...
If I had to choose one over the other, my original preference would have been for HD-DVD to win. I'm a proponent of cheap hardware.
But at this point, it looks like Blu-Ray has pulled ahead. Why I'm not really sure. From a movie watching standpoint to your average joe, the only difference between the platforms is the price of the players.
It will be interesting to look back and try to figure out how big of a role the PS3 played. Also, it will be interesting to see how the PS3 is perceived. Will the inclusion of an expensive drive stagnate the gaming platform and hurt sony? Or will that be outweighed by their triumph in the next-gen media war?
Granted, at this point, even with Blu-Ray in the lead, it could still easily go either way. Consumers have yet to buy either format in significant volume.
Both formats are backward compatible with standard DVDs.
Both formats are backward compatible with standard DVDs.
Players for both formats are backward compatible. However discs in either format are not. I guess my referral to backward compatibility was too vague.
What I was trying to get at is that many recent dvd players can already play near HD resolution (but lossy) files from home burnt DVD-Rs. Hollywood could have chosen to help standardize and optimize one of those already supported formats. This I would have have considered backward compatible. But backward compatibility is mutually exclusive with a new DRM scheme. For obvious reasons, they went with DRM instead of compatibility.
Consumers would have been better served by a more aggressive codec on the same physical media. Then when the next-gen technology was actually ready, and for a reasonable price, people would be interested in a Super-Duper-HD (but backward compatible) player.
The problem is codecs like AVC are already as efficient as they can be. There is nothing in the foreseeable future that can compress an excellent HD picture with advanced audio codecs onto a regular DVD. Some people claim you can recompress HD content into "near HD quality 720p" rips, but if you've spent $1k+ for a 1080p screen, why would you settle for "near HD quality"? Even if you could create this miraculous codec, it wouldn't be available on current DVD players, so you'd have to buy a new player anyway for this Super-Duper-HD.
But at this point, it looks like Blu-Ray has pulled ahead. Why I'm not really sure. From a movie watching standpoint to your average joe, the only difference between the platforms is the price of the players.
The big difference is that there's a better selection of content on Blu-ray. Too many studios being Blu-ray exclusive. Also, you're discounting the PS3 factor. Even if just a small fraction of PS3 owners decide to buy a Blu-ray disc every once in a while, that's a lot of sales. Despite what others like to think here, a sale is a sale is a sale, where studios are concerned.
The problem is codecs like AVC are already as efficient as they can be. There is nothing in the foreseeable future that can compress an excellent HD picture with advanced audio codecs onto a regular DVD. Some people claim you can recompress HD content into "near HD quality 720p" rips, but if you've spent $1k+ for a 1080p screen, why would you settle for "near HD quality"? Even if you could create this miraculous codec, it wouldn't be available on current DVD players, so you'd have to buy a new player anyway for this Super-Duper-HD.
No room for improving codecs? I'll skip that argument even though it is so tempting.
Most consumers haven't spent $1k+ on a TV because they can't. Most consumers also can't spend multiple hundreds of dollars on a new video player. This isn't to say that there is no market for such devices or even that the market is small. The market is huge and will continue to grow. However, the market for $100 near-HD players would have been much larger.
My point isn't that there shouldn't be HD discs. What I'm saying is that we could have had near-HD discs with existing technologies and even some existing players, and that the only reason we don't is because hollywood chose DRM over consumer desires. To many people this is just good business sense and to be expected. To others, it demonstrates a broken market which ill serves the public.
Also, you're discounting the PS3 factor. Even if just a small fraction of PS3 owners decide to buy a Blu-ray disc every once in a while, that's a lot of sales. Despite what others like to think here, a sale is a sale is a sale, where studios are concerned.
Did you even read my posts?
No room for improving codecs? I'll skip that argument even though it is so tempting.
Most consumers haven't spent $1k+ on a TV because they can't. Most consumers also can't spend multiple hundreds of dollars on a new video player. This isn't to say that there is no market for such devices or even that the market is small. The market is huge and will continue to grow. However, the market for $100 near-HD players would have been much larger.
My point isn't that there shouldn't be HD discs. What I'm saying is that we could have had near-HD discs with existing technologies and even some existing players, and that the only reason we don't is because hollywood chose DRM over consumer desires. To many people this is just good business sense and to be expected. To others, it demonstrates a broken market which ill serves the public.
Did you even read my posts?
Your point then seems to be, that a non existant format would be better?
I'm sure it would, or possibly wouldn't. The thread topic is quite clear, and while I welcome your input, it might be best to keep to the two formats that do actually exist.
horse, bolted, door, closed etc.
Your point then seems to be, that a non existant format would be better?
I'm sure it would, or possibly wouldn't. The thread topic is quite clear, and while I welcome your input, it might be best to keep to the two formats that do actually exist.
horse, bolted, door, closed etc.
Wow, that is quite snide of you.
"non existant"? $100 DVD players already play various formats that would have been gobbled up by consumers.
Maybe you want to bury your head in the sand but hopefully most people don't. HD-DVD and Blu-ray don't exist in a vacumn. They're certainly competing with each other to become the next-gen format of choice. Their adoption rate is affected not only by each other, but also by consumer expectations based upon what current players can do.
"horse, bolted, door, closed etc."
Edit: More on the pertainance of the asside that seams to have overshadowed my direct Blu-Ray / HD-DVD opinions...
Competition from normal DVDs and anticipation of potential new formats greatly affects the adoption of both formats. It speaks directly to what the formats offer consumers, relative to real and imagined alternatives. Since consumer desires weren't paramount in designing these next-gen formats, their adoption rate vs SD DVDs has been impacted.
So the question is, which format will reach reach first, a level of penetration that causes adoption to quickly snowball? It still could be either or neither. Yet in my opinion, and contrary to my desires, blu-ray has taken a small lead.
No room for improving codecs? I'll skip that argument even though it is so tempting.
So where are these magic codecs? They don't have to be limited to hardware players, you know. Quicktime supported H.264/AVC long before Blu-ray. WMP supported VC-1 before HD DVD did. If there's a better codec, why isn't it in Quicktime or Windows Media or any other media player software out there like VLC or Mplayer? Nobody ever said there would never be anything better. But for the foreseeable future, AVC and VC-1 are the best codecs available on the market.
Did you even read my posts?
No, I did no such thing. You wrote that you didn't know why Blu-ray pulled ahead. It's crystal clear why it pulled ahead and that's the PS3 factor. There's no other way to explain why HD DVD continues to claim it has more standalone players yet falls far behind in disc sales. Unless you think PS3 owners never buy discs and Blu-ray player owners buy more than twice as many discs per player (you'll have to argue with Murch about that one) or people without Blu-ray players just buy discs to put on their shelves.
It seems you're so passionate about your argument that you're not willing to follow simple logic.
We now return to the regularly scheduled, partisan bickering already in progress.
BCI Plans First Blu-ray Release
http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=328
BCI Home Entertainment has announced that they will release 'Ultimate Force' for Blu-ray on November 13th. The film stars Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) star Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic as an ex-cop who is recruited by a secret government organization to become an assassin. No specs have been announced for the release at this time.
Entertainment in Video Announces Blu-ray Support
http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=329
Entertainment in Video (UK) has announced that they will be releasing their first wave of Blu-ray titles on August 13th. Their first seven releases feature three titles already on Blu-ray in the US ('The Departed', 'Phantom of the Opera', and 'Million Dollar Baby'), two HD DVD exclusive titles in the US ('Brokeback Mountain' and 'Lucky Number Slevin') and two titles eagerly awaited for by Blu-ray fans ('Gangs of New York' and 'The Crow').
No specs have been given at this time, but expect a 1080p transfer. Word is that these titles will all be coded Region B, so US fans will have to wait a little while longer. See below for the extra content provided on each title.
Gangs of New York
* Director's Commentary
* Set Design
* Exploring the set of Gangs of New York
* Costume Design
* History of the Five Points
* Discovery Channel Special: ?Uncovering the Real Gangs of New York?
* U2 Music Video: The Hands That Built America
* Making Gangs of New York
* Trailer
The Phantom of the Opera (2004)
* The Making of Phantom of the Opera
* Production: Swarovski Featurette
* Special FX Featurette
* Music/Recording Featurette
* Production Design Featurette
* Costumes/Make-Up Featurette
* Editing Featurette
* Alex Bailey's Production Stills
* ?Behind the Mask?: The Story of the Phantom of the Opera
* The History
* The Music of the Phantom of the Opera Featurette
* ?The Phantom of the Opera?: Steve Harley and Sarah Brightman
* ?The Music of the Night?: Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman
* ?Wishing you were Somehow Here Again?: Sarah Brightman
* Look out for hidden extras!
Million Dollar Baby
* ?Born to Fight?
* Producer's Round 15
* James Lipton Takes on Three
Brokeback Mountain
* On Being a Cowboy: Actors discuss their preparation for their roles
* Directing from the Heart: Ang Lee
* From Script to Screen: Interviews with Larry McMurty & Diana Ossana
* Sharing the Story: The Making of ?Brokeback Mountain?
The Departed
* Additional Scenes with introductions by Martin Scorsese
* Stranger than Fiction: The story of the Boston mob ? The real-life gangster behind Jack Nicholson's character
* Crossing Criminal Cultures: How Little Italy's crime and violence influence Scorsese's work
* Theatrical Trailer
The Crow (Special Extended Edition)
* Commentary by Jeff Most and John Shirley
* Deleted Footage and Extended Scenes
* Featurette
* Profile of James O'Barr
* Brandon Lee's Last On-Screen Interview
* Poster Art
* Production Design
* Storyboard Sequences
Lucky Number Slevin
* Making of Lucky Number Slevin
* Trailer
And in other news, it seems HD DUD has found a new backer...
Wow, that is quite snide of you.
I did post a reply about I reghreted that you thought I came across as snide, this was not my intention.
Then I adressed some other points that Kolchak has expressed just as well, so I won't bother repeating them.
Theres a thunder storm here, perhaps thats where my post went
And in other news, it seems HD DUD has found a new backer...
Man thats funny!
but I am NOT buying the crow AGAIN
Man thats funny!
but I am NOT buying the crow AGAIN
Thanks, but I have to give props to Jef @ blu-ray.com for the pic.
You don't like The Crow? I think that movie would be fabulous on Blu-ray.
Anyhow, here is some more interesting news on the Blu-ray front...
PlayStation 3 overtakes Xbox 360 in America
http://www.tech.co.uk/home-entertain...eid=1779336277
The Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3) has struck back against the Xbox 360 , outselling the Microsoft console in the first week since its price cut. Sony cut the PS3 price by $100 (£50) and in the week that followed, 41,005 PS3s were sold, as opposed to just 35,084 Xbox 360s.
Predictably the Nintendo Wii is still putting both to shame, clocking up 76,394 sales in the same time period.
Will this renewed PS3 popularity last? It's impossible to tell at this early stage. But Sony has confirmed that it plans to phase out this discounted 60GB PS3 in favour of the more expensive 80GB version, so the status quo could return when that happens.
http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6461381.html
Universal Studios Home Entertainment is adamant about exclusively offering HD DVD titles, despite protests by enthusiasts during the Home Media Expo here that it should work to end the high-definition format war.
Starting with the first season release of Heroes on HD DVD on Aug. 28, all new releases in the format from Universal will contain Web-enabled features. The interactivity is intended to underscore HD DVD advantages over Blu-ray Disc, whose studio backers have not yet starting offering Web-enabled Blu-ray titles. Most available Blu-ray players do not feature Internet connectivity.
With Heroes, consumers who buy the HD DVD will be immersed in the show?s official Web site, but officials declined to share details, which will be publicly announced during an NBC-Universal session at Comic-Con in San Diego, Calif., later this month.
?We are targeting the MySpace generation,? said Ken Graffeo, Universal executive VP of marketing and head of high-definition. ?We are developing that same community. With Heroes, producer Tim Kring is very involved in letting HD DVD users exclusively participate in the Heroes community.?
Blu-ray players ?don?t have the consistency in their machines to be able to handle this,? Graffeo added.
During a Wednesday session for Home Theater Forum members, Microsoft HD DVD evangelist Kevin Collins gave Home Theater Forum members the first public look at Heroes scenes and showed off some included picture-in-picture interactivity, another feature not yet offered on Blu-ray discs.
During a Q&A session with Collins later in the day, HTF members seemed grateful to hear about the format?s plans. But many still seemed angry over Universal?s HD DVD-only decision.
?I have Blu-ray. When are you going to go Blu-ray?? asked exasperated HTF member Dan Deganis, who recently purchased a Blu-ray-capable PlayStation 3.
Graffeo, Collins and other panelists acknowledged that PS3 owners far outweigh HD DVD player owners. But they argued that Toshiba and Hewlett-Packard are soon releasing a slew of HD DVD drives for notebooks and PCs.
?I don?t watch movies on my computer,? shot back Deganis, which was met with cheers from the audience.
Digital Bits Web site founder Bill Hunt told the panelists about a family friend who bought a Toshiba player quickly after the company reduced prices to $299. The machine was just as quickly returned to the store after the friend?s wife mistakenly bought Blu-ray titles Ice Age and Pirates of the Caribbean, not realizing they were incompatible with the new player.
?The average consumer is just sitting out on the sidelines,? said Hunt, adding that a lot of people are enjoying the advanced quality on upscaling DVD players, not feeling it?s necessary to also buy true high-def players. ?How can this ever be a mass market??
Digital Bits Web site founder Bill Hunt and HTF members also questioned Universal?s and Microsoft?s stance that interactivity gives HD DVD a serious leg up over Blu-ray.
With picture-in-picture, HTF?s Sam Posten bemoaned the complexity, saying ?I can?t even explain this stuff to my mom. It makes it harder to get to the actual [film] feature. Who is going to sit through a movie three times to hopefully see a bug in the corner of the screen??
Hunt chimed in, ?And who is to say that a year from now, Blu-ray won?t be able to add these things anyway??
Graffeo consistently defended Universal?s position, pointing out that outside of the U.S. HD DVD is far more pervasive than Blu-ray. Some Blu-ray studios do not have the international distribution rights to titles, which then are delivered by indie companies to non-U.S. retailers. Many of these indies, including Studio Canal, are choosing to produce in the cheaper-to-replicate HD DVD format.
?In Europe, 80% of the high-def content is HD vs. Blu-ray,? said Graffeo. ?We need to look at this business on a global basis.?
Wow, it was met with cheers from the audience. Speaks volumes when you consider that it was a HD DVD event.
Time for you to go Blu Universal...$hit or get off the pot.
Digital Bits Web site founder Bill Hunt and HTF members also questioned Universal?s and Microsoft?s stance that interactivity gives HD DVD a serious leg up over Blu-ray
Hunt chimed in, ?And who is to say that a year from now, Blu-ray won?t be able to add these things anyway??
.
What a tool.
Yes Billy...let me wait a year and pay more money for something I could have today. Moron.
PlayStation 3 overtakes Xbox 360 in America
http://www.tech.co.uk/home-entertain...eid=1779336277
You make it sound like they surpassed the installed base, while all it was is just for a week of sales. The installed base of Xbox 360 vs PS3 in America:
360: 6.54m America
PS3: 1.62m America
so still awhile outside of overtaking the 360. A long while...
And really why does that matter in the context of Blu-ray vs HD DVD? Sure the PS3 is a blu-ray player at heart, but the 360 alone is not. And not every PS3 is used for blu-ray. Yes, the PS3 has helped (if not saved) blu-ray, but woo-hoo if it beats the 360 for a week of sales. But, since we are troting out sales numbers of video game consoles: This just in, the PS3 is getting <b>spanked</b> everywhere right now:
3rd place in the US (and not even close to 2nd)
2nd place in Japan (not close to 1st being much closer to 3rd)
3rd place in Europe (with about a million behind the wii)
And as Ars says:
As you can see from our graphs, Sony needs an upswing in sales before they fall too far behind. The 360 may have begun to level off, though, and this is the time for Sony to press its newfound advantage. While Microsoft's head start in North America is formidable, Sony is still doing moderately well in Japan. This is the time to get aggressive: deeper price cuts, as well as pack-in deals with games and Blu-ray discs would be the simplest ways of making the PlayStation 3 more attractive to price-conscious consumers.
Unfortunately for both Microsoft and Sony, there doesn't seem to be much hope of catching up to Nintendo in Japan; the race right now looks to be one for second place.
If Sony isn't careful, and loses any more exclusives, they could fall to 3rd with no signs of life. But this really doens't matter at all in terms of the hi-def market.
What it is about this subject that causes discussions to so quickly degenerate into flame fests?
There was no flaming involved, only straight questions. It's become way too easy for people to just say, "I was flamed" and leave a topic without having to back up their own points. Don't make a statement if you're not willing to defend it.
If you want to see flaming, see Murch's latest, with his "tool" and "moron" indictments of Bill Hunt. That and his use of the diminutive "Billy" just oozes contempt.
HOME MEDIA EXPO: Some protest the studio's HD DVD-only stance
http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6461381.html
Universal can't seem to do much right nowadays. It doesn't want to get out of sixth place among the major studios. It doesn't want to negotiate with the iTunes store. It owns a big chunk of the third-place broadcast network. It's sticking with HD DVD until the bitter end. It's hard to imagine what they could possibly do wrong next.
Thanks, but I have to give props to Jef @ blu-ray.com for the pic.
You don't like The Crow? I think that movie would be fabulous on Blu-ray.
Well just for equality sake, if it said Blu-ray, I woulda laughed too
The Crow, yeah its a great movie, I saw it on release, I bought the VHS, and recently I bought the DVD, do I want or need to buy it again?
DAMN! don't make me think about it
Super Multi Blue, Blu-ray, HD DVD, LightScribe, GGW-H20LI, GGC-H20LI -- pay close attention, these are the terms you'll need to familiarize yourself with for this post about LG's latest multi-format optical drives. The $500 GGW-H20LI reads both HD disc formats, and writes at 6x dual-layer BD-R/RE discs (as well as DVD±RW), while the completely differently named $400 GGC-H20LI can read back both formats, but only write DVD±RW and CD-R/RW.
Also in LG hybrid high def disc news, the company is offering 10 HD movies on either Blu-ray or HD DVD for free when you snag a $1,200 Super Blu BH100, but only until July 21st -- that'd be this Saturday. Also of note, LG says we should "stay tuned" for a followup to said BH100, but it isn't prepared to announce further details. Bummer.
Niiiice. By next year these drives should almost halve again and the all important $499 or less Universal player will be here effectively ending the war for many people.
Niiiice. By next year these drives should almost halve again and the all important $499 or less Universal player will be here effectively ending the war for many people.
How is half of $1200 less than or equal to $499? And by next year both formats will below $499 anyway. Blu-Ray R/W drives are $300 retail already. Getting close to the range we may start seeing them as a BTO option on Macs.
Unless there are some Universal titles worth a $200 tax to me there's no real reason to get the hybrid drive is there?
Vinea