Comments on: HD DVD vs. Blu-ray: what it takes to win a format war

By: itoldyouso

itoldyouso — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 19:24:18 +0000

wow…you are a blue ray bitch MS. jeez. right to the point, enjoy shrek bastards. second point, blue ray is getting some dvds that are from fox, and i think soon disney that are called something like platinum dvds. they are everything that is HD-dvds but triple better sound, graphics will believe it or not a little bit sharper than the original blue ray, and will have full special futures which is what origninal blues are lacking.
http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=36456
still a long time though, but pretty good.

By: M$, gotta pay the billz

M$, gotta pay the billz — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 00:37:01 +0000

WOW! Bigrich, you are in rare form on that one.
Total FUD. The author of the Economist article is clearly a HD-DVD supporter, and he chose to leave out certain facts that left Blu in a bad light. For instance, speaking of the Paramount issue, he made no mention that Fox is now back releasing for Blu with more announced titles than Paramount for the years end. The data layer on Blu is indeed shallower, that's what the insanly durable hardcoat layer on them is for, something HD can't do. As to HD being stamped out on existing DVD lines, only if the equipment is newer than 2002. These manufacturing lines don't upgrade gear every year, there are a lot of lines that would cost even more to comvert to HD than to Blu out there. BTW, those facts come from a MS VP Insider on a very well known forum. Current data puts Blu stand-alones out selling HD's for the last 12 weeks. Overall HD only holds 55% of the stand-alone market. As for the programming stuff, insiders on that well known forum have been debating this issue for a while now. The consensus now seems that BD-J is not really that difficult albiet harder, at least until outside companies start distributing shortcut tools. The internet connection…Well, HD does have that…just let me know when they really plan on utilizing it, and not for stupid pay-to-download screensavers and trailers.
This last week saw the IFA and Cedia shows which focused heavily on Blu and HD. At IFA Blu announced two Blu camcorders and at least 10 brand new Blu players, one being a Daewoo with profile 2.0. Daewoo did not announce a price but they are known for affordable products. Before you say Daewoo is crap and you get what you pay for, that certainly goes both ways (Venturer HD player 1080i). Also announced for Blu were a handful of exclusive movies. Studio Canal (a MAJOR movie studio in europe) formerly HD exclusive announced it's first Blu-Ray title. Ridley Scott demanded that Medusa, a HD exclusive distributer, release one of his movies on Blu in Italy. Roger Ebert put forth an article in which he states Sony always has the better format, and gets bullied for it (he did also say he will not purchase a HiDef player until the war is over). All this coming from and during the IFA show. What did HD-DVD have at IFA…nothing. I am dead serious, nothing new at all. The only thing they had to say at their conference was their players are cheap, and Harry Potter is coming to HD (skillfully neglecting to say Potter will also be on Blu). That is all.
CEDIA offered almost nothing new for both formats. Sony had two new players, both very high in price (CEDIA is all about ultra high end stuff). HD had a $900 dual format player. That is all from CEDIA.
I do think it is very important to note that this whole format war is really only in the US. Every other country is now majority Blu dominant. Even long time HD hold-outs like France, Germany and Australia are now dominated by Blu. In Japan it isn't even funny. Japan is now over 90% Blu, and that is stand-alone players in addition to software.
The majority of realeases for quite some time have been with BD50's. At first there were a lot of BD25 releases, mostly from Paramount and Warner, however now nearly all are BD50.
Sony pushed to bankruptcy? Let me guess, you HEARD that somewhere right? That is a bold-faced flat-out lie and you know it.

Well there ya go riches. Gotta balance out your FUD with some facts from time to time. I ain't mad at ya tho, maybe your just to busy to keep up with facts. I did hear that the TL51 finally got approved. Too bad it will probably never see use for movies as all HD owners would have to buy new players for them to work, that is if they work at all, if combo failure rate is any indication. Even IF the TL51 could do movies, it still doesn't have any higher bandwidth which is what really counts if you want better looking picture and lossless sound.

P.S. Anyone that's heard today about Warner considering an offer from Tosh to go HD exclusive, it's old news from a few weeks ago. They debunked that rumor and are commited to dual format for the forseeable future.

By: Ray

Ray — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 18:52:13 +0000

Wow, you know the only thing that sucks about having to work and go to college is that you don't have much freetime…i didn't even get to finish bioshock, what a bummshit. Oh well i guess this is growing up. I got the chance to play resistance and warhawk over at one of my college buddies house. Resistance is so a call of duty type of thing, and warhawk…its not a bad game that one, but let me tell you this it feels alot better playing with the analog sticks that the sixaxis bullshit.

By: BigRich

BigRich — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 11:35:46 +0000

A good read http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9689600

By: BigRich

BigRich — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 11:15:43 +0000

He is right blu ray disc are more expenisve. Three reasons why they are cheaper now. One they are not using the 50 gig disc, they have no internet features so there is no need. But they have had a deadline this year when all discs need to be realeased on 50 gig. Let's see if they can do that.. Two HD DVD has combo discs which adds a few bucks so that you get the DVD version as well. I have grown tired of this either do it for free, or just drop it all together. Warner has decided to reissue all of it's combos, smart move. Three right now the format war has pushed Sony to bankruptcy. They can not go any cheaper on their hardware, so they are trying to gain money through dropping the software price. Bluray is a very expensive technology, which might be it's downfall.

By: what

what — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 19:30:38 +0000

everywhere that i go blue ray discs are LESS expensive. i dont know where you go but they are ripping you off.

By: adviser

adviser — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 08:18:09 +0000

Blu-ray discs are more expensive, but hold more data—there, that's all.

By: BigRich

BigRich — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 19:45:11 +0000

M$
I knew you would have something to say about all this. You know what your right it is a bit of good news for HD DVD, and at the same time a blow to Bluray. Honestly I would take paramount and dreamworks over Fox any day. And we don't know at this point what really lies in the future. I mean with this happening who knows what the future holds. It just goes to show big things are capable of happening.
In a business world, you'll soon find out that it takes money to make money. I am not going to sit here and throw Sony under the bus and say they have also paid studios. I don't know if they did, but part of me believes there are quite some incentives to going blu outside of pretoction and stuff like that.
As far as protection goes both formats have been hacked. You know it's going to happen whether Blu or red someone wil always figure it out…
Right now things are a lil limbo with Warner Bros. If they were to swing in either direction, I would say it would almost lock it up. But more so for HD DVD. Think about it as an adult. Universal, paramount, and warner. Vs Sony, Disney, fox, mgm. Now granted the blu squad has some titles. But I thought about it with Disney. Outside of pirates, what is it that i really want??? Cinderella? no, Ratatouille? Maybe, maybe cars. But that is really it. As an adult I want action packed movies. One thing and maybe the only thing BLU realy has going is Disney.
So right now things are heating up. I have both formats to which ever ends up winning is going to be ok with me. But I do much prefer HD DVD. Somehting about the picture just tops blu. As far as sound goes they are both great.
Now my bones witht he PS3. To me it seems as if Sony is purposely holding out on games so it can be pushed to buy movies. Home seems cool but I mean what does that really do for us? What I need is Metal Gear solid 4…. I mean Lair got a mediocre review and honestly how much fun can it be to fly around on a dragon? I need guns and missles force feedback int he remotes. The reason why I loved the PS2 so much.
I hated Xbox 1, but am very happy with what I have experienced with the 360 so far… Hopefully the PS3 picks it up in the gaming dept. Until then mine wil only be used for BLU.

By: M$, gotta pay the billz

M$, gotta pay the billz — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 10:15:12 +0000

There's the bigrich I remember, finally got a bit of good news eh. You were pretty quiet for a while. Well, of course I want Paramount movies, as well as Universal movies for that matter. However Para wasn't doing a whole hell of a lot for Blu, until they went exclusive and awoke Fox from their slumber. Looks like they've been busy in their absence. Fox's current release schedule blows away what Paramount had announced, and Fox has been announcing new Blus for release every day since they came back. Don't forget Spielberg wants dual release for all his movies that Para owns.
But hey, congrats, they finally threw you H-Dudders a bone. I also hear talk of some Blu player makers going red, possibly being announced at CEDIA.
I could give two sh*ts about Lair, not my kinda game. Plus, it was only one review, all the other reviews its been getting are great.
newhere…you must be from another country, right? I can't understand anything your attempting to say. BTW, Disney is still very firmly Blu, and the bribe M$ used to aquire Para was for $150 mil. Just for anyone who doesn't think any money changed hands in that deal, why would Para bother producing any Blus of Blades Of Glory (they have popped up in a few small Ma & Pop stores) just to announce 1 week before it's released that they are going HD exclusive? Before anyone claims that Sony paid Fox & Disney for exclusivity; Fox wanted additional copy protection (BD+) and Disney wanted region coding, both not offered by HD. Sony had no reason to offer them money. Additionally, Disney is currently spending millions of their own dollars in a nationwide mall tour in support of informing consumers of the wonders of Blu. Furthermore, Universal's own President has implied that they get paid to remain HD exclusive.
To the arugement that the PS3 has no games…Well, they certainly don't have too many. They do have some and they are very good, but it has been rather slow to be sure. There are some real goodies on the horizon, but it has been slower than it should be. Not to say that is the PS3's fault, Sony isn't the olny company making games. Oh well, the games will come. Hopefully "Home" will be spectacular, I'm excited about that one and it should be released very soon.

By: newhere

newhere — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 06:49:17 +0000

i cant afford a 360 LOL. nintendo sucks, last good system nintendo 64 rest suck ass. buddy, i have a 360 and it broke on me after a week of use. i was even carful to not keep this from happening. i gave it all its space, didnt use it for more than an hour per day.

well in those first weeks, i got gears(people say it is good) and it was boring, online well i am not going to pay microsoft to play online but at the end i did it wasnt that intersting. xbox live was pretty cool though. also i wish i would have waited more time with the 360 since i want to play bioshock. oh well that is what you get for bad quality. i sold the 360 and then got a ps3. it is the best quality, games……well only resistance to bad. a couple of good games but nothing like halo. cant wait for home and metal gears solid 4!!! looks as good as halo but halo is more of combat and meta gears is more stealth but oh my god that looks so good. to bad disney and paramount went to HD thanks to a 140 million dollars bargain that HD game to them. oh well i got pirates of the caribean.
enjoy them guys they look great