Adam Tyner

Okay, so this is a little belated, but whatever.

The first wave of Blu-ray discs arrived on June 20th, 2006. ...and to think I was convinced back then that HD DVD was the wave of the future.

OldBoy

woohoo!!

PhantomStranger

I always believed in Blu-ray more than HD DVD as the eventual winner but there were times around the exclusive HD DVD release of Transformers that I started having my doubts.

I still think it was sheer lunacy the studios couldn't agree on one format for the HD era from the start.

Adam Tyner

HD DVD was closer to being a fully baked format when it launched than Blu-ray was, but it didn't take too long for all those wrongs to be righted.

I think the threat of a war was good for both formats, but that should all have been resolved before anything actually made it to market.

Doctorossi

It's Blu-ray's 10th anniversary and 19 of my top 20 films are available on the format.

Not bad.

Dan

Happy Birthday, kiddo!

I fondly remember taking allegiance with the HD DVD crowd, convinced that the region-free'ness and minimum mandatory specs were enough to combat Blu-ray's higher capacity, varying hardware "profiles," wider studio support, and adoption rates due to the PS3.

In late 2007, when I finally bought a Blu-ray drive for my HTPC, Blu-ray was still my least-favourite child, but by the time in mid-January 2008 when HD DVD threw in the towel, I was ready to embrace movies for movies, not the disc they were on.

You fought hard, little dino, and you kicked your brother's ass.

Lots of love,
Dan

zyzzle

You've come a long way, baby.

In 2016, on the cusp of physical media's sad, unnecessary, and forlorn demise, most companies have improved encode quality since 2006. But, ten years in there are still outfits who have no business insulting and flaunting the format with their shoddy releases (Echo Bridge, Odeon, Platinum Cult). Other companies (Arrow, Olive, Kino) have learned from their past mistakes early on, and made themselves proud and shining beacons of light in the pantheon of 1080p presentation!

Yet others have a ways to go, but their releases, if flawed, have been appreciated nonethless (Shout Factory!, Scream, Severin, Twilight Time).

Alan Smithee

Is Echo Bridge even still in business? They lost the rights to the Miramax titles they had, which they never should have gotten in the first place.

This format war was one of the biggest mistakes in recent years as far as consumer electronics go. Being a collector of failed formats I ended up with every US HD-DVD title, only to have a large percentage of the Warner discs become unplayable due to laser rot!

DVD Polizei

10 years later and we still have titles failing to be on the format, and those "unpopular" titles that do make it into Rape-Me-In-The-Ass producers hands, are only $20+ a piece.

Thanks, Blu-ray!

davidh777

I went purple from the start (PS3 and 360 add-on) but purchased more HD DVD than BD when I had a choice.

mattysemo247

10 years later and 1,000 movies and TV shows in my collection. I need to quit you!

BuckNaked2k

Remember all the fuss about BD Live?

morriscroy

Wonder how much of this had to do with patent(s) royalties, which one side or the other "missed out" on when dvd was first made into a final specification by IBM back in the mid-1990s.

https://books.google.com/books?id=0N...page&q&f=false
https://books.google.com/books?id=WS...page&q&f=false
http://www.sis.pitt.edu/mbsclass/sta...iam/dvd.html#2
http://didyouknow.org/dvdhistory/
http://www.edinformatics.com/inventi...entors/dvd.htm

If history is any guide, it appears Sony/Philips lost out on a lot of potential/hypothetical patent royalties on dvd when IBM chose Toshiba's optical disc structure for the final dvd spec.


ie. This time around with bluray, Sony wanted all the patents royalties for themselves, and was not willing to give up some royalties for a unified single hd optical disc format.

morriscroy

If I had cared back in 2006-2007, I probably would have supported HD-DVD. (I only started buying a lot of dvds/blurays in 2011).

My main (hypothetical) preference for HD-DVD would have been for its then slightly weaker security, and giving the middle finger to Sony.

bunkaroo

I started out purple as well in late 2006, but hedged my bet towards Blu. I'm glad I did. It was fun despite all the bickering and misinformation.

milo bloom

I figured HD DVD would win based on name recognition with the general public, but I personally refused to buy either until a winner was declared.

I think my first Blu was Up!, and we had to watch the included DVD at first since we didn't even have the player yet.

bunkaroo

I actually think the name was part of HD DVD's problem. Yes from a logical standpoint it made sense, but it didn't sound for lack of a better term, sexy. Plus the name is just clunky. Blu-ray sounds sleek and is easier to say for the average non-technical consumer. I also thought the blue cases were more inviting than the red cases, though personally I would have preferred black or clear cases.

Josh Z

Back in 2010, I moderated a panel on Blu-ray interactivity at the Blu-Con conference in Los Angeles. The panelists were representatives from a couple of studios and a couple of hardware manufacturers. The studio reps did their best to hype BD-Live as an amazing game-changing feature that was loved by everybody who'd ever experienced it. However, even at the time, it was clear that the BD-Live wasn't living up to its potential and was essentially dead in the water. Naturally, nobody would admit this on stage.

The tone of the conference was very "Rah! Rah! Blu-ray is the greatest thing ever!" and it wasn't my place to upset that. I managed to get in a couple of pointed questions, but the purpose and intent of the event was to be supportive and encouraging.

Meanwhile, a few days before the conference, I tried to watch a Fox Blu-ray in my OPPO player with then up-to-date firmware and got an error message that wouldn't let me play the disc. It only worked if I went into the player's setup menu and disabled the stupid BD-Live.

Josh Z

"4k Ultra HD Blu-ray," though... That's a totally sexy name. Not clunky at all.

bunkaroo

Hey I won't disagree there. That's damn awful. If it gets shorthanded to UHD that's somewhat better but still not great.

Adam Tyner

Alan Smithee

First time I tried BD-Live, I figured it was a good candidate to be Sony's Stupid Piece of Shit that Doesn't Fucking Work!



Now a lot of BD-Live features are no longer online, making it even more frustrating when you click on them!

PhantomStranger

I've heard the percentage of people actually using BD-Live features were incredibly tiny. Like 0.3% or some such barely there number.

orangerunner

What? No one wanted to record their self-indulgent audio commentaries and send them to their friends for endless hours of enjoyment?!!

Alan Smithee

I never even got to see how that feature worked, as by 2010 it was already discontinued!