I remember the Pirates announcement for overseas on BD, but where was the X3 announcement?

The only thing I read about X3 coming to BD was from DVD File. They had a little mention a couple of months back about the Fox BD demonstration and said that it would be included in their first 20 or so titles this Fall.

Yeah, I remember Garfield 2 was another title that was mentioned.

I also think that retailers don't want to get burned like they did with Beta/VHS war. Maybe they are taking a more wait and see approach, but at the same time they should have just said look we aren't going to support either of you guys unless you can come up with a unified format. If Walmart did that, since they obviously have the most clout then I doubt you would have seen a format war at all.

Wait wait wait WHAT? Garfield 2 is coming to BD?!

That's it, guys, format war over. Adam, if you could please close all HD DVD related threads. Thanks. I'm off to go buy a Samsung.

Is wal-mart even selling BD players? I thought it was all HD DVD.

I don't know about that but they do sell blu-ray movies.

I've only seen BD films.

I don't forsee Walmart selling 1,000 dollar dvd players anytime soon - it's just not something that you would find there.

No, they'd price them at $996.88 forcing out all the local Mom n' Pops.

You're not serious!?? SACD had a "slightly bigger drop" in its war. But it never got bigger, and then DVD-A started catching up. Didn't matter, they are both barely even niche groups. Even Chesky (wacko audiophile studio) went back to CD and has almost completely dropped SACD.

The war can't be won until one or the other becomes big enough to see in the proverbial bucket. If that never happens, they will either both fail or both hang on in the background like LD. I'm not actually sure which would be worse. Probably the hanging on since it would hinder the next tech generation, whatever that will be.

Yes, for sure. But that will be next year at the earliest. Not in September, 2006. That's all I'm saying. People here are trying to come up with a winner by tomorrow, or November at the latest. Silly notion.

I'd say at least 2 holiday seasons have to come and go before big changes happen, either in studios or player manufacturers. (ignoring Sony in both fields)

Of course, this is presuming that both formats are allowed to mature. There are other factors that could shift the landscape. For example, if the PS3 tanks, it would really hurt Sony's bottom line and might force them to reprioritize.

Isn't it thought that either Fox or Disney, or both, are interested in BD for the additional DRM? If they're concerned that much about security of their information, they may be willing to stick with it through these early hiccups.

That's a big if. Conversely, if Universal releases on both formats, then BD will have all major studios supporting it, which would be a huge advantage.

Even if that did happen, BD wouldn't be out of the picture so quickly, especially since your talking about dual-support. To the average forum member here, the superior format currently is clear, but it's not so clear to the average layman, if they're even interested in an HD disc format at this point. By the time they are, BD may have made enough improvement to keep it in the game as long as Sony was able to keep Betamax in the game, which was over a decade.

How did retailers get burned by Beta vs. VHS? They sold both devices for over a decade until VHS won out, then sold exclusively that. Aside from dumping their unsold Beta stock I don't see how they got burned, especially since they then got to sell VHS to all the Beta buyers that did get burned.

That's a mighty big if. Sony could lose this generation's platform war and still sell a whole lot of PS3s. Hell, Nintendo has been able to stay in the game even though they haven't had a winning platform since SNES.

Yes, but Nintendo's first party games are guaranteed best sellers, whereas Sony only has a few name titles, and a good portion of them are third-party, so they may not remain exclusive if the PS3 tanks. And Nintendo never sold a $600 system. Nintendo's also made a killing in the handheld market, another area where Sony is struggling.

Besides, that's not the only factor that could change the war, it was just the first one that came to mind.

In response to your comment about Disney and Fox staying with BD for DRM, we know Fox is staying for the extra layer of copy protection. Disney is supposedly staying for more space, but they're definitely not staying for the extra copy protection (which I believe is called BD+, not DRM on this format).

Sony is definitely not struggling in the handheld market. They've sold quite a few PSPs.

Not nearly as many as Nintendo has sold DS systems. Plus UMD got canned, and that was one of the selling points of the system. I certainly don't call that a rousing success.

Disney has not mentioned BD+ as a reason for them to support Blu-Ray. They kept pointing a finger at BD50 being the reason, yet never responding to Toshiba about TL45. This was before HD-dvd was released and it could have been in spec before hardware launches.

As for Fox, they still feel they got burnt on dvd's encryption scheme because of W-B so I think it's going to take some mighty impressive sales numbers to swing them.

Agreed ... but Universal is probably going to be harder for Sony to swing then Fox would be for the HD-dvd group. Two reasons.

A. The strong business ties created between Toshiba, GE, Microsoft & Universal.
B. Sony not allowing them to press discs in house, thus having a major competitor in the movie industry knowing their plans months to years ahead of time. Remember Fox has their Blu-Ray discs coming off Sony's replication line for BD50. Fox uses Cinram for dvd production.

Lastly, the studios compete with each other but they are all united in the same business. Anyone think that Universal was the designated hitter for HD-dvd? What would the studios do if they all supported Blu-Ray from day one and Sony screwed them all? Universal is releasing the majority of HD titles on any format and, unlike Fox, Disney, WB, or Paramount, they really havn't even made mention that they know Blu-Ray exists.

I don't see Blu-Ray going anywhere regardless of its quality. It's always going to be viable for PCs and the PS3. The problem is that they messed up their launch badly. Bad press and broken promises are killing them. Hell, if they had just decided to not launch anything at all, until November, I bet 50% of us wouldn't have bought Hd-dvd thinking Blu-Ray would be superior. Most of us where just looking at tech specs on paper. Now it has snowballed into both formats having a chance at sharing the market for the next few years.

Again, a product doesn't have to be "winning" its cetegory to be very successful. Of Pepsi and Coke, only one can be winning the cola wars at any one time, yet nobody would call the other cola unsuccessful. Meanwhile, RC cola keeps plugging along despite being perpetual third place.

Video on UMD got canned, UMD itself is alive and well on the platform. Also, it was video on PSP was one of the selling points, not just via UMD, and that still exists via the memorystick. Also, Nintendo suffered its own video-on-handheld mini disaster via the gameboy video cartridges.

You keep speculating that the PS3 will "tank," what exactly do you mean by that? Is selling only 2 million units by the end of the year tanking? Is selling 6 million by March while the 360 exceeds 10 million tanking? Or are you really anticipating something catastrophic, where Sony is unable to sell even its limited supply of PS3s during the holiday season?

I'm not continually speculating. I was bringing it up as a possible scenario to point out that the playing field will not stay static.

And how will it sell 2 million by the end of the year when they just cut their shipping estimates again? But that's beside the point.

Are you sure Sony doesn't allow them to press in house, or is it currently a situation where Sony has one of the only plants capable of pressing BD?

Cinram has a license for BD, but hasn't set up mass production yet:
http://www.blu-raydisc.info/licensee...ensee_list.htm

They also haven't set up HD-DVD production yet, so Fox would still have to use another plant.

Also, while Sony is all one big corporation, its home video distribution division and its BD pressing division are technically seperate entities. It may actually be illegal for it to share confidential information like pressing plans with other divisions. Besides, most studio announce titles well ahead of time anyway.

There were several other studios that were exclusively HD-DVD that altered their plans to include Blu-Ray. I'm not sure I see what's in it for Universal to keep itself out of BD.

While the technology for BD is patented by Sony, they set up an association much like the DVD Forum to handle the format. There's a board of directors that consists of many companies, one of which is Sony. Just like Sony is part of the DVD Forum and has a say in the development of that platform, but not absolute control.
http://www.blu-raydisc.com/general_i...009/Index.html

I agree that BD is a lock as far as a format just existing. I was more specifically thinking of the BD video format though.

I agree that BD mucked up its launch somthing awful. However, release timing is a double-edged sword. If they hadn't launched, some may have waited, but others would've bought HD-DVD simply because it was the only format available, while others would've been ignorant of BD existing at all, especially with HD-DVD's claims of being "the only High Definition DVD."

The point at which it snowballed is when the two formats couldn't come to an agreement for a single format. Once it was clear that both formats would be released, both with a good level of manufacturer and studio support, the likelyhood of either format dying out fast became slim to none.

Jay G

A lot of sony haters come up with terms that are just as silly as they are for how sony will fail. Sony is not going anywhere. BD is not going anywhere. And PS3 is DEFINETLY not going anywhere. I know that they all hope that a format with less space and more limitations wins (god knows why), but they are all going to end up disapointed at some point. Plus, why the pure hatred? Are you all bound by law to support anything you see blindedly? I honestly think a lot of HD-DVD fanatics need a breath of fresh air and realise that if they enjoy their format, good, stick with it. But taking every opportunity to bash and bash an oposing company... Well, i dont even know what to say.

I know guys like supermallet have no lives, work at a gamestore talking with 5th graders all day and then goes home and comes online to bash sony till he cant keep his eyes open anymore. Thats just the sad reality of some people. I advise others to live for more.

The answer is BD+. Sony is against selling the somewhere around $200K stampers to everyone who wants one. I read that they are only letting a few units out. I don't even think the replicators can resell them. The watermarking scheme on the discs should be traceable back to the individual replicator.

That being said, Sony's Terre Haute facility isn't just a short term solution to pumping out discs before Cinram is ready. Sony is now is the replication business. Pretty smart.

Working in a management position in a Fortune 300 Company for five years, I can tell you that management within Sony, SCEI, Columbia Tri-Star and Terre Haute all "hear" rumors of what is going on regardless of legality. That being said, never put your company in a position where a direct competitor can have inside knowledge of what you are doing. Pressing plans are one thing, release dates are another.

True. WB is supporting Blu-Ray for various reasons, probably because Time Warner wanted them to support both. Lieberfarb is openly against Blu-Ray however. Paramount is going whichever way the wind blows it seems.

If all the studios agree to not support Hd-dvd at all from day one, Hd-dvd is obviously dead. This pretty much sucks if something goes wrong with Blu-Ray, and they all know it. Nice to have an option B available.

Remember Blu-Ray studio support revolves around the PS3, BD+, and BD50(costs/yields) all being viable. That is what Fox and Disney bought into and were told by Sony they would have, not 25gb discs. They still don't have it. Having HD-dvd still around is still a good option B.

The BDA didn't make promises to Disney and Fox, Sony did. BDA is powerless if Sony goofs the actual PS3 release up. They are also powerless if something goes terribly wrong with BD+ at this point. If BD50 becomes non-viable, the BDA probably can't do anything about it. It's Sony and Panasonic that worked on the DL discs. Speaking of the BDA, what they were able to do was make it damn confusing for anyone to sue them in case the Samsung player doesn't play BD50 discs.

It certainly could survive nicely if software sales start rising a little. We are not talking about a night and day gap between the two formats. It only takes a few good events to turn things around. Last spring most of us were laughing at Toshiba.

The real fear most of us have about Blu-Ray is that if BD50 turns out to be non-viable, Blu-Ray is going to stick around and the studios are just going to save money and encode all films to fit on 25gbs, regardless of format. The same goes for BD50 as well. If HD-dvd sticks around, and BD50 is viable, the studios could do one encode to fit on DL discs for each format. If you have 50gbs to work with, use it. We will find out the file sizes when Fox releases KOH.

Depends I guess. We really don't know how HD-dvd would have done if Sony came out with a better show last summer. It has been one bad thing happening to Sony after another since launch day. The most ironic thing is that despite Sony being deadset against VC1, it might be the thing that saves them. The other studio's improvement with this codec is letting Blu-Ray get much better releases on the single layer discs, as we have seen with the recent Warner titles.

The longer both survive the better chance all studios will support both. Fox was actually making money selling 2000-4000 copies of each D-VHS title. They make money wherever they can.