If the PS3 repeats the performance of the PSP it will be a disaster for Sony. They don't need the PS3 to do decent in one territory and get murdered everywhere else like the PSP has done. They need the PS3 to dominate. Sony is not only struggling in the handheld market, most have already called the PSP a dead system. Outside of the okay showing in the US it has been a disaster for Sony especially in game sales since many are buying the PSPs for multimedia and homebrew and rarely buying games for it.

Nintendo could get by with the GameCube and N64 not being on top because they are the number two publisher of games in the world and make a ton of money there. Sony can't fall back on that. If they aren't moving a lot of hardware and making a lot of money on licensing fees they are in deep trouble.

I still think this is what will end up happening. Blu-ray still has their advantage in greater hardware and studio support, however, with the all the issues of the BD50 discs, PS3 shortages and higher standalone player costs it will take them a long time to actually put any of that advantage to use.

I think HD DVD will be established well enough by the time hardware prices are equal that it won't be going anywhere. We may have a situation where both formats end up supported for years and years to come. That may guarantee that DVD never gets replaced by either format and the two HD discs end up in a niche. I think it will be a much larger niche than SACD or LD, but still a niche.

Since a format war is likely to dampen down consumer demand for HighDef discs, it's in the CE maker's and studio's interests to have only one format. While they could potentially make a little more by supporting both in the short term they'd be risking a far larger pot of money a few years down the line. I suspect the studios are well aware of this strategy. And as of now Fox or Disney would still only be selling to (at most) 50,000 people, so they're not missing out on much of a market.

Yeah, so this swing of the ban hammer has been a long time coming.

Presumably Digifreek is next.

It is a time for celebration! Until he signs up again under a different name.

Wow, it's a good thing I ignored him weeks ago.

Thanks for looking out for li'l ol' me, Adam

New slogan: "Sony PSP: The RC Cola of Handheld Gaming!"

This is extremely hilarious, coming from you of all people.

No - Disney has announced that they willnot be releasing POC or Cars on Bluray this year - they said they would like to see player sales for Bluray Hidef improve first....

They meant Dead Man's Chest. The release on BR planned is of Curse of the Black Pearl. I would not be surprised if DMC is not released until April or May of next year right before At World's End.

Uh, most of us OWN one of the formats. SO, its not blindly like you support Sony.

I thought that applied to part 2. I'm talking about the original.

MODERATOR NOTE

Burnt Thru and digitalfreaknyc: I really don't care for either of your posts. Yeah, this is a "free-for-all" thread, but that doesn't mean that we'll keep allowing these jabs at each other. We're trying to be as tolerant as possible, but there are limits. And you guys are awfully close to it.

namja
Moderator, DVD Talk Forums

Thank you, namja.

How likely a scenerio is the PS3 "tanking" though? I could posit a scenerio where every HD-DVD pressing plant goes up in flames tomorrow, thus causing hardship on the HD-DVD front. Sure, it's a possible scenerio, but it's not likely.

2 million PS3 units is what Sony just cut their shipping estimates to. The Xbox 360 shipped less than that last year, and had Europe to deal with as well.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060721-7321.html

Agreed. You still haven't said what you consider the PS3 "tanking" would be.

I also remember MS saying they would have 3 million by the end of last year. That didnt happen. Didnt they end up with 1 million or so??

I highly doubt we will see 2 million PS3s by the end of the year. As usual, they are being optimistic.

That's a bit different than saying Sony won't allow other studios to produce in-house. The restrictions are based on security, not exclusivity.

Sony's Terre Haute facility opened in 1983 to press CDs. It added DVD replication in 1997. Sony's been in the replication business for over 2 decades.

http://www.emedialive.com/Articles/R...ArticleID=5127
http://specials.tribstar.com/terreha...ries/DADC.html
http://history.acusd.edu/gen/recording/dvd.html

Release dates are known publically for months ahead of time anyway.

The studios didn't seem so worried about that when DVD came out with no option B. The advantages of a unified format probably exceed that of a "backup" format being on the market as well.

You wrote of Sony screwing studios over, not Sony screwing up. The BDA ensures Sony can't screw them over.

So it's not just Sony that has to solve the problems. In fact, other members of the BDA could look for solutions to DL.

Studios have already worked on different encodes for the two formats, although currently that's because BD was MPEG2 exclusive for a while. However, based on reports of VC-1 compression advancements, I don't see how the 25GB limit is even goig to be a factor. People are claiming that VC-1 can get HD transparency at 10Mbs, which means the video for a 2 hour film could fit on a DL DVD. The possible differences between BD and HD-DVD are more likely to be either less extras or less audio options.

Tears of the Sun, which is one of the best reviewed BD so far, is still MPEG2:
http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/tearsofthesun.html

I do think moving to VC-1, or possibly AVC, would be the better move though.

I really doubt Columbia will ever support HD-DVD unless BD tanks. I can see the other studios supporting both eventually, but that will harm overall adoption due to the two formats co-existing. At that point, unless dual-format players become the norm, consumers may decide to ignore both formats.

Huh? You're the one that wants the format with less space and more limitations to win (i.e. Blu-ray). You really have to pay more attention.

Now that we've got six week's worth of data, I feel a bit better about giving summaries or examining everything as whole.

HD DVD and Blu-Ray: Software

HD DVD's best-seller was ranked, on average, at ^#680. HD DVD peaked at ^#34 and the best-seller sold as poorly as ^#1783. According to TheDVDWars, the Top 10 HD DVDs sold at an average of ^#1842 during this period. That indicates, perhaps, a measly 0.54% share*. Not exactly very promising.

If you thought HD DVD was bad, Blu Ray was even worse. Blu-Ray's best-seller was ranked, on average, at #3720. Blu-Ray peaked at ^#844 and the best-seller sold as poorly as ^#8782. According to TheDVDWars, the Top 10 Blu-Ray discs sold at an average of ^#7027 during this period. That indicates, perhaps, a measly 0.14% share.

On average, the Top 10 HD DVDs had a better ranking than the best-selling Blu-Ray title. On their best day (7/26/2006), the Top 10 HD DVDs had a higher ranking (^#823) than Blu-Ray's single best-selling title (Silent Hill, at ^#844 on 8/23/2006).

Simply put, HD DVD software appears to vastly outsell Blu-Ray software on Amazon regardless of how you slice it. If DVD is the bucket and HD DVD is a thimble, Blu-Ray is a single drop of water.


Hardware

This warrants a bit less analysis as the numbers are cut and dry: after all, we're only talking about 5 pieces of machinery here. Here are the top ranked HD DVD / Blu-Ray players on Amazon, along with average rank:

^#00501 Toshiba HD-A1
^#07500 Toshiba HD-XA1
^#08754 Samsung BD-P1000
^#09312 Sony BDP-S1
^#11765 RCA HDV5000

Both Toshiba units are outselling any Blu-Ray CE player. And the pre-orders for the Sony unit are almost as much as the Samsung's actual sales. And I have no idea why Amazon even bothers to sell the RCA unit.


* There's no way, of course, to calculate market share. For HD DVD, I did the following calculation: ( 1 ÷ Rank × # of Titles ). Since this is a top 10, HD DVD's share is 1 ÷ 1893 × 10, or 0.54%.

<hr>

BTW, the newest version of each my charts is up at www.hdcharts.com. If anyone else can think of what else to look at, let me know. I'm not going to bother with the PC/data storage angle, as that doesn't interest me in anyway.

He's banned. It doesn't matter any more

But if his pro Blu-Ray message reaches just one person, that's all that matters; he's made a difference in the world.

I have not been following all 20+ pages of this thread, and I own no advanced player yet.
Admittedly, anyone here is going to be both more educated with the industry and more interested in HD/BD than 'joe six pack', so opinions on this board might not reflect 'normal' people's opinions.
But I have a few questions about the two formats.

* I'm looking here:
and based solely on this [assuming it's accurate], BD looks 'better' - more studio support, higher capacity disks [except for the hybrids], higher bandwidth; they both have lots of manufacturer support from big names; and while having BD built in to the PS3 should help, I don't think the PS3 will be as big as the PS2 or PS1, so because built-in BD/Ps3, and add-on HD 360, it might be a wash.
* It is of the general opinion, though there's certainly not 100% agreement, that HDDVD is currently 'winning' over BD, is that correct? Why is that? Certainly the fact that HDDVD players came out first has something to do with it, and apparently BD is having some difficulty with their higher capacity disks. Some of the technical things discussed in this thread, I don't understand [MPEG vs. VC1 for instance], so I don't know why one is better than the other.
Player price also makes a difference; if it's hard to spend 500 on a player, it's much harder to spend 1000.
Looking at Amazon, there are both HD and BD disks that I would like to have, and I honestly couldn't tell you the studio of half my current dvd collection without looking, so I can't say, "Oh, BD or HD has Studio X, so that's made my choice for me!"
Can someone summarize the 'war' as it currently stands, who's winning the battles, and why, in a somewhat unbiased fashion?

dtcarson...

read this. It summarizes everything.

http://www.projectorcentral.com/reta...VD_Blu-ray.htm

News from AVS:

dt: That chart is not 100% correct.

I do have a question though: Doesn't Weinstein Company own Dimension?