I think its very telling that BD just isnt ready since Sony didnt throw out Spiderman and Spiderman 2 on BD this fall. Those titles would sell the format imo.

I know they could still announce them. But, I think they will wait for BD50 for those 2.

So you agree with me, it wasn't Sony.

Wouldn't it make sense to wait until Spiderman 3 is hitting theaters to release those two on BD as cross-promotion? So Sony may not have released those this year even if BD50 had been ready from the get-go.

Whatever happened to the proposed Spiderman 2.5 DVD anyway?

I think it would have been smarter to launch the PS3 and promote that you can have Spiderman 1 and 2 on BD....also, they could have Spidey 3 material on the disc (like trailer and so on).

You might be right and thats what they are waiting on, but I think of all of their titles, those would help the PS3 and BD format most.

Want a good laugh?

AICN says BD is "stunning."

http://www.aintitcoolnews.com/display.cgi?id=24410

Wow, talk about an opinion that differs. I have not heard anyone one bith about HD-DVD quality and praise TFE.

Well, Mr. Freak, it was a good thing you brought 'er in when you did. No telling what kind of damage it might have caused left unchecked. This is the source of the problem:

I tell ya, we see more issues with this little bugger than I can count. Anyway, you have yourself a nice day and drive safe, ya hear?

Sounds like somebody doesn't have BTB working on HDMI.

Okay, you really need to chill out if you want this thread to continue. If you like one format over another, then that's fine. But no need keep bashing another format when they are technologically equivalent.

namja
Moderator, DVD Talk Forums

Yeah, whoever wrote that does NOT know what they are writing about. He refers to TFE and T2 being HD-DVD titles.

Like others have said, he says BD looks brilliant due to the film grain in TFE, but HD-DVD looks terrible??

Can I have a judgement call on what the issue was with posting that link? I want to make sure that I don't do anything to get this thread closed... but I'm not sure I understand how posting an article comparing HD to BD (and giving your opinion of that article) is a problem. I thought that is exactly why this thread was created.

On the flip-side, once more pressing plants start up BD production, and/or Sony approves them for BD presssing, then Universal may start supporting BD.


So when you said "Sony is finally in the disc replicating business," you meant "Sony is finally controlling the disc replicating business," since they've been in the actual business for decades. I don't think the evidence supports this idea. Sony knows that restrictive licensing will hurt the overall format, that even all the majors could not fill all potential BD demand, and the money to be made from licensing is much better than trying to do it all yourself.

Sony was one of only two companies behind CD, just like Blu-Ray. They could've controlled and restricted that format as well if they had wanted.

Imagine that pizza had a patent. restricing pizza making to just a few majors would actually hurt the patent holder, since pizza is licensed out to only a few companies instead of as many as the market can hold. And how popular would pizza be if you could only get it from those two places? I haven't gotten pizza from either in years. Restricting the market would restrict the number of potential consumers, and thus reduce overall revenue, even if the patent holder owned one of the actual pizza chains.

Look as RCA and its handling of radio. Early on, the patents for radio were restricted to a few major manufacturers. However, RCA figured they could make even more revenue by licensing out the tech, even though they made radio sets themselves.

No doubt sony didn't replicate certain titles on the DVD or CD presses either. However, Sony's not the only pressing plant, and they're not restricting which titles acan actually appear on the format, just which ones they'll press themselves.

And yet Fox seems fine with the arrangement.

Who says there'd be no competition? There's HD OTA, HD sat and cable, and potential HD on-demand services. Not to mention competition from regular DVDs. If Sony sat on its haunces and didn't improve quality, then the format might be perceived as a waste by all involved. After all, D-VHS didn't get very far despite being the only HD home video format on the market for a long while.

Do we know that they're actually subsidizing discs for other studios? I thought that was just speculation.

I doubt that's why Warner is still supporting HD-DVD. At this point, the space differences seem a moot point, considering the quality of even 15GB HD-DVD releases. Even if BD50 was ready for full-scale production tomorrow, there's not that much likelyhood of HD-DVD disappearing any time soon.

If ever there was a format that didn't have a thing going for it outside of some studio support, it was DIVX. It was dimissed by almost everyone as being an unneeded expansion of DVD and was dead in less than a year. I don't see the same happening to either HD format.

Again, you initially wrote of BD members getting potentially screwed over by Sony. The BDA prevents that. The BDA can't prevent technical screw-ups by Sony, and the existence of HD-DVD hasn't prevented it either.

Did they?

bboisvert, the link is fine. The two comments above are not.

You can disagree with an article, but no need to bash the "other" format. Neither the "laugh" comment nor the rolleyes following the "stunning" comment is welcome here. They are nothing more than flame bait.

The writer on the link "Moriarty" does say

"The first thing he showed me was Columbia’s THE FIFTH ELEMENT on Blu-Ray."

which to me clearly shows he knows it's on BD. However, he then later starts talking about "HDDVD", and my interpretation was that he was lumping BD and HDDVD together, in that they were both 'high definition digital versatile disks', which is likely to be a common mistake, albeit one I would expect Joe Consumer to make, not someone who's "in" with the business and who should 'know better'. The nomenclature is a challenge BD faces, I think; "So what's BD? Is it high definition dvd?", trying to translate new product into current terminology; "Well, yes, but not really..." Definitely not a professional proofreading job, and a simple Joe Consumer mistake like this will reflect badly on his 'expert' status, I agree.

" the announcement of players that will be able to handle both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs."

Has such an announcement occured, or is he being hopeful?

Well, to be accurate, *he* didn't say that [at least in that article]; a "friend" who wrote him a letter said that.

From a non-mod point of view, I'd say the issue with posting the link is not just that the link is posted; it's the posting of the link, accompanied by the "Ha ha, this idiot says he thinks the format we're all against looks better than the one we support" vibe. If a post of that caliber were in Poli, it would probably get a strike.

Then what's the point of "Free-For-All"?

Honestly.....I don't really see anything wrong with Digi's comments....especially when you consider the source (AICN) and the titles they reviewed.

This is no different than at some of the "Positive" HD-DVD reviews that Perfect Storm got.

I thought the friend's letter was a joke as in the guy was just being sarcastic. *shrugs* who knows...

Uh...why would anyone think Universal would start supporting BD any time soon? As far as I know, they hate Sony. They are the only sole supporter of HD DVD. If they also supported BD, then the format war is over, right? I don't see them switching unless HD DVD is dead.

Ah my bad....I was thinking it was an addendum to his article...gotcha.

For major studios, yes...

... but Image Entertainment is currently HD DVD exclusive. And, while they are starting VERY slowly with only 3 concert discs, I don't consider a company with such a large catalog to be trivial.

The BD groups on AVS are a bit more dismissive of this, but I consider it to be significant.


There's also The Weinstein Company.

And there's also BCI/Eclipse. Which could definitely be described as trivial.

Dont forget porn.

Oh yes... the sweet, sweet porn.

Typically in threads like this, we try to moderate as little as possible. Because we moderate so little, people keep pushing the limits. Now, it's turned into a mess. Someone even got banned for going way over the line (mind you though that many of you are partly at fault for the banning).

Usually, though, when someone gets banned or when the moderators step in to steer the discussion back to track, people usually behave better. Unfortunately, that hasn't been the case with this thread. People still insist on bashing the format that they don't like.

Anyway, we're gonna treat [HD DVD and BD] like how we treat [XBOX 360, PS3, and Wii]. While they may not be totally equivalent, we're going to treat them like equivalent items that deserve equal respect and consideration: thus, no format bashing and no console bashing. We took down the "NO CONSOLE BASHING" reminder sticky in the Video Game Talk Forum a little while ago because people were (finally) respecting the other consoles. I hope we don't have to resort to putting such a sticky up in this forum.

Both formats are going to be around for a long, LONG time. You don't have to embrace both, but you need to at least respect both. Otherwise you won't be around here for very long.

namja
Moderator, DVD Talk Forums

Ok....new marketing strategy for Toshiba....package your players with porn. Format war over.

Mods:

Does DIVX still stuck?