...because DVD benefits owners of HD displays and standard definition displays, whereas Blu-ray holds little-to-no appeal to people who don't own an HDTV. Even people who own both an HDTV and a PS3 may prefer to do their gaming on another display. Also, DVD didn't have the same penetration back in 1999 as it does now. The PS2 was likely many people's first exposure to an optical home video format, but now those same people probably have at least one dedicated DVD player and possibly even multiple players. DVD was revolutionary, whereas Blu-ray and HD DVD are evolutionary, so even people who can take advantage may not necessarily feel compelled to do so.

It's all baseless guesswork, but I would be surprised if more than a tiny percentage of PS3 owners use their console for movie viewing and own a library of more than 5-10 titles. Admittedly, tiny percentage multiplied by a large install base is still a lot of players, but I'm skeptical that the PS3 will be the mighty Trojan horse Sony has been touting.

The same is true of HD-DVD. The difference is that when PS3 owners eventually upgrade to HDTV, they'll already have something that can play BD in their house.

Luckily, the PS3 doesn't need to be bolted to the floor.

No, but VHS did. It's not like DVD suddenly allowed people to view movies at home when they hadn't been able to before.

DVD wasn't as "revolutionary" as you think, technology wise. LD already was capable of most that DVD could do, and VCD already existed as small disc video format. DVD was evolutionary in that it added more storage through a smaller laser, better compression codecs, and more interactivity, just like BD and HD-DVD.

Sony's probably overstating PS3's potential impact, but that's what companies do. What's surprising to me is how many people want to try and totally discount it from the equation. Probably because as you state, even a tiny percentage of PS3 owners is still a very large number at this stage in the game.

I'm not arguing otherwise.

No, but that hassle is a huge disincentive, and I wouldn't think too many people would be keen on constantly lugging a box from room to room, disconnecting and reconnecting cables, etc.

DVD offered a fundamentally different viewing experience. HD DVD and Blu-ray, in my opinion, do not.

As someone who picked up his first Laserdisc player twenty-two years ago, I'm familiar with the technology.

I still argue that VHS-to-DVD and DVD-to-Blu-ray is not an apples-to-apples comparison, and just because something happened a particular way seven years ago doesn't mean things must follow in a somewhat similar situation now. The transition from VHS-to-DVD and the impact the PS2 had on DVD are precisely why I don't think the same will hold true.

No, but considering its size, it might as well be.

99% of the public doesn't share that view with you. Laserdisc was cumbersome, needed to be flipped, and most importantly, was pricier than VHS, even years after its initial release. It did not have a widely adopted data equivalent. It did not have a widely adopted recordable equivalent. It sold poorly.

I think DVD to High Def is much more apples to apples with LD to DVD, personally.

From TheManRoom:

A new partner announcement, huh?

Foot, meet mouth.

http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/23/p...-for-cure-ps3/

Freaking bastards stole my name. :grunt:

I really hope this is a big announcement. I hate when you hear about these things, and they really don't tell you anything except what has been around as rumor for the last 2 months.

Zing!

Blitz, your arguments don't often hold up until scrutiny, but this was funny. :lol:

There are already cures for cancer now if the drug companies would promote the cures...

Okay, that's hilarious.

Well, I wouldn't think that too many people would be buying a $500-600 gaming platform and hooking it up to something less than their best audio/video system. But given your widely improbable scenerio, I don't think my solution is too far fetched, especially considering that gamers wil go so far as to carry a system over to a friend's house to play. I already know someone who does something similar with his 360; he bought an extra set of cables for it.

Fundamentally, DVD removed having to rewind; that's the major difference from VHS. However, most the tech on DVD already existed on LD and VCD, so it wasn't the features that drove people to the format. The biggest advance DVD had over those formats was fitting 2 hours or more on one CD-sized disc.

I agree, although not for the reasons you cite. BD and HD-DVD are no less a technological jump over DVD than DVD was over LD or VCD. The major jump that DVD had was in public perception. Being able to fit a whole movie on one side of a CD-size disc was one major factor, as it appealed the public's favor for size and storage. For size, is it just a coincidence that DVD is the exact same size as a CD? Or that DVD cases are of similar height to VHS clamshells? As for storage, fitting on lot on one disc is important, as people hate change-overs for films. VHS succeeded over Beta at least partially because it held more.

However, one major factor wasn't even technological in nature. DVDs allowed people to buy a film several months in advance of it being released for retail on VHS. BD and HD-DVD won't have this advantage, since at best they are released day-and-date with DVD.

99% of the population probably doesn't even have an opinion about the technological differences between HD-DVD, BD, DVD, LD, and VCD.

These issues aren't specifically tied to the technology, especially the last one. In a vicious circle type way, high LD prices were caused by low demand, which was caused partially by high LD prices. The cumbersome size had been solved by VCD, which usually used two discs instead of flipping. DVD took the quality and extras of LD, the size and convenience of VCD, and added capacity. In that way it was "evolutionary" instead of "revolutionary." It's impact on the populace was huge, and the way it changed the video market may have been revolutionary, but the technology wasn't.

It did not have a widely adopted format period. As far as DVD's data and recordable formats go, those weren't even on the table during the early days of the format when the adoption was really taking off. So those weren't really factors in most people's purchasing, especially since they were mostly buying DVD players, and apparently still are mostly buying just DVD players.

Jay, I'm kind of confused as to what your point is. It sounds like all you're doing is arguing semantics.

It's anecdotal, but I've read on a number of gaming forums where people have an HDTV in their living room and their Xbox 360 hooked up to the SDTV in the bedroom.

...but if borderline-no one (in the U.S. at least) adopts a format like VCD, to consumers at large, a step forward like DVD is revolutionary rather than evolutionary.

Plenty of people don't hook up gaming systems to their best displays. I don't know why anyone would consider it widely improbable.

Sorry to interrupt this but...I found this interesting.

http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=...UserId=5380375

Why I am buying a 360 this November
Contrary to popular belief, editors of the Official PlayStation Magazine don't get free hardware for their own personal use. So I've been having an ongoing debate with myself about the PS3 since E3. After Kaz announced that the price would be $600, I found my enthusiasm sagging.

It's not that I find the concept of a $600 console insulting. Inflation happens, and it's natural that eventually inital prices will be higher than they used to be. But when I know that a console's direct competitors cost two-thirds or half of that price, it becomes harder for me to justify shelling out that kind of money--especially when I can probably get the Wii and the 360 combined for the cost of a PS3.

$600 might be worth it if there were several huge titles on the near horizon that were PS3-exclusive. But for the first year at least, there are very few big titles that are PS3 exclusive. GTA4 and Assassins will be available for the 360 at the same time. And most of the big guns--FFXIII, MGS4--won't be hitting for quite some time after the launch.

The other big reason for people to shell out $600, BluRay, is frankly something I don't care about. I have a crummy 12-year-old 21-inch very-non-hi-def TV sitting on my stand at home, and while we've been talking about upgrading it for the past three years, we always end up walking out of stores TV-less. And I don't buy movies; I rent non-BR discs from Netflix. Much like I've never been an audiophile--as long as I can hear it, I don't care if it's mono, stereo, 5.1, 7.1--I really don't care how high-res the picture is. My bottom line is that as long as it has color and is free from static, I'm good to go.

So ultimately, I can't justify it. $600 is a lot of money, especially when I can get what--for me at least--will be a very similar experience for $400. I would like to own a PS3, and I hope that the price drops soon so I can consider it. But until then, this Official PlayStation Magazine editor will have to join the dark side.

Yeah, we discussed this in the video game forum. Bottom line, I think she'll change her tune come launch. But it's nice to read this now, when even the OFFICIAL Playstation magazine is saying the PS3 isn't worth it.

The problem with Sony is you have all sorts of conflicting information. They're all over the place. Here's what Sony Computer Entertainment America president Kaz Hirai said on or about 8/18/2006:

From GameDaily:

At CES 2006 I believe they said 4 million units by end of calendar year 2006 (there's a picture of the slide here).

As for the 10 million they promised studios to get them to support Blu-ray-- that was a long time ago. I remember reading about it at the time. I did find an article mentioning it in Business Week on 11/8/05:

I also found a mention of the 10 million units in an April 06 issue of Sound and Vision link here:

Some of us have been following this for more than a year and it is hard to bring you up to date on points that were reported that long ago.

It says 10 million units by the first YEAR AND A HALF. Microsoft is about to do it in 1 fiscal year, you dont think sony can?

P.S. Devil May Cry 4 playabale at tokyo game show this september on the ps3. Dont think sony is out of the game market, they still have a lot to show for themselves.

It's a buttload of money. It has an inferior picture that is blamed mainly on the use of MPEG-2.

If they had made games on LD do you think the format would have taken over?

I think they'll find a way to get her free hardware. -wink-

She has very valid points. I could see more people with a PS3 buying regular dvds because of the price than bothering with BR discs.

No kidding? I had no idea they were anywhere near that number.

And do you really think that a significant amount of college students, or people close to that age, have that kind of a/v equipment? They are, after all, a large part of the gaming community.

Consumers voice their opinions with dollars. DVD was better and more affordable than other options, and it did well. If you want to get into technological minutiae, then that's for another discussion. This line of discussion was about the perception of value and how big of a difference each step "up" was for the consumer.


I'll repeat my quote, in full:

"Unfortunately Kaz Hirai's comments in the recent GameSpot interview regarding PLAYSTATION 3 production were misunderstood. We are still on schedule to ship 2 million units for our mid-November 2006 launch and additional 2 million units by the end of the year for a total of 4 million units." - SCEA, 8/22/06

Oh Kaz....

That remains yet to be seen. ;)

You're right, it is anecdotal. However, I would be interested in knowing ther reasons behind that decision, as they may not apply to the PS3.

Now you're just talking about perception instead of actual fact. In that case, there's these things called CDs that everyone was aware of for playing music. To public perception, DVD was a CD that played movies. So it's still evolutionary rather than revolutionary in the perception of its technological advancement

In any case, the technological advantages that LD provided were not enough to bring it mainstream acceptance at any point in its 20 year life-span. DVD didn't catch on because of technological superiority, aside from the smaller format that held a full movie aspect of it. The major things that drove the mainstream to it, low price and films appearing on the format before VHS, were market driven, not technology driven.

Warner just confirmed for me that of their second wave of BD titles, Full Metal Jacket will be the only one that uses MPEG2. Lethal Weapon, Blazing Saddles, and Firewall will all be encoded using VC1.

Things are starting to get interesting, i guess, if you want to pay almost triple to get the same quality...IF it's the same quality.

Not improbable in that I don't think it will happen at all, but improbable in that I don't think it'll happen to the PS3 in any significant amount.

Of course I'm talking about perceived value. I'm really not interested in this ridiculous semantic debate. I've seen little evidence to suggest that the PS3 will be the Trojan horse Sony (and presumably you?) believe, with millions of gamers each buying dozens of Blu-ray discs and shifting the market in that direction. It's anyone's guess what'll happen, and if you think that's the course the market will inevitably take, it's as good a guess as any. I really don't care enough to continue replying to your smarmy posts.

It still costs less than any other BD player, and is less than Toshiba's more expensive HD-DVD player. Plus, it's a video-game system, which is what most people will be buying it for. That it plays BD movies is just a bonus.

MPEG-2 usage will change. And for an owner of a PS3, buying a BD disc will be cheaper than buying a whole new player and disc.

Um, they did:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laserdisc_video_game
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_LaserActive
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halcyon_(console)

However, if any successful video game system had used LD as a media, and could play LD movies as well, I think the format would've seen a boost. Just like PS3 will give BD a significant boost, although it probably won't decide the winning format.

As of yesterday...news:

Citing issues with parts suppliers, Mitsubishi forecasts Sony will only be able to ship 3 million units following its launch of the PS3 versus the 6 million Sony has said it expects to ship. Although Sony's loss as related to its Gaming unit will be smaller given the fewer units shipped, this will have a negative impact over the longer-term as it will take more time for Sony to recoup its costs.

Have what kind of equipment? I never said that everyone buying a PS3 will have an HDTV. However, those that do will more likely than not use their PS3 on it. For those without an HDTV, BD movies won't be of interest right away, as won't HD-DVD. The difference is that once people with PS3s upgrade to HDTV, they already have a machine capable of playing BD, while they'd need to buy something else to play HD-DVD.

BD discs don't cost triple.

You know what i mean.

The player to play them on, does.

Man, are you here JUST to argue?

I bought mine for ~$450 after tax at Best Buy. Are you saying I'm going to be able to buy a PS3 for less than that? Since the Tosh has HDMI, you'd have to compare it to the more expensive PS3 with HDMI, too.

I've never said that millions of gamers will be buying and watching BD movies, at least not instantly. I also never said that I think BD will inevitably win. I did say that even if a small fraction of PS3 buyers become regular BD movie buyers, that's a significant boost this early in the formats. Its a boost that shouldn't be ignored, which is what many HD-DVD boosters seem want to do.

It's not an all or nothing equation; it's not either "PS3 will bring millions of BD movie consumers" or "PS3 will bring near zero BD movie adopters," and it's frustrating that most people want to reduce it to that.

Samsung and Sony list their BD player at $999.99. Toshiba's HD-A1 lists for $699.99