Agreed. The point I was making is that prorietary=non-standard=not cheap.

Absolutely. New Superdeduper Wally opened near my office on Tuesday. No BD or HD DVD whatsoever.

Well the Wal-Mart out by me carries alot of expensive merchandise so it must be as someone else said that they stock thier store depending on location as Oakland County, MI is like the 3rd or 4th richest county in the US. My Wal-Mart has a huge A/V dept and sells everything from recievers to home theatre speaker sets to 2000.00 HDTV's. They also carry alot of HD-DVD's and some BD's and have the HD-DVD player in stock as well which would make me assume that they would have no problem stocking the BD player.

PS...

Won't be a BD-50. According to Video Business:

Wow, so they're giving people a neutered edition. Lame.

Speaks volumes about that viability issue with BD50. I have no doubt Sony could make that many if they wanted, and had enought time, but it's an issue of how much money they are losing on the DL process.

Mass production of these discs is the one thing holding them back and would certainly reinforce my guess that this is why they are seriously looking at VC-1. Certainly explains why a Blu-Ray insider stated that only around 20% of releases will be on BD50 within the next year.

I would bet a pretty shiny penny that most that get the 500,000 whatever will not even know what BD50 is. It's pretty much a non-issue.

The HD video world is pretty tiny right now.

Wow that sucks. Guess the free King Kong HD DVD is a much better deal.

Yeah, I was going to mention that but decided against it.

That "free" version better be a stellar edition, and the PS3 BluRay hardware should make it look like perfection, otherwise those 500,000 customers will say "no big deal" to blu-ray and stick with SD-DVD.

In terms of no one caring if it has one layer or two, absolutely. But if it's just the movie, if it doesn't even have the extras of a DVD let alone any spiffy bells-and-whistles to show off what the format can do, if it's a less marketable cut of the movie, and if the console doesn't have everything the user needs to get the most out of the disc in the first place, then the pack-in really isn't doing its job.

Hell, pretty much everyone I know has no idea there are single-layered and dual-layered DVDs. I doubt things will be any different for hi-def.

Where does it say anything about BD50 production issues? The article says they're releasing a barebones theatrical cut version so it won't affect the sales of the SE/uncut SD & BD50 versions that doesn't come out to the non-PS3 buying public until a month later. Makes sense to me.

Why does it have to say something in black/white to make a simple observation about something that has been a talked about issue for two years? We are waiting to see if they can mass produce BD50 discs. The blu-ray backers were all pointing to this PS3 release as proof. If its a Bd25 then that point is negated.

Also, I don't see Microsoft and Universal watering down King Kong for the 360 add-on. I would guess that is because they know the title they decided to pack in can sell a lot of units by itself on DVD/HD-dvd as it is said to be reference quality.

I'd agree this makes very little difference to most consumers. It's the quality of the disc that is going to count.

Sony really should have thrown in 'The Fifth Element' instead. Now thats a good looking BR title!

If it's such an issue in production why is Warner wasting "precious" BD-50's on some old extra-less catalog titles like The Last Samurai and Unforgiven? In VC-1 no less, so there'll be what, half the disc empty? Easily fit on a BD-25 with room to spare, no? And they're not even getting the price premium as with a new release. It's speculation that leads to FUD, when the reason is plainly spelled out in the article.

And King Kong will have been out for nine months already on DVD by the time it comes out with the add-on. They're trying to entice people to buy the add-on and get the new "extended" version as a free bonus. Makes sense. The PS3 doesn't need a pack-in movie to guarantee a sell-out. The strip down is a marketing ploy by Sony to get additional sales from a future release, since 500,000 people will already own the movie right off the bat.

It's showing that it can play a movie that you can go buy at Best Buy or Walmart or whatever...

That's pretty much all it needs to do. MOST people don't care about the stuff we do.

You answered your oen question. Those titles will be low demand and therefore they won't have to worry about pressing too many. The only one exception is Superman Returns, if its not delayed as per the thread over on HTF. Until we see Bd50 in produced in large quantities, ala HD30, I can point to a lot of issues about it and claim FUD. How many copies of Click are they pressing? Maybe 15-20K?

Who do you think is eating that price premium? What are the real yield numbers? Why is only DADC spinning them still? Why does CTS only have four or five anounced titles the rest of the year? Until we are given evidence I think it's fine to speculate without being attacked for it. If not, please post the answers to those questions. I don't have a problem if BD50 can be produced in large quantities, I'm just asking for some proof.

I am well aware of Sony's marketing tactics of releasing everything numerous times. Who isn't? Was just hoping they wouldn't go cheap on people buying a $600 dollar game console. Also, I'm pretty sure they are not going to tell Videobusiness if BD50 is viable for mass-production is sizable quantities or not.

See, I disagree. If the pack-in doesn't demonstrate to PS3 owners that this is a completely different experience than DVD, what's there to impress them?

Agreed. It has to prove to joe six pack that BD is worth buying over DVD and worth buying again for movies they already own on DVD.

BTW, I finally picked up a few Blu-Ray discs the other day and was planning on sticking them on my shelf until I got my hands on a PS3, or my friend brings his Samsung player to my house, yet again.

I'm still debating to get a PS3 or just buy a standalone player. I was watching a video on a gaming site that showed the PS3 drive was a slot loading design. My CD player in my car is like this and scratches the hell out of my CDs. Has anyone ever had a CE player load discs like this before and do you think it will be a problem?

I believe the Wii will also load discs like that. I have a slot loader in my car, as well, but I only use CD-Rs in it since I have my ipod hooked up.

Personally, I wouldn't use a video game system to play movies no matter what kind of loader it had, but that's just me.

Usually I wouldn't either, but its the cheapest way to watch these things until the CE companies put something out worth 1K of my money.

That's why I'm waiting for G2 or maybe even G3.