It might be hypocritical, except for the fact that those who say "wait for BD-50", or "wait for the Sony deck" are assuming that those milestones will represent a significant shift in Blu-ray's favor, when in fact they may not represent any shift at all. Looking at the BD-50's that have been annnounced, there doesn't seem to be much, if any, reason to shout its praises from the rooftops. And the Sony deck? Even many ardent Blu-ray supporters now consider it a disappointment.

On the other hand, the same people who have said to wait for Blu-ray-this, or wait for Blu-ray-that, have always made the claim that "content is king". Well, if that is true, then multiple studios changing from Blu-ray-only to a format-neutral stance would be a major shift. Therefore, if there is a possibility that the rumors from AVS are true, it might be prudent for someone considering a Blu-ray purchase to wait until after CES, to see what pans out.

If nothing changes, all they have lost is a couple of months. But if Disney and/or Fox announce support for HD DVD, it might save someone a fair chunk of change.

While I can well understand why Sony would never switch until the remote of the last BD player is prized from their cold, dead hands, I still don't see why Universal might not choose to go neutral. It isn't clear to me why they went with HD DVD in the first place.

As rumors go, Fox going neutral seems pretty "out there". I'll believe it when I see it. At least with Disney we can point to a specific comment made by an exec last spring that they were at least considering it. Not so with Fox, unless there is something recent I have missed.

Nevertheless, I'd be pleased if this turned out to be true. Sony/Columbia does have a top five title for me (no, nothing to do with a web-slinging comic book character). But I could live without it if I could get everything else on HD DVD.

So, please enlighten me: when is the CES?

http://www.cesweb.org/default.asp

January 8-11th in Las Vegas.

There has been very little "official" said about this format war. And, correct me if I'm wrong, the things that HAVE been said haven't been the most accurate on the BD side, up to and including the latest statement about jellyfish.

And this is a little something from someone on AVS who has been firmly in the HD DVD camp but played with a demo version of the Pioneer BD player:

So you'll pay $1500 (3x HD DVD) to get the best of BD...and "it ain't HD DVD but it ain't bad."

And that, my friends, is why I don't get this format war.

I agree. It would make me very happy, but I have serious doubts about it.

XXX isn't the best of BD. You'll notice it doesn't even get a nod in the Best BD-exclusive reference titles thread. Of course, being that it is a BD exclusive title, there is really no comparison to HD DVD. Then again, he is viewing it on a demo unit, and if I would have listened to reviews on the demo Panny unit, I wouldn't have purchased it.

I dont doubt anybody switching sides period. People may think that Fox and Disny switching just isnt going to happen but I disagree completly. The corporate mentality is what it is and ever since I started heavily investing in the stock market about 10 years ago and really started to pay attention to what companies do and when they do it, I have seen the truth of it all. The Corporate truth is MONEY period. You can throw literally everything out the window and it all comes down to how much money will we make if we do this and how much money will we lose if we dont do this. You can throw any statment you want into this format war, you can say Fx hates HD-DVD and Universal hates BD. It all means absolutly nothing.

In the end it is all about money and ill link back to this thread on the days that all of the rest of the compaines start supporting HD-DVD. It wont be very long now for a couple of them. If HD-DVD had fallen flatly on its face then it would be a completly different story but as we all know that is certainly not the case. Fox and Lions Gate and Disney are all looking very intently at how many titles are selling on HD-DVD. Even mor so because it is now being predicted that growth in SD DVD is finally coming to a halt. They will need to make money in other ways if they want the continued sales growth that they have been accostomed to the last 5 years.

Again SD has basically maxed out, it may grow a little bit more but all signs are showing that is has basically peaked. It is a Corporations job to go out and sustain thier sales and if one sector is going downthen they need to invest in new sectors that will help it go back up again. If you think even for a second that all of these companies dont have weekly reports on sales for both ormats then you couldnt be more wrong.

Bottom line is this. As I said above, corporations are about money period and every single movie studio that isnt supporting HD-DVD is losing money period!. ill say it again. Every company that isnt supporting HD-DVD is losing money. How long do you think that losing money will be viewed as ok in the corporate board room of these companies? Already we are seeing the pressure growing for these companies to support both HD formats and it has only been like 4-6 months since movies really started rolling out consistantly on the HD market. That pressure will continue to mount especially during the holiday season. You guys may sit back and think that its really complicated and there are a bunch of reasons stopping these companies from supporting both formats and you could be right but the most important thing, one that dwarfs everything else you can think of is money and that will never change.

The clock is ticking and every minute that these compaines refuse to support HD-DVD is money lost. I guarantee that the corporate meeting that are playing out on a weekly basis are very different then the ones that were played out at the beginning of these formats lives. HD-DVD is beating BD in sales period. Just how much they are beating them is debatable but they are beating them. That fact is like a vice grip on the reasons for not supporting HD-DVD. The more sales HD-DVD has the tighter it squeezes and eventually it will bust, The corporate mentality assures us of that fact.

PS...

That's debateable.

In it's current state, I wouldn't be buying those titles on HD DVD. There's a few things that would have to change in order for that to happen. Although switching may seem very good in the grand scheme of things, to the people holding out simply switching to HD DVD doesn't change any of those problems.

Switching doesn't guarantee money...or I guess I should say my money, anyway.

Well I would buy a lot of the Fox, LG and Disney BD titles if they went HD DVD. So if/when they switch, they would get my money for sure.

Never assume that your buying habits are indicative of the public at large. I've made that mistake before.

There should be no debate at this point that every HD DVD player sold represents some number of lost potential sales for the BD-only studios. Whether or not the alleged incentives those studios received from Sony for their exculsivity are enough to offset that number is anyone's guess.

Regardless of quality? That's a pretty bold statement.

If that were the case, why not just buy into BD now?

what they should do to make the HD formats even more desireable is shrink the release windows even more than they are now. imagine being able to walk into a store say a month or less after a movie hits the theaters and being able to buy only an HD copy for atleast a few months. the could charge the higher price that they are currently at and would make the formats that more likely to sell. of course this would affect movie ticket sales but I'm sure many would still go because of the big screen experience.

When did I ever say "regardless of quality"? And I have no intention of ever buying BD at this point in time. All I'm saying is that if Fox, LG and Disney put out the same titles on HD DVD that are currently on BD, I would buy them. How is that difficult to understand??? And of course I'm not going to buy any title that I know before hand is going to be awful, that's just common sense. So I don't see your point. Are you saying that every LG, Disney and Fox title will look bad not matter what format its on? Or am I just not supposed to support those studios if/when they come to HD DVD?

It took them at least a month just to do the video transfer of Batman Begins on HD DVD. No way we'll see release windows shrink that much.

It's an idea. It makes sense to sell the HD and BD versions earlier. Don't delay the SD versions, just give us the HD versions a bit earlier.

If they could get the HD versions out first without delaying the SD versions, I'd love it. But I don't want them to rush and have the quality slip.

They don't seem to have trouble getting transfers done early for Academy Award screener copies.

I just doubt that they would want to release the HD versions early. For one thing, they would be concerned that pirates would digitize the component output (ICT or no ICT, it wouldn't matter as it would still be higher than the resolution of DVD) to make quality bootlegs. That is, if they haven't already ripped the screener copies.

No Its not debatable. You can debate just how much money but you cant debate that there is actual money being lost. The sales numbers for HD-DVD movies speaks for itself.

PS...

Yes going back and redoing a transfer takes a good amount of time but that could easily change. If they wanted to change the market window for releases with the HD formats they could easily do so. They could do it a number of ways, one of them being that as soon as the transfer is done for the theatre they immediatly begin the HD formats release. That would give plenty of time to get a solid transfer out 4-6 weeks after the theatrical release.

I actually think that is a great idea but I know that it wouldnt go over well with alot of the theatres that play extended release schedules and as always the rental busniesses like Blockbuster would try and fight it. All in all tho it would definitly do exactly what you saying it would do. It would give a big puch to the HD formats as I dont know one person who loves film that wouldnt pay a little extra to get the films they like as soon as possible. A very creative idea and one that I never thought of until you brought it up. Again it would have alot of hurldes but it would without a doubt give a gian boost to these formats and I would be all over it, actually I am already all over it so its a moot point for me :-)

PS...

Since Nacho Libre was delayed I can almost guaratee Clerks II and Pulse are gonna be delayed...I heard the rumor before...damnit!

Clerks 2 was already delayed until 1/2/07.

I agree, and PS really broke it down. In fact, if things continue to go HD DVD's way, there will be internal pressure at Sony for even them to release HD DVDs. It may never happen but if HD DVD has a 2007 as good as their 2006, at some point the bean counters at Sony will make sure they aren't missing out on a revenue stream. That is the way business works.

Most of the studio support Sony got was leveraged on a promise of an installed base of users they have failed to present. I am sure all studios will re-evaluate their positions on both formats after the holiday.

If either format performs as poorly in 2007 as they have this year it'll be a worrying sign for HighDef in general. As to studios losing money by not supporting both formats, that's unlikely to be true. Taking into account the costs incurred to releasing content on a new format (replication, authoring, distribution, advertising, etc) there's very little likelyhood that current sales are showing a profit for any of the hollywood studios.

Do you think that the problems with BD will magically disappear once those studios start releasing on HD DVD?

Unless something changes, they'll have the same encodes/extras as the BD versions. So the reasons you didn't buy into BD will still be there on HD DVD which doesn't AUTOMATICALLY transfer into sales.

Not that hard to understand.

Awards screeners are often quick-'n-dirty transfers with lousy compression quality just to get something on disc.

I had to make some comments on all this. Because some of this is great, the rest is just conjecture. Which is always worth more conjecture.

Agree 100%.

You are starting to contradict yourself. Slowing growth does not equal losing money. It means reduced margin, perhaps. PS3...that's losing money. Slowing growth is an issue because of shareholders' opinions. And if projections are accurate, that can be easily countermanded. But actually losing money is a much bigger issue to the company and the shareholders.

At this point it is a cash cow for the studios. Growth slowing is due to saturation of the market, not obsolescence of DVD. Certainly not due to 2 upstart discs that haven't really even started, yet. For the studios to suddenly start worrying less about the hundreds of millions of DVD purchasers in order to suck up to a couple tens of thousands of HD purchasers would be really stupid. Now, 5 years from now this could be quite the opposite. But we aren't there, yet.


No. First, the very first machine was launched only 6 months ago. How can you possibly say movies were rolling out back then? I still wouldn't say "movies have really started rolling out". Let's check numbers come spring 07.

Next, how are they losing money? By not selling to a couple thousand early adopters? C'mon, HDDVD and BD are both losing money right now when making product. This is a future profit line, not a current one.

I agree. Most of the discussion here is just fanboy posturing and meaningless, really.

No doubt HDDVD is selling more. But the war doesn't even begin until J6P notices the 2 formats. Right now both sides are still positioning their players. (no pun intended) The sales figures right now are pretty meaningless. I'd say those meetings are exactly the same since we are still in the beginning. No one company has even shipped 2 players yet, unless you count an RS232 port as being strikingly different.

This is why BD fanatics are pinning some hopes on the PS3, because that will no doubt be noticed by the masses. And sell in far greater numbers early than any standalone player. Same for HDDVD fanatics and the 360 add-on.