geodi

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...112300987.html

Pretty bleak...sample passage from today's article.....

The fight between Blu-ray and HD-DVD, reminiscent of the 1980s battle between Betamax and VHS tape formats, isn't just vexing consumers like Sardo. It's shaping up as a business disaster for movie studios, electronics companies and retailers that had counted on a robust holiday selling season for the fancy new players -- which cost $500 to $1,000 -- and movies to play in them.

...and....

Experts say the disc technologies have a finite window of opportunity to earn the loyalty of consumers. As they see it, movies on disc is a technology with a limited life span anyway, as people will eventually be able to retrieve high-definition movies from the Internet or call them up from a cable or satellite company -- as many consumers can already do with a limited movie selection.

Oh well...I bought the 360 add-on and my HD-A2 is on order. I'm in for the haul, no matter how long (or short) it will be.

Josh Z

Blah blah blah... I've been listening to this same argument for years, and yet customers who download movies are still a miniscule fraction of those who buy DVDs. Part of that is due to the technology, but a much bigger part is that people like physically owning their movies.

Qui Gon Jim

From recent reports, that MS HD downloads plan is a fiasco. I read a report where someone waited 10 hours for 10% of a movie to come down. The bandwidth is not there yet, and device shifting is not possible.

There will always be a physical format.

darkside

Do people that spout that crap not realize how bad the bandwith issue is in this country? Getting HD movies online is not going to be a reality until we have enough bandwith and the telecoms are not willing to spend the money or share the bandwith they have. That is not even mentioning the hassles with DRM that hurts digital downloads.

Disc movies are not going anywhere. This war may hurt HD discs, but in that case regular DVD will continue to dominate.

Mammal

There exists a psychological quirk, usually relatively harmless, that requires many of us to collect things. The ability to download something is not enough.

Mr. Cinema

What's the point of posting articles like these in this forum where there are die hard supporters for both sides? I doubt anyone who owns either is frightened when reading garbage like this from the "experts". Seems pointless to me.

viking99

If that were true, we would still have bookstores and libraries in this Country.

dharding

???

What country do you live in, Outer Mongolia?

There hasn't been a spate of library and bookstore closings in my neck of the woods...

darkside

Digital books don't even have the bandwith issues and they are still failures. People like owning physical media and books. The only digital thing to really catch on is MP3 and that is mainly because it made carrying around your whole music collection easy (well that and free music sharing). People are not as interested in carrying around all their movies and books. Disc media and paper books are not going anywhere. Even CDs are a long way from dead.

Josh Z

There's that, and the fact that MP3 downloads make it easier to own and compile just the songs that you like, rather than being forced to buy a whole CD filled with other crappy songs you have no interest in. But that obviously doesn't work the same for movies. Nobody's going to download just one chapter of a movie and not the rest. They want the whole movie, and the failure of PSP has demonstrated that portability isn't a big concern when it comes to movies either.

viking99

Yep, you nailed it!

(actually, my post was making a point through sarcasm; I thought that would be obvious)

Jay G.

I wouldn't say that. However, DVD had already beat PSP to the punch by the time it came out, since portable DVD players can be had cheap. And if you wanted movies on the PSP, a better option than UMD always existed with the memory stick.

MBoyd

Ugh . . . I read the article's reader comments page. Didn't sound like anyone had experience with either format. Overwhelmingly the readers praised Blu-Ray's specs and expected it to win. Sort of where many of us were last year. And then one guy complained about collecting 50 laserdiscs and calling it a failed format. If I hear one more person call LD a failed format I will scream.

TheKobra

If fact here in AZ there are more bookstores opening over the past year vs. closing.

Supermallet

Then definitely don't watch The History Channel tonight. At 8 they're showing "The Laserdisc: Why Did It Fail?" followed by "Laserdisc: The Failure" and finally, "Laserdisc Never Existed."

cornflakeguy

I'm so tired of these "experts" saying that we will be downloading HD content or just "calling it up" on demand.

I don't WANT to watch it On Demand. I want to buy the disc, have the package, put it on my shelf, and best part...take it over to a friends house. Or better yet, lend it to my friend while I borrow one from them.

Movies that we watch in the home should be tangible objects.

Hokeyboy

Why?

Given that bandwidth issues will resolve themselves in time, if I can download an HD movie (with extras) in less than a minute, with ownership of said media and portability via burning or device transfer... what difference does having a freakin' insert and a plastic case make?

Qui Gon Jim

I think the flying car will be in my driveway first.

Unless they can work out a DRM scheme where I can make it portable, its crap and draconian.

VOD services have consumers by the balls. There won't be any need to be competive, there will be no second hand market and it will truly breed an era of piracy these dipshit companies have never seen before.

There will always be people who want to be "off the grid." Cash is obsolete, yet it is still used because of its anonymity.

Jay G.

Itunes already allows portability of its video downloads via the Ipod. Other schemes may come into play as well.

Why do you think they won't be competitive? There's already a number of different online VOD sites, so it's doubtful there will be a monopoly on viewer's options.

Cash isn't obsolete, it has a lot of features that credit cards don't have, anonymity being only one of them. For one, it's near universally accepted; I just recently ate at a restaurant that didn't take credit cards, but took cash. There's also the lack of processing fees on the part of the vendor; I know of one store that actually passes on this savings to the consumer with a discount for paying cash.

And that's really the point here, VOD won't make HD discs obsolete because they offer different advantages and disadvantages.

Jay G.

Some people said the same thing about DVD when it first came out.

The new formats were designed with HDTV in mind, which is becoming less and less just a videophile format and more and more one the average consumer has and thus could take advantage of.

darkside

In time? Not this decade and even the next one is in question. Being able to download a HD movie in minutes is not something that will happen anytime soon. By the time that kind of bandwith exists we will probably be wanting our video content in 4K and will have to wait another 20 years for the next bandwith upgrade. No thanks, I will stick with discs I can watch whenever I want and lend to whoever I want.

One other thing I'm seeing is even people getting fiber to the curb are still not getting a huge speed upgrade for their internet since the telecoms are reserving most of that bandwith for their own services. Fast 30GB downloads are just not going to be a reality.

Qui Gon Jim

Add to that the need to keep adding disc space to the array you will store these films in, it just becomes unfeasible. Will VOD overtake rental? Probably. VOD and Netflix are making dedicated video rental outlets obsolete. It will probably never happen to "librarians."

Spiky

ROTFL
I almost actually did fall out of my chair reading this.

Supermallet

I thought it was pretty good, myself.

Giles

there was a seperate blurb from yesterday's Washington Post that stated 1080p monitors were useless since,

a) cable isn't 'broadcast' in 1080p

b) smaller (under 40 inch monitors) tv/monitor's - the image resolution wouldn't benefit from it.