Amen, Brother!

"Better" is relative. I can at least get their freakin' movie picture into the correct shape so that they don't torture guests like me quite as much again, but I'm not touching everything else that's wrong with their setup.

If identical quality HD video and lossless sound can be achieved within a 30gb disc, what's the difference to you the consumer? Have you ever watched any of these HD DVDs that you're labeling "hobbled"? The difference in storage capacity is just a spec. It's like two jocks strutting around the locker room comparing the size of their schlongs. Yeah, maybe one of them can boast that his schlong is longer, but does that make him a better player than the other guy?

Do you work for one of the Blu-ray companies? What difference does it make to you which format has the better specs on paper?

Have you missed all the rumors that Sony, a company already amortizing upwards of $300 per PS3 console sold, is considering another $100 price cut? Did you miss it when Panasonic halved the price of their poorly-selling BD player, or the announcement that Sony's next standalone BD player will be half the price of their previous model?

Again, these are the business decisions of multi-trillion dollar international corporations. Other than friendlier prices that make adoption easier, how do they affect you personally?

So why is Panasonic including 5 FREE movies with their upcoming BD-10A player?

Sony's price difference between its Gen 1 player ($999 launch) and Gen 2 player ($499 launch) is 50%, and that'll be less than a year of release between them. Can't this be considered "slashing prices"? Plus, the Gen 2 unit was going to be $599, then they "slashed" the price another $100 just this past week.

Onkyo has announced their HD DVD player, it's shown in another thread.

better late than never.

To the best of my knowledge, Blu-ray has been outselling HD DVD 3 to 1, or at worst 2 to 1, pretty much EVERY week (at least since Christmas 2006).

Even if we go by your numbers, Blu-ray does great in a good week, and still outsells HD DVD in a "bad" week. So how exactly does that NOT make Blu-ray in a healthier position?

Not trying to flame you, just trying to understand the logic in some of these posts that more sales don't equate more health/more popularity/more success.

Again, I own both formats and would love to see HD DVD "win", but some of these posts remind me of a certain President who is too stubborn to admit he's losing a war.

How much will the Onkyo player be? I can't see them selling a ton of those when the A2 can be had for ~$300. And Onkyo will want to make a profit, no?

Well, BD did seem to release a heck of a lot more titles in 2007 than did the HD-DVD group, hence the discrepancy in relative sales. Now that HD-DVD is again releasing titles at a decent clip the gap has been closing. This could be bad news for the BD group, who seemed to think that they would knock out HD-DVD in one quick blow with the PS3. With the "war" continuing at more or less a stalemate, my take is that price will become the most important factor with content a close second and specs a very distant third. Until BD/HD-DVD prices get closer to the prices that consumers associate with DVDs, I don't see them jumping to HD in any appreciable numbers, content and specs be damned.

This is closer to the XA2 and will be geared more towards video/audiophile users. I would not be surprised to see a $999 MSRP on it.

Obviously I can only speak to what's important to me. I won't try to dictate what I think should be important to everyone.

You know, I visited this site and I'm not really seeing any advantage to the extra space. They look about even for me. Plus I watched King Kong over the weekend and it's a 3+ hour movie that looked exceptional on my 56" 1080p set. I know it's not "the best" HD has right now, but many would easily put it in the top 5. So I'm not sure how much more space is needed for picture quality. Just because there's extra space, doesn't mean it's useful.

I honestly don't care. I know it's important to some people, but I can't sit that long. As I mentioned, King Kong fit just fine on one disc. Anything longer than that and I don't see the point really.

Besides, I recently attended an event hosted by Microsoft and I asked them how much further they can push HD DVD. They claim they've crunched the numbers and think they can fit Lord of the Rings Extended onto one disc. I'm not sure if that's the first movie or the last, but there's no way I could sit that long anyway. Other than bragging rights, I fail to see the advantage of having something that long on one disc.

I'm probably a little weird. But here's the thing. I pick the best sounding track on the disc and listen to it exclusively. Any additional tracks are simply a waste of space. Get real. Why do we need multiple audio options?

Plentiful extras aren't a major benefit to me. After years and years and years of watching all the bonus material on DVDs, I've had it. I'm completely burned out. I don't care how much they put on there. I'm no longer interested.

Besides, it's super cheap (that should read SUPER CHEAP) to make an additional disc and sell the two-disc set for much more. There's no good business reason to squeeze all the bonus material onto one disc. In fact, it's the opposite.

What you're probably talking about is the whole in movie experience and the like. Now I realize I'm probably in the minority, but I can't stand that crap. When I want to watch the movie, I don't want crap showing up in popup windows. And when I want to see bonus material, I don't want it in a tiny window with the movie playing in the background distracting me. I don't even care if it's in a big window with the movie moved down to the tiny window. Or any other combination. I hated that crap on DVDs and I hate it on HD discs as well.

Shannon it's funny you say that, because I see the same analogy from the other side-The "we make our own reality" belief, that just saying you are winning makes it so.

I don't dispute that Bd sells more discs in any given week. If they didn't, while having more than 15 times the capable players, then that would be a stunning stat.
The reason I don't think they are any healthier is because to sell a few more thousand (on an average week) they need to spend more
-the glass masters used in replication are twice the cost
-yields still are not great, but Sony is apparently capping the cost. In other words, when they make 10 or 20 thousand Bd 50 coasters in the process of replicating another studios Pirate movies, Sony eats the costs. The cost in materials, labor, line time, etc If they didn't, it would make even more studios skittish (like Fox) about publishing titles that were not absolutely some sort of sure thing (like a new release).

There is just no absolute domination here. Yes they move more units in any given week, but so far that only makes them king of the ant hill. Possibly the biggest benefit they get from this is not monetary, but perceptual.
People think they are 'winning' - but for the studios, this is offset by higher production costs. $10,000 vs $5000 for the glass master is a negliable issue when you move 100,000 units or more. But when you are only selling a couple thousand (as some catalog titles have done) it become a more significant sticking point. It is even more of a problem when the HD DVD version, moves more anyway. While Bd moves more unit in aggregate- if you look at the Video scan numbers, you'll see that that is not true for every title- especially when it comes to older catalog fare that doesn't neccesarily appeal to a PS3 demographic.

And that is just on the software side. On the hardware side they are completely reactive. Toshiba makes a move and the Bd CE makers react and try to follow, and yet they still can't match in features yet and they still end up being, despite massive price cuts, 100% more in some cases.

I don't think you're looking at this in proper perspective.

Yes, on the face of it, selling a combined 50k copies of the two Pirates movies (meaning really only 25k each) versus 15k copies of the Matrix box set looks like a huge victory for Blu-ray. But then you have to consider that the last Pirates movie sold several million DVDs in its first week of release, and suddenly the difference between 15k and 25k looks awfully damn pathetic. Then you have to take into consideration how much it cost Disney to produce those Pirates Blu-rays in terms of not just manufacturing, but also mastering, authoring, and general Blu-ray development (the Pirates discs have some nifty interactive features). And they only sold 25,000 copies each?

It's a shallow victory if they still lose money in the process. All they've really accomplished is losing slightly less money than Warner, which may not even be the case considering that the Matrix box set had a much higher MSRP than the Pirates Blu-rays and the format's development costs are lower.

Exactly. It's like Paul SD pointed out: King of the anthill.

This article is from a month and a half ago, but it still holds true:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...ly-matter.html

What that person didn't mention is that King Kong only has a Dolby Digital Plus soundtrack, no lossless audio on it at all, that definitely has something to do with it being limited to 30GB.

Not definitely; Universal hasn't embraced lossless audio to any great extent. They lean more towards high-bitrate lossy tracks.

Kinda like Kingdom of Heaven on Blu-ray, which used 50GB and was limited to 1 extra feature: the theatrical trailer.

MI3 is a great set, and it's 2 discs. Do you think people refused to buy that because it was 2 discs and the movie was used on a 30GB disc?

That is a poor example because KOH has DTS-HD, both movies are about the same length as well. I'm not sure if you were trying to say that it has no lossless soundtrack but it does have one.

I thought it was terrible that King Kong didn't have a lossless track. That is a top tier title and for it not to have TrueHD or an equivalent is sad, particularly for me, as I would have loved having it.

Universal encodes DD+ at the highest bit rate, which even professional sound mixers have said is essentially transparent to the master. If sat down for a double-blind listening test between full-rate DD+ and a lossless track, properly volume-matched, I'd be shocked if even the most golden eared of audiophiles could consistently and accurately tell them apart.

back to the topic on hand

I don't think the problem is that Mr. Hunt is siding with Blu Ray. I think the problem is Mr. Hunt is basically saying that those of us who adopted HD-DVD have made a drastic mistake and will regret it in the long run. I'm sure Blu Ray is a great format. But for reasons of pricing and the fact that some of my favorite movies are being released on HD DVD I opted to go with HD DVD.

What I don't understand is why people like Mr. Hunt act like this so called "format war" will be the cause of the end of the world unless it ends soon. The fact is neither format is anywhere near standard DVD. Heck read some of the reviews of Planet Earth on amazon.com. There are some people who didn't know you couldn't play an HD DVD on a standard DVD player. You can't have a format war when people don't know what the heck it is they're buying.

The format war is being fought against DVD nerds posting on messageboards. When it starts to go mainsteam then there will be a winner. Or maybe neither format wins and something else comes along.

I'm saying 50GB is limited.

Bravo, I was going to make this point too. I think people are all hung up on lossless codecs not because they can tell the difference, but because they are completists; they have to have the latest and greatest just because it exists, not because it would benefit them by having it over anything else.

You didn't actually just say that about blu-ray, did you? The bare-bones titles is one of the things that has kept me from being even remotely tempted by that side.

(Sigh...) Postponed titles do not mean "scaled back support."

Yeah, I can't say that fully three of the major studios (Disney, Fox, Sony) will "never" support HD DVD. But don't you think it's far more likely that one major studio (Universal) will join all the rest in supporting Blu-ray? Of course it is. People need to stop kidding themselves that Blu-ray's three exclusive studios are going to go out of their way to embrace the lower-selling format anytime soon, or ever.

Fine, both sides are having sales. I concede the point. Seems like HD DVD's sales are more drastic, though.

Why does it have to be one or the other? Witness the two-disc Pirates releases, with a BD50 for the film and a second BD25 for extras. The movie gets an entire dual-layer disc with a maxed-out bit rate, and the studio gets to advertise that it has two discs for more perceived value. Sounds like a win-win to me.

Remind me which format has more potential for extras in the future? Am I the only person who is not stuck thinking about only the immediate present? Does not a 50-gig disc have more space for extras and the highest bit rates for films? Do you really think the early, single-layer, bare-bones BD25s will be the standard for all eternity?