The only people banned were trolls and that happened to a couple of HD DVD supporters as well. This forum has been very civil throughout and honestly I think most of the posters on the forum were buying on both formats.

There is no reason for anyone to rub anything in. From day one of this battle we said HD DVD was the underdog and Warner would decide the war if they choose a side. Nothing happened that we didn't all know about in early 2006. If anything I am shocked it was that close to Warner going HD DVD exclusive. Toshiba fought a pretty hard fight to even turn it into a battle. Sony claimed victory at least a dozen times since 2006 only to have to take it back. Finally they got it right.

Also, it needs to be stated once again. BD is in no way superior to HD DVD. If anything it took it 18 months to finally catch up to the product HD DVD released on day one. Scratch that, profile 2.0 will catch it up if that ever gets released. HD DVD had some advantages in being region free and with HDi being ready quickly. BD has more storage which hasn't made much difference, but maybe will some day along with higher bitrates that also haven't made a big difference at least to this point. All in all Toshiba and Sony released solid technologies and either one would have been a solid format for the future. That is why so many of us we fine with supporting both.

Not a video game enthusiast, sorry. And I saw numerous HD-DVD fans putting forth childish tantrums and getting people banned over at AVS that made me think the HD-DVD fan was an average age of maybe 17-19. I am a video and music enthusiast, though. Personally, I saw HD-DVD as a maxed out version of DVD with limited future potential. BD, on the other hand, I saw as something that had a lot more potential until we get to VOD Hirez. I think BD is the natural bridging software to that point.

The best thing for this forum would be a stop on threads that mention Blu-Ray buyouts or anything of that sorts after this weekend. That way we can work towards discussing HD media and end the constant back and forth banter about who won, why, how much was paid and whatever other tricks were turned for it to have happened. If not we will have people posting links two months from now talking about the "payoff" when it doesn't really matter. It is time for this forum to grow together and accept what has been laid out in front of us and those who don't want to be a part of it can move on.

Since so much has changed since the launch of HD media in April '06, DVDTalk should consider letting some of these individuals back on the forum.

:up:

Ditto 100%

Sure. It would have been exactly the same, just with different names attributed to the various forms of vitriol, and different target for the hatred.

MOD NOTE:

Usually, the winning side has more obnoxious posts. Beginning of last year, we had more bad posts by HD DVD supporters, and lately, we had more bad posts by Blu-ray supporters. Some people seem to think that just because "their side is winning," that they can post anything they want. Well, we just happen to disagree here at DVD Talk. We will continue to filter out inappropriate posts.

namja
Moderator, DVD Talk Forums

Just neglect all the HD VMD fans here why don't you :rolleyes:
http://images.pcworld.com/news/graph...-HDVMDlogo.jpg FTW! :lol:

The more I think about it, the more it makes me angry that WB waited until RIGHT after the holidays, when people were spending like crazy on both formats, standard dvd, and everything else, to announce this. I release the Toshiba price cuts are a separate deal, but I think WB knew this was coming and was pretty greedy in waiting until now as opposed to Dec. 1. Now I know it makes good business sense to bleed the pockets dry over the holidays, but WB really makes me mad on principle. (Yes, I'm sore about it) That and their nonexistant quality control... :) Almost makes me want to un-see I Am Legend.

I agree with that, especially the one from New York who LOVES extras. I certainly didn't agree with everything he said, but he sure kept the board hopping & more fun to read. That being said, I don't know the circumstances on the 'straw that broke the camel's back' re: the ban, so I apologize if I'm speaking out of line. -smile-

True, but that is the risk you take during a format war. Anything can happen when 2 sides are involved. Those of us who bought into HD on day 1 have paid a much higher price than those who spend $100 and bought a handful of discs in December '07. So my sympathy is limited for those individuals.

:up:

For those of you who have not been involved in the HD forums since they opened, you have no idea how bad it was before with several asshole members who caused nothing but trouble. You couldn't go a page without an attack or a baiting post. This forum is much more civil than it used to be.

I have to agree with this. At the same time, we've also been able to enjoy and build our HD collection longer than the most recent adopters.

I still can't believe the format war will be ending a lot longer than either of us expected. While I lean blu, I was under the assumption like everyone else, that this would go on for at least another 2 or 3 years so just the swift nature of how everything went down is still hard to process.

P.S Fastest way for Toshiba to come on board = give them a small share of BD patents.

That was when these formats were in their infancy. A lot has changed since then and if some of these individuals were given a second chance, I believe the forum could still be civil.

Ahh, I remember. Ive been here since the start of HDM with the A1...I remember some of the people. I do, however, miss that crazy guy from NYC. Maybe he can get pardoned?

Why is HD DVD "limited" though. I hear the argument all the time that "Blu-ray has more capacity" or "Blu-ray has more bitrate" and so forth. Is that what you're saying? Because if HD DVD was adopted, I would be certain any capacity issues would have been taken care of. And as far as the bitrate issue, you should know, as a mature Blu-ray owner, that bitrate doesn't mean squat most of the time because movie studios often increase the bitrate, but not the quality per bit. If you have an extensive DVD collection, you probably noticed this already.

I agree.

I think with the HD war over the HD forum will be fine. However, you can still get jumped on in the main DVD forum from people that don't like the HD discs brought up outside this forum.

Those of us that have a lot of discs in both formats know this too well. I have watched at a couple of hundred movies in both formats and so far none of that extra storage or bitrate has amounted to anything I can tell with my eyes.

That is not to say that in the future this could improve. With studios only encoding for BD they could get better and better at pushing he AV quality. However, knowing the studios they will use the extra storage for more crappy java games and not to push the bitrates higher. I will hold out hope, but I doubt BD will ever do anything to really surpass HD DVD. They were both pretty damn equal as home video formats.

I can't believe no one has realized this is just an April Fools joke, just 4 months early!




:p

Yeah because those $29 DVD players sure are expensive. or the $50 upconverting ones.
They may not be the best, but they get you in the game.

The thing that pisses me off about Blu-Ray is the outright collusion these CE companies agreed to when they started making Blu-Ray players.

They (the BDA) had to agree not to license the technology to cheap Chinese companies so not to undercut themselves. Thats why all the manafacturers make Blu Ray players, and thats why the costs are expensive. I would rather see them compete on a fair level, like DVD, with other manafactuers so they compete on price/improvements.

The agreed to realease a produt that wasn't finalized, in effect "technologically impairing" (read: making semi-obsolete) 1.0 players that aren't going to play a lot of these "extras"

At least Toshiba had the guts to make a run with low-price units. The "technology must be expensive in order to be good" mentality that affects certain forums is to me, anti-consumer, elitist, and guaranteed to ensure that HDM media remains a niche product.

So yeah, you can all proclaim "YEAH no more format war" due to the studios coming into line, but as Forrester said $250 is the magic price for consumers - and for me personally.

So are we going to see $250 Blu Ray 1.1. players? Because I have better things to spend my money one due to my upconverting A-2 (or for that matter, any upconverting DVD player)

---
So yeah maybe Bill Hunt was right that the Blu Ray format was the right decision for movies. But Blu Ray's CE partners are nothing but anti-consumer, headed by Sony, whose record on propietary formats stinks.

I guess you can sit around and feel sorry for yourself about what happened. As I see it there are several companies that make Blu-Ray players while Toshiba was the ONLY one to do so. Had Toshiba spread their HD-Dvd love around a bit they might be in the game. I'm sure there are consumers oiut there who would have liked to get into HD-Dvd but maybe had bad experience with Toshiba in the past and had no other alternative. I think the Blu-Ray group realizes that there isn't a lot of money to be made in the hardware. It is the proliferation of software sales that bring in the profit. I can see a $200 dollar player hitting the market in the next 6 months or so. Now that the general public can be "led" to HD this will happen. And I'm sure that most of us on here didn't get into the dvd game with a $29 dollar player or a $50 dollar upconverter. These are dvd endgame prices and not representative of the game just a few years ago. It is still expensive as most of us buy hardware once or twice but we buy tons of dvds.

I heard...

...there were grapes in this thread!

http://msnbcmedia3.msn.com/j/msnbc/C...2p.hmedium.jpg

Woo hoo!

:banana:

I hope so, thats all I ask. Then I will get a Blu Ray player.