ChrisHicks

pretty much everyone I know who owns an HDTV thinks they are watching HD just because the tv is. plus, they all think I'm nuts that I buy HD dscs at the current cost when DVD is so much cheaper. that is the norm I believe for many people.

bunkaroo

All we can hope for is with one format to sell, stores will make even greater efforts to educate their customers on the benefits of HD discs.

RockStrongo

Yeah, its time....its time for one to die....and I hate saying that becuase I like HD-DVD so much.

But, the competition has driven prices down on discs and hardware. Its time for one to take off now.

IMO, this war has been good for HD formats. I still think they will not overtake DVD, but for a larger market, one must go away now.

chanster

The only thing I'm interested in seeing is if the PS3 keeps the price of stand-alone players Blu Ray players high.

Since there is only one manafacturer of the PS3, it doesn't get discounted very much, if at all.

If Sony/BDA was to allow stand-alone players drop in price a lot below the PS3, then wouldn't that undercut sales of the PS3?

Commander Dan

Well, I think this is somewhat disappointing for consumers, as I have always thought HD-DVD to be the more consumer friendly format. Indeed, I always perceived that’s why the movie industry was largely pushing Blu-ray; more DRM imposed on consumers and the continuation of restrictive region coding.

The numbers don’t lie, however, and I must admit that at this point in the game, Blu-ray is definitely the preferred format with most consumers, just as Warner contends. What I don’t understand is why we didn’t see more Internet unification (at least, more so than we already had) in support of HD-DVD. While I acknowledge that more GB per layer and greater bandwidth is certainly desirable, its merits can be debated when comparing those advantages with less copyright restrictions and the end of region coding. In the end, I always thought HD-DVD to be more consumer friendly and more versatile. (After all, you can burn HD content on a standard DVD to be played back on an HD-DVD player. Pretty nifty, if you ask me.)

All of that said, I would say that this move does indeed pretty much spell the eventual end of HD-DVD. I only wish I had known this information a month or so sooner, as it would have affected some of my recent purchases. For sure, I would have opted to get the Harry Potter films on BD instead of HD-DVD.

As it turns out, I just went format neutral about 3 weeks ago, having purchased a PS3. I have owned an HD-A1 for a year and half now. I have no regrets in investing in HD-DVD, and I was always comfortable with the notion that HD-DVD might ultimately lose the format war.

However, had I known a mere few weeks ago what I know now, I likely would have purchased a stand-alone player instead of a PS3; one capable of decoding advanced audio codecs and outputting over 5.1 analog outputs (my HT setup is devoid of HDMI connections). I did not worry about this before, because a month a ago, it looked as if both formats would endure for the foreseeable future, and since I leaned HD-DVD, with the bulk of my HD disc collection being HD-DVD, I was content with using my HD-A1 as my “primary” HD disc player, and the PS3 as my “secondary” player. Now, I wish I had looked at a stand-alone BD player to become my new “primary” player, since my Blu-ray disc collection will now likely start expanding at a much larger rate.

I still plan to keep my HD-A1 for a while, since presumably Universal and Paramount will keep releasing on HD-DVD for the next year or so. Plus, I have several WB HD-DVD titles that may not be re-released on Blu-ray for some time, if at all. (Batman Begins, Forbidden Planet, etc.) Even so, I have already been looking through my video cabinet contemplating what to eBay and replace with Blu-ray.

In any case, this format war has been fascinating to watch; even as a “participant.” I wish, as consumers, we could have sent a clearer message to the studios that greater DRM and continued region coding is not in our best interest. I think greater HD-DVD support might have helped to send that message.

Regardless, it will now be interesting to see how the “mass adoption” scenario plays out, as Blu-ray emerges as the supposed “winner.” I don’t think adoption of even a single HD disc format will be nearly as widespread as many inside and outside the industry thinks it will.

Bollux

People who want a PS3 will still buy a PS3, and the fact it's a blu-ray player will be just an added bonus (and one that will ultimately be utilized). When I bought my PS3 60GB shortly after release last year, I had 2 reasons:

1. I was tired of updating my computer every 6 months to play the latest games
2. I wanted in on the hi-def market.

The HD camp kept making a big deal about how not everybody who bought a PS3 was using it as a HD player. I think they seriously under-estimated just how many people actually are. I know dozens of people with a PS3, and every one of them owns at least one blu-ray title. How could you not?

Sony will ultimately license blu-ray to anybody who wants to build a player, and cheaper-than-PS3 players will be on the market, I'm thinking sooner rather than later. But that only addresses the people who have played the 'wait and see who wins the format war' card. If you're interested in having a multi-media device that plays blu-ray, you'll get a PS3. If not, you'll buy a cheaper stand-alone. If people were only ever interested in the cheapest device possible, that's all that would ever sell, but some people always want the more 'feature-rich' version. Maybe that feature is not what you're looking for, but that's why we have choice in our market.

Sales in both stand-alones and PS3 can, IMO, do nothing but increase now that the end of the 'war' seems to be over.

My $.02

dsa_shea

Acutally this would meet the demand of those who want a Blu-Ray player but are adamant about not having a gaming system as the player. Some people are fine with a dual purpose player like the PS3 and some want the player only. I imagine PS3 sales are going to pickup enough to allow a cheaper standalone Blu-Ray player to hit the market for the rest of the customers that want the player only.

TGM

Um, as someone who IS format neutral, yes I would be saying the same thing. I'm not a guy rooting for either side. I was rooting for a prolonged "war" that would drop the pricing to dirt cheap for both sides.

Sdallnct

LOL...I only have seven more years to enjoy HD...then might as well go back to SD...LOL

Sdallnct

This is how I feel. I ONLY got into boy BR and HD because of huge price drops. When you can get a HD or BR DVD for close to or sometimes LESS (on new popular titles) then SD why wouldn't you got one of the HD formats?

But now I'm worried that will change. How many more BOGO free or B3G2 free sales are we going to see out of BR it they have no competition?

In fact, will BR return or never make it out of a niche market due to cost? Even I who love HT I would never buy a $500 DVD Player. Probably wouldn't buy a $300 one either. And even tho I love HT, I don't see myself buying a lot of $25-$30 movies.

bunkaroo

Sorry for the generalization.

It really has more to do with personal experience.

TheBigDave

I totally agree. I was rooting for the war, not one format or the other. Fierce competition results in better product and lower prices. Does anyone really think that without HD-DVD we would be seeing sub-$300 Blu-Ray players and weekly B1G1 sales?

dsa_shea

There is still huge competition with SD and trying to get more and more people to adopt HD as their main form of entertainment. This is why I wouldn't bet that we have seen the last of the deals that we have enjoyed. If Blu-Ray wants to escape the niche market that has been expressed over and over again they will have to continue offering the software at competitive prices. If I can get a Blu-Ray movie for 3-5 dollars more out of pocket than I could buy the SD counterpart then I am fine with it. We can't expect to get better quality products and continue to pay the same or less than we did for SD dvds for the last 10 years. It is just inconceivable that people expect this stuff to be cheaper then SD discs are. If you look in the sales ads for new release SD dvds they are between 14.99 to 17.99 (for most titles) on release week. Most of us have paid this or less for the titles in our HD collections over the last year or so. I wouldn't expect for the companies that back Blu-Ray to all of a sudden say "Let's go and charge them a shitload now." It wouldn't be a smart business move and would only work if they were trying to kill the HD medium altogether.

argh923

Oh, nice, so now we're in the business of bashing video gamers? Seriously?

To hell with that.

dsa_shea

The same could be said had Blu-Ray never came along in the first place. Tsohiba could still have 300-400 dollar players on the market. The fact is most of their players are still close to 300 dollars and up except for their A2 model which is 1080i. Competition is good and it still exists since their is this little market called SD dvds that take up a few shelves at your local retailer.

tonymontana313

In fact, now would be the the time to ramp up the BOGO deals to win over the dvd crowd and ease the pain a little for the hd-dvd userbase as well.

dsa_shea

I am a gamer and I was not trying to bash gamers in any way.

Easy

Completely wrong. I bought the $100 Tosh and a handful of discs to see the difference for myself on my 65" Mits calibrated with Avia. I found it to be slightly better but I wasn't very impressed. It certainly wasn't the orgasmic experience some claim.
I guess Warner did me a favor. I learned what I needed to know and it cost very little. Now I won't be tempted to run out and "buy blu" for that minor improvement.
Naturally, if costs fall to current dvd levels at some time in the future I may revisit that decision.

argh923

I agree. I don't buy - for a second - the belief that there will be no physical media soon. People want something they can hold onto - and movies are a completely different world than music.

redrum

http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/06/l...ss-conference/

toshibas press conference.

dsa_shea

I agree with this. Music being downloadable goes along with what it is. Music is enjoyed simply by listening to it. Until MTV came around we didn't have to see our music to enjoy it. Movies are a whole other ballgame.

bunkaroo

I got HD DVD and Blu-Ray back when I was still using my Avical-calibrated Tosh RPTV. There was a nice difference, especially with colors, but the sharpness and detail didn't really shine for me until I got my 1080p DLP.

My Tosh needed constant service-level convergence to keep it looking as sharp as it could. Also, I got tired of waiting 45 minutes for it to warm up so things would look their best.

Peep

I'm a PS3 owner and I watch my Blu-rays via a composite cable on an SD TV. What's your point? That PS3 owners are all idiots? Yawn, more name-calling. How constructive.

My point is that PS3 owners are not easy to pigeon-hole. There are a lot of reasons why people have bought the unit. Some bought it merely as a gaming console. Some bought it as a Blu-ray player. Some bought it as both. And, obviously, it's hard to associate a standard attach-rate as such.

I bought it as a way to future-proof my collection. I don't have an HD TV yet, but I didn't want to have to rebuy a bunch of DVD's once I bought one. Since December of last year, I've bought 35 Blu-ray discs and I've enjoyed the ones that I've opened on my standard TV. I've even upgraded some of my DVD's to blu-ray when the price is right (and the features equivalent) - like with the first 4 Harry Potter movies during the recent Amazon BOGOF sale.

The only HD that I've bought was the Matrix trilogy and if I found out next week that Warner would never release it in Blu-ray, I'd buy a cheap HD player to play it on.

TheBigDave

It's not about Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. It's about the format war. Prices dropped on both sides because of the format war. Each side put out a better product because of the competition.

Competition with SD DVD is apples and oranges. Both products can co-exist side by side. It's nothing like the competition between the two rival HD formats.

Peep

No Q&A? Look's like they're not ready to start damage control yet.