Posted on 06/17/2007 10:29:06 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Yeah right.. blu-ray sells 2 to 1 with movies. Blockbuster picked Blu-ray because it was renting them 70% to 30%.
Online polls are worthless! Like getting your political opinions from digg.com or cnn.com polls.
In most cases, they go for the underdog or just plain dumb choice.
HD-DVD was DEAD and should have stayed Dead.... MS threw some weight behind it at the last minute to revive it in an attempt to harm Sony due to their rivalry in the video game console market and the fact that Sony was making sure Blu-Ray came with every PS3.
The sooner HD-DVD dies, the better off we will all be. Its a horrible kludge. Those “cheap” hd-dvd players don’t even do true 1080p... it was DOA and should have stayed there.
LLS
100% correct. It’s always been the lesser of the 2 techs, and is hardly any cheaper at all.
I do believe the format war helped reduce prices a lot. By the end of the year Blu-ray players will be 300 or so. That’s a big drop in 1 1/2 years from $1000+.
But it’s time for Toshiba to bail out and help the HD market.
LLS
From my understanding, everything will play on HDMI, DRM or not. DRM stuff just won’t play on non-HDMI connections eventually.
So it really doesn’t matter that much. All the hacks get around that if people really have to do it.
I part of the growing number who never uses Blockbuster or Netfix.
I use Netflix and it’s great. $22 a month for basically all the HD movies I can watch.
Does anyone shop at Blockbuster?
Sony has already effectively won the format war, just people aren’t recognizing it yet.
They have the overwelming number of studios onboard as blu-ray or exclusive blu ray.. Want a Disney DVD is High Def? Guess what, only exists in Blu Ray.. same with many other movie houses.
Add the fact that in the last 9 months more than 3 million households got a Blu-Ray player with their PS3, plus sales of the dedicated Blu-Ray players, combined with exclusive content you have a clear winner.
HD-DVD was and should have stayed dead. Sony’s decision to make Blu Ray part of the PS3 has hurt the consoles overall adoption due to the price point it has put the system at, but it has helped Sony win a much more lucrative market in the DVD HiDef format war.
MS through some last minute weight behind HD-DVD to bring it back from the dead in hopes of harming Sony.. but at this point its pretty obvious that Sony clearly has the lead globally in the Format war.
All those guys talking about price and buying those “cheap” HD-DVD players that are coming out, well I hope you don’t have a 1080P TV.. because those cheap players can’t playback in that format.. best you are going to get is 720p. You want 1080P out of your HD-DVD player it costs the same as Blu-Ray which is required to support all formats out of the box.
Agreed, HD-DVD was dead, and MS’s last minute attempt to revive it was in vein.
PS3 having Blu Ray has hurt its console sales due to the added price, but clearly helped them win them the format war.
That and the fact they got the studios on board.
You don’t have long to wait - Sony’s first-to-market BluRay player, which premiered at $999, is now $799, and they’ve added a low-end unit that’s selling for $499 at Circuit City, which is the lowest price among the competing BluRay units.
“That and the fact they got the studios on board.”
And now Blockbuster. Many people are saying that their local Best Buys and Frys are expanding their blu-ray sections, and hddvd is getting smaller and smaller.
In fact, at a Circuit City near me they have half an aisle on Blu-ray when they used to be equal. The hd dvd section is on the side of the aisle, about 15 movies.
I do. I get the mail service like Netflix, plus the convenience of returning the movie to the local store (only if I choose that), with the return being a coupon for a free rental.
Yep, in spite of what some fan boys say... and some Sony bashers think. The war is pretty much over... Sony clearly has won the battle, and the writing was on the wall a while ago.
PS3 just pushed it over the top. While you can argue 3 Million units in 7 months is disappointing for console sales.... 3 Million Blu Ray Players in 7 months is too much for Toshiba to overcome. And they were being beat even before the PS3 launched.
You can thank MS for prolonging this war needlessly.... HD-DVD was DOA less than a year ago in the states. Toshiba foolishly was conned by MS into keeping it alive.... and will take some heavy losses for it.
I don’t use any service.
The war was really over at CES in January. Toshiba, MS, and Universal had nothing.. While BD had a lot of announcements.
To me that was the real ‘end’ of the war as a real matter.
All Blu-Ray players will play standard format DVDs.
Yep,
There was also a LOT of stuff behind the scenes for BD as well, that most consumers didn’t know and such. Bayer etc which provides the raw materials to make optical disks was vested in BD as well as other suppliers etc, and were expanding their investments there.
Long before the US public was really even paying attention the BD format had already shown it was well on the way to victory in Europe etc.
What happened in the US wasn’t even a format war, it was a last ditched effort to try to have one. Fortunately the US for the most part sat out this war, while it played out in Europe.
By the time anyone in the US was paying attention, BD was already clearly winning EURO and that was before the PS3 even was a factor.
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