Confusion Surrounds Paramount's Blu-ray Decision

BD Live? Err no thanks since HD-DVD already has 'online' technology i.e. Transformers has.

HD-DVD already has total interactivity better than blu-ray and whilst people wait for BD Live and Java+ I think people should still consider HD-DVD the name alone sounds a lot better and being region free makes more sense.

Cheapest blu-ray player is a Samsung around £250 in Tescos but HD-DVD EP30 is £200 with 7 movies for free and supports all the latest features.

The players are cheap but the movies arent, if studios can knock down prices of HD-DVD's I think we will see a turning point.

Two things:

1) Which studios will be left?

2) If studios can knock down the price of HD-DVD, then the same 'if' is applicable to Blu-ray.

Frankly, I just want them to get the whole thing sorted out as quickly as possible so that we can concentrate on the games.

Cheers

Tim

Is that 'we' as in Spong to concetrate on the games? Or the games industry which is different to movie industry?

Anyways I have a HD-DVD and Blu-ray in my room but I just dont like blu-ray movies hell I dont even have any PS3 games only 2 blu-ray movies.

I dont see what makes blu-ray special, hd-dvd can hold upto 51gb on a single sided triple layer but even though its not out yet hd-dvd still supports a lot more features.

Oh and the reddish colour of hd-dvd casing is way better than the blue lol.

You seem to be operating under the misapprehension that we, the "consumers", have any say in this matter whatsoever. The decisions about which format will succeed are being made right now in Warner's, Paramount's, Universal's and ultimately Toshiba's board rooms.

Warner has cast its lot in with Blu-ray. Paramount apparently has a back-out clause in their HD-DVD contract, and even if not, repaying $150M shouldn't be too difficult. That leaves Universal, which has been pro-HD-DVD from the start of this whole shebang, but will be having doubts now and even more if Paramount flip-flops.

Notice how none of this has anything to do with us choosing a format? This is entirely driven by "the bottom line" and how to avoid it being impacted by the wrong decision.

The inclusion of BD+ was what won over Fox and Disney, Toshiba would have had to have added a DRM layer above AACS themselves to tempt those two onto HD-DVD. The rest of the studios were either owned by Sony or supported both formats, except Universal of course, which seems to hate Sony with a passion.

Now the fence sitters have chosen their sides, but the market split is very unbalanced in Blu-ray's favour plus it was already out-selling HD-DVD by ratios between 9:1 (in Japan) and 2:1 (in the US) in terms of discs sold. To my mind the "war" is over, the die has been cast and it came up "Blu", sorry Toshiba, but in under a year you'll be rolling out your own Blu-ray players.

TBH the writing was on the wall when Sony put a Blu-ray drive into the PS3. Once that happened, Toshiba were screwed. Even with its lacklustre performance in the games market, the PS3 is the highest selling high-def disc player out there. It doesn't matter that not all PS3s are being used for movie viewing, the point is that when those owners want a high-def movie they are going to pick a Blu-ray one.

Notice that none of this makes me happy. I thought that Blu-ray was a better format, sure, but I don't like my entertainment choices being dictated to by huge corporations that favour DRM over consumer-friendly features like PIP and the rest.

Eh? That's 'we' as in SPOnG and as gamers. Since falling out with Tom Hanks over The Lady Killers, I no longer have anything to do with the movie industry and no one can force me back.



I refer you to VHS versus Betamax in terms of whether quality or ubiquity wins format fights.

Cheers

Tim

And Blu-ray will be able to support a 100GB disc soon, but that will only require a firmware update to existing players. The 51GB HD-DVD disc would require new drives in order to be read, so all the existing players would become obsolete.

Since BD Live isn't, erm, live yet, then of course HD-DVD's online stuff is better. When BD Live turns up, then we'll see if this remains to be the case.

Region free makes sense to the consumer, but the studios and distributors would rather make that decision, so that weighs in B-r's favour.

Personally, as a developer I'd rather back B-r's interactive stuff as it's Java-based, as opposed to HD-DVD's HDi, which is Microsoft's JScript-based.

This is all a bit pointless anyhow, as I think most additional content is a waste of space and an excuse to inflate the price of a movie. The only extra content I watch are the "making of" type stuff, most of which has already done the rounds on TV around the time of the theatrical release.

Hmm. I wonder how long it will be before there are HD-DVD viruses exploiting JScript security holes...

One of the most stupidist of your stupid posts. Why the hell did you buy a PS3? (to hate it? BTW it thinks you are a cnut)

I can't see myself ever going to download only movies. As soon as the hard drive messes up there goes all of your movies, music and downloaded content. That is not very attractive to me. I like having a hard copy.

I take your point about hard drive failure, but there's always the option to back up. Personally, I can't wait to let go of my attachment to having music, films and games delivered on things. I've left all my CDs at my parents' house in favour of an iPod and some speakers and my home is a much better place for it.

I think games may well be the last on the list to switch to pure downloads, though. The damn things just keep getting bigger...

never owning a Betamax and being at school and no interest to remember, was betamax better quality? (off to wiki it)

From what I recall betamax was said to be superior somewhat but it was the porn industry that made the deciding factor for VHS to be victorious.

My bad - very rude. Yes, Betamax was generally accepted as being of higher quality.

I am now expecting ageing VHS and Betamax fanboys to crawl across the carpet, bleeding from the gums and murmuring, "My format better your format... ".

Cheers

Tim

Well 2 triple sides is 102gb...

Oh and nope you DONT need a new HD-DVD player I just rang Toshiba technical support and the fella was straight up and said there will be a firmware update, you will NOT need a new player to read triple layer discs.

Oh but from what I remember reading it was those with blu-ray players that needed to purchase new players to read the 100gb discs...

This format war needs the porn-factor to kick in yet...or is porn just staying with DVD's? Then its clear, both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD lost, DVD won! yeah!