HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Disappointing So Far

Dster76 writes "Reuters is reporting that the new format wars are showing signs of underwhelming performance, both technically and financially. In fact, according to the article, the new formats are just not selling. Reuters chalks it up to a current lack of interest. They indicate that as more movies and players become available this autumn, sales should improve. Just the same, the current picture is quite sour." From the article: "'Neither format is selling well or at the level I had expected. I had expected early adopters to step up and other retailers have had the same experience,' said Bjorn Dybdahl, president of San Antonio, Texas-based specialty store Bjorn's. 'High expectations were set. At every meeting with Sony, every demonstration was spectacular,' Dybdahl said. 'Then along comes the first Blu-ray player from Samsung and that's when my expectations were hurt. When we put the disc in, all the sales people looked around and said it doesn't look much better than a standard DVD,' he said."

Comments

Re:Hmmm. 1% better, heavy DRM and too $$$$

[aiken_d]

Argh, I hate misinformation. If you don't know what you're talking about, why post?

There are plenty of reasons not to buy HDDVD/Bluray. But you're way off base here, with the exception of DRM, which is as much a philosophical argument as anything. Let me count the ways that you have erred:

1) Standard DVD's look like crap on 55" screens. This is subjective, sure, but if you really believe this, you will *never* need HD because you're blind. Standard DVD's leave tons of compression artifacts in dark scenes (even title credits!) which are very visible. Tell me, would you run a 21" computer monitor at 640x480 -- with uncompressed video data? No? Then why do you think that *very* lossy compression of 640x480 looks good at 55"?

2) HDVD players are under $500. Sure, that's expensive compared to $39 Kmart DVD players, but comprable to or cheaper than a videophile DVD player. Again, if you can't see the difference, you're not the target market.

3) The average joe can buy a fine 720p screen, which is all you need for the difference to be very apparent. My local Walmart has a crappy but functional 720p 55" screen for $700.

4) Your last point is the most misinformed. Neither HDDVD nor Bluray downsample for non-HDCP displays. To get educated so you can stop spouting misinformation, search for "image constraint token" on google. Short version: the technical capacity is there, but studios have agreed not to use it until at least 2010. At which point you can whine that these technologies downsample on displays older than 4 years, which is still a valid point but a little different than what you've erroneously claimed.

Lest people think I'm a fanboy, let me list the *legitimate* reasons for waiting on HD formats:

- The format war means that any investment in players and/or media has some liklihood of being wasted money

- Bluray, in particular, uses the same poor compression technology as standard DVD, and displays a lot of the same artifacting (less extreme, because it's higher resolution and bitrate, but nevertheless there)

- Neither format has real buy-in from CE manufacturers who don't have a vested interest

- The early players available for both formats have many quirks and annoyances (an HDDVD player takes almost a minute to eject a disk when in the "off" state)

For the record, I bought a $500 HDDVD player. My rationale: I use netflix, so I'm not investing in media that may be worthless later. And even if HDDVD or both formats bomb, I'm sure I can get at least a couple of hundred dollars for it on ebay. So I'm paying maybe $300 for a year or two of a fantastic upconverting standard DVD player, with the bonus of getting to enjoy some HD stuff.

-b