High-Def Format Wars - Battle of the Freebies

An anonymous reader writes "It's come to this: eager to introduce the masses to the virtues of the next-gen DVD formats, the studios and manufacturers backing HD DVD and Blu-ray have begun giving discs away. It all started last month when Microsoft pacted with Universal to give away copies of 'King Kong' on HD DVD to consumers buying the XBox 360 HD DVD add on. Sony followed that up by offering a free 'Talladega Nights' Blu-ray with the first 500,000 PlayStation 3 units sold in the U.S.. Now today, HD DVD backer Toshiba has announced that it will give away *three* free HD DVD discs with every player sold for four months beginning on November 1st. With all these freebies, more people will likely have received free HD DVD/Blu-ray discs by the end of 2006 than will have actually paid for them."

Comments

I'll just take the drive

[dattaway]

for the high power blue laser diode.

Re:I'll just take the drive

[chmod a x mojo]

And mount it on a shark...... sharks with friggen lasers RULE.

Re:I'll just take the drive

[tkohler]

Was I the only one to read the title as "The Battle of the Frisbees"?

Re:I'll just take the drive

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

Wow!

[ackthpt]

These movies will look great on my 12 B/W set!

where do connect these players to a 1970's tv?

Re:Wow!

[multipartmixed]

You need to buy an RF modulator, and a 75-to-300-ohm matching transformer.

HTH.

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

I was just about to say that. Glad somebody still remembers the days of the NES, TRS-80 CoCo2, and several other fun toys we had "back in the day".

~R. Larson

Re:Talladega Nights for the win

[interiot]

HD-DVD Jon will save us... maybe it will take a ten line perl program this time.

yes

[zulater]

for the price of these new systems they will have paid for the free discs many times over.

Re:yes

[Warlock7]

The systems are all losing money...

uh oh, I smell trouble

[Wizzerd911]

Microsoft pacted with Universal to give away copies of 'King Kong' on HD DVD to consumers buying the XBox 360 HD DVD add on.

uh oh, the terrorism police are going to be all over them for packaging a bomb with the add on ;)

Free Movies

[Ucklak]

I remember when I paid $199 for my Toshiba DVD player way back when, there was a free movie signup as well.
Lost in Space, Stargate, and Six Days Seven Nights were included.

Re:Free Movies

[Anonymous Coward]

I still have those movies. Stargate you have to flip halfway through. Wow.

Re:Free Movies

[Iphtashu Fitz]

I got the same bundle, plus I think one more DVD with Julia Roberts. Forget which one though.

I think two of the four are still in their shrinkwrap 4+ years later.

Re:Free Movies

[antdude]

Same for notebooks if I remember correctly. My father got one an Toshiba Satellite Pro 2655XDVD back then and it had an offer for three DVD movies. Movies weren't big block busters though.

Re:Free Movies

[phorge]

Stepmom was also included.

Re:Free Movies

[scuba964]

I bought that same player and exact same dvd's for my inlaws years ago. "What a deal!"

Re:Free Movies

[Anonymous Coward]

When I also paid around $199 for my Toshiba DVD player back in 1998 (which is still my primary DVD player) I received 5 free DVDs with it.

Posting as AC because I'm using Torpark and apparently this IP address has been banned by /. for abuse.

Re:Free Movies

[batkiwi]

Same dvd player, same price (christmas 1998 timeframe?), and I got the typical rebate experience:
-Yes sir, we're processing it, 3-6 weeks ... no dvds come ...
-We already sent one lot of dvds to your apartment complex, and got 6 more requests, so we didn't ship the rest! One per address!
--But it's an apartment complex, there are different unit numbers on the address
-too bad!

Re:Free Movies

[evilviper]

Lost in Space, Stargate, and Six Days Seven Nights were included.

They decided to give them away instead of throwing them in a landfill?

Jee-zus!

[rk]

First the rootkit, then the PS3, and now giving away "Talladega Nights"... why does Sony hate us so?

Re:Jee-zus!

[Alsee]

They were going to give away Gigli, but the executive in charge didn't show up in time with the master disk. They found him two weeks later still at home, in a fetal position behind his couch in his TV room. Doctors say even if he recovers from the neurological damage, there's no way he'll ever be able speak again... during the two weeks hiding behind the couch he had chewed off his own lips and tongue.

-

Oh the silliness of consumer marketing.

[Lethyos]

I wince when I see such nonsense because I know it will sell units.

“Freebies”, that cost a few dollars in manufacturing and material costs, are being used to promote players that actually cost under a hundred dollars, but are priced at hundreds (if not close to a thousand) dollars. (Everyone remember when your average DVD players were priced at $500 and higher? Now they can be bought for $25-50 a pop. Simple reasoning tells us the same applies here.)

All in the name of a senseless format war where neither side offers anything compelling over the other, where the end result will be a market full of players that read both.

This is outright stupid.

Re:Oh the silliness of consumer marketing.

[Mikya]

Simple reasoning would tell us that you're an idiot. Just because the technology is similiar does not mean the units should have the same price. Further more I do remember when DVD players were 500 dollars a pop. It was nearly ten years ago when the technology was new. It's only now that they're 25 dollars. I wouldn't be suprised if in 2015 we're buying HD or BluRay drives for $50.

Re:Oh the silliness of consumer marketing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple reasoning? I guess this is the excuss you give when you have no facts to back what you say. When DVD players cost $500 there build cost was still much higher than $25-50 prices come down when volumes go up, also when the chinese start making knock off units which dont have to recover the R&D costs. Consumers all want new technology at build cost and then complain about outsourcing to india and that it broke after 3 movies. Forget your reasoning and learn some facts.

Re:Oh the silliness of consumer marketing.

[Anonymous Coward]

You should have stated that since the main difference is the laser frequency, the general concept should be the same. Now, granted, there's MPEG-4 compression, higher resolution signal, and more, but none are really "new" technology, nor even that much more expensive, other than the blue lasers.

For the writable part, there's some other issues, such as material research, but the basics are still the same.

Re:Oh the silliness of consumer marketing.

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

The funny thing is the question of, "Who pays for this?" I wouldn't think that it's much of a dent to either corporation, but it does mean less off-the-shelf copies of each movie will be bought. This means that a lot of the cost of distributing things for 'free' comes out of the pockets of the people basing their income on the royalties. So, by association, you shouldn't buy a PS3 for the free movie because you're helping terrorists and starving out stuntmen.

Re:Oh the silliness of consumer marketing.

[MightyYar]

The processing power on these systems is/was pretty high when they are first introduced. I had a pretty spiffy new computer when DVDs were still new-ish, and it was unable to play them reliably without a MPEG2 decoder on the video card. Today, you need a pretty decent computer to do full HiDef H.264. The hardware cost for a HD-DVD player is probably pretty darn high right now, but it will obviously come down as custom chips enter the market and come down in price.

Re:Oh the silliness of consumer marketing.

[WageDomain]

Did you really just call him an idiot for his reasoning, then completely agree with his reasoning? His point was, I beileve that obviously these players do not really cost $1000 to produce, and are being marked up, and he used DVD players as an example. They also cost tons of money to start but are now being sold very cheaply. So what happened, are all these companies taking massive hits to sell DVD players? Doubtful, even taking into account the razer-blade model of marketing. So yes, over time the players will be cheaper, which would show that no, they don't really cost a grand. Also a lot of people saying how entrenched DVDs are seem to have forgotten the early 90s and the "struggle" DVDs had in getting off the ground, what with the heavily entrenched VHS to compete against.

Re:Oh the silliness of consumer marketing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Manufacturing costs drop with time, as improvements are made to the process and as competition for manufacturing the underlying parts drives prices lower. What your parent seemed to be saying was that DVD players were expensive to manufacture, and commanded a high price. With time, they became cheaper to manufacture, and the savings were passed on to consumers. (Of course, mark-up probably also dropped with time, but the major reason for the price drop was likely cost reduction further up in the chain, which needed to be passed on to consumers, or else some competitor would pass their savings along.)

Re:Oh the silliness of consumer marketing.

[Maxo-Texas]

Well if Mikya did do that, then simple reasoning would show us Mikya is an idiot.

Re:Oh the silliness of consumer marketing.

[cayenne8]

"Also a lot of people saying how entrenched DVDs are seem to have forgotten the early 90s and the "struggle" DVDs had in getting off the ground, what with the heavily entrenched VHS to compete against."

Well, but, there is a difference now between entrenched DVD's and the new HD versions. First, the DVD was such a HUGE step above the VHS...it didn't wear out (a big seller), you could skip around on it quite easily, and the quality in pictures and sound was leaps above the old video tape....even on the same tv equipment.

And while the DVD took awhile to become the new 'entrenched' format...it did take off faster than any other A/V tech in history.....and now, you're getting to the point where the majority of homes have at least one, and they've replaced their old, and fading copies of movies on tape.

However, the new Blu-ray and HD-DVD's....well, people are pretty happy with the normal DVD...hell, some of them have only had them for 2-4 years even now. And you don't see the benefits of the new formats UNLESS you also shell out a ton of $$'s for HDTV sets...and in Joe Sixpacks home, they really aren't in a huge rush to do this....hell, I'm a techie gizmo fanatic, and I've not rushed out to get a huge plasma set....if it wasn't for Katrina and losing a lot of stuff, and temporarily in a small apt...I'd have not gotten the projector I currently have. It runs at HD resolutions. But, even with that...I'm just now starting to experiment with building a MythTV box with a HD tuner card for OTA HD content...

I'm certainly in no rush for anything like the new HD format dvd's...

For most people out there...with normal tv's and salaries...the current DVD's are "just good enough". I don't see that really changing anytime soon....IMHO

Re:Oh the silliness of consumer marketing.

[nasch]

So yes, over time the players will be cheaper, which would show that no, they don't really cost a grand.

You're both idiots. Over time, the players will be cheaper, which shows that at some point in the future they will not cost hundreds of dollars to manufacture. DVD mfrs didn't start prices high and bring them down because they felt like it. If someone could have sold a DVD player for $50 and made a profit on it 10 years ago, I guarantee they would have. They sold them for the lowest price they could and still make a profit, because that's the highest price you can sell something for in a market with lots of competitors that can easily substitute for your product. DVD players used to cost a lot of money to make, and now they don't. The same thing will happen with every single other piece of consumer electronics, including high def DVD players.

Re:Oh the silliness of consumer marketing.

[TheRaven64]

Right. When DVDs were new, every single graphics card advertised that it could do motion compensation (which reduced CPU usage by 5-20%) and the best ones for video also did iDCT in hardware (giving up to a 50% load reduction). It took about a 400-500MHz CPU to do DVD decoding purely in software, and these weren't available until 2-3 years after DVDs were released.

Re:Oh the silliness of consumer marketing.

[syousef]

Simple reasoning would tell us that you're an idiot.

Good to see you using those social skills. People like you are why Linux has no market share. Can't you disagree without being obnoxious?

Re:Oh the silliness of consumer marketing.

[GNious]

"However, the new Blu-ray and HD-DVD's....well, people are pretty happy with the normal DVD...hell, some of them have only had them for 2-4 years even now."

Even less. I only bought one about 18 months ago - and only because they now come with (crappy?) surround-sound thingies and all in one small package.

Yes, I'm a techie, but I do not get the obsession with having every movie on DVD, when there are cinemas and digital movie-channels... I just do not get it. /G

Shovelware

[Rob T Firefly]

Reminds me of the time I bought a Pentium computer in the mid 1990s that came with a foot-high stack of CD-ROMs. It was a nice attempt at an intro to the possibilities of the new format, but there were only so many different versions of "Virtual Rock Gardening," "Compton's Interactive Encephalopathy," "Mavis Beacon Teachs Self-Neutering," and "The Adventures of Poorly-Rendered Cutscene Man" I could really get any use out of.

Re:Shovelware

[Itninja]

Don't forget the compulsory copies of "Critical Path", "Wing Commander" or "Where in the [whatever] is Carmen San Diego?" that seemed to be in every piece of hardware I bought in the early 90's.

Re:Shovelware

[Alsee]

Virtual Rock Gardening," "Compton's Interactive Encephalopathy," "Mavis Beacon Teachs Self-Neutering," and "The Adventures of Poorly-Rendered Cutscene Man"

Ok I see the obvious connection between Self-Neutering and Cutscene Man, and I see how you'd then have an opportunity to arrange a... ahhh... "rock" garden... but I'm not quite sure of the purpose of putting "Compton's Interactive Encephalopathy" in for that pack. What's up with that?

-

One question

[Anonymous Coward]

Do the Blu-Ray discs come with a free rootkit?

Bring on the Freebies

[steve-o-yeah]

With all these free discs floating around, I'm reminded of the AOL days. AOL supplied a generation of bored youngsters with hours of microwaving, shattering and throwing AOL media. Someday kids will remember the "good old days" when Billy knocked out Timmy's tooth with a Blu-ray and when mom made them scrub out the microwave to get all the HD goo off the sides.

Re:Bring on the Freebies

[Amouth]

i wonder if we can get enough of them to make a new throne..

http://www.stupidco.com/aol_throne_finished.html

Re:Bring on the Freebies

[Rob T Firefly]

My friends and I used to hang out in subway stations and whip AOL CDs at passing express trains. While in retrospect that was dangerous and irresponsible behavior, I can't help but think it would have been just that much more gratifying if our missiles had Will Ferrell's face printed on them.

Re:Bring on the Freebies

[RxScram]

AOL is still doing that... every 2 months or so I get another CD in the mail from AOL, which promptly goes into the recycle bin right by my mail box. I'm gonna have to try that microwave thing, should be fun! ;)

Re:Bring on the Freebies

[Anonymous Coward]

It was better back when AOL sent out floppies. Format and use them for myself. I had so many of those, probably 1/4 of my backups were on them.

Re:Talladega Nights for the win

[Stripe7]

I doubt if it makes too much of a difference to their bottom lines, they can either give those movies away or let them sit on store shelves unsold.

Thinking ahead

[Control Group]

Sony followed that up by offering a free 'Talladega Nights' Blu-ray with the first 500,000 PlayStation 3 units sold in the U.S..

Given their production rates, I expect that promotion to last through 2007... ...and here I thought corporations only focused on the short-term.

all the free movies in the world and...

[buckadude]

only time will tell which set of fanboys will be right. Me, I'll just sit back and wait this battle out. yepp~

Re:Talladega Nights for the win

[ackthpt]

Since Talledega Nights is a much better movie then King Kong, I think we all know who will win.

Saw KK, bored me to death. Didn't see TN because racing films (even with comic actors) bore me to death.

In all seriousness though, I think both formats suck because of all of the DRM.

I think both formats have a LONG hill to climb considering how well entrenched DVDs are.

500,000 copies of a film? How many people honestly have a set they can watch something like that in all its glory on?

What?

[filtur]

So sony is shipping 400,000 ps3's but the first 500,000 get a movie when the next 100,000 show up next year? I'm getting a wii and I can use the left over money to purchase a dvd if I please :)

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you're an idiot. Sony will have 500,000 units at launch (400k in the U.S.; 100k in Japan). These are presumably the units with the freebies. And they will have more units available (1 to 2 million, maybe?) by the end of the year.

Re:What?

[filtur]

Wow, you're an idiot.
Congrats to the AC. I may have my numbers wrong, but I'm not the one that's gonna pay $600 for a console :)

Re:What?

[KDR_11k]

It clearly says the first 500k sold in the US so it's the initial shipment plus another 100k

Don't want what they're giving away...

[Warlock7]

Aside from a couple titles on the Toshiba list, there isn't one film being given away that I would waste my time watching.

Re:Talladega Nights for the win

[Greyfox]

I was actually wondering if I could pay more and have them keep their DVDs. Ugh. Why not just throw a copy of Episode One and... oh I dunno... Maybe that last Star Trek movie that Shatner directed... what was that one again? The Undiscovered Country? Yeah... that'll sell some DVD players!

Re:Talladega Nights for the win

[Winckle]

Meh, with perl you could write it in one line, and half of that would be comments!

Re:It'll be funny.. Like AOL cds

[Anonymous Coward]

You are stupid. Re-read that summary. You get the free disk WITH a player. Each off comes with a player of said format. God damn, slashdot people are getting dumb. How much did you pay someone for that sub 200,000 ID?

Just like your first HIGH!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to be trollful, but don't drug dealers usually let those who haven't tried drugs, try them for free the first time???? Not that I know any drug dealers or have, ugh, dealt drugs myself.

/end trolling

Is the public not going to see whats going on here? I'm mean really. Giving away free movies to get you to BUY their 'NEW HI-DEF VIDEO FORMAT'? The mere fact that the 'HI-DEF' isn't reason enough? Hmmm, nothing fishy going on here. Hey, while your at it, put this noose around your neck while you stand on this stool!!!!!!

DVD works for me. Besides. Hollywierd will maybe put out 1 movie a year worth buying anyways. Everything else worth buying has been out for years.

Now PORN on the other hand ..... (pun intended)

Re:Just like your first HIGH!!!!!

[Grishnakh]

DVD works for me. Besides. Hollywierd will maybe put out 1 movie a year worth buying anyways. Everything else worth buying has been out for years.

Strangely enough, it seems that most of my TV/DVD-watching time is now spent watching TV show discs, instead of movies: Battlestar Galactica, Lost, Firefly, 4400, etc. There's a lot of great stuff coming out on TV while the latest movies aren't that great. We may even get to the point where TV shows just get released straight-to-DVD since TV execs are so incredibly stupid that they sometimes cancel the best shows (Firefly) in their first season.

Re:Just like your first HIGH!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oddly enough, TV shows are the only real HD content that is actually a big improvement over the old format, and worth it to me. With movies, current 480P DVDs are 'good enough'.

Am I the only one who thinks Talledaga nights ...

[kinglink]

Is a bad choice? It's not really an HD movie.. King Kong at least hard large screen appeal especially with the CG. But Talledaga night? Not to meantion Will Farrell.... I think they just chose a movie that no one would buy in HD normally, just to get an easy freebie.

Sony really needs to pick up the slack. The PS3 would have ended the format war easily, but Sony has completely screwed that pooch. Perhaps it's Sony's fate. they did get CD and DVD, but this is sounding more like Betamax. It's true it'll be better in the long run to adopt Blu-ray, but god if it's not starting out like a lame duck.

On the other hand HD-DVD isn't exactly shining either. Both format really needs to show why "you need this now". My parents have a 50 inch CRT, and still watch VHS on it, it gives a great picture (Better then broadcast tv), DVDs also look great, they have no need to go to a new format, to rebuy all the dvds and tapes on it. That simple fact makes me wonder if it's worth it. Hell they even got the extended editions of Lord of the rings on single DVDs. Perhaps it's just not necessary yet, and won't be until we go beyond 1080p. Of course if your so anal you must have the perfect resolution go ahead, but I'll stick with my DVDs for a while (Still don't like tapes, but that's me, my parents can't get their movies on DVDs still, and for some don't feel the need.)

Re:It'll be funny.. Like AOL cds

[CastrTroy]

Well, since the discs come with the expensive players (XBox 360-HDDVD and PS3), there will be nobody returning the discs because they can't play them. Although there will probably be a few why try to play them in the old player. It won't really help persuade anyone who doesn't already have a player.

Giveaway

[Anonymous Coward]

So lets give away the razors and the blades!

Re:Giveaway

[Overzeetop]

No, the razors are costing a fortune right now. They're trying to give you a free blade or two so you'll go buy the razor. Of course, given the offerings, it's a bit more like passing out rusty, nicked blades - 'cause only the true masochists are going to really enjoy watching either of these films, much less in HD.

Re:It'll be funny.. Like AOL cds

[The Anarchist Avenge]

I think you do not understand the strategy.
The freebie disks come *with* the purchase of a HD-DVD/BlueRay player. This isn't like the AOL cd bullshit at all.

Forever

[ant-1]

Sony followed that up by offering a free 'Talladega Nights' Blu-ray with the first 500,000 PlayStation 3 units sold in the U.S.

They're gonna stock them up until the end of 2008 ?

Now if they were *good* movies...

[vanyel]

...then when a dual media player comes out, I'll happily take all the freebies they want to give away... I refuse to buy hardware that's limited to one or the other though.

Re:Now if they were *good* movies...

[Anonymous Coward]

I seem to recall reading somewhere that the licensing for the hardware for one or both of the technologies prohibits a multi-format player.

If someone can prove me wrong it would be good news, I guess, but otherwise we could be in for some consumer hell.

Re:Now if they were *good* movies...

[vanyel]

I went to check on Samsung's player (the one I'd heard about) and comments indicate you may be right, in which case they can use both formats for the fertilizer they are (HD-DVD for the format itself, Blu-Ray for Sony's idiocy), as far as I'm concerned.

That's great ...

[Hobart]

...but I'm more likely to be swayed by the first company to offer me a break on a display that can even view this high-def content ...

As far as I can tell in a cursory glance over the net, the cheapest "TV-sized" display that will do 1080P with HDMI is the Westinghouse for $1100 shipped, and the cheapest panel is $800 for some 24" display ...

That means I'm spending around $1500 for this "experience" they're peddling, all told. Sell me the display for $400 and we can talk. :-)

--
Slashcode bug # 497457 - unfixed since December 2001 - Go look it up!

Re:That's great ...

[Com2Kid]

Hey that isn't a bad price for that TV there....

Re:That's great ...

[multipartmixed]

Wow, you think YOUR slashcode bug is annoying.. How would you feel if your user page URL didn't parse?

Re:That's great ...

[Overzeetop]

I seem to remember that the sound system made more of a difference in experience than the picture size (and, presumably the resolution) of the picture. So spend a few hundred on a decend amp with surround speakers (nothing fancy really required), and keep your DVD player.

BTW - I picked up an open box 51" Hitachi HD set (1080i/720p) for $800 a year and a half ago. DVDs (and, for that matter 320p DiVXs) look good. HD is crystal clear - really fantastic, actually. I'd give up the HD for a full set of M&K speakers, though.

Re:That's great ...

[winnabago]

It's not our fault you used white text for all your user info.

Re:That's great ...

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

and the cheapest panel is $800 for some 24" display I followed the link to newegg for this panel and it has a response time of 16ms. Anything above 8ms is generally considered inferior for watching TV or movies - the screen won't update fast enough. The Westinghouse does have an 8ms response time.

Re:That's great ...

[Dev59]

720p is still high definition - and if you're more than 8 feet away from the screen (using a 60" display in this example) you won't even be able to tell the difference between 720p and 1080p unless you have freakishly good vision.

You can get nice 720p sets for between $700-800 now. I got a nice 32" widescreen LCD for under $800 two weeks ago at Best Buy. I actually spent the money I'd been saving for a PS3 on it. I'll probably still pick one up - in about a year or so when there's a decent library of games.

Re:That's great ...

[Pink Tinkletini]

There is no place for you to hide, Prisoner 163409.

Re:That's great ...

[nasch]

...but I'm more likely to be swayed by the first company to offer me a break on a display that can even view this high-def content ...

Right on. Bundle a high-def TV with it and I would actually buy a PS3.

Re:That's great ...

[westlake]

That means I'm spending around $1500 for this "experience" they're peddling, all told.

The experience for most buyers will be:

Their first wide screen set.
Their first with multichannel digital sound.
Their first experience with very large screen direct view or projection TV
---the big screen sells HD and HD sells the big screen
Their first replacement of a CRT as their primary television. Once you make this choice, you don't look back.

When color TV was introduced in the U.S. in 1954, the price tag was $1000 for a 21 inch screen and only NBC was broadcasting in color, a few hours of special event programming a week.Television History - The First 75 Years

It would take ten years for color to become mass market, with no significant technological improvements other than the first tentative moves into the use of circuit boards and transistors.

Re:That's great ...

[evilviper]

That means I'm spending around $1500 for this "experience" they're peddling, all told.

You're complaining you can't afford a luxury car, while ignoring the cheaper, nearly-as-good cars out there RIGHT NOW.

Sell me the display for $400 and we can talk. :-)

You can already get a 27" 1080i CRT HDTV for $400 (no OTA tuner--that usually adds $100).

Re:That's great ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Where? URLs please.

Re:That's great ...

[evilviper]

http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=HDTV&price1=30 0&price2=400

Though you'll actually find better deals walking into any store (Circuit City, Sears, Target, K-Mart, Best Buy, etc).

Re:It'll be funny.. Like AOL cds

[businessnerd]

This would be funny, but unfortunately you did not read the summary, just the title. They are not giving away movies randomly in your mailbox like an aol trial, they are giving them away WITH THE PLAYER. When you buy a blue-ray player or an HD-DVD player (consoles included) you will also get a free movie to get you started. This is the same concept as your computer coming with a bunch of demo software or a console coming with a free game.

P.S. Anyone else have a blue-ray banner at the top of your page? WEIRD!...or not

P.P.S. Anyone else experiencing weird login issues on /.?

Re:Talladega Nights for the win

[CastrTroy]

I won't be impressed until he does it in 10 lines of VB.

Free movies good, but stealing movies bad?

[192939495969798999]

These people are creating their own illegal market for movies by distribtuing free products. It's really not sensible for them to both distribute free copies of movies, and say that for regular people, distributing free copies of movies is bad.

How high-def do we need?

[multipartmixed]

I still watch TV on 27" JVC TV I purchased in 1995. I think it looks great. The picture was awesome the day I bought it, and the picture is still great today.

I watch TV on Bell ExpressVu (Canadian Dish Network), rent the odd DVD, and watch the occasional torrent movie or TV show I missed.

You know what? I think it looks great. Of course, I sit six or eight feet back from the TV.

I am really missing anything? The new TVs in the stores look fine, but every time I visit a friend who has an enormous screen, I can't help but think "Man, those guys look all blocky and stretched" when Hockey Night in Canada is on.

I mean, WTF?

Re:How high-def do we need?

[Control Group]

I can't help but think "Man, those guys look all blocky and stretched" when Hockey Night in Canada is on.

That's the magic of HD. SD sports on a big screen (like my 50") are blocky and stretched. Sports in HD on a 50" screen, though, make me wonder how I ever watched sports in SD. The aspect ratio alone, which allows you to see more of the field at once, is worth the price of admission.

For me, at least, the leap from SD to HD when watching sports is literally equivalent to the leap from VHS in EP to progressive scan DVD. It's just plain better.

Re:How high-def do we need?

[Is0m0rph]

That's because your friend is watching an SD broadcast and stretching it on his TV. Watch a sports program in true HD 720p or 1080i and it's painful to ever watch SD again. My 50" DLP has a sharp, clear picture.

Re:How high-def do we need?

[Dev59]

Well, a lot of it depends on the source material. I just bought a 32" widescreen LCD and the difference from the standard def 27" tube TV in the other room is just astounding. Even DVDs look so much better in progressive scan and anamorphic widescreen.

Now, standard cable tv, on the other hand... is less than impressive. In fact, it looks kinda crappy. But I'm ok with that because everything else is B-E-A-utiful. My roommate has digital cable, so while I don't have a cable box, I still get the local HD channels. Lost in 720p looks amazing. The difference is extremely noticeable.

Re:How high-def do we need?

[garcia]

That's the magic of HD. SD sports on a big screen (like my 50") are blocky and stretched. Sports in HD on a 50" screen, though, make me wonder how I ever watched sports in SD. The aspect ratio alone, which allows you to see more of the field at once, is worth the price of admission.

Yet I go to a store, a bar, or someone's home that has an HD screen and I watch something *other* than HD it looks like complete and utter shit compared to my 19 year old 27" Sony.

Blocky, smeared, etc. It's an unpleasant experience to say the least. So, I have a DirecTivo and I would *never* pay $1000 to buy the HD Tivo. I am going to end up having a high-def TV that looks like shit whenever I watch anything on Tivo (which is 99% of the time) or I am going to be looking at non-HD channels that look like shit the rest of the time.

I'll stick w/my 27" Sony.

Re:How high-def do we need?

[Aqualung812]

However, you point out exactly why HD is not as important as color (Seriously, I remember hearing how it was as big of a deal as B&W -> Color 5 years ago). HD is only helpful on a large display. I have one 56" display in my home, and 5 other under 20". I can see an improvement from VHS to DVD on all of them, and even if I couldn't, the format alone had advantages (no rewinding).

However, with HD-DVD/Blueray, I would be buying discs only for one TV. In addition, when I watch films on HD HBO or the like, all I usually see is better GRAIN. Most movies today are still put to film first, then digitized at some point down the line. So to me, a movie at 480p can actually be better than 1080i because it exposes fewer errors from the film.

Now, when I have 40" LCDs all over my house, and all new movies are 100% digital, I might look at whatever format survives. At that point, my hope is that I will just be able to download them to my media center NAS.

Re:How high-def do we need?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you've seen a few shitty larger HDTVs that don't offer any image enhancement or upscaling doesn't mean that all of them are crap unworthy of your attention.

I would rather watch SD on my 70" than on a tiny 30" any day of the week. Why? Significant work has been put into image quality enhancement, and by configuring my living room to opt for optimal viewing distance, even a low quality signal can look fine.

I have a monster of a TV and a $900 digital receiver/recorder. I wouldn't have it any way, and I bet if you won the same setup that I and many others have, you wouldn't be posting your bitter "The TV I dumpster dove out of Sears ten years ago is WAY better than your state of the art setups" shit all day long here.

Re:How high-def do we need?

[hador_nyc]

I am really missing anything? The new TVs in the stores look fine, but every time I visit a friend who has an enormous screen, I can't help but think "Man, those guys look all blocky and stretched" when Hockey Night in Canada is on. I mean, WTF?

Your friend probably doesn't have an HD source. I have a 42 LCD HD tv, and the channels that my cable company supplies that aren't in HD do look stretched and blocky, but the HD channels that they supply look fantastic. Also, you might just ask your friend to turn off the stretching feature. Most of the big widescreen tv's that I've seen have the ability to show the image stretched to fill the whole screen or "letterbox". Showing a SD signal in that mode looks fine.

As an aside, I play in a pool league with a guy who's a bigshot video guy for one of the TV stations here in the city, and he told me that the optimal viewing distance for a tv is about 2.5-3 times the length of the diagonal of the screen (103-124 inches in the case of my tv), so your 6-8 feet back sounds like a good idea. I've seen a few web articles that seem to support this guy's suggestion.

Just thought I'd pass it on...

Re:How high-def do we need?

[pipingguy]

every time I visit a friend who has an enormous screen, I can't help but think "Man, those guys look all blocky and stretched" when Hockey Night in Canada is on.

CBC has a HD channel for HNIC (only for some games, apparently). I caught one last weekend on a 1080i 37" LCD and it was quite impressive.

Re:How high-def do we need?

[evilviper]

I still watch TV on 27" JVC TV I purchased in 1995. I think it looks great.

I still watch TV on a 13" B&W tube TV I purchased in 1959. I think it looks great. The picture was awesome the day I bought it, and the picture is still great today.

Am I really missing anything?

Re:How high-def do we need?

[mgblst]

You, and many people are completely missing the point of HD - the zoom factor. Haven't you ever watched a movie, and wished you could zoom up on ...ahem... certain parts. We all have, and now we have the technology. Yeah, baby. Next step in the technology is the ability to move objects out of the way.. can't wait for that one.

Re:Am I the only one who thinks Talledaga nights .

[Anonymous Coward]

VHS is not better quality than broadcast, unless you have a bad signal.

It's a simple question of bandwidth, broadcast analog TV has more of it, and digital TV uses it better - unless you're complaining about digital compression artefacts (which are on DVD too to some extent).

How many AOL discs were given away?

[Anonymous Coward]

[quote]With all these freebies, more people will likely have received free HD DVD/Blu-ray discs by the end of 2006 than will have actually paid for them[/quote]

I'm sure there is billion to one ratio of AOL discs to actual subscribers. At least I hope so... (and there are a lot of AOLuser subs out there)

>>the newer CDs make great coffee coasters.

Wow!

[east coast]

Talledaga Nights!?!?! I'm so there, d00d.

Re:Am I the only one who thinks Talledaga nights .

[TranscendentalAnarch]

1)Buy Blu-ray burner 2)Download some Blu-ray movies 3)??? 4)Profit!

Re:Talladega Nights for the win

[Chris Burke]

I'm just wondering why they think Talladega Nights is a good showpiece for Blu-Ray technology. King Kong makes sense as the visuals are a big part of the movie. But a comedy? I'm not getting the logic.

Free logic good, but conclusions bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

"These people are creating their own illegal market for movies by distribtuing free products. It's really not sensible for them to both distribute free copies of movies, and say that for regular people, distributing free copies of movies is bad."

Before I blast your post to little bits. Why don't you explain the logic you used to arrive at your conclusion, keeping in mind we're talking about the copyright holder here.

Talledaga nights is their only choice.

[CyberLord Seven]

In this Washington Post article on Sony Corps. 94% profit plunge they mention that Talledega Nights was only marginally profitable, but was also one of their few successes.

Given that the article states that Sony Corps. profit has fallen so dramatically I'm surprised that they can give away anything.

Re:Talledaga nights is their only choice.

[Anonymous Coward]

[Talledaga nights is their only choice.
(Score:2)
by CyberLord Seven (525173) on Thursday October 26, @03:03PM (#16598310)

In this Washington Post article on Sony Corps. 94% profit plunge they mention that Talledega Nights was only marginally profitable, but was also one of their few successes.

Given that the article states that Sony Corps. profit has fallen so dramatically I'm surprised that they can give away anything.]


Why do you hate Sony so much, Zonk?!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to email the Washington Post and ask them why hired a Sony-hater like Zonk.

Re:Talladega Nights for the win

[Grishnakh]

Maybe that last Star Trek movie that Shatner directed... what was that one again? The Undiscovered Country? Yeah... that'll sell some DVD players!

Blasphemy!! How dare you confuse such a thing!!

Shatner did NOT direct The Undiscovered Country (ST VI), which was a great movie. He directed The Final Frontier (ST V), which was so horrifically bad that many ST fans consider it to not have happened.

Re:Talladega Nights for the win

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they hope you'll be laughing so hard you won't realize how much money you just wasted?

Re:It'll be funny.. Like AOL cds

[Control Group]

Since these are all being bundled with the matching player, I don't really see this plan working out so well.

Big plasma and lcd screens are crap

[Colin Smith]

I had a look at some large "HD ready" plasma and LCD screens the other day. The picture quality is shite . I mean really really bad. You can see pixelation, step changes in what should be smooth colour and jagged pictures during high speed sports events. I wouldn't touch any of them with a barge pole and anyone who has bought one is a muppet.

Re:Big plasma and lcd screens are crap

[dogbowl]

If you play an 8-track on the nicest stereo system in the world, its still going to sound like "shite"

Re:Big plasma and lcd screens are crap

[mkarpinski]

Take this for what's worth... The perceived picture quality depends somewhat on where the displays were setup. I've noticed that many retail stores that have HDTVs on display, take no time whatsoever to configure them properly.

Half the time they are not even showing HD content - Just stretched SD content (which usually does look horrible)

Re:Big plasma and lcd screens are crap

[Colin Smith]

So basically what you're saying is that if all you have is 8-tracks you'd be a fool to buy the nicest stereo system in the world.

BTW, I include in the list of crap plasmas and LCDs; Sky's HDTV system when coupled to an HD ready plasma. High definition? Yes, and completely unimpressive, there were still artefacts visible in the picture.

Re:Big plasma and lcd screens are crap

[Steve525]

Every time I've looked at a HD display in a store, I've thought the same thing. The compression they are using on HD transmissions suck. Lot's of blocky artifacts and obvious quantization errors. I still think the picture is better than SD, but it's not as good as one would hope. I really don't think they have enough bandwidth, or a sophisticated enough algorithm, for over-the-air HD. HD players should be someone better in this department. I've also never been a fan of LCD displays or any rear projection TV system, but LCD displays are getting better.

A couple days ago I went into a Cambridge soundworks store and they had an large Sony LCD display being fed by an HD player. (I assume blu-ray). I have to admit, I was impressed. Very detailed and no obvious artifacts. Unfortunately, the movie that was displayed (Corpse Bride) had very dull colors, and there wasn't any fast motion. I'm not giving a final verdict, but it showed promise. I'd like to see a scene with a lot of moving water or rain. (My experience is that compression algorithms choke on these scenes due to the rapidly changing high frequency information).

Re:Big plasma and lcd screens are crap

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not the HD that looks like shit. You're simply noticing how bad the signal really is.

Re:Big plasma and lcd screens are crap

[Shadarr]

Most TV displays in stores are running an SD signal over coax through splitters to a few dozen TVs--the picture is shit because the signal is shit. If you want to see how an HDTV looks, make the salesweasel hook a DVD player (or better yet, something that's actually HD) directly to that TV and only that TV via component cables. You wouldn't judge a new console on how well it displays 8-bit NES games, so why would you judge an HDTV on how well it displays SD?

Re:Big plasma and lcd screens are crap

[fithmo]

Not if it's Neil Diamond!

"Kentucky woooooooooommmmmaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!"

Re:Big plasma and lcd screens are crap

[Mad Marlin]

It is not the customer's job to sell overpriced electronics to himself.

Re:Big plasma and lcd screens are crap

[JTL21]

Actually how it displays SD is the toughest test for an HD display. They should all look perfect at their native resolution but how well they upscale will matter for much of what you watch will SD material is common.

Re:Talladega Nights for the win

[certain death]

It takes 10 lines of VB just to declare that you are using VB!!

Like dumping

[QuantumFTL]

This is like dumping, but cheaper because the DVDs cost very little to produce, and no one's going to buy them unless they have the player anyways...

Re:Talladega Nights for the win

[Greyfox]

I either didn't see the Final Frontier or if I did I took something afterwards to blot out all memory of it. I don't have good memories of The Undiscovered Country either, though. I remember something about the plot really pissing me off but I'd have to watch it again to remember what and I really don't want to do that. Hmm... Maybe if I got a free copy when I buy my HD-DVD player...

Aah and now the circle of Slashdot postings is complete and we are right back where we started, but one level up. Feel that? It's balance.

Are high-def and Vista cut from the same cloth?

[OnTheWay]

I agree with you. I'm quite happy with my 24" flat screen TV and non-progressive scan DVD player. By the same token, XP works great for my needs. Why should I spend lots of $$$ for an HD TV set, or for Vista hardware and OS, for just incremental gains? The change from VCR to DVD and from Win98 to XP was an order-of-magnitude change and well worth it.

Re:Talladega Nights for the win

[Firehed]

If us silly Americans will *pay* for crap like that, what could possibly give you the idea that it being free isn't an incentive to buy something even more expensive? I know that the people with vaguely decent taste are the "pirates" (ie, the ones not going to theatres to see the shit they produce), but most people will happily lap up the load of crap produced and pay for it.

Did you mean ...

[djtachyon]

Battle of the Frisbees?

Re:Talladega Nights for the win

[JamesP]

Lines are overrated.

A C program will work the same if it is all in the same line...

Yet reason to avoid the PS3!

[doublem]

What will they be giving away next? A remastered copy of Ishtar?

*shudder*

Re:Yet reason to avoid the PS3!

[Inner_Child]

What will they be giving away next? A remastered copy of Ishtar?

Isn't that the only movie still available on Betamax?

Re:Yet reason to avoid the PS3!

[fimbulvetr]

Up next: Manos, the hands of fate!!!

Comes with free Torgo, the pizza delivery man!

Re:Yet reason to avoid the PS3!

[rk]

"Isn't that the only movie still available on Betamax?

Yes... from the first printing, no less! They were going to play it non-stop in Camp X-ray but even Alberto Gonzales said "Whoa, that's kinda hardcore, don't you think?"

Re:Talladega Nights for the win

[Spazntwich]

I'm guessing you didn't see the movie.

It's got plenty of action/racing scenes that will show off the high resolution, framerate, and 7.1 sound capabilities. It doesn't have loads of CG eye-candy special effects, but what are there will probably make for a damn good display of the capabilities of the format.

This just says...

[joerdie]

To me anyway, that the formats are not doing that well. I watched a movie in blu-ray on a HD 60ish in screen. (I dont know all of the specifics, sorry) The room had surround sound too but i didnt notice a huge difference. I really dont think that DVD to HD DVD/Blu-ray are as big a step as VHS to DVD. Like i said. I dont think either format has a chance and this is just the start of the formats begging ANYONE to buy.

Comic Book Guy

[sadler121]

Comic book guy is that you?

What are they ... stupid?

[jo42]

In order for us to watch HD DVD or Blu-ray discs I'd have to throw out and replace all of our entertainment system but the speakers. This ain't gonna frackin' happen - I'm not going spend five figures doing this. Until the industry groks this we bit of reality, they are going to bang their MBA educated noggins against a wall trying to sell something that people don't have to have.

pr0n

[TheWoozle]

Just like every video format before it, the eventual winner here will take off when there is a decent selection of porn to be had.

Re:pr0n

[gstoddart]

Just like every video format before it, the eventual winner here will take off when there is a decent selection of porn to be had.

Other than the sheer quantity of porn to be had on a single disk, I'm not sure most people want to see porn in HD.

I mean, you'll be able to see the stretch marks and blemishes in astonishing detail, but will it be any better? Only cmopanies like Vivid might be inclined to do this.

Heck, as it is, DVDs still end up with older video snippets on them that don't even come close to what DVD can do (err ... at least, so I hear ;-). Do you want to see Ron Jeremy in any more detail than now?

While it's true that porn were the first disks to make use of the multiple-angle feature of DVD (and, probably not any more), I'm not sure that porn is really going to drive HD that much. Certainly they had an impact on VHS and DVD, but HD-DVD I'm not so sure of.

HD will win out in situations with large fields of view, landscapes, and things like that. The distance from camera to porn performers isn't really high enough to merit HD if you ask me. There's just simply no more detail you really want to see.

Cheers

Re:pr0n

[myheroBobHope]

I have yet to see any HD porn... I'm thinking that porn is one thing that won't improve with better definition and sound... I don't really want to see the lines on the "actress".

The changeable angles feature is nice, but really, the director usually knows the best way to angle the camera, and switches between them well.

I'm not really sure porn is going to improve with technology, unless you are talking sex devices...

Re:pr0n

[mgblst]

Well, another way to think about it is that they can fit more people on the screen at the same resolution. That can't be a bad thing.

The first one's always free.

[Kadin2048]

It's called a "loss leader." You give something away in order to get people to spend more money on something else.

If you're unfamiliar, walk down to the corner and talk to your friendly local crack rock dealer, he can fill you in on the basics.

Whoever can get the most consumers 'hooked' on their format stands to make a whole lot of money...

Re:It'll be funny.. Like AOL cds

[stile99]

Acting like a calm, dumb job average consumer

Some apparently find this easier than others.
In fact, it would appear some need not act.

Re:Hmm, out of luck...

[InsaneProcessor]

Ditto. What does HD have to offer that is worth the price? While I don't go to theaters much, I do when I want to see the great HD content. That would be about twice a year. Gee, $600 VS $50. No contest here. Every other movie I watch looks great on my Wega with a standard DVD.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

Re:It'll be funny.. Like AOL cds

[Ajehals]

Offtopic -

Do appear to be some issues logging in, although the problem seems to be fairly short (2-4 minutes) and infrequent (for me anyway) I've seen it maybe 5 times in the last 3 days (503 System error is the response I am getting trying to get to the login page). Anyway you are not alone.

Ontopic

Since when does anyone read the article!?

But more to the point I wonder if giving away say 5 decent DVD's (Older Blockbusters may be a good place to start (Die hard / Top Gun / Terminator etc..) without needing to buy a player would boost uptake, after all 5 DVD's would be 'worth' £100 or so. I guess it depends on if the movie producers want this format (with all the DRM goodness they get from it, or whether its a push by the device manufacturers. After all no one is saying who is paying for these 'free' DVD's.

Of course giving them away free would probably just mean that a hell of a lot of HDDVD's would appear on ebay.

Re:Am I the only one who thinks Talledaga nights .

[kinglink]

I probably should modify that.

VHS LOOKS better then old tv shows and some normal broadcast tv over cable.

This is more like trying to watch a 90s sitcom on a non-hd channel.

I am almost afraid to try Nick At Nite, or TV land just because I've seen what 10 years has given us.

Re:Talladega Nights for the win

[Grishnakh]

Your mind probably automatically took defensive measures to block out your memories of ST:V, in order to preserve your sanity.

ST:VI is actually considered one of the better ST movies. It's not as great as The Wrath of Khan of course, but it's probably #3 according to most people, after The Voyage Home, or maybe #4 after the Borg one.

The way to instant market share

[Skapare]

The first one million units sold shall have DRM disabled.

I'll wait a little longer...

[CODiNE]

Til they start giving away the players free. Then I'll get one... maybe.

I already upgraded to the next generation HD

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh wait I didn't upgrade to what they consider HD, locked media, self policing hardware. I picked it up all last year even. The best part is it is compatible with nearly every media type ever inventeg. In other words I have my lovely 24" wide screen LCD computer monitor and nearly 1TB of harddrives for storage space. Add in DVD decrypter and DVD shrink (to strip out all the crap extras, menus, and stupid control locks (until you watch the anti-pirate commercial) and you have a wonderful media player. Ok fine it's not HD-DVD or Blue-Ray, but at least with mine I can do what I want with it. I won't be buying into either DRM format scheme. The discs and drives might be interesting once writeable storage versions come out, but other than forget it, not interested.

Free BetaMax tapes....

[Beefslaya]

Free BetaMax tapes with purchase of BetaMax Player!!

I'm not biting.

Battlefield Earth for teh win

[MaWeiTao]

Once either one of them offers Battlefield Earth in HD, then we'll talk.

Re:Battlefield Earth for teh win

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you go for the format that doesn't have Battlefield Earth?

Seeing how it was a Warner Brothers film, it'll end up on both formats. :(

Re:Talladega Nights for the win

[GreyPoopon]

How many people honestly have a set they can watch something like that in all its glory on?

The 1080p sets have hit the market at a much lower price than their lower resolution siblings did. Just glancing at the typical retailer... a decent 42" plasma set is about $2000. A 42" LCD 1080p set is about $2700. I don't know about you, but the choice would be pretty easy for me. Expect all the HDTV holdouts (like me) to be picking up the higher resolution sets within the next year.

Uh, what's left to buy...?

[Shiptar]

Doesn't this cover about 70% of the movies available on BR or HD?

Re:Talladega Nights for the win

[drinkypoo]

It takes 10 lines of VB just to declare that you are using VB!!

Couldn't you just bang on your helmet and lick the window?

Sucked So Bad...

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

Actually, for me it didn't happen. It sucked so badly that it sucked open a wormhole to an parallel universe where it never was made. Just before the collapse, I fell through.

Move along people, nothing to buy here...

[Shotgun]

With all these freebies, more people will likely have received free HD DVD/Blu-ray discs by the end of 2006 than will have actually paid for them

That's because there will be very little content on most shelves for people to buy. Remember LaserDisc? The BlockBusters and BestBuys of the world don't care about low volume, competing formats. They only care to stock material that moves fast. None of these formats will take off until one starts getting a definite advantage on the market, and then the network effect will take over to doom the rest. The stores don't want to be left holding a lot of stock that nobody wants, so they'll wait and see...and by extension...so will the rest of us.

Re:Move along people, nothing to buy here...

[ShadowsHawk]

You can always use a service like Netflix which carries DVD, HD-DVD, and Blu-Ray.

```pacted'''?

[Russ Nelson]

Somebody "pacted"?? Gah! They've shited the language!

Re:Talladega Nights for the win

[drinkypoo]

They should just re-re-re-remaster Top Gun for the N-teenth time so that a whole new generation of vidiots can have their stomach contents rearranged by the subwoofers at the ol' circuit shitty. Gotta love those afterburners.

Besides, who wouldn't want to buy a TV displaying the only movie gayer than priscilla queen of the desert? You can be my wingman any time!

I don't want to get burned on this.

[wwillia99]

I just know that if i get a HD player it will go blue ray and if I get blue ray it'll go HD. This is so stupid they should have a standards board that sets an international standard. And to become a standard a format should have to be open and not owned by Sony or Microsoft. And why the heck do HD and blue ray discs cost twice as much as DVD? Sometimes I think this is all an excuse to raise the price on movies.

Re:I don't want to get burned on this.

[Anonymous Coward]

The price of Blu-ray discs and HD-DVD discs will be marginally augmented by R&D costs for the time being. As these dues are paid and the costs deflate to merely production and shipping costs, you will find the price of Blu-ray/HD-DVD discs to significantly drop. It happened with VHS and it happened with DVD. Don't don the tinfoil hat yet. There's no conspiracy to jack up the cost of your entertainment, it's just simple business.

Re:I don't want to get burned on this.

[payndz]

This is so stupid they should have a standards board that sets an international standard.

They did. It chose HD-DVD. Unfortunately Sony decided they didn't want to play because they'd spent money developing a format that wasn't picked by the DVD Forum, so instead they spent still more millions - billions? - to push Blu-Ray instead.

And the consumers of the world said, "Wait, fuck that! You think we don't remember getting stung by VHS versus Betamax? We'll stick with our regular DVDs, thanks."

Cost & Content are key

[Anonymous Coward]

If these fools want me to buy into their new and special formats they're going to have to give me the content I want. I don't give a rat's ass about the utter GARBAGE that they've released so far. I'm sure there's good stuff in there - Serenity, for instance - but most of it seems like shovelware to me. They're just trying to get people to re-purchase stuff the probably just bought.

What I want to see is rescanned copies of old classics, like Roman Holiday and Bringing Up Baby. In cases where the original prints are available there's no reason at ALL why they couldn't do a re-scan of the prints for HD re-release. As I recall there's a company in Santa Monica which was doing this for the James Bond films' initial DVD release. I'd pay $40 for a true hi-definition version of Sabrina, for instance, or Casablanca, but I'll be damned if I'm paying $40 for the HD version of Serenity when I JUST bought the DVD. Screw that.

But the real impediment to HD adoption isn't the content. The content is coming. The biggest problem is the cost. The really sweet HD sets cost thousands of dollars, and many of them won't last more than four or five years because the technologies used to make them just aren't that durable. Until 40" 1080p sets drop below $1000 (and it'll happen someday, so don't scoff) people are going to ignore HD. All the freebies in the world won't make someone who can't afford it buy HD hardware.

Gimme a converter

[EvilMoose]

Why don't they freebie an hdcp converter too? My memory span isn't short!

Re:Talladega Nights for the win

[Babbster]

You can be my wingman any time!

Haha! You can be MY wingman! In your face, Iceman!

Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

"Sony followed that up by offering a free 'Talladega Nights' Blu-ray with the only 500,000 PlayStation 3 units sold in the U.S.. "

-- fixed

Deja-vu!

[ZorinLynx]

Wow, deja-vu.

I remember these promotions when DVD was starting as a format, back in the late 90s...

"Buy X DVD player and get 6 movies free!"

Of course, it wasn't your choice of movies... But it's neat to see them doing this again...

Too bad there's two freaking formats competing.. this is going to do nothing but hurt the adoption of HD disc players until multi-format players come out.

-Z

Re:Talladega Nights for the win

[Anonymous Coward]

I wont' be impressed until he does it in 10 lines of cocaine.

Free upgrade, please

[Dachannien]

When a company offers to replace my entire DVD collection with its HD counterparts, then we can talk.

Of course, I'll still say no, because of the DRM. "Free" just isn't worth it.

dvd is fine

[Maxo-Texas]

Dvd is fine.

The slower these are adopted, the longer product comes out on DVD and is super cheap.

I've no interest in rebuying my 400 dvd's in hd-dvd or blue ray.

PLUS hd-dvd and blu-ray have so much capacity that they should really be including a lot *more* content. I mean- you could probably put every mainstring song every recorded on a blu-ray disk at 192 bitrate.

Re:Am I the only one who thinks Talledaga nights .

[BobSutan]

You've just described why many are referring to the HD-DVD and BR as the "new laserdisk". IMO they're totally right. The quality increase over DVD is barely there for most that have seen it in action. And if you've got a 720 HD set with an upscaling DVD player, you are REALLY going to be hard-pressed to see an improvement over the 1080p+BR/HD. The only tried and tested benefit to Blueray is that its the better format of the two for data storage (as on the PC).

Aside from data storage, I suggest consumers bypass HD-DVD & Blueray completely and simply stick with their DVDs and 720 HDTV. They're far, far cheaper than the 1080p solution and looks virtually the same. And that's not to mention the limited usage of 1080p in the world by broadcasters. Hell, 1080i is hard enough to find so why waste the money if you don't have to?

Re:Talladega Nights for the win

[Winckle]

WTF, offtopic, hey mods, it's ontopic if i'm replying to an above comment, if i was replying directly to the article then yes I would be offtopic yes, but making a joke about perl when replying to a comment about perl is most definitely on topic!

Re:Talladega Nights for the win

[certain death]

WOW! That was really funny! I laughed so hare, I just scared a bunch of folks who were actually coding in VB!!!

Four Flaws in their Plan

[Cr33pybusguy]

It's my opinion that only true videophiles will be buying either one of these systems until

A) the prices of the HDTV's come down and I'm not talking about the "ready" ones. Thats a shitty advertising gimmick. You still need some sort of transformer for the TV. I don't know too many people who will shell out $2k for a TV when their 27" looks fine to them. Not to mention reciever's that usually run a couple hundred for a half decent one.

B) The format war settles down so that there is only one. (Laserdisc what???)

C) They give out some movies that would blow your socks off. Talledega Nights? Please. How about X-Men 3? Or hell, Click which has better effects than TN. Some thing where you can see the indivdual hairs on Storm's head as she becomes the whirlwind.

D) The HDTV "ENABLED" TV's are your every day TV. Right now it's not a convenient change over. This isn't something like DVD which out-sold VHS's ten year sales in the span of two. There's too much new equipment thats needed. With the DVD player all you had to do was plug into your TV (or VCR if your TV was really old). Can't do it with HD-DVD / blu-ray and see the true beauty of the system. See point A

Thats my 4 cents.

Re:Four Flaws in their Plan

[Anonymous Coward]

A) the prices of the HDTV's come down and I'm not talking about the "ready" ones. Thats a shitty advertising gimmick. You still need some sort of transformer for the TV. I don't know too many people who will shell out $2k for a TV when their 27" looks fine to them. Not to mention reciever's that usually run a couple hundred for a half decent one.

You only need a "transformer" if you are watching over the air HD content. Maybe it's different in New Jersey, but I do not know a single person that has their TV connected to an antennae to recieve any content. Everyone I know has cable or satellite. HD readiness is a non issue here.

Re:Talladega Nights for the win

[biztalker]

I bought a Westinghouse 42" LCD 1080p last month for $1600. It rocks! Google for the reviews.

History tells us.

[jimlintott]

History tells us that the best way to tell which format will win the format war will be to visit your local porn store and see which HD format is available.

Porn has driven visual media technologies for quite some time now.

Re:History tells us.

[Anonymous Coward]

In the little "Adult Novelty Shop" I work in we carry the "Pirates" movie as a three disc set. One of these discs is an HDDVD. I have heard of a few other movies being out in HDDVD, but I have not seen the box covers to confirm this.

So right now, HDDVD appears to have an advantage, but that is from my little perspective from my little cornfield state capital in the central US.

With all the little 6 hour $9.95 movie sales that I do of junk scenes thrown together to make a DVD, I cannot see people caring about HDDVD. These movies sell very fast and some of the quality is worse than anything produced in the last 20 years. Not due to a scene being transferred from a VHS master, but from the low quality settings they are using to get these 6 hour DVDs together, and the 24 hour DVDs are far worse.

I mention the HDDVD disc inclusion when talking about the Pirates movie, but only one person has ever known what I was talking about and that is due to him being an early adopter. Most others don't want to pay the $49.95 fee for the three disc set. Most won't pay the 19.95 price for normal dvds. Not sure if porn is going to be that much of a driving force this time.

Re:History tells us.

[leland242]

How is Pirates?

"Free" Disks?

[dakirw]

With all these freebies, more people will likely have received free HD DVD/Blu-ray discs by the end of 2006 than will have actually paid for them.

Well, they'll have paid for the "free" disks by buying the overpriced new HD-DVD/Blu-ray players, so not much of a discount in my mind.

Re:Talladega Nights for the win

[Anonymous Coward]

#include #include int main(printf("hello, world\n");exit(0);}

Re:Am I the only one who thinks Talledaga nights .

[onx]

I think that a lot of the driving forces that helped advance dvd adoption are gone with this generation. Going from VHS to DVD had several key advantages: 1: cheaper to manufacture (but not cheaper for the consumer, so you might not include this) 2: You don't have to rewind a DVD, pause, rewind, and fast forward are easier to do on DVDs 3: DVDs take up less space. You can store 200 DVDs in a binder the size of maybe 8 VHS tapes? 4: DVDs use progressive scan (480p) as opposed to VHS interlaced (480i) which in itself is a very large improvement in picture quality (a lot of people thing the difference between VHS and DVD is greater than between DVD and HD-DVD/Blu-ray 5: Better sound quality (at least a MUCH bigger leap than HD-DVD/Blu-ray offer to the average consumer) 6: DVDs are as readily, or commonly "eaten" by the player, requiring significant time repairing the tape and rewinding it by hand. 7: Special features 8: Easier to rip Some of these are key reasons for compelling reasons to upgrade such as playback in more areas than just home theaters, by way of portable players and laptops. Who doesn't want to buy the version of the movie they can watch at home and on the plane, or anywhere for that matter, using their laptop? HD-DVD and Blu-ray are more of a DVD on steroids type thing than the complete rethink of the home video buisness that DVDs were. Perhaps this will end up being like DVD audio.

Disc price too high

[Anonymous Coward]

I am probably the ideal target when the studios market HD. Plenty of disposable income and a huge interest in high quality audio and video equipment. I spent over $40k on my in-home theater, and own both a Blu-Ray and an HD-DVD player. The picture quality is simply amazing. However, even I cringe when I go to the store to purchase new HD movies. $40 for a single movie? I don't think so. The most laughable was Firewall... horrible movie that tanked at the box office... yet was released on HD-DVD for the amazing price of $37.99. I did not bother. I might have picked it up for $20-$25 just to "complete my collection" of HD movies. This all makes me wonder... I know I am in the top of the income bracket, so how do the Studios expect middle america to ever justify this expense? Seems to me like they have priced themselves out of the largest part of their market. Greedy bastards.

Re:Am I the only one who thinks Talledaga nights .

[hotzeyboy]

I dont know, Talledaga nights had a lot of racing scenes. Those could look pretty good in HD.

Crack Dealers do the same marketing

[Anonymous Coward]

This is how crack dealers sell their products.

Shouldn't they give them away, or a token amount?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish no one would pay for a disc player, ever, at all.

I mean, the real bounty is the content in hi res, not the device itself.

They are priced high since early adopters will fall all over their credit card (or atm) to get one.

There was a review recently proposing and demonstrating that the inexpensive ATI and NVidia cards had better playback/video/color that the most of the very high-end DVD players; $thousand(s) ?

Again, why would we pay (once again) for the right to buy and view their property, which they hold all control over, with potentially even less functionality, potentially less performance, and guaranteed less freedom via HMCP/HDMI?

Simply for more resolution? which I admit is tempting for some material. Bragging rights?(Grow up already). For the potential need to throw away perfectly good DVDs, players, receivers, etc.?

I'll wait this one out as well, at least until they are a small amount and they are more "open", by hook or crook.

why the fuss over the resolution?

[JumperPunk]

because my monitor runs at 1680x1050. if im watching a movie on a screen 2x (or more) the size of my monitor, it had better have a resolution at least as good my 20" LCD, which requires at least 1080i, or 1080p to match the refresh rate.

Re:Hmm, out of luck...

[Anonymous Coward]

Throw in another ditto to be mismarked as troll. Many of us geeks couldn't care less about HD because the difference isn't great enough to be worth the inconveniences, removed functionality, and price hikes.

If even the geeks are shunning a new tech, you can be pretty sure it will fail.

HAHA

[A Wise Guy]

Why give them for free? I own the movies already. So when are they giving the players away?

My collection....

[Fantasio]

Blue-Ray Coasters and HD DVD coasters, they'll join my collection of AOL coasters !

Not until I can make affordable backups.

[thedarb]

If I can't make myself a backup copy, I won't buy it. Period.

I know everyone has said it...

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

...but HD is simply not worth it.

After recently buying a 720p display (for the picture quality, not resolution), and watching HD broadcasts, I've decided that it is simply a waste of money. I have great trouble telling the difference between upscaled DVD and HD broadcasts. I suspect that many of the broadcasts are upscaled anyway.

One channel here (in Australia) is called SC10, and they have an HD channel that is entirely devoted to HD content. i.e. they constantly show HD demonstrations at 1080i, unless they are showing a natively HD program (which is very rare). I saw one such program, and I noticed that the HD looked very visibly worse than the SD broadcast. You could see the visual noise very clearly, whereas the SD broadcast had scaled it out. The scaled down then scaled up version looked better. Trust me, HD is not worth it.

Re:I know everyone has said it...

[leland242]

One of the problems with HD is in the connection to the TV. If I connect it using component cables, it looks like crap. using HDMI, its amazing.

And your right, when you see a HD program instead of some upsampled crap, its very apparant. We have similar channels to you in northeast America - all in 1080i. I'm not aware of any 1080p broadcasts.

I vaguely worry about my decision a little over a year ago to purchase a 1080i set.. but I really doubt that 1080p is all that different. hell, maybe ill just give it to my parents or mother-in-law someday...

Re:I know everyone has said it...

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

One of the problems with HD is in the connection to the TV. If I connect it using component cables, it looks like crap. using HDMI, its amazing.

Not for me! My HD tuner is integrated into the TV.

I'm not aware of any 1080p broadcasts.

I'm not surprised. I believe that down here, in Australia, DVB-T doesn't support 1080p. Maybe I'm wrong...

Talladega nights vs. King Kong

[heroine]

What would you rather watch? Talladega nights or King Kong? First betamax, then memory stick, and after making all those proprietary formats cost twice as much and have 1/10th the users, Sony has created the world's first proprietary audience.

These formats are bulletproof

[heroine]

HD-DVD has been out for almost a year. BD has been out for a few months. No breaches of encryption. Millions of 128 bit keys on each disk. No software players being sold. No interest from users in watching movies on their PC. These formats probably won't be cracked.

Replacing DVDs

[Tekoneiric]

If they offered one to one replacement for my large DVD collection, I'd think about upgrading but we all know that's not going to happen.

Re:Am I the only one who thinks Talledaga nights .

[evilviper]

My parents have a 50 inch CRT, and still watch VHS on it, it gives a great picture (Better then broadcast tv),

Digital TV will certainly change that. Broadcast signals will go further in most situations, and the picture will be absolutely bit- PERFECT right up until the edge of the signal coverage area.

they have no need to go to a new format, to rebuy all the dvds and tapes on it.

HD-DVD and Blu-ray are both backwards compatible. Anyone saying "I don't want to rebuy everything" is a complete idiot. You keep your DVD collection, and simply buy NEW movies in highdef formats.

There was a reason to rebuy VHS tapes on DVD (not a GOOD one, but still). There will be almost no good reasons to rebuy your DVDs in highdef formats.

Psst...buddy!

[mjeppsen]

"eager to introduce the masses to the virtues of the next-gen DVD formats, the studios and manufacturers backing HD DVD and Blu-ray have begun giving discs away."

Isn't this basically the same strategy employed by drug dealers?

-MJ

Re:Talladega Nights for the win

[mcvos]

I either didn't see the Final Frontier or if I did I took something afterwards to blot out all memory of it. I don't have good memories of The Undiscovered Country either, though.

How dare you compare those two? The Final Frontier (ST V) is the biggest piece of crap ever committed to film, whereas The Undiscovered Country (ST VI) is the best Star Trek film ever. It has everything: ice planets, prison worlds, mystery, conspiracy, intrigue, the prospect of either a bright future or a devastating war, and even some nuuggets of wisdom. I'm not generally a Star Trek fanatic, but this is absolutely the best work of art that the Star Trek franchise has ever produced.

I decline to bet in your Casino

[speedlaw]

Bottom Line, I am not risking $500-$900 to buy a doorstop with 50-50 odds. Want to sell HD disk media ? Marry it to an HD DVR, for export of programs. Heck, even make it a "copy once" block. Oh, I forgot, we are NOT selling HD DVR in the USA......unless you $pend a fortune with your Cable or Sat Monopoly.

Re:Am I the only one who thinks Talledaga nights .

[kinglink]

Except why pay for something twice, than just keep the good format that you have now. If you're force to pay full price for an incremental improvement would you? You don't pay 60 bucks for an expansion normally? You wouldn't expect to pay 30 bucks for a patch that allows your game to have hi res models? Why are we allowing it here?

In addition Digital TV will change that, except the cable company is squeezing digital TV as hard as they can to make everyone pay every little cent more to get it. All these companies should tell cable to start making this available for lower costs. I'm not paying more money per channel I want in HD. I thought every channel was going to be digital five years ago, three years ago and last year. The only reason they arn't is because cable companies want to charge more for it and no one is going to agree to that if there's no other option.

HD formats might be better, but there's no reason to run out and get them, especially when everyone seems to think they need a premium. If I could buy HD movies for 10-20 bucks I might think about it, but currently they are more, and currently they can come with less features then DVDs. For shame. I'll just keep buying DVDs, because they are cheaper, and better. If they started putting TV shows on blu-ray I'd be thrilled. Imagine a whole season of a show on one disc? I'm down with that.

Re:Am I the only one who thinks Talledaga nights .

[MemoryDragon]

Eeek everyone who buys HD-DVD or Blue Ray is an idiot, sorry to say that, but beneath the shiny HD content, there is an awful layer of DRM which is even as evil as that the content providers can disable your shiny device via a key on the disk if your HDCP key was stolen or was/is in one of the stolen keys lists! DVD was not copyable either until CSS was cracked, but this thing is inherently evil, it basically scrambles all the signals up to the tv, the lifetime of your device can be nullified by the content providers, you wont get full resolution unless you adhere all the so called security standards, still region codes in that dreck, and a lot of other nasty things. Also expect a price hike once the format has killed off dvd, since there is no copying anymore, hence the cheap "vendor" next door is closed. (It always was a myth that piracy raises prices in fact usually prices are raised where there is a monopoly situation)

Panasonic already gives away three blu-ray discs

[bitbucketeer]

I just bought the new Panasonic Blu-Ray player and it came with a free "Eight Below" and an offer for another two by mail "Gone in 60 Seconds" and "The Great Raid". I received the mail movies in less than a week. I also purchased "Stargate," "Sky Captain," and the first two Terminators. My only complaint is that the compression sucks on all these discs. There is a "color banding" or "posterization" effect on scenes with sunsets and is seen at it's worst on the "Sky Captain" BD where Sky Captain's plane plows into the ocean. This "effect" only happens occasionally, but when it does it's really, really distracting and annoying.

Granted all these discs are single layer BD discs. I was really expecting to see them releasing dual layer discs with a whole lot less compression. I am viewing these discs at 1080p over an HDMI cable on a Mitsubishi WD-57831 and I have used the THX video tests on the discs to adjust the display to where I can barely see macroblocking in the sky scenes in "Eight Below".

Well, DVD started out with the same kind of incorrectly compressed releases and it took time for "Superbit" discs to arrive. Properly mastered DVDs look fantastic on this player when upconverted to 1080p.

Re:Talladega Nights for the win

[epee1221]

If someone gives me that much to spend on a video-watching system, I'm buying a computer that plays DVDs.

Re:Am I the only one who thinks Talledaga nights .

[evilviper]

Except why pay for something twice, than just keep the good format that you have now.

A) You don't have to. If you like low-res analog TV, keep it.

B) DTV/HDTV is a HUGE improvement in many more ways than just the 6X resolution that is most often hyped.

I'm not paying more money per channel I want in HD.

You don't have to pay anything per month for HDTV channels. Point your antenna in the right direction, and you'll get a perfect-quality HD picture, better quality than cable or satellite providers offer.

If I could buy HD movies for 10-20 bucks I might think about it, but currently they are more,

You could have said the same thing about DVDs just a few years ago. New formats always cost more for a while. The cycle will continue.

Re:Am I the only one who thinks Talledaga nights .

[evilviper]

there is an awful layer of DRM which is even as evil as that the content providers can disable your shiny device via a key on the disk if your HDCP key was stolen or was/is in one of the stolen keys lists!

That makes it equally as bad as DVDs.

Remember, DVD-CSS has multiple keys too, it just happened that they were ALL cracked at almost exactly the same time.

it basically scrambles all the signals up to the tv,

As opposed to Macrovision...

Also expect a price hike once the format has killed off dvd,

Completely baseless.

Re:Am I the only one who thinks Talledaga nights .

[MemoryDragon]

The main difference between the DVD and the newer systems is, that both the blue ray and the hd-dvd units can be bricked at will by the content providers, by a blacklist of keys which can be distributed with every new movie. Have much fun having a 600 dollars player and then having it bricked by the latest movie you just bought!

Re:Am I the only one who thinks Talledaga nights .

[evilviper]

both the blue ray and the hd-dvd units can be bricked at will by the content providers,

Prove it.

Lots of idiots have been ranting on it, but it's almost certainly based upon one rather mundane sentence in a Reuters article, which is being widely speculated about, and probably completely misinterperated.

Their own docs and specifications make no mention of any such feature: http://www.aacsla.com/specifications/

etc.

If you want to make crazy claims, get at least some proof to back them up.