Sony Set to Market Blu-ray as Winner of Format War

An anonymous reader writes "Citing the recent sales numbers, Sony exec David Bishop is claiming that the high-def format war can officially be declared over. With a movie sale ratio of almost 2:1 Blu-ray discs are being declared the victor over rival HD-DVD by Blu-ray supporter Sony. 'And yet while all agree that it was a strong month for Blu-ray, opinion is split on whether the surge in sales is an indicator of stronger user adaption of Blu-ray compared to HD DVD, or simply a reflection of the larger number of new Blu-ray titles that hit the market over the month -- 25 new Blu-ray titles were released in January, compared to just 11 titles on HD DVD for the same period.'"

Comments

Number of movies

[SnarfQuest]

Aren't the number of movies available related to the popularity of the format?

Re:Number of movies

[ngtvtw13ve]

If that was true then wouldn't we still be buying vhs tapes?

Re:Number of movies

[LiquidCoooled]

If thats the case, divx avi movies rule the world ;)

Re:Number of movies

[Andy Dodd]

Number of movies released in a particular month != total number of movies available

I believe that prior to this particular month, HD-DVD was consistently ahead of Blu-Ray. Declaring a winner based on a single months' worth of statistics (especially at this early point when both formats are in their infancy) is utterly idiotic.

Re:Number of movies

[Paolo DF]

maybe this time is the other way: industries are in a "push" attitude more than ever.

Re:Number of movies

[Itchyeyes]

Yes, but they're also related to how much the studios like the format's DRM and how much money the format producer is willing to throw at them.

Re:Number of movies

[SnarfQuest]

But, how many new VHS movie titles were released last month?

Re:Number of movies

[Babbster]

Aren't the number of movies available related to the popularity of the format?

You're absolutely correct, and that would be a good measure of a particular format's success. Here's the problem: The number of HD DVD and Blu-ray titles currently available is a virtual dead heat. The last time I did a count (about 2 weeks ago) via a popular website that sells both formats, the numbers differed by less than 10, with the total being in the mid 100s.

As regards the most recent numbers, it's pretty obvious that more Blu-ray titles have been released and purchased in the last two months because a) Sony finally released the PS3 and there is nothing else to do with that hardware other than playing Blu-ray movies and play Resistance and b) they're trying to catch up with HD DVD which had a significant lead in available titles prior to the holiday season.

It's obviously way too soon to declare a winner, but I'll give Sony props for trying to turn lemons into lemonade...

I should note, as I often do, that I don't care who wins. If Toshiba and company stand pat and don't push their format then Sony could indeed win the thing because the PS3 is going to sell as time goes by, even if it doesn't become the dominant game console that the PS2 and PS were. The HD DVD folks need to get a standalone player out ASAP for under $400 and by Christmas they need to have players under $300. If they don't, then they'll have to rely on the Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on to compete with the PS3, and that's a dangerous road - not because the HD DVD add-on is a bad deal (it's actually a pretty good one), but because 360 owners already have what they need and want to play games without the bonus of an HD format, while PS3 owners are "forced" into possession of the HD format as a consequence of desiring PS3 gameplay.

Re:Number of movies

[Ucklak]

Doesn't really matter.

As crappy of a movie it is, I still want The Incredible Melting Man on DVD and it's not available legally in the US of A.

I remember seeing that at the local grindhouse with trailers for Suspiria and other shlock fests back in the day.

Re:Number of movies

[bdr529]

Declaring a winner based on a single months' worth of statistics (especially at this early point when both formats are in their infancy) is utterly idiotic

True. However, it can be used as a tool to gage the trend to try to predict WHERE the winning format will fall.

Re:Number of movies

[DesertBlade]

If you look here. A majority of the Blue Ray movies are older. I counted 15 that are about a year old. For Example:
Resident Evil
Scooby Doo
Hitchikers Guide
Courage Under Fire

HDDVD has a a few too (counted 6), but I think blue-ray flooded the market with older movies.

Re:Number of movies

[Dorkmaster Flek]

Sony doing something idiotic? Naw...

Re:Number of movies

[packeteer]

Its not idiotic, its smart. That is, it's smart marketing for the people involved with Blu-Ray.

Re:Number of movies

[Yvanhoe]

So 36 movies were released in HD format this month. Clearly, regular DVD are more popular by an order of magnitude. Until one of the HD format outperforms DVDs using this metrics, I wouldn't call the war over.

Re:Number of movies

[encoderer]

So let me get this straight:

A single data point can be used as a "tool" to gage the trend?

No shit?

Re:Number of movies

[oh_bugger]

you hit the nail on the head when you said it's too early to tell. Sony can't decide at this point which product is the winner. That's like Al Gore saying he's the president just because he's got the most votes. (yes bad analogy, I was going to say something serious but that came into my head)

Re:Number of movies

[bdr529]

6 months of data is a single data point? No shit? It's not a single data point. It's the volume of title sales over 6 months. RTFA and maybe... just MAYBE click the links.

Re:Number of movies

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends... popular with who? Your own partners or the public?
I'd think sales would have more of something to do with who wins than otherwise.

Seeing as the porn industry is siding with HD... sheer numbers of titles offred would go to HD no?

Re:Number of movies

[Penguin's Advocate]

It's not at all idiotic. When the signs in Best Buy (or Walmart, or on tv) tell Joe Sixpack that "Blu-ray is the winner of the Hi-Def format war" (Assuming Mr. Sixpack is there spending his tax return on a new Hi-Def setup) What do you think Joe is going to buy? He's not stupid, he's not going to buy the "loser".

Re:Number of movies

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh. I know that was intended as a joke, but you're absolutely correct. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are barely in the battle at all. The winner (by an indescribably large margin) is either DivX, XVid, or something along those lines. Of course, I know that they're only referring to next-gen disc-based media formats, but still, as far as newly released movies go... it's a valid point.

Re:Number of movies

[Anonymous Coward]

Declaring a winner based on a single months' worth of statistics (especially at this early point when both formats are in their infancy) is utterly idiotic.

Sony's desire to wholly misinform the consumer about its product strikes me as being Microsoft. For that reason alone, I am not going to participate in its incipient technology beta test. If I feel the urge to spend some money on an over-priced player and over-priced movie discs, I will be going HD-DVD. Not to mention no porn runs on Sony's format and all the other crap Sony has done over the years to fuck with consumers (CD rootkits, "MP3" players that only play ATRAC, exploding batteries, et cetera).

Re:Number of movies

[pluther]

I think the problem with this is, that most people don't know there's a format war going on.

Those that do are the ones paying attention, and they probably won't be fooled by the marketing hype declaring Sony the winner.

25 titles release in a month, compared to 11 for the competition, is far too small of a number to actually draw any kind of conclusion. Sure, it's more than twice as much, but with numbers this small impressive-sounding percentages are easy to come by.

Re:Number of movies

[ampathee]

Hey, if they declare themselves the winner enough, people might start to believe them - and then they will win!

Re:Number of movies

[Anonymous Coward]

What? Isn't Sony's Beta the winner format? What am I going to do with my Betamax and all my Beta tapes?

Re:Number of movies

[PopeRatzo]

I agree with TFA. Blu-ray has won the format war.

I'm also ready to declare Tom Vilsack the winner of the '08 presidential election and the Chicago White Sox the winner of next year's World Series.

Re:Number of movies

[Anonymous Coward]

If the numbers stay as they are, then I don't know if I'd call it a war or not. In 3 years, the costs of the technology will not be an issue. The number of available titles will be one. If there is a 2:1 or 3:1 or greater ratio, why would you even consider the loser? We're not talking about tons of disposable DVDs either, it's like the Disney collection. Just watch highdefdigest.com, every week the gap is huge between HD-DVD titles and BD titles. There will be like a one movies on only HD-DVD and then like 10 only on BD and then a few on both. MD, memory stick, UMD, were all losers with close to no titles. There is a huge difference when you start getting media. Toshiba and MS need to move fast if they want to turn this tide. They need cheap players, cheap burners and some pretty damn compelling movies on HD-DVD and not BD. Maybe it's still a little too soon or in poor taste to say it's over but if the pace continues, it's over. The sony haters need to wake up a little bit, PS3 sales never stalled so much as they can't build units fast enough; BD and HD-DVD are basically the same technology from a DRM point of view; MS isn't much better than Sony at very many things if anything.

Re:Number of movies

[harp2812]

Hey, if they declare themselves the winner enough, people might start to believe them - and then they will win!
Interesting... *ahem* I hereby declare myself the sexiest man alive!
Now all I have to do is just repeat it often enough that everyone starts believing it... ;)

Re:Number of movies

[aztracker1]

Well, I haven't bought a single sony related product since the CD-DRM crap they pulled... so, I'm pushing for HD-DVD (despite my distain for MS)... I will probably be hooking up one of these to my Media Center box...

Re:Number of movies

[aztracker1]

With the HD-DVD player for the Xbox 360 available for about $200, it should be possible to have a stand alone HD-DVD player for $250... I will probably get the 360 one for use with my Media Center box.. since, apparently people have gotten it to work fine on PCs.

Re:Number of movies

[compro01]

Interesting... *ahem* I hereby declare myself the sexiest man alive!
Now all I have to do is just repeat it often enough that everyone starts believing it... ;)

well, if you repeat as much as sony's marketing budget would allow, it's likely that a number of people would start believing it.

Re:Number of movies

[Afrosheen]

That movie was awesome. I remember it well, the astronaut comes back to Earth after being exposed to a burst of radiation. This basically turns him into a cheeze pizza with extra cheese.

  The scene where they're tracking him and they find his ear on a tree branch = classic.

Re:Number of movies

[StikyPad]

What do you mean by "not available legally?" Are you referring to region codes, which have no legal teeth, or are you saying that the film has been banned in the US?

Re:Number of movies

[Babbster]

With the HD-DVD player for the Xbox 360 available for about $200, it should be possible to have a stand alone HD-DVD player for $250...

Unfortunately, that's not quite correct. While the pieces making up the drive itself (such as the blue laser) are indeed a large expense, the hardware permitting 1080p playback from such a drive are similarly expensive - CPU, audio/video decoders etc., all handling more complex work than similar hardware in a DVD player. In other words, it would take more than $50 of additional hardware to turn the add-on into a standalone device. Add in the mark-up so that both retailers and manufacturers make some dough on the deal, and the price increases quite a bit.

Still, the HD DVD prices aren't that bad compared to DVD prices at a similar point of only one year (actually, a little less) from introduction. This (and upcoming price drops, which I expect to reach $300 or less by Christmas) is most likely due to the competition in formats. While the early adopters may get hosed by the two competing formats (if their chosen format "loses"), the inevitable price war will probably greatly benefit the rest of the consumers down the line.

Re:Number of movies

[encoderer]

What article are YOU reading, bro?

I think _YOU_ ought to click on the link.

The article clearly says, many places, it's talking about JANUARY.

And it doesn't say so directly in the article, but if you do a little homework, you'll find that HD has outsold Blu-Ray (in units) so far.

So really, you want to try that again?

Re:Number of movies

[Ucklak]

I'm a little leery about buying something that
A) may not play in DVD players I have
B) not distributed in the US even though it was made in the US*

I also would love to get a copy of Mansion of the Doomed

It appears to also be in Region 2 limbo.

*That doesn't really bother me that much. I just want it to work with no hassles.

Re:Number of movies

[Propaganda13]

Sweet, let me run down to Best Buy and buy a Blu-Ray player.
Let's see
PS3 $599
Sony $999
Samsung $799
LG $1199 (which also plays HD-DVD)

Hmmm, maybe they should get some more players on the market before declaring victory. Also get the price down to the $200-300 range.

Re:Number of movies

[StikyPad]

There are plenty of players which either natively, or through minimal reconfiguration, play region-free. There are also a variety of sources. If there are no retailers near you, I used (Buy-it-Now) eBay to purchase the Philips DVP-642, which plays almost anything you can throw at it, including VCDs, DiVX, xvid, etc. for $50-$60. Additionally, I purchased the "Planet Earth" DVDs online (BBC, Region 2, PAL) and it played them flawlessly doing realtime PAL->NTSC conversion.

VLC player will also ignore region codes. Unfortunately it's not the most user friendly player, but it gets the job done.

So it isn't entirely hassle free at this point. You still have to find and buy a specific model of player (and possibly unlock it), but those are generally trivial one-time hassles which will provide you with years of unrestricted DVD playback.

Re:Number of movies

[jZnat]

Pretty much every DVD player (yes, even Sony ones) have region-unlock codes. Check videohelp.com.

Re:Number of movies

[jZnat]

If you've been following Slashdot over the past, well, few years, you'd know that Joe Sixpack already owns an HD-DVD and Blu-ray player already along with thousands of dollars of other expensive equipment he doesn't seem to know how to use. Your point is moot.

Re:Number of movies

[Afrosheen]

I guess you're not old enough to remember when VCRs first debuted. Or DVD players. Media and players were both outrageous.

The economics work themselves out over time. It's all about ubiquity.

Re:Number of movies

[pacalis]

The fact that most people don't know that there's a format war going on is the point. Sony hasn't won but can make a compelling arguement. As hardward purchases are based on expectations of future complements, they idea is if they fool enough retards at the local circuit city and they will have a self-fulfilling prophecy on their hands.

Re:Number of movies

[cgenman]

True, but correct me if I'm wrong... aren't what you're mostly talking about is basically an MPEG2 / H.264 decoder that can handle 4x the data flow of a DVD? That's not exactly a huge flow. With the custom decoder chips out, it was probably possible to put out a 300 dollar HD-DVD player this past christmas... though it wouldn't make sense not to get back some of your tooling costs from early adopters.

Re:Number of movies

[EvilIdler]

MPEG4 is a different beast, processing-wise, ESPECIALLY when pumping out at 720p and 1080p resolutions.
The latter is 19xx by 1080 pixels. Try that on a cheapass chipset. A hidef movie is 4-5 times the size of a DVD,
so that's up to five times as much processing power. But the algorithms require more processing power than
MPEG2 for the same amount, so it's really much more. Then going from 720x480 (or x512) pixels to 1080p is
another huge leap in processing. It's 2.5 times the number of pixels both horizontally and vertically.

We're on the way to get it all on a chip or two, I'm sure, but it's still going to take a decent GPU and CPU to
pump all that hidef goodness to our screens.

Re:Number of movies

[Penguin's Advocate]

My point is only moot if you assume that the general concensus on slashdot is correct...

Re:Number of movies

[Propaganda13]

Umm, ok. I'm not sure how that applies to what I said. Sure, the price will come down and there will be more players in the FUTURE. Currently, there aren't enough players and the price is too high to declare Blu-Ray or HD-DVD the winner. I also remember mini disc and laser disc. Those were expensive when they came out. While they were expensive when they came out, both faltered when it came to becoming common in the average household. The industry should have learned from DVDs that settling on a standard is a good idea.

Re:Number of movies

[SetupWeasel]

Well then UMD is more popular than either of them. You have to remember that Sony does own a lot of film properties, and they will be more willing to spend the money to convert their movies to the format more quickly than studios that have no real stake.

Just because a few people bought BR discs so they had something compelling to play in what would otherwise be a $600 paperweight does not mean much.

Re:Number of movies

[SuperDre]

I don't think so, Divx is even worse quality than a regular VHS tape... (at least on a decent TV/projector)

Re:Number of movies

[Crayon Kid]

*That doesn't really bother me that much. I just want it to work with no hassles.

Oooh, in that case you're going to love it when Blu Ray finally takes over.

Re:Number of movies

[Talgrath]

He does actually have a point though, the TRENDS show that Blu-Ray is steadily gaining on its HD-DVD counterpart; and most likely will overtake it if HD-DVD doesn't do something to turn the trends around (the article mentions this in part). Considering Blu-Ray hit the market second, it's not terribly surprising that HD-DVD outsold Blu-Ray overall, so far.

Re:Number of movies

[KDR_11k]

Send them to Google, I hear they LOVE Betas.

Re:Number of movies

[encoderer]

Well, no, the TRENDS do not show that. One or two data points do not a trend make.

Besides, his point was: "It's the volume of title sales over 6 months. RTFA and maybe... just MAYBE click the links."

Which clearly shows that if he DID "click the links" he DIDN'T actually read them.

Re:Number of movies

[steveo777]

DVD didn't seem to become the everyday standard until players could be sold sub $100. That's when VHS was forced into the backseat at major retailers like Wal-Mart and Best Buy. Sure, lots of early adopters loved DVD and didn't mind paying high premiums (yes, above $100) for players, but once you could get the players for under $100 everyone had one. Though you will still overhear the occasional customer screaming at a Wal-Mart employee because his new DVD player wouldn't play his VHS cassettes.

Blu-Ray or HD-DVD won't become standard unless their players can out price DVD players.

Re:Number of movies

[apoc06]

alot of people like older movies. i am definitely dont believe in buying my movies all over again [esp since regular dvds work in next gen drives] but i would rather buy a movie that i've seen and know is worth watching multiple times such as casino, usual suspects or goodfellas than some of the newer crap movies. as for older crap movies; if you are buying scooby doo in HD... i hope youre doing it for your kids' sake.

i dont see a problem here with older releases. some of us are still waiting for titles to be finally released on dvd. why is it a problem that they are doing what /some/ consumers want?

Re:Number of movies

[alienw]

First, VCRs could also RECORD tapes. In fact, that was their primary mode of operation when they first appeared.

Second, the grandparent's point was that the format is marginal right now. A winner will have already emerged by the time the players come down in price.

Re:Number of movies

[bdr529]

FTA:

After over six months of head-to-head combat, we finally have an all-inclusive independent yardstick against which to compare Blu-ray and HD DVD disc sales, thanks to the first public release of sales numbers from Neilsen VideoScan.

yawn...

Re:Number of movies

[encoderer]

Are you seriously that stupid?

Or did you think I am?

The article headline -- the fact that Blu-Ray beat HD -- was ONLY TALKING ABOUT JANUARY.

Next time _read_, don't skim.

Re:Number of movies

[encoderer]

And I want to add two things:

1. You basically agreed to my point in your first post. I quote:

<quote><p><blockquote> <div><i>Declaring a winner based on a single months' worth of statistics (especially at this early point when both formats are in their infancy) is utterly idiotic</i></div> </blockquote>True.

However, it can be used as a tool to gage the trend to try to predict WHERE the winning format will fall.</quote>

2. The article you're quoting is actually the article attached to ANOTHER slashdot post that's linked to from this one. Furthermore, the quote you posted "After over six months of head-to-head combat, we finally have an all-inclusive independent yardstick..." DOES NOT SAY that six months of data have been released. It merely says that after six months WITHOUT data, we have been given some. If you'd have read ANYTHING but the lede, you'd have realized that the "data" was only TWO WEEKS WORTH.

Now, since I just completely owned your ass, I'm certain you won't reply, but keep yawning moron.

Why?

[Paolo DF]

Why is this article here in the games section?

Re:Why?

[ack154]

PS3 = BluRay

Other than that... who knows. Maybe they're still relating to the BluRay "dominance" to PS3 sales - hence games.

Re:Why?

[Pluvius]

Because BluRay is inextricably linked with the PS3. If one succeeds then the other is likely to follow, and the same if one fails. I agree that this still doesn't belong in the Games section, but that's the rationale.

Rob

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Sony is counting PS3 games as Blu-ray sales. ;-)

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sony is trying to play mind games with the consumers...

Re:Why?

[gamer4Life]

Furthermore, why is this even discussed at all? It's just marketing-speak. We all know that it's all non-news.

It's like Bill Gates claiming that XBox 360 is the best console. Non-news.

cool.

[President_Camacho]

Sony Set to Market Blu-ray as Winner of Format War

Are they also going to market their laptops as the winner of the battery war?

Re:cool.

[MrNaz]

Yep, it'll be like when George Bush declared the Iraq war won! :P

Re:cool.

[Reverend528]

Are they also going to market their laptops as the winner of the battery war?

They blow the competition away!

Re:cool.

[SatanicPuppy]

Why not?

"Sony lithium batteries smoke the competition!"
"Sony is on fire with these new batteries!"
"Put a Sony battery in your laptop and witness an explosion of power!"
"Sony lithium: Taste the Apocalypse!"
"Sony lithium batteries: Your laptop will never be the same!"
"Sony batteries keep burning long after the competition has gone out."

The marketing material just writes itself.

Re:cool.

[Anonymous Coward]

>> Are they also going to market their laptops as the winner of the battery war?
> They blow the competition away!

Not to mention the poor users... :-)

Re:cool.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they'll get Bush on top of a aircraft carrier to declare them the winner.

"Mission Accomplished!"

Re:cool.

[psychogentoo]

Considering Sony isn't allowing for adult content....

Re:cool.

[GrayCalx]

This just in...

GrayCalx declares his new Gray-DVD format is the winner of the HD-format wars.

Re:cool.

[SCPRedMage]

That's funny, because when I read this the first thing that crossed my mind was, "I wonder if they're going to hold a press conference on an aircraft carrier..."

Re:cool.

[soft_guy]

Maybe they can get a picture of the CEO of Toshiba smiling while holding a newspaper that reads "Blu-Ray beats HD-DVD!".

Re:cool.

[SeaFox]

Are they also going to market their laptops as the winner of the battery war?

I guess their Kamikaze warfare tactics paid off.

Re:cool.

[macshit]

"Sony batteries -- We light up your life!"

Re:cool.

[Maxwell]

It's your lucky day....

http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showthread.php?t=3 065&page=14

They also have Sony CEo on the aircraft carrier:

http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showthread.php?t=3 065&page=4

Clever people, those HD geeks.

JON

Re:cool.

[The Clockwork Troll]

"Sony lithium: Taste the Apocalypse!"

More like the Vaiocaust.

Re:cool.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's hot

Re:cool.

[apoc06]

do people still believe this? sony has no say so on what form of content gets printed on blu-ray. sony themselves may not allow porn to be replicated using its plants, but thats the extent of sony's say-so. sony didnt stop porn from getting printed to UMD. sony didnt send cease and desist letters to websites that cater to delivering porn to its PSP. why do you think they randomly stopped turning a blind eye to something that helped do in one of their first formats? this is FUD.

as a matter of fact, there have been several pornographic blu-ray movie studios producing content in japan since late 2005. vivid, one of the US's largest distributors of pornographic films just simultaneously released a movie on both formats here in the states as well.

look all this up. dont believe the FUD. just because one studio comes out and tells their sob story does not in fact make it true.

BONUS LINK!
http://wesleytech.com/blu-ray-vs-hd-dvd-replicatio n-costs-revealed/
one of the reason blu-ray movies are cheaper or equal price to their HDDVD releases is due to the fact that they are cheaper per gig to produce. this flies against one of the major bulletpoints of hd-dvd.

Head Sony Exec:

[Anonymous Coward]

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

Re:Head Sony Exec:

[UbuntuDupe]

That's kind of unfair. If you look carefully at the banner the ship actually put up, you'll note it *really* said:

this specific ship's MISSION has been ACCOMPLISHED

Sure....

[Anonymous Coward]

And these are the same people who already believe that the PS3 is the winner of the console wars against the 360 and the Wii, even though sales numbers in the US and even Japan say otherwise.

Re:Sure....

[pionzypher]

I don't know what (google cache) you're talking about. (second link has a great pic below the PA comic.)

Re:Sure....

[Anonymous Coward]

lol, good point

Will they say the same about the PS3?

[vjmurphy]

"Citing the recent sales numbers, Sony exec David Bishop is claiming that the next gen console war can officially be declared over. Looks like the Wii and 360 are the winners."

Perhaps they shouldn't be gloating.

Re:Will they say the same about the PS3?

[sl3xd]

You know, joke aside, it's a very good point. And, in fact, the same lesson should be taken: Just because one is selling well, it doesn't spell the doom of a competitor.

Sony's just doing a bit of grandstanding to try to get more people to buy Blu-ray: "The format war is over! We won!" Fear sells, and they're attempting to boost their sales by saying the competition is doomed; one of the oldest sales tactics in existence.

Just like consoles, the success of one does not mean the demise of another. There's no reason why both can't succeed, no reason why "there must be one."

Cases in point:
CDMA vs TDMA vs GSM (Cell phones). There's no small amount of grief that this caused, and the solution was to build phones that do all of 'em. Oddly enough, that's what is starting to happen with the "HD" optical discs.
PS3 vs. Wii vs. Xbox
Linux vs. Mac vs. Windows
Apple's music vs. everything else...

And so on...

Nice of them ....

[gstoddart]

Nice of Sony to declare themselves the winner. Now we can all get on with out lives.

Seriously, is this the same Sony who last week said the fact that they're being outsold by Nintendo doesn't mean they're losing, it means we shouldn't be counting Nintendo.

I'm fairly confident a company can't unilaterally declare themselves the winner in a 6 month old format war. It doesn't work like that.

Oh well, it's their Kool-Aid, they can drink it all they want. :-P

Cheers

Re:Nice of them ....

[Anonymous Coward]

"Now we can all get on with out lives."

I'm glad you're out. Fabulous! Wanna get a massage?

Re:Nice of them ....

[kabocox]

I'm fairly confident a company can't unilaterally declare themselves the winner in a 6 month old format war. It doesn't work like that.

Um, sure everyone "can" decalre themselves the winner, but no one will listen to them though. I'm too lazy to read the article. I'm wondering how this even got outside of some marketting/PR guy's office/e-mail system. I mean come on, can't they have atleast bribed a few consumer electronics mag reporters to write a few articles declaring them the winner? I mean come on if you are going to declare yourself the winner; then you need to do it in a manner people will somewhat listen to and believe it.

Re:Nice of them ....

[hamfactorial]

Nice of Sony to declare themselves the winner. Now we can all get on with out lives.

Good thing that's been worked out. Now, back to the basement!

Re:Nice of them ....

[Anonymous Coward]

Now we can all get on with out lives. Very appropriate for Slashdot. :p

Set to?

[Itchyeyes]

Set to market it as the winner? They've been doing it for over a month now without the help of your puny "statistics"

Sounds familiar.

[endianx]

Mission accomplished!

Re:Sounds familiar.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

Just wanted to say your opinion was OK, but your SIG rocks! GO TMBG!

just waiting...

[Anonymous Coward]

I see no need to do anything other than wait 3 or 4 years until this whole thing sorts itself out. I've lived for 30+ years in an NTSC world, and I just don't see any compelling reason to shell out thousands on new hardware to be an early adoptor for what amounts to nothing more than television.

Of course, I've been waiting 3 or 4 years already for this to happen, and it hasn't yet - which makes me look all the wiser for not investing in new hardware in 2003...

Why is it either/or?

[Pluvius]

'And yet while all agree that it was a strong month for Blu-ray, opinion is split on whether the surge in sales is an indicator of stronger user adaption of Blu-ray compared to HD DVD, or simply a reflection of the larger number of new Blu-ray titles that hit the market over the month -- 25 new Blu-ray titles were released in January, compared to just 11 titles on HD DVD for the same period.'

Wouldn't the fact that there are over twice as many new releases for BD than for HD-DVD in itself be an important indicator of stronger adoption of BD?

Rob

Re:Why is it either/or?

[iamblades]

Maybe, but if it is, it is indication of stronger studio/publisher adoption, not user adoption.

Re:Why is it either/or?

[DailyRich]

Wouldn't the fact that there are over twice as many new releases for BD than for HD-DVD in itself be an important indicator of stronger adoption of BD?

Sure -- if both there had been an equal number of titles released on each format up to this point, which is hardly the case.

If the Yankees are up 14-0 but the Red Sox outscore them 7-0 in the fourth inning, the Red Sox don't win the game.

Re:Why is it either/or?

[Pluvius]

Sure -- if both there had been an equal number of titles released on each format up to this point

Why does one necessarily have to have anything to do with the other? You're assuming that BluRay is playing catch-up with HD-DVD by coming out with movies that already came out on HD-DVD, but it's just as possible that BluRay is simply coming out with more new movies than HD-DVD is. The only way to know for sure would be to look at the list of released movies.

Rob

Re:Why is it either/or?

[FatherOfONe]

And when you look at the movies that are coming out in 2007 you will see that BluRay has 2X as many as HD-DVD. Now add to that fact that the players are selling at around a 10 to 1 advantage for BluRay and the fact that most of the content providers are behind BluRay and life looks very bleak for HD-DVD.

I have said it before on Slashdot and will say it again. This war was over on Nov 17th 2006 in the U.S. Now Sony didn't hit the 400k at launch, but they did hit 1 million by 2007.

Re:Why is it either/or?

[GSwarthout]

When it should be neither/nor!

Wait for adult titles to enter full production

[topical_surfactant]

Here's some more info on the HD formats courting "behind the scenes" to porn producers. http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/local/la-fi-p orn12feb12,0,4934876.story?coll=sfla-business-head lines

Re:Wait for adult titles to enter full production

[Anonymous Coward]

thanks for the interesting link !

because....

[President_Camacho]

Why is this article here in the games section?

You don't think a corporate pissing match is a game?

In other news

[TinBromide]

HD-DVD proponents throw up arms and say "That just about wraps it up for us". They began packing up the manufacturing plants and began work on other projects.

In other news, Apple declares victory over vista because of the ratio of new apple ads to new microsoft ads.

Re:In other news

[Jesus_666]

In yet other news, Microsoft declared itself winner over Apple in the OS war before being interrupted by the Linux community.

"We pretty much crushed them," Microsoft spokesperson Lotsa Cash announced on a press conference, "they released one version a couple of months ago, now ported it to their smartphone and another version is to come. We've got about twenty. I mean, there's Starter, Home Basic, Home Basic Upgrade, Home Basic OEM, Home Premium in the same flavors, Business-- there's no way they can match that. We've--"

At that moment Richard S. Torvalds and two hundred Linux distribution maintainers barged in and seized control of the microphone.

"Twenty?" RST laughed into the microphone, "You declare yourself winner because of twenty lousy versions? We tried counting all Linux distributions but lost interest at one thousand. Go home and play with your twenty versions, loser." At this point, the Microsoft delegation left the room in shame.


Joseph R. User, when interviewed as to whether he thinks the OS war is over, answered: "What the heck are you people smoking? Many versions do not a winner make." Then he went back to his PC to be indecisive about which flavor of Ubuntu he wanted to install.

This Just In!

[Lithdren]

Large Mega Corp Declares Themselves Profitable!

Denmark - Earlier today, Way Overpaid Guy announced to the world "WE'VE DONE IT! We pulled a profit!"

Market Analysts projected the market responce months in advance. "I knew it, I knew they'd make money!" remarked Whocares Whoyou'are, "They make money all the time!"

LMC pulled in profits on their profitable Profit Making Thing(tm)2007 in the first quarter of 2007, allowing them to hold market share. "Seriously, we made profit!"

How is this news? They delcare themselves winners? Who gives a crap? Call me when something newsworthy happends.

Numbers??

[Kelz]

25 new Blu-Ray releases and 11 HD-DVD releases in one month?

Beta was still around for 27 years. I have a feeling that the two sides will be able to co-exist for quite some time (especially with the duel-format players that are close to release).

Re:Numbers??

[Anonymous Coward]

Duel-format player? There's a typo that deserves a whole cartoon devoted to it.

I'm the winner

[uerunner]

I got a stain out of the carpet this weekend. I officially declare myself the winner of the carpet vs. stain war.

Two major advantages

[elrous0]

The two major advantages that Blu-ray has right now is

1. EXTENSIVE marketing. It's almost impossible to watch an HDTV cable network and not be innundated with Blu-ray ads (they should rename "HDnet" the "Blu-ray channel"). And Best Buy and other retailers all have blu-ray kiosks touting the glories of blu-ray. I've yet to see a single HD-DVD ad or kiosk, by contrast
2. Studio support. HD-DVD just doesn't have the support to turn out enough titles. Warner and Universal alone just aren't going to cut it.

Oddly enough, what everyone THOUGHT was going to be a big advantage for blu-ray--the PS3, hasn't really been that great, as so few people are buying them. Conversely, the supposedly big HD-DVD advantage of price (both HD-DVD players and media are cheaper) hasn't really helped it, apparently.

-Eric

Re:Two major advantages

[Pluvius]

Oddly enough, what everyone THOUGHT was going to be a big advantage for blu-ray--the PS3, hasn't really been that great, as so few people are buying them.

Er, the PS3 is selling a lot better than any dedicated BD player, and a large percentage of owners have expressed intent to buy movies for it, so that is a big advantage for BluRay.

Rob

Re:Two major advantages

[Pojut]

Wow, way to make it clear to everyone that you're just another idiotic fanboy.

Hey dipshit, the PS3 is selling at a faster rate than the 105+ million selling PS2...

Anyone wanna get in on this one?

Re:Two major advantages

[SCPRedMage]

I think this image says it all...

Re:Two major advantages

[AIFEX]

Not to mention that the PS3 still hasnt seen a European launch

Re:Two major advantages

[ucblockhead]

Er...despite "so few" people buying PS3s, they make up 3/4s of all Blu-Ray players in customer's hands...so I'm not sure how you can claim that it isn't a factor especially given that (IIRC) sales of stand-alone HD-DVD players have exceeded stand-alone Blu-Ray players.

Re:Two major advantages

[HappySqurriel]

Hey dipshit, the PS3 is selling at a faster rate than the 105+ million selling PS2...

Japan PS2 vs. PS3 Japan Gamecube vs. PS3
North America PS2 vs. PS3 North America Gamecube vs. PS3

Now, the PS3 apears to be outselling the Gamecube in Japan at the current time but that is likely to change in the near future; the Gamecube launched mid September in Japan whereas the PS3 launched in November, the PS3 got its first big holiday sales pretty soon after launching whereas it took longer for the Gamecube to get there (from week 14-17 the Gamecube averaged over 100,000 per week whereas the PS3 is currently selling around 20,000 per week so the cube will likely take the lead soon enough).

Re:Two major advantages

[Anonymous Coward]

> Anyone wanna get in on this one?

Why would they? The monthly sales for the PS3 are so far ahead of where the PS2 was at when it launched. That's just a fact. Whether that trend continues is yet to be determined.

Re:Two major advantages

[Anonymous Coward]

obviously somebody has their head shoved up sony's ass a little too far. take a look on eBay, you can find a NEW ps3 with games (maybe an extra controller if they are lucky) for less than the cost of the console alone. looks like the only place there is a shortage of ps3's is wherever that joker is living because the rest of the country has more than enough. one side note about backwards compatibility, the console is compatible but the controllers are not. one would think that the adapter would come with the console or least BE AVAILABLE for consumers to buy. but it is not. is sony forcing ps3 buyer to buy blu-ray movies(due to lack of games)just to be able to actually use the $600 system? yeah, flame me all you want. i'll be sitting here playing my 360 and watching hd-dvds with an abundance of titles to choose from. ok,i'm done.

Re:Two major advantages

[laffer1]

The gamecube didn't do that well.. now the Wii sales show Nintendo clearly ahead. Why don't we compare to the newest consoles and to the predecessor... next you'll compare sales to the Turbo Graphix 16 or perhaps the Sega CD....

http://www.vgcharts.org/japconscomps.php?name1=Wii &name2=PS3&type=2&align=0

Re:Two major advantages

[mikedeanklein]

The two major advantages that Blu-ray has right now is
...
2. Studio support. HD-DVD just doesn't have the support to turn out enough titles. Warner and Universal alone just aren't going to cut it.

Point #2 is not true.

In case you haven't heard...porn is major driver/seller in industry...and b-ray requires millions in startup costs to mint discs...hddvd only requires 200K. Smaller porn productions may only gross several million, so costs are out of line w/profits.

With sony's public stance on revoking keys of xxx publishers/etc...hddvd w/be used almost exclusively by vivid/etc. There are supposedly a handful of b-ray porn titles...but this doesn't exclude fact 99% of hd porn w/be hddvd.

Everybody who watches porn...will opt for the porn-approved player...and that's hddvd.

HD porn...somehow an oxymoron

Re:Two major advantages

[GNious]

I'll up you one:

Outside of /. I've not really seen HD-DVD anywhere. I've seen Bluray (uhoh, no dash?) players and movies in several stores, but not "that other format". Sure, it exists, but Joe Sixpack With A Penis Envy isn't going to go online to see if there is anything better than the one being touted at the local Media Markt.

/G

Re:Two major advantages

[Anonymous Coward]

true enough. Anyone backing Blu ray will sell blu ray movies, anyone backing HD-DVD will sell HD-DVD AND Blu ray.

No one is that prepared to give HD-DVD total support.

Re:Two major advantages

[apoc06]

1) the ps3 has not launched in europe yet.

europe is a huge territory for sony and they are already reporting record amounts of preorders

2) the bulk of "interesting" titles for the ps3 arent being released until the end of feb/ march

lets not forget that until now the main ps3 title has been resistance. gundam musuo[in japan], singstar [in europe], VF5, motorstorm[US] and some of the other newer releases will push sales along. by march, the ps3 release calendar looks to have a solid stream of new content coming.

3) sony still has a few surprise games left

given how few japanese owned an xbox last generation, i expect ninja gaiden: sigma to actually be a pretty big system seller despite the game not getting AAA-level press buildup.

4) the ps3 is partially responsible for the blu-ray buying surge.

there are over 1 million ps3s in circulation, but only ~92k hd-dvd addons sold so far. keep in mind the hd-dvd addon has been on the market over a month before the launch of the ps3.

the ps3 is selling better than the ps2 did at this point in time, but we will have to wait until this time next year to tell if sony will see a huge surge as quality games are released, or if sales turn out largely lackluster. if sales of the hardware pick up, you can imagine that sales of movies will as well.

Re:Two major advantages

[vakuona]

People keep saying this. It isn't true. 2 Pixar titles can sell more DVDs that the entire pr0n industry in a year.

Alien Technology

[ngtvtw13ve]

Of course Blu-Ray is the winner, it is by far a superior format. HD-DVD is nothing but DVD with 2 extra letters who wants to buy something unimaginitive, but Blu-Ray thats new and exciting. Its "blue" wich means advanced cause aliens are blue, and ray makes me think of an awsome ray gun from all those sci-fi movies. Its friggin advanced alien technology that Sony got its hands on hundreds of years before any other company. How could it not be the leader.

Re:Alien Technology

[sctaylorcan]

The amazing differentiating point is that these Blu-Ray devices are apparently read with frickin' laser beams!!!!

OMG - git me one!!!!

My thoughts exactly

[Weaselmancer]

How many coaches at halftime ever say they're going to lose the game?

That being said, IMHO this won't be a VHS versus Betamax thing. There is too much manufacturing set up for both sides to simply abandon one format. What I'm hoping happens is that one of the two becomes the dominant format (which it almost certainly will), and the other one will become the "ghetto" HD format.

The loser in this format war will still make money, but it will have to do it by underselling the winner. Lower prices, bigger numbers. When that happens, the loser will most likely wind up as a cheap burner you can stick on an IDE cable. And I'm really looking forward to that for data storage.

Re:My thoughts exactly

[Not_Wiggins]

When that happens, the loser will most likely wind up as a cheap burner you can stick on an IDE cable. And I'm really looking forward to that for data storage.

More likely, it'll wind up like the format war between DVD-R and DVD+R: you'll get a player capable of reading both formats, so it won't matter and the prices of the movies will be roughly equivalent.

If anything, consumers will pay for the war indirectly through hardware costs that integrate both solutions transparently.

Re:My thoughts exactly

[pionzypher]

That being said, IMHO this won't be a VHS versus Betamax thing. There is too much manufacturing set up for both sides to simply abandon one format. I have to disagree with one format being immune to abandonment. Industry support for a format would dry up If consumers ignored it. Consumers don't care how much infrastructure has been invested in a format, only how well it works for them.

That said, I think both formats might come through this. Though it's still very early in the battle.

Re:My thoughts exactly

[SatanicPuppy]

Assuming that our telecoms stay fubared and we don't make the jump to streaming video on demand as quickly as we could, BluRay will probably clean up, for the same reason that the PS3 will probably do well in the long run: They're both built on long term extensible tech (Well, the PS3 will do well because Sony will eventually stop making PS2's and people will upgrade so they can keep playing their old games...yay backward compatibility).

HDDVD is just fancy encoding on last generation hardware...BluRay has a lot more space on those disks, and if the disk manufacturers step up and take advantage of that space (eg more than one movie per disk or crazy special features, or some such), then there will be a pretty clear case for picking one format over the other.

Re:My thoughts exactly

[AaronPSU777]

"What I'm hoping happens is that one of the two becomes the dominant format (which it almost certainly will), and the other one will become the "ghetto" HD format."

I think another likely scenario is dual format players. Remember we had a format war just a few years ago with DVD+R and DVD-R and it was negated when dual format burners came out. If we do get dual format players it seems possible HD-DVD could become the more prominent format since it has plenty of space for full length movies *and* is cheaper to produce. Of course Blu-Ray has stronger DRM from what I understand so maybe studios will stick with that format as much as possible.

Re:My thoughts exactly

[News for nerds]

HD DVD is inferior in terms of both studio support and data storage so your prospect for cheap media for data storage looks unlikely. Anyway the winning format will become cheaper by mass production in the end.

Re:My thoughts exactly

[Pluvius]

DVD-R and DVD+R are nearly indistinguishable from each other, unlike BD and HD-DVD which are very different. It's a lot cheaper to make a dual-format player for the former than it is for the latter.

Not that it really matters; the massive amount of studio support that BluRay has over HD-DVD makes it rather unlikely that HD-DVD will long enough to where dual-format players would be a viable option.

Rob

Re:My thoughts exactly

[sootman]

And what I think will happen is that no one will give a shit since mass adoption won't happen until all players will work with both formats, just like DVD (+/-) R(W). Seriously: who, with a limited budget, an ounce of technological awareness, and any memory of history is running out to buy any kind of HD shiny-disc-based player today? (Not counting people who buy PS3s since anyone who buys one is buying it primarily to play games.)

Re:My thoughts exactly

[Anonymous Coward]

How many coaches at halftime ever say they're going to lose the game?

How many coaches at halftime ever say they've already won the game?

Re:My thoughts exactly

[Danse]

BluRay has a lot more space on those disks, and if the disk manufacturers step up and take advantage of that space (eg more than one movie per disk or crazy special features, or some such), then there will be a pretty clear case for picking one format over the other.

Yeah, more space, which they use to add more DRM. HD-DVD gets my vote simply because it's not quite as bad DRM-wise as BluRay.

Re:My thoughts exactly

[jez9999]

IDE is horrible. I prey for the day when there is nothing but SATA optical drives.

Re:My thoughts exactly

[JebusIsLord]

Nah, i'd say they're pretty much indistinguishable. Maybe they are from a data point of view (ie one holds more), but as content delivery mechanisms they appear more or less identical (same features, resolution etc).

Re:My thoughts exactly

[AaronPSU777]

"DVD-R and DVD+R are nearly indistinguishable from each other, unlike BD and HD-DVD which are very different."

BD and HD-DVD actually have a lot of similarities; for example they both use 405 nm lasers, they both support the same video codecs and they both support a lot of the same audio codecs. Furthermore, while DVD+R and DVD-R may appear identical to the average consumer there are a number of distinct technological differences between them. When the two formats first began competing the possibility of a dual format drive was far from certain, and there were many people saying it was not feasible for a variety of reasons, until such a drive was released.

"It's a lot cheaper to make a dual-format player for the former than it is for the latter."

Saying it would cost a lot more to make a dual format HD drive than a dual format DVD burner is pretty meaningless when single format HD readers are still $100-200+ more than even the most expensive DVD burners.

"Not that it really matters; the massive amount of studio support that BluRay has over HD-DVD makes it rather unlikely that HD-DVD will long enough to where dual-format players would be a viable option."

I don't pretend to know the future, but neither does anyone else, and anyone that is claiming to know the outcome of this format war at this early stage is an idiot. All I'm saying is a dual format player is a definite possibility, it's technologically possible and there is demand for it.

Re:My thoughts exactly

[aaza]

All I'm saying is a dual format player is a definite possibility, it's technologically possible and there is demand for it.

LG is supposed to have one available by the end of Q1 2007. That is, in a few months. I'm not sure I believe it until I see one, but my opinion is that HD is not worth it for me. (No flames, please. For me, it isn't worth it. For you it may be).

Re:My thoughts exactly

[drew]

I've probably said it a hundred times by now, but as far as I can tell, the only winner in this format war is going to be DVD.

Re:My thoughts exactly

[donaldm]

With regard to having a cheap burner well you really have to look at what people have to backup today (if they even backup) and like the floppy disk the DVD will start heading down that path. Try to backup 300GB with standard DVD's (dual layer, + or - it does not matter) You are going to need a alot of DVD's to do one full backup. If you are going to get a burner that will backup a reasonable amount of data you will normally go for the one that can store the most and that at the moment is Bluray.

Even using a dual layer Bluray burner (cost is on par with DVD burners in the late 1990's) you will still need at least 6 disks to backup 300GB and that is just if you have one 300GB drive and considering 1TB disks are nearly here then even a Bluray disk is too small. In reality Bluray and HD-DVD are aimed at he HDTV market whereas DVD's are still aimed at the SDTV market which won't disappear anytime soon. My guess is 3 to 6 years before you will see significant trends, however given that you can get 81cm (32in) HDTV (720p with HDMI) for under AU$1000 (US$780) which makes owning a HDTV very attractive. Smaller sets are even cheaper.

You could try HVD (Holographic Versatile Disk) but currently the burners and disks make the price of a Bluray burner and disks look like a bargain. I am aware of backing up to other hard disks but does fire, flood and theft to name a few mean anything?

Re:My thoughts exactly

[lovswr]

It's already out for just about a month or so. Check out Best Buy or even CompUSA. 1100.00USD & it is HDMI 1.3 to boot.

Re:My thoughts exactly

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait a minute, the losing format will make a profit by producing bigger numbers than the dominant format?

Wouldn't that make it the dominant format?

Problem with Ratios

[flynt]

With a movie sale ratio of almost 2:1

Unfortunately, he forgot to mention that those were also the actual numbers of discs sold.

Re:Problem with Ratios

[MBGMorden]

That's what he was saying, and yes, it was a joke.

Re:Problem with Ratios

[Anonymous Coward]

So does that mean only 2 Blu Ray discs were sold?

Re:Problem with Ratios

[mypalmike]

>> With a movie sale ratio of almost 2:1

> So does that mean only 2 Blu Ray discs were sold?

No. It means that almost 2 have been sold. Right now, there's a guy at Best Buy holding a Blu-Ray disc in his hand, pondering its purchase. He's not sure it'll play in his VCR, but the clerk is close to convincing him it will.

Free Movies, really sales?

[Innova]

Also to note...All PS3's came with a coupon for a free Blu-Ray movie. How many of those were included in the strong sale numbers?

Re:Free Movies, really sales?

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? I just bought a PS3 and didn't get any such coupon. They did give 500,000 free copies of the movie Talladega Nights (which would only have covered the launch back in November).

I wish I had gotten a coupon for a free Blu-Ray movie but all I got was a tiny flier letting me know about Blu-Ray movies. I'll check my box again, but I'm pretty sure you're misinformed on this one.

(Sorry for posting anonymously. I moderated a couple posts in this story so I can't use my account.)

Re:Free Movies, really sales?

[crabbz]

No they didn't. People keep repeating this but it isn't true. The first batch of ps3's came with a free blu-ray movie in the box (Talladega Nights), not a coupon. I don't know how many ps3's included the movie but I don't think they are still in there. They did come with discount coupons though. But I forget what exactly they were for.

Re:Free Movies, really sales?

[powerlord]

All PS3s that were part of the initial "launch" (what was it, 200-600K depending on who you believe?), included a bundled in copy of Talladega Nights.

Considering those PS3s sold in November, and no other PS3 included a Blu-Ray movie, I don't think it affects the December or January numbers much.

Re:Free Movies, really sales?

[Anonymous Coward]

People keep repeating this but it isn't true.

Except that a simple Google search shows that it is true. For instance, Best Buy give you two free blu-ray discs from whatever discs they have in stock with the purchase of a player. I think there may be a reason it seems like over a very short time period Sony's format has been doing a little better than HD-DVD. For the record, I think both formats are vastly underpowered in storage space, forward-looking video quality, and value for the price. But if Sony is going to misinform, I am going to go with the competing format every time. In this case, that means HD-DVD. Plus, you can buy porn on HD-DVD. On that basis alone, Sony's desire to be the moral police on my television, I would have to choose against Sony.

Re:Free Movies, really sales?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called a "bundle", and it's done with consoles as well.

With Microsoft supporting HD-DVD, I don't think there's a winner based on moral ground, unless you're a MS fanboy.

Re:Free Movies, really sales?

[crabbz]

That is quite different than including a free blu-ray coupon with all PS3s.

Re:Free Movies, really sales?

[iainl]

Curiously, a good 50% of the people I know who have bought PS3s in the last month got the movie. I'm suspecting they're returned stock, bought by failed eBay scalpers, but who knows?

Re:Free Movies, really sales?

[iainl]

As others have said, there was an actual disc in the box of the first ones, but the rest just get vouchers for discounts, not free films.

What they _are_ doing, however, is helping Best Buy run regular "buy 1 get 1 free" promotions on Blu-Ray, and both films count as sales.

whichever sells first $99 player is the winner

[u19925]

i ain't gonna buy till price drops to $99. so 4 me, whichever one sells first for $99, is the winner.

Re:whichever sells first $99 player is the winner

[StringBlade]

And I will wait until HD is consistent both in availability of content and quality of content. The major problems I have with HD right now include:

• Costs more than standard content
• Just 'cause it's shown in HD doesn't mean it was filmed that way
• HD standards keep changing -- my HDTV has DVI and component video, but by the time HD actually hit HDMI is the only acceptable transport/connection for anything over 480p
• HD is far from regulated -- the government can't even put its foot down to require digital broadcast signals
• HD is locked in so much DRM even with a bunch of supposedly compliant hardware I've still seen it fail

For these and other reasons I'll stick with standard definition DVDs -- widescreen perhaps, but standard def. I have zero incentive to move to HD any time soon. If they really wanted people to adopt it, they'd give it away for free or at an extremely low cost to get it in everyone's hands to ensure its success (or at least market penetration).

Re:whichever sells first $99 player is the winner

[7Prime]

Just 'cause it's shown in HD doesn't mean it was filmed that way.

Well, if that were the case, we'd all be watching reel to reel, because movies are shot on FILM, which is much higher "definition" than the highest HD format. Unless we're talking soap operas or pr0n.

I don't think you have too much to worry about DVI going out... DVI and HDMI are identical in video quality, the only difference is that HDMI includes audio in the stream (up to 10 channels, if I remember correctly)... oh, and DRM, of course (this is slashdot, after all, gotta mention the DRM!)

Re:whichever sells first $99 player is the winner

[Banzai042]

DVI can carry HDCP just like HDMI can, if you look at graphics cards these days the fact that they have HDCP is all over the box, in prep for the need to have HDCP to watch any HD content on your comp.

Re:whichever sells first $99 player is the winner

[drew]

$99 for the players or the discs?

I would imagine that latter has to be coming relatively soon...

Re:whichever sells first $99 player is the winner

[EvilIdler]

HDMI with HDCP has DRM, yes. It's not a function of HDMI itself. Besides, there are monitors with HDCP on DVI.

Re:whichever sells first $99 player is the winner

[StringBlade]

I never stated that I was opposed to HDMI because of DRM, however it has been inextricably tied to it in that the movie studios have strong-armed manufacturers into producing players that only send out HD signals over the HDMI interface even if that device has a component video or DVI output.

My biggest gripe about HDMI itself is its a pointless shift in cabling designed for no other purpose than to make me shell out a bunch of money for "upgrades". I've never been given a convincing reason why HDMI is better than component video or DVI, both of of which have longer lengths of cable and are cheaper to produce than HDMI.

Re:whichever sells first $99 player is the winner

[StringBlade]

I mention the DRM because in my mind it's still a reason I don't move to HD. Even if this were the Newsweek Forums I'd have it in my list. Are you suggesting that since Slashdotters are so embedded in groupthink that DRM isn't really a problem - we just like to complain about it for the sake of being whiny?

Re:whichever sells first $99 player is the winner

[StringBlade]

If you look even more closely at the box those "HDCP Ready" cards actually say that they can't play HDCP content without yet another piece of the puzzle. But in any case, the point is not what can carry HDCP, the point is why do we need another expensive type of cable? I can make four 25 foot coaxial RCA-style cables for about $15. If I match of three of them together I have a 25' component video cable for dirt cheap. I'm quite certain making your own HDMI cable is out of the question though I know you can still make your own DVI cable at a slightly higher cost per cable.

Video cables are sensationally priced to start with, the last thing we need is a new type of cable that costs about $2.50 per foot that has no real benefit over the existing cabling.

Well, it worked for Bush?

[Lord_Slepnir]

Remember when Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" and the end to all combat operations in Iraq? And how since then, there's been very little combat operations and the country has been a bastion of democracy?

Yeah, I'm thinking the same thing.

Re:Well, it worked for Bush?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you remember that you're living in a parallel time line. It never happened. There was a banner in the background of a welcome home speech given on the carrier Lincoln of San Diego. It marked the end of major combat operations against Saddam's Iraqi forces. That's *it*; it was very specific. Anything different claimed by partisan critics, bloggers, pundits, your boyfriend, the postmodern feminist you're trying to get in bed is all BULLSHIT.

Re:Well, it worked for Bush?

[Anonymous Coward]

Snicker.

Guffaw.

Re:Well, it worked for Bush?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can claim that it marked Vladimir Putin's cousin's birthday if you want; the "mission accomplished" message was there, with the TV cameras fixed on Bush strutting around like he was some kind of Hollywood supermodel. If you're going to send a message like that, you have to be prepared for people to draw certain conclusions. I know, I know, we're all traitors (or worse, feminists) if we don't prostrate ourselves next to you in worship of the great god Bush.

Firefox wins browser war!

[krough]

This just in: Firefox declared winner in browser war since Firefox has more new users this month than IE.

Not one penny!

[InsaneProcessor]

I am still not spending one penny on any HD content, media or TVs until there is an affordable standard. (maybe never?)

Re:Not one penny!

[nate nice]

I see you're on the cutting edge and are an early adopter!

A question

[east coast]

Is there or can there be a split format player? I don't know a whole hell of a lot about BR vs HD-DVD. I was just wondering if we might see players of this nature in the future like we had seen as we had DVD/LaserDisc players during the transition phase of the formats.

Re:A question

[crabbz]

LG announced a dual format player available first quarter 2007.

Re:A question

[Mark Gillespie]

A player that costs more thsan buying a PS3 and a Toshiba HD-A1 together!!!

This will bomb bigger than the 360 HD-DVD add-on..

I don't care WHO declares, just end it!

[spoco2]

I really don't give a rat's hindquarters who claims victory, just as long as one of them does soon, and it sticks and we're left with ONE HD movie format. Please can this HD war be over?

Please?

Re:I don't care WHO declares, just end it!

[Anonymous Coward]

There never was a 'war'. Sites like Slashdot pretended there was one to rack up post counts, but HD-DVD never was a viable competitor to BluRay.

Unless one has to have something from Universal right now, everything one wants is on BluRay or will be shortly. The only people still think there is a battle going on between the two formats are the lunatic fringe of the Xbox userbase.

Re:I don't care WHO declares, just end it!

[HappySqurriel]

There never was a 'war'. Sites like Slashdot pretended there was one to rack up post counts, but HD-DVD never was a viable competitor to BluRay.

Let me change that for you:

"There never was a 'war'. Sites like Slashdot pretended there was one to rack up post counts, but The PS3 never was a viable competitor to The Wii."

The fact is that, although early sales figures support these statements, it is far too early to predict the outcome of either "war". The fact is that it took 3 to 4 years for DVD to become a viable format and over 6 years for it to sell more than VHS so, being that both formats are less than a year old, it is unlikely that either format has won anything yet.

Yeah, we trust them

[GweeDo]

This coming from the same company that owes me $9,600 for all the PS3's at my local walmart! source

Re:Yeah, we trust them

[Mongoose]

When that comment was made ( right after Christmas ) the PS3 was still being sold for an outrageous amount on eBay. It is fun to laugh at Penny Arcade proving once again they jumped the shark a long time ago. Way to go to bring this comic up in the middle of Feburary! If they wanted to collect on your reward maybe you should've atempted this back in the first week of January. I haven't had any respect for them since their 'Microsoft Xbox sell-out' edition of their news page a while back. They bitch about a lot of things they don't understand when it comes to game development as well. Wrapping up they're arm chair game developers like the kids in that devry commerical -- now they're not even funny too boot.

Re:Yeah, we trust them

[edwdig]

PS3's weren't hard to find back in the first week of January. As I walked through Times Square in NYC a few times, I saw several stores with signs in the windows saying they had PS3s in stock. I didn't bother to verify, but I can't see why they'd keep those signs up if they didn't really have them.

Re:Yeah, we trust them

[iainl]

Collecting back at the beginning of January would have been simple from a point of machines on the shelf. What would have made doing so rather more difficult is that it was made to the Playstation magazine for an interview he knew would appear in the March issue.

He knew the statement would come out now, so I hardly think it's Penny Arcade who look like the idiots. But then, there does seem to be some sort of competition going on at Sony to see who can say the most ludicrous thing to the media.

Re:Yeah, we trust them

[GweeDo]

PS3 prices on eBay died by Nov 19th. It only took 2-3 days for them to hit retail on eBay.

BluRay has a Case

[Nom du Keyboard]

With BluRay in every PS3, HD-DVD not an integral part of any shipping product yet, and BluRay movies starting to outsell HD-DVD, there good reason to be betting on the BluRay horse. BluRay market penetration should outstrip HD-DVD, unless they're able to pull a VHS in pricing or capacity.

Re:BluRay has a Case

[Babbster]

With BluRay in every PS3, HD-DVD not an integral part of any shipping product yet...

I'm fairly certain that HD DVD is an integral part of the standalone HD DVD players that sell for less than the cost of a PS3 and less than half the price of a standalone Blu-ray player...

Re:BluRay has a Case

[powerlord]

I'm fairly certain that HD DVD is an integral part of the standalone HD DVD players that sell for less than the cost of a PS3 and less than half the price of a standalone Blu-ray player...

Yes, but right now, more people will buy a PS3 for gaming than will buy a standalone player for HD media.

Once they already have the PS3, they are much more likely to buy a Blu-Ray disk since they only see the cost of the media as the price, instead of the player also (as opposed to the standalone player).

Re:BluRay has a Case

[Babbster]

I don't disagree at all. I would say, though, that DVD didn't have to be integrated into anything to become a success. It was already being rapidly adopted before the PS2 hit the scene, and long before most PCs had DVD drives. So, while the PS3 can give Blu-ray some early traction, I don't think it can be counted on as the basis for the format's success. If the HD DVD manufacturers can get standalones on the shelves for the "right" prices, the majority (who were never going to buy a PS3 anyway) could end up going the HD DVD way - unless, of course, the non-Sony Blu-ray manufacturers get off the stick and compete on price themselves.

Re:BluRay has a Case

[HappySqurriel]

Here are some questions for you ...

Per system sold who will buy more movies someone who bought their system because it played games or someone who bought a stand alone movie player?
Will movie collectors buy a $500 HD-DVD player, a $500 videogame system or a $1,000 Blu-Ray player?
Will the average (non gamer) who bought a HDTV for TV/Sports buy a $500 HD-DVD player, a $500 videogame system or a $1,000 Blu-Ray player?

The answers to these question will determine which is the winning format in January 2008 ...

Re:BluRay has a Case

[SuperKendall]

Per system sold who will buy more movies someone who bought their system because it played games or someone who bought a stand alone movie player?

The answer is the figures are identical. I know three people at work who own PS3's, all of them watch movies on it and a large reason they bought it was for Blu-Ray playback.

If Blu-Ray playing is a major component of your purchase choice, why would you not then acually use it for playing Blu-Ray movies? A player is a player.

Will movie collectors buy a $500 HD-DVD player, a $500 videogame system or a $1,000 Blu-Ray player?

"Real" movie collectors leave off the figures you mentioned above, because next to the $20k+ they've put into the home theater there is no difference between $500 and $1000. So then the answer is that they would buy the best player possible - and currently the PS3 gets high marks for quality of playback (plus it supports HDMI 1.3 which offers greater color accuracy). Meanwhile we are only jus starting to see HD-DVD players that support 1080p - which a movie collector would also choose over a 1080i only player.

Will the average (non gamer) who bought a HDTV for TV/Sports buy a $500 HD-DVD player, a $500 videogame system or a $1,000 Blu-Ray player?

A sports-watcher, you say? If you look at the top sellers, right after GTA and Halo sits Madden. What tiny percetnage of sports watchers do you know who are not also into sports ganes? I know approximatley zero. It seems pretty clear that between the three options listed you would choose a system that could also play sports games for the same price as the non-game system.

Re:BluRay has a Case

[SuperKendall]

I don't disagree at all. I would say, though, that DVD didn't have to be integrated into anything to become a success. It was already being rapidly adopted before the PS2 hit the scene

That's partly true (actually the PS2 was the first DVD player I and a number of other people I knew had), however at that time DVD players were about half of what HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players are today. That's why the PS3 is far more a factor this time around, because essentially you are getting a Blu-Ray player for only $250 (if you figure you get a game system with the other half). All of the people I know who have bought PS3's so far are thinking along similar lines - the PS3 is by far the cheapest way into the HD format.

Even with that I would say there would a real fight if HD-DVD had more studios behind it, but it lacks exactly the titles which will offer the most HD punch - Pixar movies. Disney being a Blu-Ray exclusive is pretty huge for the format (as is the exclusivity of 20th century fox). With Start Wars and the Incredibles on one format, which do you think is more likley to do better?

Re:BluRay has a Case

[Anonymous Coward]

"Real" movie collectors leave off the figures you mentioned above, because next to the $20k+ they've put into the home theater there is no difference between $500 and $1000.

Actually it does matter ... Movie collectors do not buy their movies at one time, they buy 1-2 movies a week over years. Much like how YOU used to say "Real gamers do not care about the price of a console" saying movie collectors don't care about the price of the player is false.

A sports-watcher, you say? If you look at the top sellers [about.com], right after GTA and Halo sits Madden. What tiny percetnage of sports watchers do you know who are not also into sports ganes? I know approximatley zero. It seems pretty clear that between the three options listed you would choose a system that could also play sports games for the same price as the non-game system.

Maybe women and men over the age of 40?

I know, the 50 year old men with disposable income are obviously not going to matter in a new expensive format when every 18 year old you know who works at McDonalds loves the PS3.

The fact is that anyone who is not a gamer will not consider the PS3 as a movie player

Re:BluRay has a Case

[powerlord]

Maybe women and men over the age of 40?

I know, the 50 year old men with disposable income are obviously not going to matter in a new expensive format when every 18 year old you know who works at McDonalds loves the PS3.

The fact is that anyone who is not a gamer will not consider the PS3 as a movie player

Possibly, but remember that at this point at least, HD video is still very much in the "early adopter" phase (at best its "early-ish adopters"). The people spending the money are usually doing a fair bit of comparison shopping, checking on-line reviews and what-not. People are not usually just walking in to Best Buy and getting what they want, and when you ask a BB employee for help, are they likely to point you to a stand-alone player, or a PS3 + Blu-Ray remote? (especially if they have them sitting around, and price matters?)

Also, have you seen the PS3? It looks as much like a piece of stylized AV equipment as it does a game system.

And the real winner is...

[countSudoku()]

Regular DVD5/DVD9 format, by a landslide! When you can *only* purchase a title on either BR or HD formats, and *not* on DVD5/9, *then* we can decide a winner. Until then Sony should rethink it's policy of preventing hackability in their products... I'm looking right at the PSP, Sony. You shmucks.

From the same idiots who brought you the overpriced, under performing "Memory Stick"! I've got a Memory Stick for them... ;)

Not even laughable

[lelitsch]

25 vs 11 releases in one month? Could anyone remind me how many DVD titles are currently out there? 100,000? 500,000? Any decent porn studio releases 36 DVDs in a week.

I liked their products for a long time, but Sony has officially jumped the shark, first on product development, then on reliability, then on screwing their own customer, and now on being in the same universe as the other 8 billion humans.

Re:Not even laughable

[EvilIdler]

I dunno how many releases there are, buy IMDb lists less than 400000 movies total.
Not all would be on DVD, but there would be DVDs not listed there (I have a few Asian ones, for example).

Porn probably adds three times that :P

Ummm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Might the increased sales have anything to do with all those BlueRay-enabled PS3's that were sold immediately prior to Christmas? And for those who counter with any HD-DVD drive on XBox 360 arguments I'll submit that the drive is not required to play XBox 360 titles so there is no real pressing need to purchase it other than for HD-DVD movies, unlike the PS3.

Sony is Displaying Bush-eque Triumphalism

[Luscious868]

Sony declaring Blue-Ray the winner in the HD format war is a little like Bush's "Mission Accomplished" banner on the deck of the aircraft carrier during his speech after the initial invasion of Iraq. It's way, way to early to be anointing a victor here.

Re:Sony is Displaying Bush-eque Triumphalism

[MrFlibbs]

And he voted for Blu-Ray before he voted against it.

Oops! Wrong politician! Sorry, sorry...

Actually yes, all over but the shouting

[DumbSwede]

The first week of January it was 2 to 1 for sales of BD
The second week of January it was close to 3 to 1 for sales of BD

The HD-DVD camp Shot back that there where more title released on Blu-Ray the first two weeks (11 vs 21).

So what to make of this weeks releases? 12 titles to 1
It seems the distributors have decided for us.

HD DVD and Blu-ray releases on February 13th, 2007

Blu-ray

* Broken Arrow (Fox)
* Chain Reaction (Fox)
* Chronos (Koch)
* The Departed (Warner)
* Entrapment (Fox)
* Ladder 49 (Buena Vista)
* The Marine (Fox)
* Phone Booth (Fox)
* Planet of the Apes (Fox)
* Reign of Fire (Buena Vista)
* The Sentinel (Fox)
* The Usual Suspects (Fox)

HD DVD

* The Departed (Warner)

Titles to date HD DVD 159 vs Blu-ray 171.
and remember HD-DVD had a big head start and is now fading fast.

Re:Actually yes, all over but the shouting

[Anonymous Coward]

What's funny about the tiny group of diehard Xbox/HD-DVD supporters is they think things are bad right now.

The PS3 hasn't even hit the shelves in Europe yet and we are just seeing the results of a couple million PS3 in consumer hands right now. There are going to be five to six million by the middle of 2007 in all three regions.

Universal looks like they are holding back on HD-DVD releases and are likely getting ready to jump to BluRay. 3-1, 5-1, at some point they are going to have to make the jump. Japan is all BluRay already and Universal would have to give up that entire market even if HD-DVD wasn't getting clobbered in the US.

HD-DVD supporters have no one to blame but themselves for believing the bullshit spouted by sites like Slashdot and teamxbox about the viability of the format.

Re:Actually yes, all over but the shouting

[Yakman]

From that list it looks like both formats got the new release (The Departed), and Blu-Ray got a bunch of old movies that won't be significantly better in quality than the SD DVD version anyway.

Re:Actually yes, all over but the shouting

[EGSonikku]

Sony is a little over 1.4 million PS3's *shipped* as of now, you think they are going to sell 5 million more, especially with Europe's '$840'ish USD price tag? And given that HDTV's are not as "common" in the US? Keep dreaming.

http://nexgenwars.com/ is your friend.

Re:Actually yes, all over but the shouting

[Apotsy]

bunch of old movies that won't be significantly better in quality than the SD DVD version anyway

WTF? Those movies are all less than 10-15 years old (unless they are talking about the original Planet of the Apes). They certainly will look better in HD. Even if they were 50 years old, they still would show improvement in HD. There is a tremendous amount of image detail in movies going back decades that is simply not visible in traditional home video formats, not even DVD. All it takes is a fresh high resolution scan to get at it.

Hell, a lot standard def DVDs out there today are already sourced from hi-def scans. In those cases, they don't even need to rescan, just reencode.

Re:Actually yes, all over but the shouting

[EGSonikku]

That should read: "...as 'common' in Europe as the US."

Re:Actually yes, all over but the shouting

[DragonWriter]

From that list it looks like both formats got the new release (The Departed), and Blu-Ray got a bunch of old movies that won't be significantly better in quality than the SD DVD version anyway.

The film used for most movies, despite being an analog format, provides a hell of a lot better quality than DVD, so there is no reason that a transfer of an "old" movie to an HD format wouldn't be significantly better than a DVD transfer of the same original material.

Re:Actually yes, all over but the shouting

[bigNuns]

perhaps you are unfamiliar with the difference between film and video. there can be as much of a difference between old movies as there is with new movies when put onto either format. the number of "pixels" (grains of silver halide) is way more than you get on a standard DVD (and really, way more than you get on an HD format) so moving an old movie onto a hi-def format gives you a much better quality than you would get if you dumped it onto standard DVD. Not to mention the fact that for playback on an HDTV set, especially 1080p, DVD has to upscale its content to fill the pixels. Upscaling makes things blurry.

Re:Actually yes, all over but the shouting

[DrEldarion]

Since the only game worth playing on the PS3 right now is Resistance, it's not out of line to think that once more games that people want start being released, sales will increase. Numbers in the XX millions are easily possible by the end of the year if the big-name games don't get pushed back.

Re:Actually yes, all over but the shouting

[Scudsucker]

They certainly will look better in HD. Even if they were 50 years old, they still would show improvement in HD.

Yup. I was reading a review of high quality releases on high definition formats, and Casablanca was one of the top picks.

Re:Actually yes, all over but the shouting

[ross.w]

That's so you can buy all those movies again for your new player, just like you did when DVD came out. :)

Re:Actually yes, all over but the shouting

[apoc06]

europe is a HUGE territory for sony. they are already reports of record preorders [one order every 20 seconds? http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/gaming/a42660/playstat ion-3-enjoys-record-pre-orders.html ]. the ps3 is expensive and people have come to terms with it. sony could easily sell 500k ps3s bringing that total to what? 2 million world wide within the first week or so. this brings ps3 sales to 1/5 of what the xbox360 has shipped so far worldwide within four months. keep in mind that the 10 million xbox360s are also *shipped* numbers. MS has lowered their spring ship estimates because they flooded the market with consoles this winter in order to make the 10 million console claim.

then keep in mind that these are sales "without" games since resistance seems to be it for most people. what then when singstar is released? europe loves their singstar and eyetoy. what about when sony's litany of exclusives start to be released? no one will disagree that the price is steep for the ps3, but if you dont think sony can sell 5 million consoles you are in denial. in a six month period sony can sell 5 million psps worldwide [and thats a console everyone claims is "dead in the water"]

Don't be so hard on Sony guys...

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

They need to recoup the money that Jack Tretton lost :
http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2007/20070210.j pg
http://kotaku.com/gaming/kotaku-magu/kotaku-magu-t retton-offers-to-buy-unsold-ps3s-for-1200-235204.p hp

The end of format wars

[AIFEX]

When will corporations stop fighting and trying to get one up on each other as they tout their latest format. Did the DVD -/+ war or the flash memory stick wars teach them nothing?

It is inevitable that everyone will do everything. With multi-format DVD burners and players and multicard readers as standard with most media kit, its merely a matter of time before people actually realise that the format wars are now futile.

Warner have released a hybrid HD/BDR disc and LG have already put out the hybrid drives. Cost is negligable, a 12 month availabilty will see prices dropping tremendously. Only a year ago the top of the range Sony DVD recorder demanded £900, now the same spec machine (by Sony) can be bought for under £300.

Everytime a new format is developed, there is this ridiculous, costly and unrequired fight to prove whose better. Its infuriating.

Re:The end of format wars

[hexix]

When will corporations stop fighting and trying to get one up on each other as they tout their latest format.

I guess around the same time we decide we should buy everything from 1 company and always rely on them to have exactly the product that we want.

Re:The end of format wars

[soft_guy]

Everytime a new format is developed, there is this ridiculous, costly and unrequired fight to prove whose better. Its infuriating. The obvious answer is that the chairman of the communist party should decide what format is best for us.

Re:The end of format wars

[AIFEX]

Dont get me wrong, the availability of choice is not under debate. You are welcome to buy a £10 DVD player from Bobbys Bucket or a £100 DVD player from Panasonic. But at the end of the day, they do the same thing. Format wars are merely a waste of marketing money. As history has now proven, no one format no longer comes out on top, which is why we inevitably have multi format devices; my DVD player plays DVD+, DVD-, MPEG-4, DivX, CD-R, JPEG, VCD, SVCD; my portable music player supports WMV,WAV,MP3; my PC accepts Memory Stick, SD, XD, CF.

IMHO - The money could be spent to much better effect elsewhere, such as usuability testing, market research, security etc etc.

In other news ...

[Ace905]

Citing recent sales numbers, local used car dealer frank "the lone testicle" johnson has declared that he is in fact the best car dealer in all of north america.

"It was a toss up between me and every single other person, that is until I decided on the criteria by which we were all graded.", said the lone testicle.

Some other sales people are confused by the unanimous victory, but have to admit that Johnson is the best at dealing cars he himself is authorized to sell - in all of north america. One of johnson's opponent dealerships claims, "He only gets those numbers because he's counting sales of the very rare 'Delorian' cars that he sells. Of course when they offered 2 delorians for sale this year, his numbers doubled and every single other dealer in north america that doesn't sell those got a zero on his rating scale."

Confused by semantics, my editor has decided to just give free publicity to Mr. Johnson because he came up with a self-fellating story that almost sounds legitimate. congratulations lone testicle, please take all of my readers and try to sell them your over-priced crap.

---
lone testicle?

Samsung Flash Drives Win

[Anonymous Coward]

When you can lug 100 GB flash drive around on your keychain for $49 bucks,
people will stop using disks all together.

CDs/DVDs/discs of any kind are going to go the way of the 8" floppy disk...

It's called astroturfing on the internet

[guruevi]

They just declare themselves (rightfully or not) the winner, dumb people (aka (Best Buy, Staples, ...) employees and their customers) might read it or hear it and even believe it. They go now to the store with the pre-conceived notion that HD-DVD is going to be old pretty soon.

Imho I would rather buy Blu-Ray over HD-DVD just because of the internal technology (Java vs. Microsoft's-Java-Rip-off) used and the extra storage space (30G vs. 50G). But I won't choose either for now as long as it has DRM. Let's see what's on BitTorrent...

lets see

[way2trivial]

last VHS by publication date

amazon.com
#1 the mystery of love
VHS Release Date: February 6, 2007

#115 Dora the Explorer - Save the Day! was Jan 10, 2007
#116 Here Comes the Big Red Car ~ Wiggles was Jan 3rd, 2007- so 115 seems to be a safe bet for new vhs titles in the last month.

Re:lets see

[Dretep]

Brilliant, too bad you can't by a decent VHS player to view them on. And I don't want a dual VHS-DVD player either - unless it was a DVD recorder and I could copy stuff to DVD. Hmmm... Time to do some research.

Agreed, the format war is over

[iamacat]

Plain DVDs won, with many good reasons. There are not enough movies to justify player prices. For the ones that are out, HD is just not that compelling of a feature to attract attention - remember SACD and DVD audio? There are no portable players at all, either with hard drive transfer or with an actual HD-DVD/Blu ray drive. H264 or DivX allow storing a high definition movie on a plain dual layer DVD, so its not clear whats the whole deal about new hardware is about.

Re:Agreed, the format war is over

[aweraw]

so its not clear whats the whole deal about new hardware is about

I'll give you a clue... 3 Letters; begins with 'D', ends in 'M'

Re:Agreed, the format war is over

[dcam]

Can I buy a vowel?

Console War is Over!

[AbsoluteXyro]

Hey guys, the Console War is clearly over! The Wii is outselling the PS3 2:1

In the lead... by 14 titles?

[popo]

So the winner is the one with 14 titles more?

Hell, *I* could still win the format war.

Re:In the lead... by 14 titles?

[pionzypher]

But are those videos that anyone is going to want to watch? You'll never win the war with movies no one wants to watch.

Never mind.. I just saw the list of movies for BD and HD-DVD.

Re:In the lead... by 14 titles?

[hexix]

So the winner is the one with 14 titles more?

Well it is also outselling HD-DVD movies in the first 2 weeks of 2007. There were also 12 Blu-Ray movies releases this week and only 1 HD-DVD movie. I agree it's too early to declare a winner, but it's not as ridiculous as you're trying to make it sound.

HD-DVD has only one studio that is doing HD-DVD movies exclusively, and that is Universal. Apparently Universal has been very tight-lipped about release dates for their HD-DVD movies while the Blu-Ray making studios have been willing to list many of their upcoming dates. This has lead some to hypothesize that Universal will jump ship.

So like I said, it's still too early, but as of this second Blu-Ray seems to be sitting in a better position than HD-DVD is. Could definitely be the Blu-Ray camp spreading FUD I guess, but if it is, it's working.

Nice but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that the same Sony that declared, and I quote: "If you can find a PS3 anywhere in North America that's been on shelves for more than five minutes, I'll give you 1,200 bucks for it."

Penny Arcade strip

Who would have thought that reality would need defenders?

And he's right

[melted]

The primary thing that decides the success or failure of a format is content available on it. There's only one HD-DVD exclusive studio (Universal). There are quite a few that are Blu-Ray only, including all of the Sony studios and Disney. There are rumors of Universal throwing in the towel on HD-DVD.

Besides, Blu Ray is a better format. 50 GB per disk allows for lower compression ratios and uncompressed multichannel sound. The only advantage HD-DVD has is the "extras" and "interactivity features". I don't know about you, but I don't give a shit about picture-in-picture that they push so heavily. I just want to watch the goddamn movie.

As if this wasn't enough, Blu Ray also enjoys much broader industry support, including Apple (which gives you a hint as to what Final Cut / DVD Studio types will be using) and Dell. PS3 is by far the best value on the market as far as 1080p players are concerned. The fact that it plays games as well is gravy. Xbox HD-DVD add-on has an abysmal attach rate, and even if it did have a better attach rate, Xbox doesn't support HDMI, so it's not an option for folks who want an entirely digital signal path.

So there you have it.

Re:And he's right

[AIFEX]

+1 High capacity storage is proving to be just one more reason for vendors to stuff more crap at us just because the hardware allows for it. Hey, I've seen no Vista comment yet - another prime example. Just because the hardware is improving, doesnt mean we want to be subjected to bloatware.

Re:And he's right

[timmarhy]

i laugh at your comment that hdmi is an entirely digital signal path. the concpet of that is really just a gimic. also, it's WHAT content is on the discs that matters, not sheer volume of discs released.

Re:And he's right

[mczak]

Besides, Blu Ray is a better format. 50 GB per disk allows for lower compression ratios and uncompressed multichannel sound. The only advantage HD-DVD has is the "extras" and "interactivity features". I don't know about you, but I don't give a shit about picture-in-picture that they push so heavily. I just want to watch the goddamn movie.

The problem is, that picture-in-picture functionality you don't need, some blu-ray discs include such functionality just as well (apparently some people do like it). So how is it done if the format doesn't have that capability? Well, that's easy, they just store multiple versions of the complete film, one normal version and one which has the picture-in-picture overlay just directly integrated. There goes your higher storage capacity...
Apart from that, both formats offer enough storage for high-def movies. Apparently enough that a couple of blu-ray releases use the good old mpeg-2 codec...

Re:And he's right

[nighty5]

As for Apple, I will wait until they release a laptop capable of supporting native HDMI.

This DVI -> HDMI stuff is bullshit, so one can hope with their support of Blu Ray that will be indeed change the support HDMI on at least the high end laptops.

Re:And he's right

[Scudsucker]

This DVI -> HDMI stuff is bullshit, so one can hope with their support of Blu Ray that will be indeed change the support HDMI on at least the high end laptops.

So don't do it. Get a TV with DVI inputs and use the optical audio out on the Mac.

Re:And he's right

[MojoStan]

Subject: And he's right It's way too early to declare a winner.

The primary thing that decides the success or failure of a format is content available on it. There's only one HD-DVD exclusive studio (Universal). There are quite a few that are Blu-Ray only, including all of the Sony studios and Disney. At this early adopter phase, I don't understand why Blu Ray proponents make a big deal about HD DVD having only one exlusive "Big 6" studio (Universal) while Blu Ray has three exlusive (Sony, Disney, Fox). HD DVD also has support from Paramount and Time Warner, just not exclusively. None of these studios will stay exlusive forever. All of the studios will support whichever format wins, and the battle has just started.

For those that believe "exclusive" studio support and porn is important, HD DVD is exlusively backed by Digital Playground, Wicked Pictures, Pink Visual, Bang Bros, and ClubJenna Inc. (which on 22 June 2006 was acquired by Playboy Enterprises), and HD DVD is also non-exclusively backed by Vivid Entertainment.

Besides, Blu Ray is a better format. 50 GB per disk allows for lower compression ratios and uncompressed multichannel sound. Which has made no difference in video quality so far. Toshiba demonstrated a triple-layer 51GB HD DVD disc at CES this year, so Blu Ray might not be able to exploit this capacity advantage in time.

Blu Ray also enjoys much broader industry support, including Apple (which gives you a hint as to what Final Cut / DVD Studio types will be using) and Dell. Apple and Dell will support whichever format wins. Apple exclusively supported DVD-R and not DVD+R. Dell exlusively supported Intel. Also, it's not like there aren't alternatives to Apple and Dell that support HD DVD.

Re:And he's right

[DrXym]

Exactly. Simple common sense and pragmatism shows Blu-Ray is winning. It's selling more, it has more titles, it has widespread industry support. HD-DVD would have to do something pretty amazing or Sony (+ rest of industry) something really dumb to lose at this point. I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone but HD-DVD player owners who thinks Toshiba's format stands a chance.

And that's just in the US. Japan has already decided on Blu-Ray and Europe will default to Blu-Ray as soon as the PS3 launches.

Re:And he's right

[DrXym]

HDMI isn't "just a gimic" unless you think DVI-D is also "just a gimic". Perhaps you can't tell the difference between VGA and DVI-D outputs in which case I recommend you stick with component / composite cables. For everybody else, HDMI offers a clear advantage in picture quality.

As for the "content" on the discs, unless Universal & Warner Bros (who support both formats) offer consistently better movies than the other studios combined I fail to see what your point is. Universal is the odd man out here. Everybody else is behind Blu-Ray. Sooner or later Universal will be too.

Of course perhaps some miracle will occur, but at this point HD-DVD is looking doomed.

Re:And he's right

[DrXym]

I think most of the early Blu-Ray discs were using MPEG-2. But the more recent ones are gravitating to AVC/H-264 which suggests it will become the defacto format in future. I don't know if anyone at all is interested in VC-1 which is Microsoft's format.

Re:And he's right

[Anonymous Coward]

[quote]For those that believe "exclusive" studio support and porn is important, HD DVD is exlusively backed by Digital Playground, Wicked Pictures, Pink Visual, Bang Bros, and ClubJenna Inc. (which on 22 June 2006 was acquired by Playboy Enterprises), and HD DVD is also non-exclusively backed by Vivid Entertainment.[/quote]

doesn't matter - porn is free now

Re:And he's right

[DrXym]

Porn really is a sideshow and mostly irrelevant. Porn purveyors sell content and they really do not care how you get that content, just that you do. In fact, the most important thing for porn studios is discrete and convenient distribution of their product. Therefore I suspect that most producers are 10x more interested in delivering downloadable porn.

It's simply not like the days of Betamax vs VHS any more. Remember that mainstream movie studios were highly reluctant to support either format and about the only thing you could buy was porn and video nasties.

Been said before

[edwardpickman]

The President might have a used sign he could loan them. Seems he won a war a few years back.

what nonsense

[timmarhy]

the number of movies released is not an indication of who has won the war, the ONLY thing that indicates that is which format was purchased by most consumers. you can release all the movies you want it doesn't make a fucking difference if no one buys them. watch next thing sony will be blaming pirates for the failure of blue ray, possibly the terrorists as well

Re:what nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who has spent $200 on an HD-DVD player and about $60 on HD-DVD's, I will be pretty pissed off if my HD-DVD player is worthless. I might start making late-night trips to my local Wal-Mart to sneak in, steal all the Blu-rays, and dump them in the harbor. Like a Boston Blu-ray party.

25 Blu-Ray releases versus 11 HD-DVD?

[Kintar1900]

Odd. I could swear that's about a 2:1 ratio. But that couldn't POSSIBLY have any relation to the 2:1 sales of Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD. :)

Apex Digital

[HappySqurriel]

One thing to consider is that one of the main reasons there is such a push to HD formats is because of companies like Apex Digital; when many companies were selling $400 DVD players Apex Digital came along and produced the $99 DVD player that ended up making them (at the time) the #1 DVD player manufacturer in the world. If you notice, Apex Digital (and similar companies) are not part of either groups at the moment.

If the DVD forum wants to win at all costs all they have to do is allow (and encourage) the inexpensive product manufacturers to choose their format; if you can walk into Walmart and buy a $99 HD-DVD player instead of a $500 Blu-Ray player who is going to win?

Re:Apex Digital

[Anonymous Coward]

Companies like Apex will eventually be allowed to license the proper rights to create such players. For awhile, though, Sony will milk every last penny it can from the early adopters.

Hey, I've got a great joke to describe this

[Anonymous Coward]

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

See? See what I did there? I analogized Sony saying that they've won the format war with Bush saying that we won the war in Iraq. And since we haven't won the war in Iraq and are likely not going to, I'm saying that Sony won't win the format war! God, I'm a comedic genius. I bet nobody else on /. came up with that zinger!

Self Declared Winners

[scopius]

Well, it worked for George Bush in the presidential election, so I guess Sony figured it would work for them, too. I'm gonna get in on the action myself by officially declaring myself the winner of an all-expenses paid trip to outer space.

Re:Self Declared Winners

[dunng808]

No no no! We cannot infer that it will work for Sony. This Sony is Blue. Bush is a Red. If they ever cross: total protonic reversal!

Re:Self Declared Winners

[Jesus_666]

Well, if only their protons reverse I certainly have no objection, not with these two ones. Especially as I'm on another continent.

I'm assuming you don't want Casino Royale

[melted]

I'm assuming you don't want Casino Royale or any of the Pixar stuff? 'cause you aren't getting them on HD-DVD.

And yes, HDMI is fully digital path. There's even encryption support in it (even though it's not on right now).

Re:I'm assuming you don't want Casino Royale

[crabbz]

I believe the encryption is on (HDCP). What is not enabled is the downgrading of the video when not using the encrypted path (ICT).

Against HD?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please can this HD war be over?

You're against the HD war? What kind of pinko hippy are you? Why are you against the HD format? That's unAmerican! You're either for HD or against it! Can't be both!

I think I need to stop listening to AM radio.

Sony, come on.

[DoktorSeven]

They want their pet format to win, so they've decided that since they sold 6 blu-ray disks to HD-DVD's 3 disks last month, their crappy format that no one is buying is the winner.

Buy a clue, Sony (and the rest of the world hoping these useless formats are going to catch on anytime soon): 99.999% (pulled out of my ass, but I'm pretty sure it's VERY close to being right) of consumers will continue to buy plain ol' DVDs for a long time. Their stupid new format just isn't even on the radar of most consumers. I'd wager that people are still buying more VHS videotapes than Blu-Ray disks.

Congratulations on being the most popular format of the 37 people who have a BluRay or HD-DVD player. Now STFU while plain DVD continues kicking your ass for years to come.

Reminds me of famous historical headlines:

[vertinox]

1812
France to market Napoleon as winner of battle of Waterloo!

1862
Southern states to market General Lee as winner of Battle of Gettysburg!

1944
Germany to market themselves as winner of World War 2!

2003
Fox news to market US as winner of Iraq war! Oh wait...

Re:Reminds me of famous historical headlines:

[Pluvius]

How the hell did you miss "Dewey Defeats Truman"?

Rob

Re:Reminds me of famous historical headlines:

[crimson30]

No kidding. That was the first thing that popped in my head after reading the summary.

Early Adopter?

[Zobeid]

If you wanted to be an early adopter of HDTV, you are several years too late. I got my first HD set a few years ago -- when there really wasn't much to watch on it. In retrospect I should have kept my NTSC gear a while longer. But now HD sets have improved, there is more HD broadcast over the air, and I have a DBS-DVR combo that handles hi-def and works great. It was slow to get off the ground, but HD is rapidly going mainstream now.

It would have happened faster if there had been a HD videodisc format earlier. It was the last important missing element.

p0rn embraced HD

[peter303]

HD has big headstart in p0rn. Sony would not duplicate blu-ray p0rn disks while HD would.

Re:p0rn embraced HD

[PikachuMolester2007]

pr0n embraced internet, not 'HD'. If anything, pr0n companies are going to pioneer digital distribution, not any disk based format.

Re:p0rn embraced HD

[DragonWriter]

Where the pr0n goes might influence the results of the war if it was otherwise close (or, if it went in the same direction, help to magnify a blowout), but I don't think its a big deal on its own. The pr0n industry is fairly agile, and will go wherever the eyeballs are, in the end, and while I think plenty of people will buy pr0n for whatever player they have, a lot of people will have trouble justifying (to themselves, and even moreso to any other person that might be involved in the purchasing decision) the expense of an HD player centered mostly around what pr0n is available, particularly if there are other factors weighing in favor of a different HD format.

Re:p0rn embraced HD

[Anonymous Coward]

Certainly true for slashdot people, but do you know that porn magazines, VHS tapes and DVDs still exist, even *with* the internet? It's true, I've seen them!

Re:p0rn embraced HD

[b.burl]

to release blu ray discs you need blu ray licensing. sony seems unwilling to have their brand alongside titles like "anal fisting petite debutantes who swallow" for some reason. And a lot of early adopters are young men with more money than sense who like porn and think a 6 foot HD vagina is exciting. No porn on blu-ray? guess what, there are a fair number of people who wont buy blu-ray.

You're all asking the wrong questions...

[Anonymous Coward]

The real question here is how a company can declare itself the winner of a competition...
LOL I WIN, GG GUYZ. EVEN THOUGH I'M THE ONLY ONE WHO BELIEVES THIS, I'M RIGHT.

Sorry bud, but no. Of-course, they may have sold more blu-ray than hd-dvd. But that in MY opinion only means that they are the biggest ass-holes.

But I'm a dirty commie, apparently.

GG SONY LOL

Re:You're all asking the wrong questions...

[Pluvius]

You're all asking the wrong questions... The real question here is how a company can declare itself the winner of a competition...

I think everybody here is asking that question.

Rob

Re:You're all asking the wrong questions...

[PenGun]

Or perhaps how a company can declare it's CEO innocent of stock trickery. Sorry for the pointed stick macboyz ;).

You must believe us

[JonnyO]

"There are no HD DVD players in the stores. Their casualties and bodies are many. The titles are illusions. The Toshiba infidels can hide no longer. This is the truth I tell you!" - Baghdad Bob, Sony Marketing VP

Sounds vaguely familiar...

[DogDude]

Maybe they should have said, "Mission Accomplished!". As we all know, when you make a big red, white, and blue banner and say it, it's true.... Right?

Re:Sounds vaguely familiar...

[Anonymous Coward]

And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion: for we are many.

Frank Papa, you are alone. And We come for you.

They're both losers!

[Swtzrs]

As cool as both these new formats may be, they've made the market so unfriendly/confusing to the consumer that they are both going to die a slow and painful death. Maybe then, they'll attempt to recover what little profit there is in the HD market and release something that is a viable option for people to adopt.

MOD PARENT UP

[TheSHAD0W]

I don't know about the $99 price point, but he makes a shrewd observation as to the cost of the player being an important determining factor. The fact that Sony has the Blu-ray platform locked up will make it likely that HD-DVD player manufacturers will be able to underprice them as well as trying to underprice each other.

another Sony deception?

[Flint Dragon]

Sony at its best...declaring itself a winner after:

[1] post-xmas PS3 owners buying discs since there are no games to buy and want to justify their $600 purchase

[2] releasing more titles than HD-DVD

[3] offering buy-one-get-one free blueray titles at Best Buy in January

[4] somehow paying off Best Buy to only demo blueray

[5] ...any others?

My opinion is that BR- and HD-DVD are even at this point and Sony is actually disappointed that the PS3 didn't sell more to boost BR numbers.

market share?

[loshwomp]

With a movie sale ratio of almost 2:1 Blu-ray discs are being declared the victor over rival HD-DVD by Blu-ray supporter Sony.

Shyeah, it's a real runaway. Blu-ray has 0.00002% market share against HD-DVD's 0.00001%.

Nope

[melted]

A lot of TV sets don't support HDCP. So the studios are reluctant to screw the early adopters.

Those stats dont count me!

[SteveXE]

I just got my HD-DVD addon for Xbox360 (gift from my girlfriend) 2 weeks ago so these sales numbers dont count the 12 HD-DVD titles I bought in a week. Not that I matter all that much but hey there has to be more people like me who were waiting for either their tax return to get the HD-DVD player or wait for a pretty lady to hand it to them after work.

I do wish some of the Blu-Ray movies were on HD-DVD but I can live without them for now. I wont buy a Blu-Ray player until it has been declared absolute winner of this format war. The only reason i was going HD-DVD was because the 360 addon was cheap cheap cheap and it works on PC as well. The picture and sound quality is excellent and I've seen Blu-Ray and its no better and sometimes worse. It will be interesting to see who wins but for now all my money is going to HD-DVD...oh that and Xbox Live Video Marketplace.

The xixnxtxexrxnxextx DVD is for Porn.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been a while since I paid much mind to the format wars, but...
Doesn't HD-DVD now have Porn (which was originally predominantly leaning towards Blue-Ray until Sony said "no porn",) which pushed porn to lean heavily towards HD-DVD? And isn't porn the silent and "secret" weapon which pretty much ended the VHS/Betamax war?

Dont forget to take B1G1 Free into account...

[RobotSimp]

Almost the entire past month Bluray has been running ads with major retailers for select titles being Buy one Get one free

I would think that this has been and will be (ads still running now with even more titles) a bigger factor in the sales numbers than the number of released titles

If HD had the same type of promotion, I would be curious to see if BD would still come out ahead

Funny, but new meme????

[tacokill]

Ok, your comment was funny. Real funny. So funny, in fact, that I found myself thinking of all kinds of situations where the "Mission Accomplished!" meme would be applicable. (note: you have to add the exclamation point). So, uh, without asking a stupid question: is this a new /. meme?

I am thinking of any situation that is declared "over and won" by one side or the other, when in fact, the battle is still raging and far from undecided.

...And IE7 is winning the browser wars!

[sillivalley]

...based on download counts from Micro$oft, right? Ignore the fact that IE7 is forced on (most) users; it's more popular than Sasser!

What do people want? Most people want content, not features. 35gb, 50gb, red, blue, purple doesn't matter if the movie the kid down the street wants isn't available. We'll know which side has won when the major studios release their blockbusters on only that format. I think it may be a while yet -- (standard) DVDs have only recently beaten VHS.

Guess Sony Changed Their Stance...

[Phoobarnvaz]

Didn't know Sony was allowing porn to be released on their format. If so...they have certainly won this format war.

Re:Guess Sony Changed Their Stance...

[Pluvius]

Sony didn't change its stance at all. They've said all along that porn could be allowed on BluRay depending on the licensing policies of the other companies, but that the discs for it wouldn't be pressed at Sony's own factories. Anything else you heard is just FUD from HD-DVD supporters.

Rob

Experience with Blu-ray/HD-DVD

[MrJynxx]

So, I actually own both Blu-ray/HD-dvd players (PS3, and HD-dvd addon for 360). I have both systems hooked up to a 50" sony SXRD LCD projection TV and so far . . . I think HD-DVD looks better even though it's displaying at 1080i. (My PS3 is @ 1080p)

I've now come across quite a few instances of really grainy video with the blu-ray movies I have. This has not been a problem with HD-DVD.

In terms of quality both are identical (except for the annoying grainy video on blu-ray). I've shown this to quite a few friends and they all see the exact same thing (so I'm not crazy). So from experience, I'm hoping HD-DVD overcomes blu-ray.

***SIDENOTE***
So far I've been really disappointed with the PS3. It's probably been the worst purchase I've made in years. Sony had better get their shit together, and get it together FAST!!!

Re:Experience with Blu-ray/HD-DVD

[Anonymous Coward]

I've noticed this too. . . on side by side comparison HD-DVD's video quality blows away Blu-rays'. Blu-ray may have superior Capacity and DRM, but HD-DVDs actual video quality is much much better. I'm pulling for HD-DVD myself as well.

Re:Experience with Blu-ray/HD-DVD

[Anonymous Coward]

aren't they supposed to be grainy? transfering from the old film and all. similar to how vinyl has all those lil' cracks and pops, maybe they clean it up for hddvds or something to do with compression.

Re:Experience with Blu-ray/HD-DVD

[Anonymous Coward]

1080i is the exact same thing as 1080p when you're dealing with content transmission at or below 30 fps. (film is 24 fps)

Re:Experience with Blu-ray/HD-DVD

[Mordaximus]

I have both systems hooked up to a 50" sony SXRD LCD projection TV and so far . . . I think HD-DVD looks better even though it's displaying at 1080i. (My PS3 is @ 1080p)

Hooked together with what? Interconnects are important. I noticed grainy image with PS3 blu-ray movies using component video. Not so with HDMI.

Re:Experience with Blu-ray/HD-DVD

[DarkJC]

I have a PS3, and I've noticed that all the titles I've played so far have all been using the relatively inferior MPEG2 codec. I think we'll see a marked improvement in quality once studios start using H.264 or VC-1

Re:Experience with Blu-ray/HD-DVD

[MrJynxx]

Yep I'm using HDMI on the PS3 and the regular xbox360 component cable. I tried the xbox VGA cable to get 1080p, but I didn't realize the Sony's won't let you do 1080p on VGA so that's why my HD-dvd is @ 1080i.

Networking won the format war

[heroine]

The Sony/Pioneer player supported networking. Streaming 30Mbit 1080p 60fps video from a server to a BD player was the killer feature that pushed it over the top. Since BDP-HD1, there hasn't been a reason to hack set-top boxes because the set-top box now does everything people hacked them for.

Sony pissing match: don't cross the streams!

[MS-06FZ]

No no no! We cannot infer that it will work for Sony. This Sony is Blue. Bush is a Red. If they ever cross: total protonic reversal! And that's bad. Okay. Alright, important safety tip - thanks.

They still owe me $1200

[XaXXon]

When questioned on why PS3s were sitting on store shelves instead of on entertainment center shelves, Tretton responded with "If you can find a PS3 anywhere in North America that's been on shelves for more than a few minutes, I'll give you 1,200 bucks for it." He continues, "I can get any retail buyer on the phone with you and get them to verify that not a single retail location in America where there's a PlayStation 3 on the shelf for sale. They've all been sold in a matter of minutes."

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/02/10

What if they gave a war, and nobody came.

[517714]

The war is not over until people are buying the winner to replace the the loser, and that is a long way off.

Wii is the winner of the console wars

[gamer4Life]

With the Wii outselling the PS3 and XBox 360 combined, I think we can safely assume that...right?

Not the 360... only the Wii

[gamer4Life]

..only the Wii.

As much as Microsoft wants to included in the winner's category, they are beaten by the popularity of the Wii.

As for Sony vs Microsoft, Sony is selling more consoles right now, and that will only increase with the Sony European launch.

Re:Not the 360... only the Wii

[Lehk228]

actually a lot of people are still buying the 360, and there are more 360's out there than Wiis and PS3s combined

Re:Not the 360... only the Wii

[EvilIdler]

I've got a PS2, a DS and a 360. Those happen to be the three most sold, although comparing the Wii and PS3
yet is unfair because they're new. But looking at plans for releases, it seems Sony aren't killing off the PS2 yet.
Wii is also torn off shelves the moment they get on the shelves, while PS3s are collecting dust, with the occasional
sale. Once they get to Europe, I'm guessing it'll be an even split between people who believe in it as a gaming
console and people who want a Blu-Ray player with "something extra" causing the initial rush of sales, then it'll
taper off just like the US sales. I could be wrong. Perhaps they'll even release games for it someday.

Re:Not the 360... only the Wii

[trdrstv]

comparing the Wii and PS3 yet is unfair because they're new.

That was the parent argument. Using the logic that 'Blu-Ray is the Winner' over HD-DVD simply using last months sales as a Metric would also mean 'Wii is the next-gen winner' over the PS3 and 360. Based on January 2007 sales that also would be true.

It's simply bad logic used to come up with a pre-determined ( and meaningless) conclusion.

OMG

[brockbr]

OMG - Ponies! Sony needs to put the crack pipe down.

We can thank HD-DVD for at least one thing

[Anonymous Coward]

FORCING Sony to wake up to the necessity of new codecs. If HD-DVD had never been around as competition, Sony and friends would still be happily chucking out MPEG-2 movies featuring decidedly inadequate quality. It was up to the early adopters to force the issue, with their wallets. And thank goodness. Clearly, the blind masses who purchased PS3s can't tell the difference.

Now all that's left is to magically transform the BluRay format into something that can match the far superior interactive capabilities of HD-DVD. Oh, and re-release the over 100 BluRay titles which were mastered in MPEG-2. Yeah. Those are going to happen. Alas, poor Fifth Element.

Re:Nope?

[crabbz]

Right, the ICT flag is not set so you can get HD over component cables. No need for HDCP. That's what I said.

Odd Man Out

[Paulrothrock]

I'm probably the only person on /. who can afford an HDTV setup and doesn't have one. Because, honestly, it's not something that I'm interested in.

What would I get if I got an HDTV? I'd be able to see the pores on the overpaid, under-talented busty young actress's ass, or the blades of grass on a field where 300 pound men in tights jump on each other between truck ads. Whoopty-freaking-doo.

What would be much better for me would be a cheap, safe, legal way to get good video content that doesn't have commercials and doesn't involve monthly fees. iTunes is close, but Dr. Who, Torchwood, and Charlie Jade (all phenomenal, none available in the US, at least not butchered to hell) are not available on iTunes thanks to antiquated licensing fees.

To put it succinctly: I don't want HD content distributed using the current content distribution methods. If we freed content creators from the current market of middle-men, like has happened in industries from publishing to insurance to banking to lawyers, they'd be able to make and distribute content on their own. And while this means that we'd still have mediocre shows for the vast mediocre audience, smart shows wouldn't be written off because they're "too smart." (This actually happens. A lot.)

Does it even matter?

[Psx29]

The average person is not going to notice or care about the difference between DVD and HD-DVD/Bluray. It reminds me of the situation of SACD. Sure maybe there audio/videophiles out there and so there is a niche market, but I don't see it ever entering the mainstream anytime soon (if ever).

Re:Does it even matter?

[dank zappingly]

There actually is a key problem with your analogy. As televisions get bigger, the difference in resolution gets more noticeable. While it is arguable how useful HDTV is on a relatively small television, it would be hard to find someone with decent vision who didn't see a noticeable difference on a 60" television. As large HDTV's get more widespread and cheaper, people will see a very good reason to adopt the new format.

Screw HD.

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what? None of this matters. I have a SNES, an N64, a Cube and a PS2 with a shot CD-ROM drive. So evidently my console priorities are low. Which means I'm not acquiring any sort of nextgen movie disc player soon.

I have a 13" TV and four computers. 80% of my movies are downloaded. (If I'm not going to pay ten bucks to see a movie in a theatre you're off your rocker if you think i'm paying $20 for a DVD unless I really, absolutely love it.) Format wars are moot as long as we have DVD rips. Hi-def discs are for a long time going to be like the now-kind-of-affordable bigscreen TVs of today. Sure, they can do HD, but HD isn't the be-all and end-all of TV. Not for a few years still. A -lot- of people didn't jump to DVD until the players dropped to around $80, and I don't see why this isn't going to be the case with hi-def stuff.

So we have two factors working against widespread adoption of any sort of hi-def discs. And you might even get a large contigent that wants to stick with DVD because it looks perfectly fine on their TVs. This isn't going to be like the VHS-to-DVD transition. DVD players don't eat discs and don't require tracking adjustments or any of the anachronistic stuff you had to deal with in VHS. It's digital, it'll always be the same unless the disc gets scratched, and if it still plays and looks good then why bother switching to a more expensive player? (Unless the time comes where the movie you want is only in a hi-def format.)

This format war isn't going to grab the average joe consumer the way the last one did. I'd give the advantage to sony just because PS3 uses blu-ray and thus by default has a higher installed base, but advantage doesn't mean victory.

Meanwhile, I'll still be downloading movies and stuffing them onto my Macbook.

You have no idea of film quality

[SuperKendall]

Blu-Ray got a bunch of old movies that won't be significantly better in quality than the SD DVD version anyway.

You don't know much about film, do you?

Scans of 35mm film exceed even the top HD resolution (1920x1080) you can get on today's HD discs.

As an example of just how wrong you are, on HDNet some time ago (when I still subscribed to Dish) I was watching Charlies Anglels, the original TV series, in full HD. It actually looked quite amazing. Even old stuff on film can look good (if a bit messy as the negatives age), modern day films will all look impressive as well - although one detraction can be that cut-rate effects really show up on HD sets. Also, anything shot in all digital can only be shown at the maximum resolution the cameras operated at (except for the special effects) that can be re-rendered.

Re:You have no idea of film quality

[EvilIdler]

Yeah, don't knock 35mm. It's a very, very high-definition format. I did some calculations based on what I could find
(sorry, you lazy gits will have to use the Wikipedia yourselves) about HD formats and analog film resolutions.
I came up with somewhat short of two terabytes to hold a typical feature film, with one soundtrack at 48-96kHz with
six channels. My calculations could be off, but it's basically out of reach of current CPUs and graphics hardware to
decode something equivalent to REAL film in anything approaching realtime.

It may be a while before we get there, too, as movie formats have been the slowest moving tech. At least it took us many
years to go from DVD to HD DVD (six times as many pixels on screen at a time). The next leap may be around the
same increase, and still would be far behind 35mm.

Re:You have no idea of film quality

[ThePhilips]

I came up with somewhat short of two terabytes to hold a typical feature film, with one soundtrack at 48-96kHz with six channels.

They are definitely off. But that holds true conceptually. I have seen somewhere comparison of digital and analogue imagery, and stated "resolution" of analogue film was going thru the roof. It is not unlimited - light sensitive coating has grains, dirt and other similar defects. Some where saying that digital 16MP (~5000x3000) would indistinguishable from analogue film. Yet photos made on film look to me more realistically, while digital photos still suffer from smoothed texturing.

I think the same goes for HD content. 1920x1020 is definitely progress, but as many have said, it didn't add much to movies: it is just our imagination has to do little bit less work.

Re:You have no idea of film quality

[buffer-overflowed]

Well, visible, discernable lines of resolution are about the same between a 35mm print and 1080p. However, neither 1080p or any of the current HD media come close to capturing every bit of info you can get off a film print. Which is why a lot of the places you can find info to back my first statement up include disclaimers like "oh, not scanned" or "oh no, not in a lab." Film has more character to it though, and tends to look better as it's enlarged because grain looks more natural than noise(although the noise in my Canon, regular digital SLR, is a pretty close approximation of the grain found in lower-quality film stock).

This is why I'm not investing in an HD player. It's a scam. Next up is SUPER-HD, then ULTRA-HD, which will have all the info of 35mm film, and then MEGA-ULTRA-HD, which will be half 70mm/IMAX, and then ULTIMATE-HD, which will have full 70mm/IMAX. Then, if they get really desperate, they'll start going for more exotic, higher-resolution formats.

And the other thing is bandwidth. Would you rather have a disc player, or about 11xDVD, or a connection via fibre back to some network attached storage? The telecos and cable cos are rolling out the necessary connections. Verizon's FIOS could handle some quite high-quality video if they wanted to use it that way.

HD-DVD doesn't even have that

[SuperKendall]

The only advantage HD-DVD has is the "extras" and "interactivity features".

Actually it doesn't have eben that advantage - in theory there is less room for extras with HD-DVD's smaller space, and as for inetractivty Blu-Ray has BD-J (not fully implemented in all players yet though).

Both formats support the same codecs so there really is no difference between them, other than HD-DVD supporting the Microsoft menuing standard and Blu-Ray supporting BD-J.

It's all in the codec

[SuperKendall]

Technically, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD can look identical because they support exactly the same codec.

Blu-Ray titles have however opted generally for lower noise reduction to preserve detail - and the film grain that you see.

Mandatory Maddox

[frostband]

As soon as Sony stops shitting all over us, I'll buy a Blu-ray player.

Re:Mandatory Maddox

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, I'd expect that to be modded funny.
When you see a maddox link, I think it's assumed that the post is tongue-heavily-in-check.

Slashdot moderation at its finest.

Re:Mandatory Maddox

[frostband]

Yeah, it was a joke. Sony shits on me, so does MS and Toshiba. Damn m200 tablet doesn't have a reinstall CD and buying another one is a PITA (just try finding one to start with). Oh, and I can use the MSDN version of MS WinXP Tablet edition 2005 to reinstall w/ my XP key. Thank you MS and Toshiba.

Wow, that's off topic.

Back on topic, has anyone mentioned the players that can play both HD DVD and Bluray? Doesn't it seem like all the manufacturers w/o a vested interest would produce those types of players? I guess the counterpoint would be that (possibly) most manufacturers have a vested interest.

What do I know, I'm a flamebaiter.

HD-DVD does not have region codes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Less DRM, means good for me!

3x1

[spwolfx]

Actually, in the week ending Jan14th, BD outsold HD-DVD almost 3x1, not 2x1.
And those are strictly retail movie sales, they dont include games or free movies.

40 days after PS3 is released, BD has 3to1 advantage over HD-DVD.

Sony sold 1mil PS3's in US in 2006, while MS sold 92,000 HD-DVD addons for Xbox.

Obviously Sony has won this war. In fact, the whole industry has won this war. Everyone but Microsoft, Toshiba and Universal is part of BD camp.

sounds like Bush on the gulf war

[Anonymous Coward]

doesn't this comment sound a lot like GW Bush claiming victory in the Gulf War in Iraq?

360 cost?

[SuperKendall]

With the HD-DVD player for the Xbox 360 available for about $200, it should be possible to have a stand alone HD-DVD player for $250...

Oh really, did your 360 "fall of the back of a truck"?

That HD-DVD player costs about $100 more than the PS3 solution. in total And it doesn't support HDMI. And you can't use the HD-DVD for game storage so you don't even get that benefit.

What reason is there to think the 360 HD-DVD add-on will enjoy any more success than any console add-on ever released? Why is it not just another SegaCD?

Re:Number of movies - DVDs

[emjoi_gently]

Of course sales of DVDs still make both formats seem insignificant.

Maybe they should both surrender.

Obvious result, decided a year ago

[SuperKendall]

Because Microsoft opted not to fully back the HD-DVD format by including it in every 360 sold, the PS3 alone (even if you don't consider Star Wars and all Pixar movies being on Blu-Ray) decides the battle easily, by having an order of magnitude more homes with Blu-Ray players. Microsoft decided the battle already - in facor of Blu-Ray. Another partner learns the "benefits' of partnering with Microsoft.

If Microsoft had shipped a little later, and shipped with the HD-DVD drive, Blu-Ray would be dead now and the studios would mostly have switched to HD-DVD at this point.

It's easy to determine where studio support goes when you remember that what the bean counters look only at total market availiable to buy product. To them since the exact number of people that use a PS3 to play Blu-Ray movies is somewhat inscrutible, they look at total market penetration (in terms of homes with players) and see a relativley huge (and growing) number of Blu-Ray players and a much smaller, and flatter, growth rate for HD-DVD players.

Re:360 cost?

[The Warlock]

It's not another SegaCD because you can't play games on it. Just movies.

The lack of HDMI on its bestselling player means that HDDVD is unlikely to ever be encumbered by that "image constraint token" crap.

The GP was saying that if the drive costs less than $200 to produce, a company should be able to produce a full standalone player for less than $250.

Read and understand the posts before making a reply.

Only $999,999,999,999,999,999.99 !!

[gumpish]

$99 huh? $100 too rich for your blood?

It's comments like yours (and likely your real life buying habits) that result in such inane dishonest mental pricing games played by marketers.

"No one will buy this car for $20,000... but if you price it $19,999.99 you'll have to beat them away with a stick!"

Wouldn't you rather live in a world where prices were nice even multiples instead of $NICE_EVEN_MULTIPLE - .01 ?

Re:Only $999,999,999,999,999,999.99 !!

[91degrees]

It's rational behaviour.

People have a set price of X that they think something is worth. X will usually be a round number. Some people will buy an item if the value is less than X, others will buy it if it is less than or equal to X. By going for the round number, you exclude all those people who will only pay less than X.

Like global warming?

[Anonymous Coward]

What, no global warming comparison? Com'mon, this is Slashdot! :-)

Sony making up stuff?

[Anonymous Coward]

Say it ain't so.

Backwards

[SuperKendall]

It's not another SegaCD because you can't play games on it. Just movies.

Yes, which makes it even less desirable!

The lack of HDMI on its bestselling player means that HDDVD is unlikely to ever be encumbered by that "image constraint token" crap.

You totally do not understand what is happening there. If they ever turn on ICT (which personally I doubt, but let's say they do) that makes the HD-DVD drive on the 360 even worse for playing movies because playback will be limited to 720P! Not using HDMI does not magically make you imune from the evil effects of it; in fact you are more prone to harm than any PS3 owner since they simply will not notice!

This incidentally is why I was very sad to see HDMI added to the base PS3; if the base PS3 had stuck with component only it would have been sure there would never be enough Blu-Ray players to make them think it was OK to enable the ICT. Now it has more of a chance of being used.

The GP was saying that if the drive costs less than $200 to produce, a company should be able to produce a full standalone player for less than $250.

First, you do not know how mcuh of that cost Microsoft is eatingt to try and drive DVD sales.

Secondly, the 360 HD-DVD drive is basically just a drive with electronics to transfer data to the host 360, which is then able to take advanatge of $300 worth of electronics all dedicated to making video look good. You think the chips to handle all the possible HD-DVD codecs are cheap, along with all of the control and output circutry? Think again. That's exactly whu the cheapest HD-DVD player is around $400. Don't think think if they could make them cheaper, they would?

Read and understand the posts before making a reply.

Think well past those points before dismissing mine.

Bounty

[KalElOfJorEl]

So how long before a Sony exec starts offering a bounty for the Blu-ray discs that remain on shelves?

Additionally, does anyone know of them making this ridiculous claim with Beta-Max? We all know how well that went.

Honestly, the fact that Sony said they're declaring themselves the winner of the war is something I'd expect to see on The Onion.

As a PS3 owner...

[daggre]

I can officially say the war is not over as a consumer. I own a BluRay player (by virtue of the fact that I bought a PS3) but I don't buy any BluRay discs and probably won't because although they look about 10-20% better on my 56" DLP HDTV, the quality is NOT enough to warrant a cost of 2-3x what a DVD costs. Even more importantly, as a consumer I'm really ready to move away from physical medium and move to a download model. I also own an XBox 360 and the quality of the HD movie downloads is just as good as the BluRay movies I've seen (Talladega Nights, Click and Lady in the Water). MS definitely needs to either up the size of the hard drive or let you use an external drive to store the 5-6GB video files but other than that I really prefer the download service. I know it's only 720p but it seriously looks just as good (at least on a 56" - on a 108" it might be another story altogether). Another good thing about a download model is that there's no inventory shortage, no packaging, no disc to scratch and no losing the discs or having your kid scratch it up. If they ever do the DRM right (they haven't yet) - I'd be able to log in at my brother's house and watch anything I bought while I was over there (just like bringing the movie with me when I visit). So my vote for the HD format is "neither" - let's move to a download model and be done with it. Winner of HD format = Hard Drive & Consumers.

Re:As a PS3 owner...

[Mark Gillespie]

I really cant belive how many fanboy posts there are here. I have a PS3 on pre-order, I have no problems with the price, as it's got a very well reviewed Blu-Ray player. As for Blu-Ray costing 2x to 3x the price of DVD's Total BS.. Casino Royale: DVD: http://www.sendit.com/video/item/7001000131804 Blu-Ray: http://www.sendit.com/video/item/7001000131846 Exact same price. The Blu-Ray is 50GB AVC encoded..

Re:As a PS3 owner...

[ShadowsHawk]

Pre-order? I saw two at Best Buy on Sunday. Granted, this in anecdotal, but it seems consistent in most major cities.

Re:As a PS3 owner...

[Mark Gillespie]

Despite what Fox News tells you, there is a whole world outside your trailer park. PS3 has yet to launch in Europe....

Re:As a PS3 owner...

[ShadowsHawk]

Sorry, I forgot about the PS3 launching in Europe. Kind of like Sony actually...

Take a breath and realize that I'm teasing you. I genuinely did forget that the PS3 has not launched over there yet. This is mostly due to the fact that I'm not interested in spending $600 for a game machine and all of my movies are standard dvds run in a up converting dvd player. If you're still looking to insult me for forgetting about the last launch, you could always make some comment about my dead mother.

Sounds like UMD all over again

[WiiVault]

I'm sure you guys all remember shortly after the PSP came out how Sony was selling tons and tons of UMDs. Where are they now? I'll trust Sony once the HD-DVD camp throws in the towel. Until then I will just stick with what I do know about them; that they are liars, thieves(MPAA/RIAA), and rootkiters.

Re:Sounds like UMD all over again

[DarkJC]

Right, this is exactly like UMD. I enjoy paying the same price as a DVD to play my Blu-ray discs on a single device that isn't useful anywhere else.. Oh wait. (And as a side note, UMD may have failed for movies but it's not like they don't use it anymore...see PSP games)

Re:Sounds like UMD all over again

[apoc06]

"...they are liars, thieves(MPAA/RIAA), and rootkiters."

1) liars: name one corporation that doesnt lie

2) thieves: MS has stolen plenty. universal [HD-DVD supporter] is a part of the MPAA as well.

3) rootkitters: MS is the one company most responsible for DRM period. lets not forget that the rootkit simply exploited a vulnerability that MS left open in the first place.

dont get me wrong, im not trying to say that sony is the company of saints. all im saying is that both sides are equally evil.

Re:Sounds like UMD all over again

[WiiVault]

I don't remember saying that MS was any better or the HD DVD camp wasn't just as bad. They are both market failures so far.

Re:Sounds like UMD all over again

[WiiVault]

My point (which was pretty clear BTW) is that I put little stock in Sony declaring a format a huge success considering how they positioned UMD. I didn't compare the usefulness of the formats just how untrustworthy Sony PR is.

Blue-Ray already won

[Moondevil]

Here in Germany it is possible to buy blank blue-ray disks in many stores.
And a few of them are already selling blue-ray burners.

I am yet to see a blank HD-DVD on sale.

This will help a lot the people decide in which format to invest.

The Real Winner?

[JumperCable]

Your hard drive. DRM free. Rapidly dropping prices per GB. (Current = $109/300GB). No special hardware needed to read/write on the media.

Same goes for HD-DVD...

[pdaoust007]

Toshiba HD players come with 3 free movies (yes three, it's not a typo) and the XBOX-360 add-on comes with one (King-Kong) so this is pretty much a moot point.

It's not worth it for most people

[brokeninside]

Most people don't have HDTVs or computer monitors large enough to give buying HD content any advantage over regular DVDs. The average consumer isn't yet ready to drop $500 on a new TV and another $500 on a new disk player, and an additional $50 per month for the HDTV digital cable package. So right now, the market consists entirely of those with very large discretionary incomes.

My VCR crapped out last month. I priced out HD kit and was quite disappointed at the present state of affairs. I would need to buy a 36" set to get the same size picture as my present 24" set for analog signals. I /might/ be able to pull down HDTV content over a terrestrial antenna, but that's a crapshoot. The reason I buy cable is precisely because my terrestrial reception is pants. So to be assured of HDTV reception, I'd have to upgrade to the digital cable package and pay extra for the HDTV rider. It's insane.

So I won't be buying HDTV anything for at least another two years. Maybe by then prices will be feasible. And once HD content is a true commodity and past the early adopter series, then we'll see whether HD-DVD or Blu-Ray will be the winner.

Not buying either

[PenguinGuy]

I'm not buying either since I don't have an HDTV and what I have DVD wise is perfectly fine for me.

Though I may buy one of the combo VCR/DVD recorders..

Re:Anecdotal

[ShadowsHawk]

Disclaimer: Anecdotal evidence. I was at Best Buy on Sunday to pick up Hotel Dusk. Out of the eight people in line, five had 360s. One of which had every single 360 accessory that they stocked. I'm not sure if people are getting their tax refunds early or what, but that was a hell of a lot of 360s. On a side note, there were two PS3s sitting on the shelf.

multisystem

[way2trivial]

as in, multisystem vcr.. most have 6 or more heads, and dual voltage...

I have family in eastern europe.. my JVC multi allows for pal or ntsc video, and it's darn good..
it converts on the fly, even from the video in- I could hook up a pal gaming system to the front jacks if I was so moved.

I've had mine three years, and it cost +600 (now around 400)
when it once locked up, mid-2006, I took it to a small time tv repair guy who repairs tv's for my workplace,
who said it was the first time in two years he'd had a standalone vcr brought in to be repaired- as opposed to tossed & replaced...

Mission Accomplished?

[hawridger]

Sound familiar?

Re:360 cost?

[aztracker1]

Here's your sign.. if you read above, you will see, I am going to use it with my Media Center... which I already own. The drive is USB based, and will work with XP/Vista. And since when can you get a PS3 for $200? Not to mention the fact that I really don't like how entrenched Sony has become with the media conglomerates, which is a bit more than Microsoft.

This is all beside the point...

[DaBishop]

Sony and Toshiba can sling mud at each other all they want. The real format war isn't HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray - it's both next-generation disc formats vs. DVD. The reality of the whole thing is that:

1) Most Americans have no idea what HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are, or how they compare to DVD
2) Most Americans STILL don't have an HDTV, so buying HD disc players now would have absolutely no use to them
3) Regardless of how many titles each camp releases, the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray section of your local Best Buy or Circuit City is about 1/100 the size of the DVD section
4) The price point of new release DVDs continues to be about half that of the HD version (and every new release on HD disc is also available on DVD)
5) Many people (like my 60-something parents and all their friends) have a hard time telling the difference between 1080p on a disc and a widescreen DVD upconverted to 1080p, as long as the transfers are both very good, and even I have a hard time telling the difference between DTS ES and the new lossless audio formats (and I used to sell this stuff)

The way I see it, the main task of both of these new formats' backers has been to prove to the public why they should adopt HD disc instead of just sticking with DVD, and so far, they've both been failing. Try this experiment to see what I mean - go to a big-box store and watch someone buy a new HDTV. If they buy an upconverting DVD player with their set, or if they don't buy a disc player at all, then that means that no one has won the real format war yet. And until then, Sony should keep their trap shut.

Oh, BTW, anyone remember the SACD vs. DVD-Audio format war? I rest my case...