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Blockbuster Chooses Blu-ray
s31523 writes "The format war between HD-DVD and Blu-ray has posted another battle, this time the victor seems to be the Blu-ray side. Blockbuster has announced it has chosen Blu-ray as the HD format to rent out in the majority of its stores. This decision comes after rental data was looked at for the 250 stores that carry both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray with the majority of rentals being Blu-Ray. Blockbuster now plans to stock Blu-ray only in 1450 of it's stores, but says the 250 stores with the HD-DVD movies will be kept on the shelf."
"This decision comes after rental data was looked at for the 250 stores that carry both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray with the majority of rentals being Blu-Ray."
8 rentals versus 6?
Yet another win for Netflix, which allows you to pick your favorite HD format!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. The war is over, Blue Ray won. Sad.
since i just finished reading the 'psychology of fanboys' story below. now we can see some in their native habitat.
my sig is an honor student
More interesting will be to see what the retail giants do.
If Wal-Mart decides not to stock HD-DVD (or, for that matter, Blu-Ray) titles, then that's more interesting.
Myself, I think the idea of two formats which (unlike VHS/Betamax) are, at first glance, practically identical and come in very similar cases yet require different players is absurd. Unless and until either one wins or dual-format players become commonplace, there's going to be some very pissed off people when they get their shiny new film home only to find that it won't play.
Digital distribution is the way of the future, not Blu-Ray or HD DVD discs. Isn't netflix already selling movie downloads?
There's likely a lot more Blu-Ray players out there right now because of the PS3. While maybe some of you might think the PS3 isn't selling or hasn't sold enough units, they've sold several million of them - and that's nothing to sneeze at when you consider the the fact that HD players are still pretty new to market.
Evenrually, it'll be like a DVD-R/DVD+R situation - players will support both and that will be the end of it.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
One "advantage" of living in a depressed post-industrial area of the country - we are ahead of the curve in terms of business that will eventually no longer exist closing before everyone else. We lost our last CD stores years ago, and the one downtown bookstore closed just this year. Yippee.
Why on earth would they not just rent both? Its not like it costs them any money to rent another format. Dollars to donuts there is some behind the scenes payola or pressure going on here. I guess with all of their sales heading towards online rentals it probably doesn't matter, as they are still supporting it online.
As I remember it, it was the rental market that killed off Betamax. Whatever you might think of them (and few have a lower opinion than I do) the rental market, and Blockbusters in particular, has a massive influence. You can just see the average clueless consumer saying 'Why get HD DVD when Blockies only stocks Blu Ray'
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
Let's see, Blockbuster does basically the same thing as Netflics (ordering over the net with postal delivery) but you can drop the movies off at the store, if you want, so, yeah, I guess they are still relevant.
The unfortunate thing about Blu-Ray is its BD+ DRM feature, which has not yet been turned on. While Blu-Ray and HD-DVD both use AACS, Blu-Ray's BD+ is an additional layer of DRM which has not yet been broken. The reason you aren't hearing about this is that people think Blu-Ray has been freed to the same extent that HD-DVD has, when this really isn't the case. All it will take is for Blu-Ray Disc publishers to start using BD+ on their titles (which we can expect to see in a few months) and at that point our hopes of ever seeing free HD disc player software will be dashed once again.
For now, as a user who wants to play HD content with free software, I'm going to advocate the use of HD-DVD and not Blu-Ray.
BB online will match netflix in that they will still have HDDVD, so how is this a win for netflix?
Is netflix starting a chain of B&M rental outlets to compete with BB?
What sort of shelf can fit 250 retail stores, exactly?
Tags != Comments, and -1 (Troll) != -1 (I Would Respond Angrily To This Poster So They Must Be Trolling)
"How to close the door after the horse has bolted." By the BlockBuster management
The future ain't DVD, of any format. The future be network distributed content, no matter what the US film industry wants you to think.
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While this is somewhat interesting, the problem is that it doesn't matter at all. Neither HD-DVD nor Blu-ray has managed to get any sort of decent penetration into the home market aside from enthusiasts. There are a couple of reasons for this.
Firstly, there's price. I'm not just talking the price of players here, though that is a factor right now. The big thing is that the vast majority of people do not own televisions that will benefit from a higher-quality format. The cost of having a television that will benefit from this has to be added on to the startup cost, and that price hasn't seemed like it's gone down at all. Sure, you can get high-def 22" sets - but with a set that small, the difference between DVD and HD-format is pretty nullified. Again, only enthusiasts will notice a difference.
Another big reason is customer fatigue. DVDs have only relatively recently obtained high penetration in the home market - in no part thanks to cheap players from Walmart and other discount stores. Now customers are being asked once again to spend money to upgrade their collections... and as I said above, the startup price is not trivial for marginal improvement in quality. No, there are no MPAA-Nazis... oh, there are. My point is, no one is forcing them to upgrade - but on the other hand, the mass amount of customers just don't care.
Another thing I might point out is that the major indicator of trends - the porn industry - hasn't chosen a format yet. In fact, they're pretty much eschewing physical media for the internet. So, were I to be a betting man, I'd say that an online format is going to be the next big thing - and we're already seeing that with sites like YouTube.
So, in the long run, this isn't really news at all, this is just a blip on the radar.
I predict that BlueRay and HD-DVD won't even make a splash as they sink without trace. ok they may sell some in the US where they have 3rd world levels of bandwidth, but the rest of the world is going to be downloading it's HD movies to HD PVRs... legally or not...
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Blockbuster is owned by Viacom. Viacom owns Paramount Pictures. Paramount is one of the proponents of Blu-Ray.
Its like "Buggy Whips, Inc chooses Naugahide over Vinyl". I can't remember the last time I bought/rented a movie on a disk.
I guess the dying industries need to get into the news somehow.
So sad.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
I'm not saying which one you should prefer, but lots of people either hate HD-DVD or Blu-ray on irrational basis. For example, "HD-DVD players break too much! (even though I don't own them and the current generation is just fine)" or "I hate Sony/BMG, therefore I will boycott all of Sony (even though the connections between various divisions of such a large company are extremely slim)." Some people are even so foolish as to have decided-retroactively, of course-that the format they purchased is the superior one because, well... they spent a lot of money!
There is no reason to hope both lose. I'd really hate to be suck with DVDs for several years while the next-next-gen media gets its act together, and probably does the exact same thing all over again.
Me, I prefer Blu-ray because Sony takes their recordable-data business seriously and they're getting that stuff to market much faster. You might prefer something else, like HD-DVD because the hardware is a bit cheaper. Either way, there are plenty of rational non-fanboy reasons to prefer formats. The most irrational view I can think of is your position. How would the completely failure of the new media types benefit the market or consumers?
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Digital distribution is the way of the future, not Blu-Ray or HD DVD discs. Isn't netflix already selling movie downloads?
Microsoft sure thinks this is the way. That's why they backed HD-DVD, to try and keep the format war going long enough to make sure Microsoft is in control of the majority of digital distribution via Live and to fragment physical formats.
However, what is not being factored in here are two issues:
1) Size and thus quality of downloads.
2) DRM
You can download HD media today, but even the 720p stuff Microsoft offers takes a while. As 1080p sets become more popular, there simply are not a lot of people who will be able to download 1080p versions of movies over the network, for many many years to come as fiber is slowly built out to homes. A physical Blu-Ray disc offers 50 GB of storage - how long will it be before you can download anything near that amount in any kind of reasonable time? Even with torrents a few GB can take a while.
On top of that, the video people buy online is not really very transferable - Apple comes close by being able to also put video on an iPod, but it's still not something you can share. So people will be inclined to buy some video online, but if they really like a show or movie still pick up a physical disc for that just so they can share it or carry it around between devices easier.
P.S. Yes Netflix offers movies, but not all of them and only online streaming. A cool way to check out a bit of this or that but not very practical for watching whole movies, and nowhere near the quality even of DVD, much less Blu-Ray!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Define clear winner. Toshiba has been heavily subsidizing its players to make them sell, yet it's still had to slash its 2007 sales estimates almost in half. Sales of Blu Ray discs outstrip HD DVD almost two to one and the format has the support and backing of the majority of electronics companies and every major studio except one.
It's not a question of if HD DVD will fail but when. Now perhaps some cheap HD DVD players will charge over the hill and save the day, but I think it may be too late for that.
That doesn't mean Blu Ray has set the world alight - it's still transitioning from early adopter to mainstream. But it looks inevitable that in a few years the only things selling in your local store will be DVDs and BDs.
Blockbuster chose Blu-Ray. Porn chose HDDVD. Blockbuster is becoming incresingly irrelevant and is (IMO) heading straight for bankruptcy. Porn isn't. How has this choice "won" the battle?
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It's a shame it's going this way. I was an early supporter of Blu-ray, but now I'd be much happier to see HD DVD win (or at least live on for a while).
Reasons to support BD:
- Sony & Disney catalogs
- More storage
Reasons to support HD DVD:
- Universal catalog
- Less DRM, no region codes (imports!)
- Easier to author your own content
- No censorship by factories
Reasons to hope both stay alive:
- Price wars
I rent DVD's from the Hollywood Video store near my house. They have had HD-DVD for some time now, but this week, all a sudden, they now have an equal number of BlueRay as well. Interesting.
-Unresolved symbol? Byte me!
Yeah, Blockbuster still 'offers' all those old faults that drove us into the arms of Netflix in the first place.
I must be odd - I don't find the process of driving to the video store, shuffling through the poor selection, finding something that's actually in stock and waiting in line to check out and driving home all that appealing.
I suppose they're still relevant in much the same way Blu-ray vs HD-DVD is relevant.
Other people might see value there - but all I see are the limitations that far outweigh the benefits.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Seem the only people that think there is still a format war, are Xbox360 HD-DVD add-on owners, and 80,000 vocal standalone HD-DVD owners... ... And folks who prefer the lesser of two weevils (HDDVD = no region coding, slightly milder DRM, lower cost media, ability to play back HD home burns on non-HD media), and folks who enjoy the NBC/Universal exclusive catalog (such as _Heroes_, _Battlestar Galactica_, _Shaun of the Dead_, _The Big Lebowski_, etc.. And presumably other Uni features such as _Scarface_).
I still think Sony is stupid enough to keep licensing costs high enough for BD players up over $300 for quite awhile yet, while HDDVD will probably be first to go to China and come out in the states for less than $200. I'm thinking Toshiba branded players for $200 for XMas, Chinese knockoffs for $150 or so.
Folks don't have enough bandwidth for digital delivery of HD, and nobody's doing 1080p digital delivery yet AFAIK (everything I've seen on XBL is 720p)
Music and movies are "consumed" differently. While Audiophiles have been looking for a high end solution, SA-CD and DVD-A promised that, that isn't how most music is consumed. The formats that Audiophiles normally listen to are different, because they normally listen to classical music that benefits from the audio, or jazz and alternative genres where the quality matters. However, the most popular music genres are Pop and Country, which don't benefit from the new formats. Since audio masters are evaluated quickly on what "sounds best," the ear is trained to pick the louder version (especially for Rock) without listening to subtleties. As a result, Pop and Rock masters are generally mixed to sound "loud" which compresses the sound into a small fraction of the range available to the CD. With that mastering reality, and no matter how many sound engineers suggest turning up the volume instead of destroying the audio range, Pop CDs just don't benefit from superior audio. Country is even more vocal heavy than Pop, and the 5.1 separation or expanded audio range doesn't show up there.
The fact is, most music is 1) listened to in the car on the radio or CD player, 2) by teenagers hanging out with their friends, 3) commuting urbanites on mass transit, or 4) someone looking for background music while working on the computer. Very listen music is listened to in a dedicated environment designed to maximize quality.
As a result, unless one is choosing to listen to music in an ideal way, MP3s or mini-discs which compress the music sound "about the same" in the non-ideal environment. The subtleties of music are irrelevant in a noisy car or while at the gym.
Movies are consumed in a variety of ways. Families may play a movie in the car, may watch it in the family room/living room in a relaxed environment, or may use a dedicated home theatre room. While the latter is the minority, it's not the extreme minority that music listening is.
For music, portability is key, and the ability to pop a CD in at a friend's house is important, but the ability to take your digital audio in MP3 and/or AAC/WMA and have a CD in a few minutes is part of why digital audio is popular.
For video, there just isn't a demand for portable viewing... sure the video iPod or iPhone will be popular with urban commuters, but that is are relatively small percentage of the population. The ability to grab a DVD and pop it in the kid's room, in the home theatre, etc., makes a difference.
Within a few years, either of the high definition players will crowd out conventional DVD players, because distribution costs and desire for profitability will prevent the DVD player from dropping under the $30 it is at now, and the high def players are already "cheap," sub-$500 for a cutting edge technology is historically cheap, and within two years we'll probably be under $200, and the under $100/$50 range will come within a few years. At that point, new sales of DVD players will taper-off.
The reasons that portable and digital music is so popular don't really apply to video, as they are watched differently. Most adults simply don't have the desire for handheld video (handheld televisions were NEVER mainstream, while walkmans took off like crazy when they came out).
The market for "high end" video is a larger niche... probably 5%-10% of middle to upper-middle class homes have a home theatre setup, and many more have "nice" televisions that would benefit from HDTV... If the studios were smart (and they aren't), they'd ship the dual-layer DVD/BR discs at the same price, eliminating the DVD option, which would cause rapid adoption. However, they are looking to increase the prices for HD formats, which may be their undoing. However, as Car DVD players become Car BR-DVD (or HD-DVD), and the HiDef DVDs become common, the format will take off.
The problem, IMO, is that if I have 3-4 DVD players in a house (not unreasonable, Family room, Master bedroom, plus one or more kids rooms), even if I replace the family room DVD
Right, because you can fit the same amount and quality of 50GB ~30mbit MPEG2 video onto a 9GB DVD disc. Even if MPEG4 looked just as good at 10mbit it would still be quite the feat.
Second, MPEG2 was mainly used for the initial Blu-ray releases. Casino Royale used AVC at around the same bitrate (~30mbit) and it looks fantastic. I don't even have a 1080p set. I highly doubt it would be possible to get even close to the same quality on DVD (in one disc mind you).
Finally, since it's not in the DVD spec, people would have to go out and buy new players even if DVD w/ MPEG4 was chosen as the new next gen format (and would also have to clear out their shelves to support the 5 disc movie releases in HD resolutions)
Viacom spun off Blockbuster back in 2004.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.