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Evolving Blu-ray Format Will Leave Some Behind
Reservoir Hill writes "Blu-ray may have taken a commanding lead in the next-generation format war, but Betanews is reporting that early supporters of Blu-ray will be left out in the cold when the Blu-ray Disc Association introduces BD Profile 2.0, expected to arrive in October. Unlike HD DVD, which from the very beginning mandated features such as local storage, a second video and audio decoder for picture-in-picture, and a network connection, the companies behind Blu-ray took a different approach to keep costs down. 'We should have waited another year to introduce Blu-ray to the public, but the format war changed the situation,' said one developer. Representatives at the Blu-ray booth at CES said that the PlayStation 3 is currently the only player they would recommend, due to upcoming changes to the platform. Asked if they were concerned about a backlash from early adopters who supported the format from the beginning, one representative said: 'They knew what they were getting into.'"
... and only post?
WTF is going on here? Where are all the comments?
I guess this is the ultimate statement that BluRay is irrelevant.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
When BlueRay was first unvailed it was already behind HD-DVD. It was few months late and not all glitches were fixed and all features done. Now, they are finally getting all features complete. This is the result. Incompatible upgrade.
Of course, if a player has firmware upgrade capabilities, it may not be obsolete.
- Not going to work
- Incapable of working
- Going to not work
- Gonna unwork
- Es non worko
- Really not going to work
- So not going to work.
Yes! More blue laser diodes for cheaper. Will Blu-ray burners be going obsolete as well?
Warner Bros. biggest reason for switch to BR was that the format war was causing customers to buy fewer movies altogether (not just HD movies). This sort of thing isn't going to help ease the confusion. In addition, HD DVD is going to throw in everything they've got. I would imagine you will see HD DVD players at absurdly low prices, because even if they are losing a hundred bucks on each player, they are still recouping SOME cost. If you get the average consumer to look at it and realize, well this HD DVD player is $200 less than Blu-Ray, and the BR one might not even work in a couple months (even if that is not the actual situation, that possibility is still floating around), you may begin to see a rise in HD DVD sales.
I think the most important thing we've seen from Paramount and Universal's relationship with HD DVD is that these are NOT binding contracts. If there is any sort of significant consumer momentum towards HD DVD, studios are not going to hesitate to go where the money is. Just because Blu-Ray has a massive lead right now doesn't mean it will stay that way; remember, high-def movie sales are still a TINY fraction of total movie sales.
So will we now see a mass return of all the recently bought BluRay players?
This is *exactly* friggin' why technology gets such a crappy reputation. Products not ready for mainstream are pushed out because marketing says its time.
I really hope that this does in BluRay - friggin' DRM ridden POS.
BTW - why don't you see a huge backlash against BluRay for region coding? I was just visiting friends that are ex-pats in Spain, and in order to watch their DVD's, they have *3* players hooked up - US, Europe and Australian - to deal with DVD's they have from everywhere they've lived.
None of that crap with HD-DVD - they eliminated regionalization.
www.christopherlewis.com
Compatibility makes HD-DVD a natural PC component. There are no downsides. I wouldn't get a stand-alone player of any kind now. I'll stay with regular DVD and use my hard drive and HTPC for HD content for the next several years. However, in building a new PC, putting in an HD-DVD is becoming a nice option. You still have the ability to read and burn regular DVD+/-R's, and you can can burn a HD-DVD as well, though these will not be readable till HD-DVD replaces regular DVD on PC's.
HD-DVD will never replace the DVD has a storage device on a computer, atleast not in the long term. A Blue Ray disc holds approximately 20 gigs more of data than an HD-DVD does. Until a DRM type anti-theft encoding measure can be agreed upon in the entertainment world so that small and portable solid state storage devices may be use to hold our beloved information, then Blue Ray wins hands down. If anything, give props to Sony for actually winning a battle for once.
WWPD - What Would Picard Do?
Here's to you, Blu-Ray fanboys who said 'you knew what you were getting into' when some of us bought HD-DVD players...
"HA-HA!"
Looks like, as I predicted, we're all getting burned, and as usual, the real winners are the hardware manufacturers, who'll be able to sell you yet another player, and the studios, who get even harsher DRM than HD DVD had. The losers are the people who actually believed in a. the future-proof nature of Blu-Ray and b. the people who believed in HD DVD being standardized and cheaper, thus "better."
Oh, well. At least us early HD adopters know we got decent upscaling DVD players, right? LOL
At least the people who bought Toshiba units at Christmas time got Oppo-comparable quality at an Oppo-comparable price. Not that I'm trolling for flames or anything.
Maybe the real losers will be the studios, when people decide that they're still confused and see Blu constantly trashed in the press. It's a great format, don't get me wrong, but hearing stuff like this really does kill consumer confidence, and coming out with the format early just to fight off HD DVD, then having studios cut support for the finalized, cheaper format right as the price gets into interesting range, is, I predict, going to have the effect which Warner was seeking to avoid by dropping HD DVD.
Or maybe none of this will matter at all when the global economic depression hits.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Well, yeah; price and the incomplete BR spec are two factors that went into me buying an Toshiba HD-A3 a mere week before Warner's bombshell. I kept mine rather than opting for an Oppo because I only have Region 1 DVDs, don't play SVCDs (and if I do, I have a SD DVD player that does fine for that) and don't care about JPEG slideshows or Divx playback, so for less than an Oppo I got something that plays DVDs about as well as an Oppo. Now, it might be limited to 1080i but at my TV's size (32") I can't really tell the difference...for all I know, the TV just deinterlaces it.
Would I buy into Blu-Ray before Christmas, or possibly before next year? Nope. It's still too much in the air. So from my perspective, the studios just kinda gave up on high-def for now, and went for DRM. Yeah, I know, I know; Blu-Ray is technologically superior. It's also crippled and incomplete, with the crippling being the only reason studios are going nutso over Blu. Better tech for the wrong reason is just wrong tech, in my book.
OTOH, HD DVD, while inferior, is ready NOW and with good transfers looks FANTASTIC. And before you scoff, I've seen it on larger sets, and it does indeed look fantastic. I couldn't help but notice that my local Best Buy FINALLY put an HD DVD display up, and the content they're playing on both...no contest, whoever authored the Blu content was a monkey, as it looks like ass, and the HD DVD content looks fantastic. Hm...$200 to get in on HD that looks nice, or $400 for theoretically superior but looks like ass...hm...
But yeah, if the word gets out that the Toshiba units also make awesome DVD players, likely upscaling better than your TV does, you'll likely see the things start to sell like hotcakes, espec
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Seems to me that having a MASSIVE amount of players on the market might sway studios back into HD-DVD. Seems like Toshiba could take their second generation player, the very fine HD-A2 and mass produce the thing like crazy and sell them for $89 and push the crap out of them in advertising and store spiffs.
If they can sell for under $100 out the door and Toshiba can keep stores supplied with them the market could easily shift back into the HD-DVD camp. Studios would be retarded not to support a format that has so many players for so cheap (though the power of stupidity is strong in Hollywood). That price point is a guilt free price for most any consumer.
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
I bought the same player from Amazon just before Christmas when it was $198, It's $139.98 right now.
Here's a tip for anyone not aware: Call 1-800-201-7575
dial extension 7. Ask about their 30-day price guarantee
They will refund you the difference between the current price and what you paid for it within 30 days as long as it was sold directly by Amazon. Amazon rocks!!! You'll need to give them the order # so have that handy when you call.
I don't regret purchasing this player, it's an awesome upconverting DVD player. Plus I can rent HD DVDs and play them unlike with an Oppo or other upconverting player.
What about people who buy profile 2.0 players, do they know what they are getting themselves into? I'd be a bit cautious of buying hardware whose specification is controlled by people who have already shown they're not averse to making obsolete players that were bought less than a year ago.
To be clear: as I understand it the changes in profile 2.0 are at the hardware level, so no firmware upgrade will enable older players to be able to handle the features offered by profile 2.0 discs. The PS3 is presumably the exception since most operations it performs are software based thanks to having plenty of horse power to spare.
The skeptic in me can't help thinking that these "upgrades" will come at the rate of every couple of years or so to force people to buy new hardware.
The local WalMart has a stack of BluRay media in a prominent location with leading movies on at a very good price. The stack is neat, tidy and hardly touched. Asked a checkout person in the electronics area how sales were. She said she has seen them but personally has not sold one since before Christmas.
Or as one potential sale said "BluRay must be some kind of game system"
Still waiting for the critical mass of buyers I guess.
"and with good transfers looks FANTASTIC" What I don't get, is that you seem to understand how a good DVD could be encoded as a bad HD-DVD, but you watch ONE HD-DVD/Blu-ray comparison, and conclude that Blu-ray has inferior video quality. Hm...$200 to get in on HD that looks nice, or $400 for theoretically superior but looks like ass...hm... ... and one only plays movies while the other is really a PS3?
Were you intentionally trying to mislead everyone with that whole paragraph?
Maybe the public needs to be convinced how significant Blu-ray is compared to dvd format; Possibly the dvd format itself, or dvd players (and components) could be improved to produce quality and other benefits comparable to any perceived value of the Blu-Ray format...
I read somewhere that there was going to be a huge price drop in the HD-DVD players. However, I think it might be mostly to get rid of inventory. A friend of mine recently got a HD-DVD player, and he was a little bit disappointed because it increasing looks like BR will win. I told him not to worry, because he will be able to get a lot of deals on movies. I was pretty fortunate to find a small video rental store that was cleaning out laser discs just as DVDs were becoming popular and got a lot of movies cheap. I would bet pawn shops will have a lot of good deals.
As for region codes, the lack of region codes on the HD DVD delayed several New Line releases for HD DVD behind the DVD and blu-ray release because HD DVD lacked region locking. None of that matters now that New Line is Blu-ray exclusive. I have over 80 titles in my blu-ray collection that are region free. Feel free to google for "region free blu-ray".
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
This is *exactly* friggin' why technology gets such a crappy reputation. Products not ready for mainstream are pushed out because marketing says its time.
It's OK, 99.44% of people who will eventually own a Blu-Ray player haven't even heard of it yet. By next Christmas, this should be sorted out and there might be a few $200 players for sale.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
If I go out and pay $400 dollars on a player, I expect it to support the full spectrum of BD features, just like the "doorstop" in my rack right now. But they won't, and never will. To me that's the very definition of crippled; hey, I might not ever use the BD Live features, but I dislike the idea of buying into the format if I know the current players will be that much obsolete before the year is out.
Much as purchasers of higher-end stuff don't like to admit it, more middle-class consumers don't like to blow tha t kind of money on something that's planned do be obsolete in less than a year. In my rack, I also have a CD changer that dates to March 1990. Would I have gotten it if I had known it was going to be totally obsolete in 1991? Doubtful; the thing cost about $300 back then.
The fact is, just being the format that 70% of the studios behind something isn't going to be enough to boost consumer confidence. If anything, having a studio pull the rug out from under me just SHOOK my confidence. How am I to know that, if BD sales don't go up, we won't just see studios drop support for BOTH formats?
Face it; DVD is heavily entrenched and for people like me, had fate not swayed my hand and forced me to replace a burnt-out unit, I would still be cherrily watching movies on my DVD player. As it is, I'm using my HD DVD unit largely as a DVD player, and have no plans to run out and splooge all over myself to get a BD player. After being burnt on one format, I'm not in a big hurry to jump into the other.
And do you think Disney's going to be a big factor in winning parents over to BD? Maybe, but I think not; how many minivans will be shipping with BD players this year?
I hate to tell you this, but every single POS display I've seen for Blu-Ray has video that looks like shit. Not so on the inferior, dead HD DVD format. It's puzzling since both use the same codecs but BD DL disks have higher capacity. I guess they could all be set up wrong, but I would think that the same retail monkey who sets up the BD display would also do the HD display. It's really weird.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.