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.'"

Comments

Mass return of all BluRay players?

[Christopher_G_Lewis]

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.

PC's go to HD-DVD, HD video to hdd, BluRay nowhere

[gregconquest]

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.

Here's to you, Blu-Ray fanboys...

[Enahs]

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.