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HD DVD Prices Slashed By Toshiba
Hellburner writes "Hoping to stop the inevitable, Toshiba has slashed the price of entry-level HD DVD players to $150 — down from the previous $300. 'It's a half-empty, half-full moment for retailers, who could see a sales boost at the same time that some may be faced with price matching from holiday sales ... The theory: play up the acceptance by consumers who have already paid for HD DVD versus those who get it with something else like a gaming console, get more players out there--and dare studios to ignore those consumers. In addition to the sales cuts, Toshiba will launch major initiatives, including joint advertising campaigns with studios.'"
Warner joins Blu-Ray. People think the battle is over. In response, HDDVD prices are slashed. Consumer's flock to HDDVD. Battle continues.
I'm really tired of this.
Why does it matter? It's a dying format. Even if people jump on now, everyone's scrambling to get away from HDDVD discs! The real news will be when BluRay players are 150 bucks a pop.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
but still... is this too little too late....
I think more than that's needed for HD DVD to "not fail", but it still results in good value hardware hitting the market that's worth the money regardless of whether it supports a standard that may not end up going anywhere.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Toshiba can't actually set the street price at the store legally in the US. They can influence it with a lower price to the retailer. They can lower the suggested retail price, which many consumers expect the stores to match. They can offer rebates and coupons. They can't actually tell the stores they'll be selling it at exactly $150, because there are laws against that.
We've had to contend with +r and -r for dvd burning and I honestly can't tell you anything about them other than +r seems to work better with my equipment. My burner can handle both and I'm assuming if both of these formats can stay viable long enough, burners, players, and even the game consoles will eventually support both. MS is already on record stating the 360 would be able to support a BR player due to it's current high def player being external. A lot of people bitched that it wasn't included like the BR drive was with the PS3 but I think in the end they made a smart decision to go external. If the format does fail then they can easily switch and probably a lot of the people that have bought drives would buy again to get the new format.
I really don't care who wins out or if we end up with both. I'm sick of needing to replace my movie collection every however many years. I had a crap load of vhs. I now have a library of films on dvd. Am I going to replace everything with the media du jour? No. I have too much money invested in the shiny discs I already have and I don't see those going away for a very long time. Most people I know don't even have a high def tv yet and according to the story yesterday regarding the uber def format the Japanese are working on, why should I upgraded to BR or HDDVD only to have to upgraded again to support the crazy resolutions of yet another format in 2015?
How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
I have a hunch that movie studios are jumping on board with Blue Ray because they feel it's more secure. Which makes me ask, "Why haven't there been more stories about Blue Ray being cracked recently?" Anybody?
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
My mother bought me an HD-DVD for the holidays, assuming for some reason that I owned an HD player. Now, this is a series that I wanted in HD (Planet Earth), but I was going to wait till this annoying format war was over. Now of course, a month later, the format that she bought me turns out to be losing.
Anyone know if there will be some way to exchange formats, should HD-DVD finally die out? Buying a hybrid player seems like an awful waste for a single dvd. Anyone else have a contingency plan to play HD-DVD's that they own?
-dave
http://millionnumbers.com/ - own the number of your dreams
Those guys posted an awesome recreation of what is really happening at Toshiba headquarters.
Youtube clip via gizmodo : http://gizmodo.com/344885/the-downfall-of-hd-dvd-now-available-on-blu+ray
Its too late. The writing is on the wall. With almost all studios having defected to Blu-Ray primary/Blu-Ray only, anyone who's been sitting out the format war to date is not going to jump at this.
Especially since, lets face it, you'd only care about Blu-Ray/HD-DVD in the first place if you drop $1k-2k+ on the TV itself, and another $200-1K on the stereo system.
Test your net with Netalyzr
That's a fairly opinionated statement for this site. I have to say I'm disappointed. Especially so, after seeing this article has a giant Blu-Ray advertisement attached to it. Keep this up and you'll lose this reader.
Seeing how most people still don't have an HDTV, they won't bother getting either an HD-DVD player or a Blu-Ray or a combo unit (if they even make these yet). Until that changes a cheapo DVD player works fine still. It's a start, but I think whoever gets a $100 player out first will win the war. (not on sale, but one that normally retails for $100)
Isn't that a big part of what capitalism is all about? While there are two competing solutions, since they have many similar features on a technical level, they're forced to compete on price. This tends to be GOOD for the consumer, at least in the short term. (In the longer term, it can be bad as lower margins can squeeze out smaller startup competitors in the field.)
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Educational microcontroller kits for the digital generation.
I am going to purchase a Sharp HDTV later today and will be getting a free Sharp Blu Ray player with my purchase. Toshiba can cut prices all they want, you can't beat free.
I came here to make a comment, but was greeted with Bluray adds.... I hate format wars, it does nothing but to stifle acceptance. Just like the bajillion different HDTV standards during the development phase; manufactures need to accept just ONE standard and quit locking us into a standard with the sole intent to license it just to generate revenue. I might be tempted to buy a new player if it didn't become obsolete the moment I paid for it.
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
If you want your format to win in the market, you don't gouge customers for as long as you can get away with and then AFTER you lose try say "hey wait, come back" ... horse is out the barn already. (I'm not saying the other side isn't overpriced either, but it's not a format "war" if neither side does any "attacking" i.e. aggressively lower prices to win customers over.
Why doesn't the HD DVD camp just replace regular DVD releases with HD DVD combo format discs (HD DVD on one side, DVD on the other)?
Make HD-DVD disks the same price as DVDs, or less. I don't care about getting a cheap player if the disks are going to cost me 25%-75% more for a movie that looks just as good (right now) on my TV as the cheaper DVD that I already own a bunch of players for.
Meh, it doesn't really matter at this point. Digital Distribution is going to end this format war a lot faster than Sony's or Toshiba's corporate posturing.
What studios are left...that matter?
"I'm in it to win it, and no limit is my home." - Snoop Dog c/o PvP Online (July 12th, 2006)
I wonder if they timed this partially because of the recent blu-ray admission that none of the existing players but the PS3 will play new movies shortly? They may suddenly have a much larger installed base of players-that-can-play-new-movies.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
That makes them hardly more expensive than a high end upconverting DVD player, which they also are. And if HD-DVD really will go away, then hundreds of title will end up in bargain bins and be offered for next to nothing on peer-to-peer second hand markets. Just that would be enough to keep us busy and see if physical media will be replaced or not by on demand in the next couple of years. On that account, maybe it's the $400-$500 investment in a Blu Ray player that doesn't make sense.
I know many parents who still use VCRs regularly (like me!).
Little kids aren't clamoring for better-than-DVD quality. They don't care or know the difference, and parents aren't going to fork over extra $$ for it.
Read this from the Firehose the other day. Seems that the BlueRay format was not and is not finalized yet. All 1st gen players aren't going to support the final format (which sounds an awful lot like HDDVD with internet connectivity) and they won't be able to be upgraded. The only player that will continue to work is the PS3. Talk about alienating customers. This makes me think that the war is far from over.
They will drop their players down to $139 etc .... and this will all be over
I love Capitalism!
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
I got an HD-DVD when they where on sale for $98. It is only 1080i but then I only have a 1080i TV. I am hoping that it will win but I think the magic price was $100.
If there was a flood of $99.95 HD-DVD players on black Friday then HD-DVD would have won.
I thought that was going to happen.
It does do a wonderful job with upconverting and is is a very nice DVD Player.
The funny thing was when I was buying it the woman at the check out made the comment "That is an expensive DVD player." I told her that it was really cheap for an HD-DVD. She thought that all DVDs where HD.
Toshiba needs to get them under $100 then they will win.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
KEKEKE
To HD-DVD: I'll have a blu Christmas without you...
stuff |
Fire Sale...
I don't think you can compare competing solutions with competing standards.
Pick the wrong standard and you end up lumbered with a pile of useless junk.
Maybe someone can come up with a car analogy.
This is like giving away free tickets for the Titanic...Unless you have a better use for the laser.
The real question is: will their factories continue with production (after the stock of components are used up), or will they shut down - maybe even licence Blu-Ray and start building "the competition's" products.
The only indicator would be if Tosh are still ordering components - anyone know?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I really hate moves like this.
This is simply taking advantage of mom 'n pop consumers who are just out to buy a nice birthday gift or something like that and don't read consumer electronics news sites.
There's probably nothing in particular that can be done to stop it. It's simply the strong taking from the weak, where in this case the weak are the uninformed. The current moral climate in the United States seems to accept that it is perfectly OK for the strong to take from the weak as long as there's no law against it, and as long as it only involves money. But it leaves a bad taste in my mouth nonetheless.
I wonder how many of the Best Buys of the world will be warning customers that the price drop is a firesale of a product that many think will be orphaned, and how many will be stacking 'em up by the checkout isles and selling them as hard as they can?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Dell is offering a free Blu-ray player with a Sharp 46" 1080p LCD TV today ($1699 total). You can't really beat free.
Link
Why you'd waste your money on either format until the format war is over and players for the winner are priced less than $150. What's the point?
I had the choice of buying the rerelease of Bladerunner in standard DVD, HDDVD, and Blueray, but that would mean buying all new equipment to play it if I went with the new formats. All of my TV's are now HD and I still don't have digital cable so I watch standard TV and DVD's upscaled to HD. There is nothing on cable that to me would justify doubling the exhorbitant fee I pay every month to the cable company and there is nothing on disc that would justify me buying new players. So I chose the standard DVD edition. Problem solved. When there's finally something worth watching in HD I'll upgrade. HD doesn't improve the quality of the idiotic programs that today qualify as "entertainment".
While the UK version is still around $400. I'd rather like a standalone player to replace my 360 add-on drive, but not at that price when I'm also looking at needing a PS3 for most future releases.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
If they had done this earlier then HD-DVD would have probably won. Doing this now is just throwing money away. Without content it doesn't matter how cheap the player is.
So a product is being sold at a discount and somehow that "victimizes" the weak? Tough shit if the consumers don't know any better. It's simple economics: as the price drops, more units are sold. I have never heard of consumers complaining about lower prices.
If it bothers you so much, then you pay for an ad in your local newspaper warning others of the "danger" of buying electronics at a discount. Seriously, why do people even care what others are doing with their own money? It's called free will.
There are now only two studios supporting HDDVD, leaving 75% of the total content today under the aegis of studios that support only BluRay.
'The Wawr is ovuh!'
I bought a new Toshiba HD DVD player in early November, when they were closing out the A2 model. It was DOA. It took until January 8th for them to get a replacement to me. During that time, it took them 3 tries to get the mailing label right, a week to verify that the machine was, in fact, dead, and then four weeks to ship a replacement machine. Their customer service people are very good at apologizing, but completely unwilling to take responsibility for the problems or to do anything that would make amends. What am I offered for a new in-the-box Toshiba HD-A2, along with the coupon and receipt for 5 new HD-DVDs?
> you end up lumbered with a pile of useless junk. >Maybe someone can come up with a car analogy. I bought a Ford. Damn!
I support the troops. I pay f'ing taxes.
And if consumers buy enough HD-DVD players, they will switch to HD-DVD.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The current wave of HD video simply isn't enough of an improvement in quality to excite me. It's a fairly transparent game of marketing to try and jack up the basic price of plastic disks and give them more DRM.
Give me actual high-def - three or four megapixels. At the moment I'm walking past the demo screens and I'm having to check the labels to make sure it's actually hi-def and not just a good quality DVD.
Make me say "Wow!" and I'll pay this thing some attention.
Until then, I'm just not going to bother.
No sig today...
I remember looking at HD-DVD burners around the same time. It was about $600 for the Blu-Ray internal drive and it was about $1200 for an external firewire HD-DVD burner. Late spring/early summer 2007 I went to look at getting an HD-DVD burner as wedding season started. I figured the price of HD-DVD burners had dropped to the point where I could make a buck by offering the same service to others still not wanting to invest a $1000 in a burner, but still needed HD-DVD work. I could purchase the blank media at staples (both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD), which is saying something because it's a rural college town, not a big city.
So I went out shopping online and found HD-DVD drives for computers, but I couldn't find a single burner. I went to a couple specialist companies that sell high end editing equipment, and they didn't have any Pro-sumer grade HD-DVD burners (they had the high end stuff). Come to find out, the low-end/consumer/prosumer grade HD-DVD burners simply didn't exist. They weren't available.
That told me something right there. When people asked what format to buy this past christmas, I still said, "I think digital downloads is going to be the way HD-content is delivered to TV's. Whether that's Apple TV/iTunes, Amazon/Cable/Tivo/Sat. I don't know. My advice is to wait. But if you have to buy one, go Blu-Ray. I can burn Blu-Ray discs, I can't even find an HD-DVD burner.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Right here: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?Sku=T24-9148+&AffiliateID=isIkAyUyNbM-mPW6QR9OW.eqd9j6oPmXsQ
And if you can't copy and paste, bite me.
"it's a half-empty, half-full moment"
Funny, I've always thought of this format war as "twice as big as it needs to be"
I will wait until Walmart will have their say:
right now it's fifty-fifty (4/4), not counting Playstation.
http://www.walmart.com/search/browse-ng.do?ic=48_0&ref=125875.331064&catNavId=62055
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
To hell with video formats. As a laser aficionado on a limited budget, I'm just waiting for someone to win this war so I can crack open the losers' remaindered players and harvest those lovely little blue laser diodes for a fraction of the normal price.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
How about a class action suit against Sony for bribing movie companies? Restraint of trade? Monopoly? Bribery?
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Some 20 years ago Pioneer was trying to keep it's Laser Disk product alive.
They eventually got third parties to second source the player for a while, but
because of the "chicken and egg" problem to bootstrap sales, they had to
produce the software as well as the hardware. If Toshiba wants to keep HD-DVD
alive, they are going to have to license the software from the studios, press and
sell the disks themselves (just like Pioneer did with LD). They can discount the
players down to zero and they won't sell without software (except for the fact that
some of them do upscale DVD's and will play DVD-Audio, SACD, Divx, CD's, and MP3 CD's).
Dreamworks HD, and call the player the Dreamworks HD Player
The BluRay version is 1000x better.
All the "extras" on the HD-DVD version that aren't on the BluRay version are the bits they cut out of the original to make more room for ads when they aired it on Discovery. The BluRay version has those bits integrated, and has narration by David Attenborough. It makes the HD-DVD version (and the Discovery Channel version) seem un-watchable.
Whatever store she bought it at will likely exchange it for you.
I ordered this player yesterday. The combination of low price + 7 free HD-DVDs was too hard to refuse! This morning I canceled my order. I have an older 50" HDTV and a front projector, neither of which have HDMI inputs, and I discovered that this player (er, all players in fact) will only output 480p max via component. So we "early adopters" who forked over vast amounts of cash for early-gen HDTVs are now discovering that we've been screwed over royally by the HD content providers! Life sucks.
That's what the American civil courts are for:
1) Claim that you're losing money when people don't buy HD-DVD players.
2) Sue everybody to force them to buy HD-DVD players.
3) Profit.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
I'm interested in one that plays both HD formats, and both HD audio formats. What exists?
For now, I'll just enjoy my DVD collection on my DVD Upconvert player (http://dvdupconvert.wordpress.com/).
...that slashdot could make a fortune by marketing itself as a consultancy firm/consortium for everything tech related (mod system might need a '-1 Retarded Business Idea' added though); someone mentioned ages ago that if there was a scheme where you could bring in your DVD and "upgrade" to a HD-DVD/BluRay version for a nominal cost (say £5), adoption rates would skyrocket overnight. The combo DVD/HD-DVD discs were a nice thought but of little interest to people like me with extensive DVD collections (mostly ripped to my media centre).
But I guess no-one's taken up that idea because you don't get to gouge as much, plus it'd require studio backing ("why sell 1,000,000 at $5 apiece in six months when we can sell 100,000 at $30 apiece? The other 900,000 are bound to buy it at some point or other so we make more money that way!"). Still, think it would have worked out cheaper for the manufacturers in the end. If Tosh and the others had done this from the off I think the shoe would be on the other foot by now.
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
You'd never see Google or Apple slashing prices on high-definition optical players. I wonder why...?
His point is (as you could have known if you actually though a little bit) that HD-DVD appears a dead end anyway and this is just a way to dump stock. In other words: they'll have to buy Blu-Ray anyway after this, so they're effectively tricked into buying a format thats absolete from the moment of purchase.
I have sympathy for the HD-DVD format, for reasons like their blood lineage with the DVD Forum, their forsaking of Region Coding, the availability of a hybrid DVD format, the general emphasis on drive prices as cheap as possible (most people now have at least two TVs on which they expect to watch DVDs, better buying two $140 drives than two $400 drives). I don't think that consummers would stand to benefit from a format victory decided by studio executives. The best outcome in my opinion would have been co-existence. The cost of publishing movies in two different formats is very small to studios. Look at the game industry, which is thriving while having so many multi-platform games ! Mastering both Blu and HD discs is very cheap in comparison, especially using the same codec in both cases ! There is the shelf space issue but it's becoming obsolete as brick and mortar retail and rental places are vanishing. And there will be co-existence anyway, with several VOD platforms, which will be much more complicated. Would studios also exclusively supports iTunes over Amazon Unbox or Live Marketplace ?
I think the way this format war will end up is being the last nail in the coffin of physical media distribution, and that's too bad. I myself cannot shake out the need to _own_ movies and line them up on a shelf for me to browse. I must be old...
...then you really need to chill. It isn't that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. Watch some football, drink a beer or 10, and quit stressing about who will win the HD format war. Competition is good.
I wandered in and looked at some of the demos, one would think they would try and make the picture as perfect as possible. When the picture was still it looked really good, but whenever they panned or there was action the picture had a bunch of compression artifacts.
What did blow me away was OTA HD. I've been playing with and HD tuner card and the clarity really is amazing. I figure it's what the HD discs were supposed to look like. Too bad they seemed to have screwed it up.
I've been mulling over getting the HD-DVD add-on for my 360 ever since I saw Galactica advertised on HD-DVD, but I've been holding back because my 360 doesn't have an HDMI port (no HDCP) and I've already decided against "upgrading" to a newer 360 (no way to transfer DRM). However, if the price on the add-on is also going to be slashed (and if the HD-DVD format will soon be deader than BSD anyway, before they start enforcing HDCP), then I might consider buying it in spite of my non-future-proofed 360.
It has never been a question of Hi-Def (or even DVD for that matter) for parents when buying these electronic babysitters. The recent explosion has been the idea of portability of hardware. If I can keep my sister's kids quiet with a little 8" screen of Disney, veggie tales, Dora, etc. that's what I want. That includes the little portable DVD player, the built screens in a car, whatever that plays the crap they want to watch with as little headache and cost to me. They drag that sucker away from own TV, go wherever they want and leave me the hell alone.
It is a little disingenuous for the parents to claim they are buying HD or Blueray for the kids. After all it is these same people who buy the SUV for "safety." C'mon people! Is your penis really so small that you need to make up for that inadequacy?
People keep quoting your above argument, but if you look historically, it is often backwards.
When did consumers make the move en-masse and DVD started outselling VHS? Not when the quality and content difference was there - it was there from the beginning. It was when the players got cheap!
When did the DVD+R/DVD-R/DVD-RAM war end? It wasn't when one media had innvation over the other - it was when the dual-format hardware came out!
Why did VHS beat out betamax? It wasn't cause of the Porn angle, that is an urban myth (do a Google search). The real reason? VHS media was cheaper both to acquire and to record on (consumers could record 3 hour long shows on 1 tape vs. betamax's 1 ).
Consumers don't think with their heads. They think with their WALLETS. If they see high def player A on the shelf and high def player B on the shelf, and one is 1/2 the price of the other, they don't sit around doing market analysis to see what content is available on each - they buy the cheap one. Then they buy stuff that works in the cheap one.
And if your content doesn't work in their cheaper player and they know that, it won't get bought.
Yes, I know that. Again, so what? If you have XXX units in your inventory and need to clear them, then lower the price. Who's to say HD-DVD is obsolete? All the media ads I read says that HD-DVD is great! Why should the store owner take a total loss when he can dump his inventory at a lower price? The consumer gets a better deal. If it's obsolete hardware then that's the consumer's problem for not doing their homework before buying a product.
I make my own DVDs for my kids. Record Mickey Mouse Clubhouse with MythTV. Take 7 MPEG-2 files, cram them together with ULead's DVD Factory, mix and stir, run DVDShrink on the results, and boom. Practically free DVD that the kid watches OVER and OVER again. If it gets scratched - so what? I've got a backup. I've done this for a lot of their shows and/or movies. I had a High School Musical 2 DVD for them within 2 hours of it being on TV.
:)
My kids don't care if it's pixellated (it's not) or if it stutters (it does sometimes in the $20 DVD player that they use).
I am NOT buying my kids a $15+ DVD. Forget it. I have found them playing with DVDs like toys, even though they know they're not supposed to do that.
Now get off my lawn!
Maybe... but this screams out more of "Fire Sale! Everything must go!"
Forget the sales numbers of HD-DVD players. Watch the production numbers of HD-DVD disks. If that number stalls or starts dropping this thing is over for sure.
If that's a 32" HDTV, then it will look better, but going from good to great (DVD to Blu-Ray) isn't as big a step from crappy to good (regular broadcast TV to DVD.) I have a 32" Sony tube HDTV, and it's quite easy to tell when I'm watching regular broadcast cable vs. DVD vs. HD cable. But yeah, DVD's look more than good enough for me. Now that the war seems to have finally tilted, I'll pick up a Blu-Ray player when they're $100, or I can get a PS3 for $200...
The consumer gets a bad deal, because they buy defunct hardware that can play discs no-one sells. On top of that they'll have to get a BR-player anyway. The point is that people with smaller wallets will think this is a good deal when it's not, and the retailer/Toshiba knows it but just dont tell. Bordering on fraud if you ask me, because the retailer damn well knows HDDVD is sold with great promises of HD-iness. And consumers dont (shouldnt) really care about how the retailer or Toshiba gets rid of its stock, right?
Little kids aren't clamoring for better-than-DVD quality. They don't care or know the difference, and parents aren't going to fork over extra $$ for it.
Your average Walmart-shopper, Joe Sixpack says, "What's with all this blue tooth ray HD DVD nonsense... Ain't DVDs high def already anyway? After all they're digital ain't they? And they look fuggin-A awesome on my brand new Wizio 42" 720p flatscreen TV with 1000:1 contrast ratio that I bought at Wally World with my credit card. Man, I can't wait to watch some porn and some football on it. And Rambo and Chuck Norris movies too."
I'm definitely going to go buy an HD-DVD player now. There's several titles on HD-DVD that I've wanted to get but I only had a Blu-Ray player. While I wouldn't spend $300 on a player when I already have Blu-Ray but I'll spend $150. That's only like the cost of 4 movies.
Then I'll have both and I won't have to care.
Personally, I think there's room for two formats and don't see the big deal. I guess some people want decisions made for them.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Last week I bought a Philips upconverting DVD player for $59. And an HDMI cable for another $11. When plugged in to my HDTV and pumping out 1080p, I see absolutely no compelling reason to move to either Blueray or HD-DVD. So for me, and for at least the next few years, the format war is indeed over...just not the way they wanted.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
please see my sig
One simple rule for its versus it's
Because in January 2007, months before your supposed search for an HD-DVD burner, Toshiba unveiled the SD-H903A. I call bullshit on your sob story.
Please see my sig. When I see that error, I stop reading and move to the next comment.
One simple rule for its versus it's
BlueRay / HD-DVD.
At least for video the lifespan of both technologies are almost over. They are only around because of the RIAA and large media campaign against P2P networks with things like Comcast deliberately poising Torrent traffic.
I can download 1080i movies already on Bit Torrent. Why are they wasting time over plastic disks? Maybe to sell more players?
Cable companies are already setting up for another order of magnitude leap in data rates.
Docsis 3.0 will allow Cable operators to offer over 100Mbps to 160 Mbps internet access.
Broadcast HDTV for 1920x1080 is only 20Mbps. www.8vsb.com
At least BlueRay will establish itself as the next level up from DVD-Rom with things like the BenQ BW1000 Blu-ray Writer. But people are already able to Pirate BlueRay and HD-DVD movies.
The establishment doesn't get it.
They are still thinking about physical objects and not BIT's.
Renting and moving plastic disks around for movies will be as dead as vinyl in 5 years.
Heck the most kids don't even bother with CD's because MP3's/audio files are much easier to deal with.
If we use any physical media it will be something like MicroSD cards in our Cell Phones to pick up movies from Blockbuster or some vending machines. At least those of up not cool enough to stream or download them off the net. Just swipe your phone past some pad and presto HD movies uploaded into your phone, play anywhere.
This is why Steve Job's is kicking everyone ass. I can't stand Apple, but they are the only ones that "get it" and are also in a position to do something about it.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
I think the HDDVD consortium is missing a trick. ALL media sales are suffering as people don't know which HD format to choose, and are worried about buying DVDs now as they know they'll want to replace them when they do decide which format to go for. Fewer HD DVDs are being released in the 'killer' dual format (HD one side, DVD the other), which is a shame. What I propose is for the HDDVD backers to actually STOP selling "HDDVD" discs and players......... hear me out - instead the exclusive studios only release their DVDs with "bonus HD versions" on side two and a leaflet inside the box saying that the owner will enjoy the DVD but why don't they try out the fantastic version on side two? Back this up with a SHORT (ie not annoying) intro feature (using the no-skip feature they all love) and you've grabbed all the current DVD purchasers. At the same time, the manufacturers don't release HD DVD players - they turn their lines into 'HD ready' DVD players or 'DVD+HD'(similar to DVD-A being added as a feature). this is a two pronged approach that introduces people buying current DVDs and assures them their purchase is 'future proof' whilst people buying new machines are drawn in too. In both cases the average consumer is being given something for free (which they're not really. The machines and discs are the same as being sold currently), which everyone loves. this also gives people the ability to watch a HD disc on all those other devices they and their friends own. There are millions of car in-dash, car over-seat, portable, notebook, PC, console and just 'round mum and dads' players out there which will still be able to use THE SAME DISC. (a poster above mentioned how he wanted something that his kids could watch in the car so he'd stick with DVD - well, there's no reason to make that distinction in this case) Selling your DVD media and Players with a copyrighted 'HD Media ready' logo, similar (and thus familiar) to those found on new displays gives the consumer a nice warm fuzzy feeling and sales will boom.
1. It's cheap.
2. No region coding.
3. BluRay will eventually start releasing movies with an Image Constraint Token flag. HD-DVD won't. . . not after their format is "dead". Sure there'll be no new movies released. . . But all the movies in circulation will have no ICT flag to worry about.
4. After HD-DVD is dead and buried, there will be no revoking of HD-DVD AACS keys either.
Even my sisters who are just out of college and have zero money, don't use VCR's anymore. Tapes wear out after all so kids movies are the absolute worst application for them. How old are you, 90?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The media has some impact, but more obvious is the simple fact that Blu-Ray have 70% exclusive studio support makes it obvious that format won, and people realize that. People nowadays aren't taking media reports without a giant grain of salt now.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If you look at the final spec, what you'll be getting out if it are things like the ability to chat online or look at trailers over the web. If you are reading this I assume you have something else that can do this already. If you want to watch movies, there's no need to wait.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sorry, but there are not yet "thousands" of HD-DVD discs now (nor will there ever be). If you like some of the 400 titles around then great, but most (probably all) of them will be out for Blu-Ray within in the year so why spend that money for a disc that players wont exist for in a year or two?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Lower prices would of course naturally come about anyway because of multiple manufacturers making Blu-Ray players. DVD prices didn't stay up forever, after all... And all Blu-Ray providers know the REAL competition is not HD-DVD. It is DVD, and this Blu-Ray has to be priced aggressively to draw people in.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Both Blu-ray and HD-DVD use the same encryption methods, and it has been essentially cracked. Blu-ray has BD+, an alternate encryption methods that hasn't been used yet, so it hasn't had a chance to be cracked.
The way I understand it, there's not much more cracking to be done, so there haven't been any new stories. Correct me if I'm wrong...
Do not attribute to malice that which can be easily explained by incompetence.
I guess you didn't look too hard either, because if you google that model number, there are NO places that you can buy it from.
Do your homework next time, dumbass.
There are no HD-DVD burners. There are plenty of Blu-Ray burners.
HD-DVD is junk designed to lock you into a read-only marketing scam.
Guess it's no longer worth it for ppl to mod/buy the XBOX360 HDDVD Player if they can buy a stand alone for less.
Cutting the price of a product from 300$ to 150$ means that when the price was 300$, profit was over 60% of the price.
It's not fair, and not atypical of CEOs wanting to get ultra rich and exploiting the consumer market with technology.
You are talking about "crackers." Good hackers generally don't have any problem with showing their stuff to the public.
... and then they built the supercollider.
I'm no longer concerned about who wins the war since I've got a player for both now (360 and PS3, the later being free with a new TV). Having watched both types of movies however I prefer HD-DVD over Blu-Ray becuase of interactivity and features (the mandatory dual decoders makes interactive picture in picture for some extra feature types much much better than Blu-Ray), I also think it looks better. I also travel occaisonally to the US where I purchase HD-DVD titles because they have no region coding and for Blu-Ray Australia is in a different zone to the US.
With the cheapest Toshiba player with a US$150 price tag and Amazon selling the 360 addon drive for ~US$180 there will be some more life added into this war if the 360 add on drive has to go below US$99 price to make it attactive. You can't justify the price of the addon drive for more than the cost of a standalone player.
Comments here also assume that one or the other format will win over the entire world, it's still possible that one or the other may win in different places leading to two formats in different places. Assuming that does happen for HD-DVD owners (because of no region coding) that means that even if Blu-Ray wins where you are it's still possible to get movies from elsewhere. It's still entirely possible that most consumers will "just say No" and neither format will be viable commercially in the longer term and the world jumps directly to online distribution.
This is not about Sony fans vs Microsoft fans it's about which format offers you more. At this point in time most of the Blu-Ray titles in Australia are mostly back catalog titles (from what I've seen) and the more interesting releases (i.e. new or Sci-Fi and Action/Adventure) are HD-DVD releases (We get the EU/UK releases of movies for HD-DVD but most of them are just silk screened differently and are actually the US versions). That may change over time (and is likely to) but if Toshiba do sell a lot of players that is going to be hard to pass up for the content providers.
Heroes Season 1 on HD-DVD is simply beautiful to watch in Full 1080 HD.
First its not just $149, which is how much best buy, fry's etc are charging. Tiger direct has them for $129 with 7 free movies. As others have said they should have done this last year.
For HD all is not lost though, its possible that in walmart style stores they might sell a lot of them. The problem is that idiots at best buy, fry's etc will spout the same crap about technical superiority and how the war's already over that people on this board are spouting (which is shocking considering the DRM restrictions on bluray vs HD). In fact its the same crap they have been saying for the last year. In truth the image and sound quality of the two formats are basically identical (same codec's etc), the capacity limits on HD are BS since most of the blu-ray titles are on single layer 25G disks. In theory the java implementation on bluray is better, in fact it sort of sucks, reading the reviews on amazon of the bluray players gives you an idea of the problems people have with insanely slow load times, disk/player incompatibilities etc. Apparently the bluray technical committee voted against java, but the decision was overridden. Many of these problems are fixed with firmware updates, but many of the players don't have ethernet ports, and some don't even read CDR's (BDP-S300 for example) so you end up burning DVD-R's to do firmware updates. In the end, early adopters who bought standalone bluray players will need to buy new ones to get all the features the first gen HD DVD players already had. With profile 2.0 and the addition of M$'s and HDDVD's iHD format its likely many of the profile 1.1 players will only work in a degraded state if at all. Profile 2.0 could just as well be called HD DVD with extra DRM and an unused java engine maintained for backwards compatability.
For the last year or so, anyone claiming bluray was better obviously hasn't tried one of the HD DVD players. The user experience between the two is night and day, the ~$139 Toshiba A3 against the ~$299 Sony BDP-S300 (profile 1.0) is astonishing, the A3 boots in a few seconds, loads disks in a few more, and massively responsive. The semi transparent menu's smoothly fade in over playing video content, the fast forward, rewind pause actions respond instantaneously. Its really stunning, plus for those people who like alternate PIP streams and buying movie junk over the internet HD DVD's just sort of work.
Anyway, I'm all for the war. Real competition is good for everyone, I don't care if the $99 player is being subsidized (i'm not sure the subsity is that large, the HD technology isnt some super advanced stuff, compared to $50 upscaling DVD players) to gain market share. What I care about is that I can get a really nice HD player for $129 and HD movies for ~$10-$15. Even bluray fanboy's should be loving this war as they snatch up heavily discounted disks, and the price of bluray players falls 300% a year. My personal bias wishes that the war lasts another year or two in a stalemate, hopefully by that time the dual format players will be available for ~$150 and the single format players less than $100. This is the best route for the customer, if this doesn't happen don't expect the prices of HD dvd's to be less than $20, and the players won't fall in price for another 5 years or so.
So perhaps in reality your argument is reversed? My observations support it. More tech, more education, more wealth, all lead to less kids.
Soon enough we'll be over run by the Luddites because:
They couldn't afford an HDTV so they f*cked the evening away instead of watching '300' in HD.
They can't afford season tickets to the local sports franchise so they drank cheap bourbon and Coke and f*cked all afternoon while the game was shown on their Low-D TV.
Can't afford to go on vacation in Europe and look at a bunch of ancient, but very carefully stacked, piles of rocks so instead on their day off they slept late after a good night of f*cking.
Don't have enough education to know better so instead of spending money on doctor appointments and contraceptives they...
Etc...
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
And has eyes that can still see the difference, then take him to a store and show him. The dual sided HD/DVD of '300' is a decent example. Play the low-D side in the HD-DVD player, which also upscales low-D DVDs. Then play the HD side in the same player-HDTV combination. He won't argue about quality anymore. He might switch to "It still costs too much, not worth it" or somesuch, but he won't try to keep up the "Just as good as...", "There's no difference..." arguments anymore.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO