If someone pays good money for a blu-ray player, it ought to work.
Blu-Ray players work, old ones play new movies. No problem. They can not do the extra features that are on the disks, but they can play the movies etc.
Depends on what you want. If you want to make money developing software, systems programming is the way to go. That is where the money is, but it may not be as "fun" as other programming. Reality however is that no matter what job you get, most of it is going to be "dumb" routine for most of the time anyway, so I wouldn't worry too much about how fun things are.
So, for money as a developer learn Java, Oracle, DB2, Web services etc. That will get you the decent paying jobs in the short run. Make sure you are a generalist though, what is hot today is cold tomorrow. Well, except for Oracle and DB2 that is.
More importantly, if you want to make real money, is to learn something that has nothing to do with technology. Technologists (OK, geeks) are a dime a dozen these days, and getting cheaper by the minute. What the industry is seriously lacking is geeks with other skills. Social skills perhaps:-). Not really joking. Take classes in public speaking. If you work in the private sector you'll make more money teaching people technology than actually working with it. Learn something about business and economy. A sales engineer (a technology savvy person who can convince people he knows stuff and that his stuff is better than the other guy's stuff) makes twice what an engineer does, or even more, and he works less. A lot less. He also has a lot more fun.
The hardest thing to find in technology is someone who really gets technology and can communicate this to others. Sales. Teaching. Evangelizing. They all pay better than the pure technology job, and it is also a job you can have past forty without going insane. If you like your self and want a family, make sure you don't end up coding past forty. It's not worth it.
Also PCs support wireless networking. Very few blu-ray players do
The most common Blu-Ray player on the market today is the PS3, and it supports wireless networking. Since the PS3 is the most popular player, the other manufacturers will have to match it in features (the new announced players clearly have the PS3 in their sight), so long before the regular consumers get their players, wireless will be the norm.
From normal viewing distances (NOT standing 4 ft away in a shop) most people can't even tell the difference between high definition and standard definition on the average 32" screen
This is absolutely correct, and the vast majority of the people who have 32" screens do not have HD capabilities. Therefore, what people with 32" screens can and can not see is totally irrelevant, they can't even plug their HD player into their TV and get any kind of picture at all. HD is for people who recently bought new TVs, TVs with HDMI inputs that are HD capable. Most of these are in the 42" and up range, and on these TVs anyone who is not blind can tell the difference.
I do like your argument though, it is funny. Way back when, when the BBC moved from black and white to color, you would have been arguing that it was a stupid move on part of BBC since most people didn't have color TVs and therefore would not be able to tell the difference.
I suggest you take a reading class. You seem to have failed the last one you took. The following is what I quoted and responded to. In that he talks about standard definition DVDs vs either of the two HD formats.
not going to notice a significant advantage either format has over DVD
More important: Higher bandwidth. Not only can you store more data on the disk, you can transfer more of it to the TV in real time. That means better picture. 33% higher bandwidth.
anyone who doesn't have a very, very, large TV, that does 1080 and has a really good contrast ratio is not going to notice a significant advantage either format has over DVD
Is 42" "very, very, large"? Does a 1080p Westinghouse LCD have a "really good contrast ratio"? That's my setup, and if you can't see the difference between upconverted DVD and HD on my TV you are blind as a bat.
these firmware updates will be needed for the next year or two anyway because the Blu-ray spec, unlike HD DVD, still hasn't been finished.
Old information. 1.1 players are out, 2.0 will be out early this spring. Loooong before there is any serious uptake in HDM players in the consumer market. This is a non-issue, but often sited by zealots.
a system unusable to a large portion of the population who neither have the skills nor resources to ensure their players are connected to the Internet.
I probably don't have as much respect for "the common man" as I should. I am not dumb enough to state things about him that flies in the face of observed fact though. The vast majority of people who are going to buy a Blu-Ray player is already on the 'net. Naturally. They were able to connect their PC/Mac to the 'net, why would you think they would not be able to do so with their player? Hell, even my 65 year old father was able to install a wireless router in his house when he upgraded from a desktop to a laptop and from POTS to VoIP, and believe me, if it isn't a hammer, he doesn't much know what to do with a tool. When he goes Blu-Ray, his player will most likely have a wireless connection, so it won't be an issue at all.
As others have pointed out, Sony already won a few format wars, the 3.5" disk and the CD. Also, you could easily argue that Sony won several other format wars too, but perhaps not on your battle field.
Video - Beta: Sure, they lost the consumer market, but the seriously won the professional market
Audio - Minidisk: Again, a loss in the consumer market, but not so in the professional market.
Various - DAT: Definitely a loss in the consumer market, but a decent win in the professional and data markets
It's all about your perspective. The pros have been using Sony only for a long time in many areas.
I have some experience with corporate communication, and that statement is 100% equivalent to: "Oooops, shit happened, and we now have to re-evaluate what to do, but we can't really say anything at all until the lawyers have looked into this for a while".
On the other hand, it would also be equivalent to: "Oooops, shit happened. But screw WB, we are sticking to our guns for as long as we can".
Despite the fact that Tosh has been dumping players at somewhere around 1/2 of production price, the uptake of HD DVD has been pretty dismal. In fact, uptake of HDM in general has been dismal. This is the problem Warner was facing. They, and only they, had the power to put an end to a format war that kept the consumer on the fence. To do so they only had one move open to them. They made it.
There is no reason to think Warner was paid off in the way Paramount was, but it is not unreasonable to assume they got some good disk-printing incentives. Warner executives denies Warner was paid, and with Sarbanes-Oxley, it is reasonable to assume they are speaking the truth about that. I find it odd that the HD DVD fanboys are so adamant that Warner is unable to make rational business decisions. As with most nutcase theories, there has to be a conspiracy somewhere.
Oh, and BTW, in December, the sales of stand alone Blu-Ray players was higher than that of HD DVD players, despite the fact that they are priced twice or more of HD DVD. So, what can we say? Even when you give away HD DVD players, the general public say shrug, I don't care. That hurts everybody, and Warner needed to do something about that.
Combine that with the fact that less than 1 in 5 PS3 owners even know they have a BD player....
Now, now, let's not just make up numbers willy nilly or distort pretty ancient numbers. A good portion of PS3 players by now was sold with a Blu-Ray movie, the consumer isn't that stupid.
I'll stick with DVDs.
And that is your prerogative. I prefer to watch HD movies. You apparently want to watch SD movies rather than going with a format that your religion says you should not use. Good for you.
Because HD DVD would be dead in the water without it. That doesn't say anything about why Microsoft pushed it. Pushed it despite the fact that Toshiba didn't really want to do it. If you want to read up on the history of the formats I'd recommend www.google.com. For your own edification.
I have no idea how the many early blu ray players are going to work.
How about "all of them"? They won't have interactive internet oriented features, but they will still work. Besides, these were bought by early adopters. Early adopters are going to move to 2.0 compatible players this year without thinking about it. That is the nature of early adopters. They have hundreds of dollars to piss away down the "early adopter" drain every month. They simply do not care.
If you were an early adopter on a tight budget, then you were an idiot.
There is a huge market potential for HD-DVD in backups.
Wish it was so. After years and years, even the inventor of the HD DVD format, Toshiba, has been unable to create a HD DVD writer that works. Think about that for a second. They simply can't do it. You can bet your ass they have tried. Are they incompetent or is it that hard? With the format now dead, you can bet your ass those people in Toshiba R&D are being moved, head and beard, to the new Blu-Ray division. This means that there will never be a working HD DVD writer on the market. Ever.
Burnable Blu-Ray has been on the market for quite a while. I'll go with what works. I have a Blu-Ray player in my home theater setup, and I will probably install a Blu-Ray burner some time this spring once the new 4x burners come down a little in price.
HD DVD was created for one, and only one reason. Microsoft wanted the world to use Windows 9 media encoding rather than industry standard MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 encoding. That is the only reason that HD DVD exists today. The entire format was created for the single reason of pushing a proprietary encoding standard from a company with years and years of history of pushing inferior, proprietary, pay-MS-or-die technologies onto the consumer.
I simply do not understand how someone can be paranoid about Sony (who is only a member of the Blu-Ray alliance, and not the owner of the Blu-Ray format) and at the same time embrace a format created specifically to tie consumers, both disk-buying consumers and streaming and download consumers, to the cold, strangling embrace of Microsoft.
That was the purpose of the creation of the format for Pete's sake.
Blu-ray is alive today only because a punch of pimply-faced teens got a PS3 for Christmas, and suddenly believed that they had to defend all things Sony
This is just sad. Retarded. And sad. Last Christmas the sale of the PS3 wasn't all that high. This Christmas it was way too late to claim that Christmas gifts had anything to do with the uptake of Blu-Ray at all since Blu has been outselling HD DVD all year.
Not only are users going to get fucked on the price of hardware
How are they getting fucked? The Blu camp is selling the Blu players at a moderate profit. Toshiba is dumping players at about 1/3 of the production cost. Do you really feel that in order for you not go "get fucked" on price, your vendor has to sell you a product at 1/3 of his production cost?
that is for those of us who don't want a media player in the form of game machine
If you are looking for a Blu-Ray player, perhaps one that is also a capable Media Center, why would you care if it can also play games? Particularly if you are not intending to play games. Is there some divine punishment in store for you if you put a Blu-Ray player that in theory can also play games (it can't if you don't buy them) into your living room?
When people actually intentionally buy a next generation media player, they overwhelmingly chose HD-DVD
Overwhelmingly? Not really, and not any more. In December, according to the NPD numbers, standalone Blu players outsold HD DVD players.
yeah, expect divx like lock-downs and timed rentals soon enough with blu-ray. It's commming....
Funny. Argument by Paranoid Delusions. That's a new one.
What argument? You stated that HD DVD was on the uptake, this simply isn't the case. In December there were more stand alone Blu-Ray players sold than there was HD DVD players. In addition there has been a significant increase in the number of PS3s sold, further widening the gap between HD DVD and Blu-Ray.
You stated that the my and Warners argument about why WB would and should go Blu was well presented. You then state, with no arguments whatsoever, that it is wrong. If you had any facts to back up your "arguments" you would have presented them. Until you do, I have to assume they originate in your fantasy.
How about standalone players in the final quarter of 2007?
Ah, yes, the standard "The PS3 doesn't count" argument. Absurd. So, when NPD says that standalone Blu-Ray players outsold HD DVD players in December, that is WB and Blu-Ray fanboy fantasy? Come on. With prices dropping to $99, which is pure dumping on part of Toshiba, they still couldn't keep the sales up. Some surge!
'm not defending HD-DVD, even if I'm intelligent to realize that it's a much better value proposition for consumers
Wonder why you think so. Blu-Ray has higher storage capacity and 33% higher bandwidth. This means better picture quality, particularly the bandwidth. If you are going HD, why not with the highest possible quality? Blu-Ray also has a menu system that is better design than HDi with BDj. Why would the inferior technology be better? There have been burnable Blu drives in the market for quite some time, Toshiba still hasn't been able to deliver a burner that works. How is that better for the consumer?
The HD DVD camp has primarily harped on two points. The first is the lack of 1.1 and 2.0 capable players in the Blu camp. OK, fine. 1.1 is now in the box, and 2.0 is approaching fast. The early adopters have not had any problems with this, but the consumer in general would struggle a little. Given that they mostly have bought PS3s, that's not an issue in reality since the PS3 is software upgradeable to 1.1 and 2.0, and this is basically transparent to the end user.
The second point from the HD DVD camp has been DRM. For the end user that is irrelevant.
One million standalone HD-DVD players were sold during 2007, and the pace was rapidly accelerating.
Yes, the fantasy of HD DVD fanboys. No, the pace was not accelerating at all. Even with Toshiba dumping the players at less than about 1/3 of the production cost, they were not able to sell any significant number of players, and in December of 2007, with Blu-Ray player prices significantly above that of HD DVD players, Blu-Ray standalone players out sold HD DVD.
HD-DVD was galloping to dominance at a rapid pace.
Again, fantasy born out of pure wishful thinking. Until the second week of December, Blu-Ray software out sold HD DVD at somewhere between 2-1 and almost 4-1. The Transformer release had close to no impact on that number, only a single blip in a single week. The Bourne release had a slightly higher impact, propelling HD DVD software to a 39% market share for the final two weeks of December. That was the peak. Without the Warner announcement last week, the HD DVD numbers would have dropped down to the normal of about 25-35% market share, and stayed there.
Warner was paid off with absolute certainty, and the number was substantial.
It is interesting that you claim this, but you can not substantiate it. Neither can you produce a single argument that goes against the very compelling business argument I made which makes 100% sense, but which you conveniently avoid altogether since it would burst your fanboy bubble.
Indeed, the market hasn't spoken at all, and the likely explanation for Warner's decision was some back office hand greasing.
I have to disagree with this one. It seems rather unlikely that the explanation for Warner's decision was greasing given the fact that the camp that has been spending the most time with Warner trying to grease them was the HD DVD camp. In fact, the insiders claim that Tosh and MS was visiting Warner once again late last week to sway them away from Blu with somewhere between $300 and $500M in incentives, but that they got nowhere
Warner essentially looked at the following:
Stay format neutral - result: Format war goes on for another three to five years at worst.
Go with HD DVD - result: Similar to the above, since Disney and Sony are well entrenched in the Blu camp, going HD DVD would not do anything to end the format war.
Go Blu exclusive - result: Probably ending the format war in early 2008.
So, what should Warner do? Well, essentially the biggest threat to Warner revenue in the HD space is not HD DVD vs Blu-Ray, it is HD vs SD, that is Any-HD-Format vs regular DVDs. And the HD formats are not winning right now. The reason - consumers are waiting for the war to end. Even worse for Warner, market trends indicate that consumers have now put DVD purchasing on hold waiting for the end of the HDM war. That is bad news all around.
Given any reasonable analysis of the current state of the market, going Blu was the only rational option for Warner, and they made a sound business decision. The rumor is that they got incentives from someone in the Blu production line to go Blu, in other words, lower cost of pressing Blu disks. This is not likely a very important factor for Warner given that they would probably be able to negotiate good year-over-year deals for pressing disks in the next few years. In other words, the current value of the deal, assuming the $500M is correct, is $500M, but the future value is significantly less as the cost of disk pressing goes down.
Viewing a DVD is 10X as hard as viewing a video Cassette
I'm sorry, but what??? If watching a DVD is 10x as hard to accomplish as anything I that has to do with playing anything at all, then I feel really sorry for you. I hope they find a cure real soon.
No, food is not preferable to a PC, really. Didn't anyone ever teach you the old "Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he eats for life". This is a silly analogy, but it is true. The fact that the west gives Africa food all the time is one of the main reasons for the continents poverty. We should stop sending food and start enabling.
Zimbabwe is a country in one of the words power-stricken parts of Africa. Until a few years back it was doing phenomenally well due purely to reasonably good management. Compared to the mismanaged countries around it it was like a cool oasis in Hell. Now that Zimbabwe has fallen to the same plague that the rest (well, large parts of) Africa is suffering from, namely absurdly bad governance, zimbabwans are dying by the truckload. They will continue to do so for a while too, until they learn that poverty is something you create your self in most instances, and you have to fix it yourself too.
Hey look, my server's melting -- must of hit slashdot...
Must have! Must HAVE!
How can you write a paper revolutionizing our understanding of physics if you don't use proper grammar?!
This is precisely why he can. People who stay locked up in thinking (and therefore writing) like everybody else, can not write a paper revolutionizing anything at all.
It doesn't matter to the religious environmentalists. Their god on earth is Gaia, the benign, but oh so tortured, earth. Any change made to Gaia is sacrilege. Transferring this absurdity to Luna makes, in their heads, 100% sense.
Whether the player costs $200 or $300 when your TV costs $1200
Why do you have to buy the TV first?
Simple. If you are thinking about buying an HD player right now you want an HD TV. If you already have a TV and you are a HD-DVD/Blu-Ray potential customer you most likely already have a DVD player. If you are not a potential HiDef customer, in nine out of ten cases you are not going to be "logical" and buy an HD-DVD player, you'll just get a $50 DVD player.
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Blu-Ray players work, old ones play new movies. No problem. They can not do the extra features that are on the disks, but they can play the movies etc.
Depends on what you want. If you want to make money developing software, systems programming is the way to go. That is where the money is, but it may not be as "fun" as other programming. Reality however is that no matter what job you get, most of it is going to be "dumb" routine for most of the time anyway, so I wouldn't worry too much about how fun things are.
So, for money as a developer learn Java, Oracle, DB2, Web services etc. That will get you the decent paying jobs in the short run. Make sure you are a generalist though, what is hot today is cold tomorrow. Well, except for Oracle and DB2 that is.
More importantly, if you want to make real money, is to learn something that has nothing to do with technology. Technologists (OK, geeks) are a dime a dozen these days, and getting cheaper by the minute. What the industry is seriously lacking is geeks with other skills. Social skills perhaps :-). Not really joking. Take classes in public speaking. If you work in the private sector you'll make more money teaching people technology than actually working with it. Learn something about business and economy. A sales engineer (a technology savvy person who can convince people he knows stuff and that his stuff is better than the other guy's stuff) makes twice what an engineer does, or even more, and he works less. A lot less. He also has a lot more fun.
The hardest thing to find in technology is someone who really gets technology and can communicate this to others. Sales. Teaching. Evangelizing. They all pay better than the pure technology job, and it is also a job you can have past forty without going insane. If you like your self and want a family, make sure you don't end up coding past forty. It's not worth it.
The most common Blu-Ray player on the market today is the PS3, and it supports wireless networking. Since the PS3 is the most popular player, the other manufacturers will have to match it in features (the new announced players clearly have the PS3 in their sight), so long before the regular consumers get their players, wireless will be the norm.
This is absolutely correct, and the vast majority of the people who have 32" screens do not have HD capabilities. Therefore, what people with 32" screens can and can not see is totally irrelevant, they can't even plug their HD player into their TV and get any kind of picture at all. HD is for people who recently bought new TVs, TVs with HDMI inputs that are HD capable. Most of these are in the 42" and up range, and on these TVs anyone who is not blind can tell the difference.
I do like your argument though, it is funny. Way back when, when the BBC moved from black and white to color, you would have been arguing that it was a stupid move on part of BBC since most people didn't have color TVs and therefore would not be able to tell the difference.
I suggest you take a reading class. You seem to have failed the last one you took. The following is what I quoted and responded to. In that he talks about standard definition DVDs vs either of the two HD formats.
More important: Higher bandwidth. Not only can you store more data on the disk, you can transfer more of it to the TV in real time. That means better picture. 33% higher bandwidth.
Given the fact that there are no 2.0 enabled movies out yet - you could probably say that :-)
Is 42" "very, very, large"? Does a 1080p Westinghouse LCD have a "really good contrast ratio"? That's my setup, and if you can't see the difference between upconverted DVD and HD on my TV you are blind as a bat.
Old information. 1.1 players are out, 2.0 will be out early this spring. Loooong before there is any serious uptake in HDM players in the consumer market. This is a non-issue, but often sited by zealots.
I probably don't have as much respect for "the common man" as I should. I am not dumb enough to state things about him that flies in the face of observed fact though. The vast majority of people who are going to buy a Blu-Ray player is already on the 'net. Naturally. They were able to connect their PC/Mac to the 'net, why would you think they would not be able to do so with their player? Hell, even my 65 year old father was able to install a wireless router in his house when he upgraded from a desktop to a laptop and from POTS to VoIP, and believe me, if it isn't a hammer, he doesn't much know what to do with a tool. When he goes Blu-Ray, his player will most likely have a wireless connection, so it won't be an issue at all.
As others have pointed out, Sony already won a few format wars, the 3.5" disk and the CD. Also, you could easily argue that Sony won several other format wars too, but perhaps not on your battle field.
It's all about your perspective. The pros have been using Sony only for a long time in many areas.
I have some experience with corporate communication, and that statement is 100% equivalent to: "Oooops, shit happened, and we now have to re-evaluate what to do, but we can't really say anything at all until the lawyers have looked into this for a while".
On the other hand, it would also be equivalent to: "Oooops, shit happened. But screw WB, we are sticking to our guns for as long as we can".
Despite the fact that Tosh has been dumping players at somewhere around 1/2 of production price, the uptake of HD DVD has been pretty dismal. In fact, uptake of HDM in general has been dismal. This is the problem Warner was facing. They, and only they, had the power to put an end to a format war that kept the consumer on the fence. To do so they only had one move open to them. They made it.
There is no reason to think Warner was paid off in the way Paramount was, but it is not unreasonable to assume they got some good disk-printing incentives. Warner executives denies Warner was paid, and with Sarbanes-Oxley, it is reasonable to assume they are speaking the truth about that. I find it odd that the HD DVD fanboys are so adamant that Warner is unable to make rational business decisions. As with most nutcase theories, there has to be a conspiracy somewhere.
Oh, and BTW, in December, the sales of stand alone Blu-Ray players was higher than that of HD DVD players, despite the fact that they are priced twice or more of HD DVD. So, what can we say? Even when you give away HD DVD players, the general public say shrug, I don't care. That hurts everybody, and Warner needed to do something about that.
Now, now, let's not just make up numbers willy nilly or distort pretty ancient numbers. A good portion of PS3 players by now was sold with a Blu-Ray movie, the consumer isn't that stupid.
And that is your prerogative. I prefer to watch HD movies. You apparently want to watch SD movies rather than going with a format that your religion says you should not use. Good for you.
Because HD DVD would be dead in the water without it. That doesn't say anything about why Microsoft pushed it. Pushed it despite the fact that Toshiba didn't really want to do it. If you want to read up on the history of the formats I'd recommend www.google.com. For your own edification.
How about "all of them"? They won't have interactive internet oriented features, but they will still work. Besides, these were bought by early adopters. Early adopters are going to move to 2.0 compatible players this year without thinking about it. That is the nature of early adopters. They have hundreds of dollars to piss away down the "early adopter" drain every month. They simply do not care.
If you were an early adopter on a tight budget, then you were an idiot.
Wish it was so. After years and years, even the inventor of the HD DVD format, Toshiba, has been unable to create a HD DVD writer that works. Think about that for a second. They simply can't do it. You can bet your ass they have tried. Are they incompetent or is it that hard? With the format now dead, you can bet your ass those people in Toshiba R&D are being moved, head and beard, to the new Blu-Ray division. This means that there will never be a working HD DVD writer on the market. Ever.
Burnable Blu-Ray has been on the market for quite a while. I'll go with what works. I have a Blu-Ray player in my home theater setup, and I will probably install a Blu-Ray burner some time this spring once the new 4x burners come down a little in price.
Better product? How?
HD DVD was created for one, and only one reason. Microsoft wanted the world to use Windows 9 media encoding rather than industry standard MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 encoding. That is the only reason that HD DVD exists today. The entire format was created for the single reason of pushing a proprietary encoding standard from a company with years and years of history of pushing inferior, proprietary, pay-MS-or-die technologies onto the consumer.
I simply do not understand how someone can be paranoid about Sony (who is only a member of the Blu-Ray alliance, and not the owner of the Blu-Ray format) and at the same time embrace a format created specifically to tie consumers, both disk-buying consumers and streaming and download consumers, to the cold, strangling embrace of Microsoft.
That was the purpose of the creation of the format for Pete's sake.
And so far, not a single logical argument. I think that must be some sort of record. I hope you get well soon.
This is just sad. Retarded. And sad. Last Christmas the sale of the PS3 wasn't all that high. This Christmas it was way too late to claim that Christmas gifts had anything to do with the uptake of Blu-Ray at all since Blu has been outselling HD DVD all year.
How are they getting fucked? The Blu camp is selling the Blu players at a moderate profit. Toshiba is dumping players at about 1/3 of the production cost. Do you really feel that in order for you not go "get fucked" on price, your vendor has to sell you a product at 1/3 of his production cost?
If you are looking for a Blu-Ray player, perhaps one that is also a capable Media Center, why would you care if it can also play games? Particularly if you are not intending to play games. Is there some divine punishment in store for you if you put a Blu-Ray player that in theory can also play games (it can't if you don't buy them) into your living room?
Overwhelmingly? Not really, and not any more. In December, according to the NPD numbers, standalone Blu players outsold HD DVD players.
Funny. Argument by Paranoid Delusions. That's a new one.
What argument? You stated that HD DVD was on the uptake, this simply isn't the case. In December there were more stand alone Blu-Ray players sold than there was HD DVD players. In addition there has been a significant increase in the number of PS3s sold, further widening the gap between HD DVD and Blu-Ray.
You stated that the my and Warners argument about why WB would and should go Blu was well presented. You then state, with no arguments whatsoever, that it is wrong. If you had any facts to back up your "arguments" you would have presented them. Until you do, I have to assume they originate in your fantasy.
Ah, yes, the standard "The PS3 doesn't count" argument. Absurd. So, when NPD says that standalone Blu-Ray players outsold HD DVD players in December, that is WB and Blu-Ray fanboy fantasy? Come on. With prices dropping to $99, which is pure dumping on part of Toshiba, they still couldn't keep the sales up. Some surge!
Wonder why you think so. Blu-Ray has higher storage capacity and 33% higher bandwidth. This means better picture quality, particularly the bandwidth. If you are going HD, why not with the highest possible quality? Blu-Ray also has a menu system that is better design than HDi with BDj. Why would the inferior technology be better? There have been burnable Blu drives in the market for quite some time, Toshiba still hasn't been able to deliver a burner that works. How is that better for the consumer?
The HD DVD camp has primarily harped on two points. The first is the lack of 1.1 and 2.0 capable players in the Blu camp. OK, fine. 1.1 is now in the box, and 2.0 is approaching fast. The early adopters have not had any problems with this, but the consumer in general would struggle a little. Given that they mostly have bought PS3s, that's not an issue in reality since the PS3 is software upgradeable to 1.1 and 2.0, and this is basically transparent to the end user.
The second point from the HD DVD camp has been DRM. For the end user that is irrelevant.
Yes, the fantasy of HD DVD fanboys. No, the pace was not accelerating at all. Even with Toshiba dumping the players at less than about 1/3 of the production cost, they were not able to sell any significant number of players, and in December of 2007, with Blu-Ray player prices significantly above that of HD DVD players, Blu-Ray standalone players out sold HD DVD.
Again, fantasy born out of pure wishful thinking. Until the second week of December, Blu-Ray software out sold HD DVD at somewhere between 2-1 and almost 4-1. The Transformer release had close to no impact on that number, only a single blip in a single week. The Bourne release had a slightly higher impact, propelling HD DVD software to a 39% market share for the final two weeks of December. That was the peak. Without the Warner announcement last week, the HD DVD numbers would have dropped down to the normal of about 25-35% market share, and stayed there.
It is interesting that you claim this, but you can not substantiate it. Neither can you produce a single argument that goes against the very compelling business argument I made which makes 100% sense, but which you conveniently avoid altogether since it would burst your fanboy bubble.
I hope you feel better soon.
I have to disagree with this one. It seems rather unlikely that the explanation for Warner's decision was greasing given the fact that the camp that has been spending the most time with Warner trying to grease them was the HD DVD camp. In fact, the insiders claim that Tosh and MS was visiting Warner once again late last week to sway them away from Blu with somewhere between $300 and $500M in incentives, but that they got nowhere
Warner essentially looked at the following:
- Stay format neutral - result: Format war goes on for another three to five years at worst.
- Go with HD DVD - result: Similar to the above, since Disney and Sony are well entrenched in the Blu camp, going HD DVD would not do anything to end the format war.
- Go Blu exclusive - result: Probably ending the format war in early 2008.
So, what should Warner do? Well, essentially the biggest threat to Warner revenue in the HD space is not HD DVD vs Blu-Ray, it is HD vs SD, that is Any-HD-Format vs regular DVDs. And the HD formats are not winning right now. The reason - consumers are waiting for the war to end. Even worse for Warner, market trends indicate that consumers have now put DVD purchasing on hold waiting for the end of the HDM war. That is bad news all around.Given any reasonable analysis of the current state of the market, going Blu was the only rational option for Warner, and they made a sound business decision. The rumor is that they got incentives from someone in the Blu production line to go Blu, in other words, lower cost of pressing Blu disks. This is not likely a very important factor for Warner given that they would probably be able to negotiate good year-over-year deals for pressing disks in the next few years. In other words, the current value of the deal, assuming the $500M is correct, is $500M, but the future value is significantly less as the cost of disk pressing goes down.
I'm sorry, but what??? If watching a DVD is 10x as hard to accomplish as anything I that has to do with playing anything at all, then I feel really sorry for you. I hope they find a cure real soon.
No, food is not preferable to a PC, really. Didn't anyone ever teach you the old "Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he eats for life". This is a silly analogy, but it is true. The fact that the west gives Africa food all the time is one of the main reasons for the continents poverty. We should stop sending food and start enabling.
Zimbabwe is a country in one of the words power-stricken parts of Africa. Until a few years back it was doing phenomenally well due purely to reasonably good management. Compared to the mismanaged countries around it it was like a cool oasis in Hell. Now that Zimbabwe has fallen to the same plague that the rest (well, large parts of) Africa is suffering from, namely absurdly bad governance, zimbabwans are dying by the truckload. They will continue to do so for a while too, until they learn that poverty is something you create your self in most instances, and you have to fix it yourself too.
This is precisely why he can. People who stay locked up in thinking (and therefore writing) like everybody else, can not write a paper revolutionizing anything at all.
It doesn't matter to the religious environmentalists. Their god on earth is Gaia, the benign, but oh so tortured, earth. Any change made to Gaia is sacrilege. Transferring this absurdity to Luna makes, in their heads, 100% sense.
Simple. If you are thinking about buying an HD player right now you want an HD TV. If you already have a TV and you are a HD-DVD/Blu-Ray potential customer you most likely already have a DVD player. If you are not a potential HiDef customer, in nine out of ten cases you are not going to be "logical" and buy an HD-DVD player, you'll just get a $50 DVD player.