1-7-08 WSJ Article on Formats/Studios

gadgtfreek

SatelliteGuys Master
Original poster
May 29, 2006
22,105
865
Lower Alabama
Toshiba, which conceded Friday that the Warner Bros. move is a "setback," is expected to continue making its case for HD DVD, at least for awhile. Paramount Pictures, a unit of Viacom Inc., plans to continue to support the HD DVD format, a spokeswoman said yesterday. The other remaining Hollywood supporter, General Electric Co.'s Universal Pictures, declined to comment.


Insiders at the other forum have declined to comment on Uni but said not to expect anything out of Paramount for awhile.

I have to still think that Paramount has outclause issues but Universal is the studio we should be pulling for BD next.

In Blu-ray Coup, Sony Has Opening But Hurdles, Too - WSJ.com
 
That Wall Street Journal article is excellent and I was going to post it but you beat me to it. I thought the comments about the direction of Paramount & Universal were the minor points.

Sony Corp.'s Blu-ray technology for high-definition DVDs has given the Japanese electronics giant an opportunity it hasn't had in 25 years: the chance to win a high-stakes format war and reap the benefits across its sprawling empire. However, its victory comes at a high cost and may be fleeting.

However, Sony's push for Blu-ray -- which analysts estimate as an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars -- has cost the company in areas such as the key videogame market.

Many analysts believe that Sony's insistence on putting Blu-ray on its PlayStation 3 players gave it just enough extra consumers to help tilt next-generation DVD sales toward Blu-ray.But complications related to the Blu-ray technology played a part in repeated delays of the PlayStation 3 release, giving Microsoft's Xbox a full year in stores before the PlayStation 3 came out in November 2006. The PlayStation also had a heftier price tag than the Xbox. In the U.S., the Xbox 360 has outsold the PlayStation 3 more than 3-to-1 from the time the consoles have been on the market through November.

Even with major studios on board, Sony must still win over consumers to Blu-ray. Consumers were arguably better off with HD DVD technology, which generally cost less to produce, contributing to HD DVD players selling for as little as $99 over the holidays. Meanwhile, Blu-ray players cost about $300 and up -- and movie titles issued in Blu-ray are often sold for twice the cost of a regular DVD.

Then there is the Internet. Sony is counting on sluggish development and slow consumer acceptance of technology that will allow for quick and easy downloads of movies at home, sending them directly to the TV set. If that snowballs faster than expected, Sony may never recoup the costs of its Blu-ray investments.

In any case, most home-entertainment chiefs see next-generation DVD as a temporary format that will last only as long as it takes for a superior technology to catch on. Most agree that while online movie distribution is still too clunky for the casual movie consumer, one day in the not too distant future it will dominate.

Now, Toshiba will have to focus more on other areas that can help broaden its consumer-electronic presence, such as technologies that copy movies directly onto USB flash drives. Those are tiny sticks that consumers can just plug into their computers, or in the future, directly into their TVs.

"You're going to see that hard drives and reusable flash are much more economical and green" compared to DVDs, says Warren Lieberfarb, a consultant to Toshiba and former head of home entertainment at Warner Bros. "You don't need packaging." He sees portable drives as an interim technology that will last the five or 10 years it takes for online movie distribution to rise to the fore.

And they appear to confirm the "rumors" that Fox was in play, and that it very nearly swung the other way.

But the outcome of the high-definition DVD battle remained uncertain until the final days before the annual Consumer Electronics Show, kicking off now in Las Vegas, where both sides like to make big announcements concerning their formats. Toshiba was still working hard last week to court Warner and News Corp.'s Twentieth Century Fox to use HD DVD exclusively. Warner was considering it, people familiar with the matter say, but when it realized Fox wouldn't leave Blu-ray, decided to go with Blu-ray exclusively as well, to bring an end to the format war.
 
I'd be all for getting on my pc and downloading a movie to a thumb drive, then walking over and plugging it into a tv and watching the movie. What I don't want is another damn box I have to set by my tv and connect it to the internet. If they created an hdmi to usb adapter and rolled it out, this could kill DVD quick becuase most would not have to but a new tv.
 
I like how they talk about how HD-DVD is cheaper compared to BD, and then mention that BD movies can sell for twice as much as a DVD... Never mind the fact that anyone who pays that much is stupid, the question is this: "that's different from HD-DVD how?"
 
just what kind of quality are you going to get on a 2 gig thumb drive?
From my experience, using modern codecs you can compress a regular DVD into 2GB without sacrificing quality (1GB per hour).

I believe 8GB is good enough to hold a 720p re-encoded version of any HD/BD released movie (4GB per hour).

Diogen.
 
USB flash drives are a bit clunky. However, I do like the option of a USB solid state ROM or even WORM.

You have no scratch issues like with optical discs. You don't have the silly freezing and cracking issues. It's smaller--not as thin, but way smaller. Hmmm...

I always thought it was going to be burning kiosks that took over anyway since people don't trust harddrives.

I bet write once USB costs a lot less than rewritable flash. You could add DRM a-la WMV/Quicktime, etc. with ease. The 480Mb/s (60MB/s) maximum bitrate of USB 2.0 is still higher than Blu-Ray.

Oh yeah.

ONU, do you think you will still see BOGO free if HD-DVD goes away? Blu-Ray did BOGOs like crazy during Q3/Q4 to put HD-DVD away. HD-DVD did half-assed BOGO's to compete w/ Blu-Ray.

It's nice to see the WSJ put on good spin on it. Even pro-Blu Engadget and Gizmodo said Blu-Ray has a lot of work to do. I guess BusinessWeek and Bill Hunt are the only ones doing somersaults.
 
ONU, do you think you will still see BOGO free if HD-DVD goes away? Blu-Ray did BOGOs like crazy during Q3/Q4 to put HD-DVD away. HD-DVD did half-assed BOGO's to compete w/ Blu-Ray.

No, I don't, and unless I misread my own post, I don't think I said I did. I've been on record as preferring Blu-Ray, but I own both formats and it wouldn't have particularly bothered me if this thing dragged on for a while, because I do like getting stuff cheap.

I think BD will still have some price pressure even if HD-DVD closes its doors tomorrow, just because they're going to have to start targeting SD DVD at some point.... but I'm not naive enough to think that we'll see the same downward trend in pricing with only one format - at least not right away.
 

Thanks, this war is over everyone!

BD insider comments on FOX and WB and HDDVD

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Total: 0, Members: 0, Guests: 0)

Who Read This Thread (Total Members: 1)