Why Blu Ray will win the War

[dnyce]

I figure instead of finding some bogus online article to support my opinion I'll just spew it and we all can argue back and forth like it really mattered what we thought....

A few reasons why Blu Ray will win....

1)Perception
I find myself in Best Buy, Circuit City and Magnolia at least twice a week during my lunch breaks talking to various Home Theater sales guys. Not ONE thinks HD DVD will be the format that survives. Most back Blu Ray and very few still stay impartial.

2)Sticking to your local electronic store. Next time you walk into an above mentioned electronic store go to the Home Theater dept and look around. You'll find a pretty Blu Ray display box with tons of movies, probably a Bravia or SXRD playing a Blu Ray demo. NO HD DVD in sight. They stash those back next to regular DVD's. Or maybe that is just the places I've been in the past 4 months in Atlanta, South Florida and Dallas.

3)PS3
Over a million PS3's/Blu Ray players sold. HD DVD wil be lucky to hit half of that number by 2008! Nuff said.

4)Exclusives
Bond, Spider Man, Pirates, Harry Potter HUGE!!
(Let me know if I'm wrong on any of these)

 

[Hoopnoop]

Harry Potter is not exclusive to BD -- it is currently only available as a foreign HD DVD release (no region coding so you can watch the UK edition here in the US).

I would add studio support to your list.

As I've argued elsewhere, I think your list is offset by the lower price and potentially greater mass marketability of the HD DVD players.

I agree that the Best Buyers and other retailers have largely bought the Blue Ray hype, at least in my area. But I believe they still sell far more HD DVD players than stand alone BD players.

 

[jgags6]

I would have to say the biggest reason BD will win is becuase of studio support.

 

[navychop]

Does anyone regularly report sales of players, not just titles? I think it would be most interesting to see those numbers, especially after the cheaper Sony player comes out.

 

[r.jones1116]

Does anyone regularly report sales of players, not just titles? I think it would be most interesting to see those numbers, especially after the cheaper Sony player comes out.

They may have hit a little snag and may not sell too many stand alone players for awhile.

http://www.dvdtown.com/news/dontgettheblues-saynotoblu-ray/4407

 

[navychop]

Well, the author got that wrong, and it's not even "new" news. You'd think he'd read other articles on the topic before publishing something NQR (Not Quite Right). Here's a link to a March 26 article that got it right. But then, judging by his closing comments, it seems to be his intention to mislead people and push HD-DVD.

The new specs for BD-java, including PIP, are mandatory as of 10/31/07. That's not when they finalize the specs, as this guy wrote in his article, that's when all machines sold as Blu-ray must meet the expanded specs. Things like 256MB of memory, or 1GB if able to be connected to the internet. Specs have been finalized for some time, it's only the mandatory implementation that was set for 10/31/07. And many machines will likely be able to perform all functions of the new spec after a firmware upgrade.

Every Blu-ray player sold so far will continue to play Blu-ray movies, even those not yet released. However, some extra features may or may not work. There is some question about if the PS3 will be able to do PIP with a firmware upgrade, or if that feature will require additional hardware not built in to the PS3.

But all the same, I admit I am unlikely to buy a BD player unless it both connects to the internet and either meets the expanded BD-java specs or is guaranteed to be able to be upgraded to them. And I won't be buying anything if it looks like HD-DVD keeps hanging in there.

This has been discussed in other threads.

 

[sampatterson]

I have both blu-ray and hd-dvd, and have been in the HD-DVD camp so far because of the future "managed copy" promised support. Blu ray, I don't believe have promised this yet.

My setup is Vista Media Center (32-bit) with a NVidia 7950GX2 HDCP video card, internal BLU-Ray drive and USB HD-DVD Drive output at 1080p24 (which is upconverted to 1080p72 by the TV. I use PowerDVD with Blu-Ray and HD-DVD support. In comparing picture quality on my Pioneer Elite PRO-FHD1 (incredible picture on anything, by the way), I have been surprised the blu-ray wins for nearly every movie I watch. This includes the movies that are released on both formats, blu ray picture quality apprears crisper with brighter colors.

I didn't think blu-ray would get my vote as I have been strongly supporting HD-DVD, but I am changing to buying blu-ray discs. Picture quality is in the eye of the beholder, but on 1080p on my excellent TV, blu-ray is just looking better.

 

[navychop]

Yes, Blu-ray supports managed copy. See 1.13 of this link. At least, for the movies themselves. Individual hardware may or may not support it.

Might be moot.

 

[BlackHitachi]

I have been surprised the blu-ray wins for nearly every movie I watch. This includes the movies that are released on both formats, blu ray picture quality apprears crisper with brighter colors.

I didn't think blu-ray would get my vote as I have been strongly supporting HD-DVD, but I am changing to buying blu-ray discs. Picture quality is in the eye of the beholder, but on 1080p on my excellent TV, blu-ray is just looking better.

I agree completely! :up

</IMG>

 

[r.jones1116]

I didn't think blu-ray would get my vote as I have been strongly supporting HD-DVD, but I am changing to buying blu-ray discs. Picture quality is in the eye of the beholder, but on 1080p on my excellent TV, blu-ray is just looking better.

It must be in the eye of the beholder because the overall consensus has been the opposite.

 

[dnyce]

People keep saying HD DVD has more stand alone players than Blu Ray. That means nothing! 2 MILLION people own a PS3/Blu Ray player. HD DVD will never be able to say that. I'm sorry, that is Check Mate anyway you look at it.
I just don't understand how ANYONE thinks HD DVD could overcome less studio support, little to no retail support and most importantly MUCH less penetration in the market.

"At the Consumer Electronics Show in January, the HD DVD camp could claim 175,000 players sold in the US, well ahead of Blu-ray. But Sony can now claim a total of 1.8m PS3s sold worldwide"
I think the number is well over 2 million now ;-)

Good article:
http://www.about-electronics.eu/2007/03/29/is-the-ps3-a-trojan-horse-to-help-sell-blu-ray-films/

 

[navychop]

Title sales are a bit over 2 to 1 YTD, Blu-ray to HD DVD - a little over half the 3.5 to 1 projected rate at this point. I have thought that Blu-ray would win out over HD DVD, but I'm not so sure anymore. It seems to be holding around 2 to 1. I really want to see the rate at the end of the second quarter. If it's still around 2 to 1, we may have a LONG war- or peaceful co-existence (even if retailers and studios don't like that). I suspect there's a lot of money riding on ending it after Q3, before the Xmas buying season, and all important Black Friday.

I really think it's going to take somewhere between 3 to 1 and 5 to 1 to have a winner emerge. And volume must go up considerably. Now if BD players came in under $400, entry level, and Disney started pumping out their hits faster, maybe this would happen.

Both camps have good releases coming. If the Blu-ray camp wanted to swamp the competition with releases, they might win. But could they? Will there be enough replication capacity come on line over the next 3 to 6 months? Somehow, the HD DVD camp is hanging in there- could it be that the Blu-ray camp simply can't pump them out faster?

Things may be slow for the next month or 2.

 

[vurbano]

I thought BD would win because their first player manufacturer Samsung would never go neutral.

 

[JoeSp]

I thought BD would win because their first player manufacturer Samsung would never go neutral.

Samsung can make a dual format player for folks like you Vurbano so that when the HD-DVD format dies you can still play your old HD-DVD discs along with your new Blu-Ray discs!

 

[BlackHitachi]

It must be in the eye of the beholder because the overall consensus has been the opposite.

Well when the first releases of Blu ray came out this was true but now Looks the same!

 

[Ernesteugene]

Well if it comes down to storage.
A HD DVD will store about 15GB per layer. Were the BluRay will store about 25GB per layer.
Maximizing storage while minimizing space needed. It isn't hard to discern which will prevail.

 

[ClevelandRob]

My setup is Vista Media Center (32-bit) with a NVidia 7950GX2 HDCP video card, internal BLU-Ray drive and USB HD-DVD Drive output at 1080p24 (which is upconverted to 1080p72 by the TV. I use PowerDVD with Blu-Ray and HD-DVD support. In comparing picture quality on my Pioneer Elite PRO-FHD1...

I think the winner is whoever is this guy's friend!!!

 

[JonUrban]

Not sure who the "winner" will be, although it seems like Blu-Ray sure has the advantage at this point, but I KNOW who the loser(s) will be.

People like us..................................

 

[vurbano]

Samsung can make a dual format player for folks like you Vurbano so that when the HD-DVD format dies you can still play your old HD-DVD discs along with your new Blu-Ray discs!

:haha

 

[CochiseGuy]

Well when the first releases of Blu ray came out this was true but now Looks the same!

With all due respect, which is it? Blu-ray "looks the same", or "looks better"?

Originally Posted by sampatterson
I have been surprised the blu-ray wins for nearly every movie I watch. This includes the movies that are released on both formats, blu ray picture quality apprears crisper with brighter colors. Picture quality is in the eye of the beholder, but on 1080p on my excellent TV, blu-ray is just looking better.

I agree completely!

I have only HD DVD, and haven't seen a Blu-ray playback since the 'early days' when I laughed at the 5th Element playback display at a Best Buy. But I do read, and it appears Blu-ray has improved. The dual format releases from Paramount & Warner do receive pretty equal reviews for Picture Quality. It can be hit or miss for audio quality, as Blu-ray still doesn't support HD audio like HD DVD does in requiring all players to be able decode TrueHD and DTS MA. Some Blu-ray only releases do have excellent audio quality by getting around this by including space wasting uncompressed PCM audio tracks. I guess they need to find some use for that extra disk space, when advance video codecs provide equal or superior PQ with much less disk space.

But, all quality issues aside, why does there really have to be a "format war"?

I have an HD DVD player. I could care less if Blu=ray is still around 40 years from now, as long as I have HD DVD content. I have Dish Network; I'm happy & could care less if Direct TV has more customers. Do Xbox owners want Playstation to die and go away?

Yet 90% of all Blu=ray fan posts I see are directed at looking forward to seeing HD DVD die and go away. What's wrong with both formats continuing to be available, studios producing in both formats, and consumers choosing the player that fits their budget and equipment?

Yeah, yeah, I've heard it before - studios don't want to have to produce two formats, retailers don't want to have to carry two formats. Retailer manage to carry 3 formats or more for game titles; they'll manage. I'm watching HD Movie net as I type this. They just had a a promo for the premier of John Wayne's "The Searchers". I own it on HD DVD, in VC-1. For HD Movie Net on Dish, I'm sure it has to be in Mpeg4. Studios will do what they have to do to sell content.