Yep, my dad spent RM3.5k for his dvd player back in the day.


The way things are going, looks like it's split right down the middle. Studios with strong support for both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. Wouldn't be feasible to see studios producing movies in both formats. So that's something to think off. Looks like this war will continue for sometime, until one party backs down.

The split doesn't matter in the long term. Either the formats will reach a stalemate, and it will become like the DVD+ and DVD- specifications, or one will die off. But fierce competition is good, especially now since the price of the stuff is still out of reach of most people. The average person won't bother either way until things get cheaper all round, because they don't even have high-def displays yet. Ultimately consumers don't even care about the number of formats out there, as long as things are cheap enough and compatible with each other, just like what happened with the DVD formats.

It matters now because with a split like that, movies are also split down the line. This studio produces this movie, that studio produces that movie, hence this format gets this bunch of movies, yet the other format gets that bunch of movies. An adopter of this format doesn't get this movie, but the adopter of that format does. Unless of course the adopter complies with both formats (which isn't the case most of the time)

Movies produced by both formats don't matter here.

Of course, doesn't make a different yet here because the majority isn't involved in the high-def displays as you said. Hell I'm still buying normal dvd formats and that's just for me on my lcd display.

Blu-Ray and HD-DVD will never co-exist as long as there's a split of studios each producing different type of movies for each format. Neither will both of the formats be an equal choice by all the studios, meaning this movie will get a miss on that format, while this movie gets a miss on this format, etc.

This will only be bad for the consumer, because as far as we know, Blu-Ray is the more expensive media while the HD-DVD is slightly cheaper to mass produce.

[quote=stringfellow,Aug 23 2007, 04:42 PM]
Let's be frank about this. We all want the format war to end. The faster the movie industry choses a singular format to release the movies in HD, the better it is for the consumer, since we can move forward with developing more into that singular format, and driving the price down through mass adoption.

Nope - The war should continue until we see cheap HD players. $199 or $149. and cheaper HD disk. $36.98 has to go. $29.98 should be the maximum MRSP with catalogue titles priced at $24.99.Amazon should then sell the disk at $16-$9 .

like it or not, HD DVD can go down in price MUCH MORE faster than Blu-ray

The thing here is, exclusivity announcements like these, delays this singular format adoption, prolonging the war. Consumers are then forced to either wait even longer while more and more movies are being released on different formats, hoping that those movies will still be available when the "nuclear fallout" from the war settles and a singular format emerges. Those who had chosen a side (or two sides) had to face the fact that they either have to settle for movies exclusive to their chosen format, or in the case of those who embraces the two formats, having to invest further in 2 players to get their movie fixes. This very reason is why there are still many Joe/Jane.Q.Public still squatting on the fence seeing how this is going to end.

This is what BDA had been telling us and some of us actually believed it. Consumers are not buying into hidef because of the format war. They dont know about the format war. They dont know what the frack is Blu-ray. Consumers will buy into HD when the prices drop and the format war and Toshiba' economic of scale is doing just that.

Bear in mind that when i posted that paragaraph above, it applies to both the HD-DVD and BDA consortium. What consumers want, im sure, although the truth is hard to swallow, is one format to live, and the other die a quiet death. Unless players for both formats drops down to ridiculously cheap prices, i dont see the general masses buying two players for two formats. Face it, although we pat ourselves around the bac saying that both formats can live side by side together, this utopian scenario will not happen. I mean, this is not the console war folks, where 3 consoles can live side by side, feeding on their own piece of the videogaming pie. Historically, in the home video format, the general masses CHOOSES only ONE and only ONE format, not two or three. As much as anyone hates to hear this , be it from a Blu-ray or HD-DVD fan, One shal live, and one shall fall, as to quote Mr.Optimus himself. Then, and only then, can the industry moves forward with improving that surviving singular format with more features and capabilities. Until that happens, we will continue to see these exclusivity deals being thrown around, and feces being sling about between the two competing camps.

The only other way i see how two formats can live side by side with each other is, to destroy the studio exclusivity, and let all studios produce their movies on both the Hd-DVD and Blu-ray format, and let the consumer shoose which format their would rather buy. But this is impossible pipe-dreamish to think off, since if this happens, these movie studios would have to pay royalty and publishing fees to both the BDA AND the HD-DVD group for producing on their medium. No movie studio wants to chalk up losses by doing this, which is why we will continue seeing studios choosing sides until something happens to either kill one format and let the other live, or unifies it.

This is what Sony is hellbent to prevent because they know they wont make it with equal content. That is why we hear them scream the war is over. we won. we have burried HD DVD. They HYPED exclusivity as the only thing that matters. Guess that? The 'exclusivity' term just exploded in their face !

No one is going to buy BD that is priced 2x when 300, Blood diamond, can do MUCH more than BD.

Sony is subsidizing BD replication. 25GB single layer Blu-ray disks cost $2.95 to make - 30GB Double slayer cost $2.09 (both = 1,000 bulk price) and the insiders in the AVSforum revealed that the 50GB double layer BD disk cost more than $4. Currently ONLY Sony is replicating the 50GB disks. Why, Sony will always have PS3 to fall back to. The same cannot be said on other new entrants. With the paramount announcement, potential entrants to BD replication business would be MUCH MORE wary.

http://www.pacificdisc.com/PricingHD-DVD.html
http://www.pacificdisc.com/PricingBluRay.html

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Added on August 24, 2007, 5:12 am[quote=refnulf,Aug 23 2007, 06:21 PM]


This will only be bad for the consumer, because as far as we know, Blu-Ray is the more expensive media while the HD-DVD is slightly cheaper to mass produce.

[/quote]

check my post

Double layer HD DVD : $2
Double layer BD : >$4

multiply that by millions of disks per title and see the difference


This post has been edited by g5sim: Aug 24 2007, 05:12 AM

am i the only person here who didnt give a rats anus about HD wars? my tv sucked.. it can only go up to 480p............ original HD and BD are way outta my reach. im just glad DVDs are cheap these days. although i wish SPEEDY would stock more classic movies!

Same here man. DVDs are indeed cheaper now. That's why we can wait for it to end slowly.