Comments on: HD DVD vs Blu-ray war heats up with third party manufacturer support

By: gadgetpig

gadgetpig — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 06:38:03 +0000

Unfortunately the format war will drag on a lil longer even with Warner’s announcement. There are still major players on HD-DVD and until everyone (ALL studios and all hardware manufacturers) agree and move quickly in one swoop, we haven’t seen the end of the tunnel just yet. Plus normal DVD sales are still a huge market for at least a few more years. As a hd-dvd owner, I am saddened and also betrayed given Warner’s last announcement they would “stay” neutral (denying rumors earlier about BD exclusivity.)

This format war has left a bad taste in everyone’s mouths (Paramount/Dreamworks leaving BD, Warner leaving HD-DVD). The question now is,l how soon can Sony come up with a 99-199 standalone 1.1 player with ethernet?

By: Boss Kelvin

Boss Kelvin — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 01:11:37 +0000

Just days before CES 2008, Warner Home Video has announced that they
are going to stop supporting HD-DVD and support the Blu-Ray format
exclusively. There are rumors that this decision was made after Sony
paid Warner 1.8 billion dollars to sign an exclusive contract, one of
the largest payoffs yet (the second largest being 150 million to
Paramount and Dreamworks to go HD-DVD exclusively.)

Warner’s official response, however, was:
“In response to consumer demand, Warner Bros. Entertainment will
release its high-definition DVD titles exclusively in the Blu-ray disc
format beginning later this year” it was announced today by Barry
Meyer, Chairman & CEO, Warner Bros. and Kevin Tsujihara, President,
Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group.

After August 2007, Sir Howard Stringer, CEO of Sony said that the Blu-
Ray format was in a stalemate. “It’s a difficult fight. We were trying
to win on the merits, which we were doing for a while, until Paramount
changed sides,” Howard Stringer told the AP.

Blu-Ray was winning the HD format war in North America and Asia, but
not Europe, until the Dreamworks/Paramount buyout.

Many consider this new Warner Home Video buyout to be the end of the
format war completely.

By: izo

izo — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 17:01:59 +0000

HD-DVD will be dead in 3 month after Warner studio dumps it.

Over 10 million Bluray players are sold compared to less than 1 million HD-DVD.

By: Sai

Sai — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 04:53:36 +0000

DaveBG, I seriously hope Toshiba is paying you, since I see your comment everywhere.

There has already been a cheap chinese HD DVD player, and even Walmart refused to sell it. Come on, thats just sad.

Right now, it seems Bluray has the advantage over HD-DVD. I don’t know where you’re getting your info from…

By: DaveBG

DaveBG — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 23:19:11 +0000

It’s not about wildly over-priced Macs
(who, btw, have a history of initially installing grossly over-priced hardware that doesn’t sell and then moving to dual formats at a more reasonable price).

No, it’s about getting the self-same punters currently still buying regular DVD (in such quantities that it still trashes both high def formats combined out of sight in the sales numbers) to move to high def.

Only HD DVD will do this, this year.

It happens when those same Chinese companies making the very well selling regular upscaling DVD players swap their production over to making even better upscaling DVD players that also happen to play HD DVD and for around the same money ($100).
‘HD DVD China’ launches in march.
The new Chinese brands all use the excellent Toshiba HD A3 as their reference design.

It’s perfect for the mainstream a/v mass-market, it’s all that’s needed and it can be sold for sub $100 which we already know moves as fast as it is stocked..

‘Twin’ discs (with an SD DVD & HD DVD copy of a movie on the same side of the disc) will see the differences in movie disc production eliminated = vast production numbers.
This will mean high def discs will soon be around the same price as regular DVD.

Game over for Blu-ray is this year.
They have nothing to counter this.

Blu-ray will just be another failed game console proprietary format for the PS3 with a relatively tiny amount of standalone and PC burner activity bolted on.