High-Def Format Wars - Battle of the Freebies 212
An anonymous reader writes "It's come to this: eager to introduce the masses to the virtues of the next-gen DVD formats, the studios and manufacturers backing HD DVD and Blu-ray have begun giving discs away. It all started last month when Microsoft pacted with Universal to give away copies of 'King Kong' on HD DVD to consumers buying the XBox 360 HD DVD add on. Sony followed that up by offering a free 'Talladega Nights' Blu-ray with the first 500,000 PlayStation 3 units sold in the U.S.. Now today, HD DVD backer Toshiba has announced that it will give away *three* free HD DVD discs with every player sold for four months beginning on November 1st. With all these freebies, more people will likely have received free HD DVD/Blu-ray discs by the end of 2006 than will have actually paid for them."
Am I the only one who thinks Talledaga nights ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Sony really needs to pick up the slack. The PS3 would have ended the format war easily, but Sony has completely screwed that pooch. Perhaps it's Sony's fate. they did get CD and DVD, but this is sounding more like Betamax. It's true it'll be better in the long run to adopt Blu-ray, but god if it's not starting out like a lame duck.
On the other hand HD-DVD isn't exactly shining either. Both format really needs to show why "you need this now". My parents have a 50 inch CRT, and still watch VHS on it, it gives a great picture (Better then broadcast tv), DVDs also look great, they have no need to go to a new format, to rebuy all the dvds and tapes on it. That simple fact makes me wonder if it's worth it. Hell they even got the extended editions of Lord of the rings on single DVDs. Perhaps it's just not necessary yet, and won't be until we go beyond 1080p. Of course if your so anal you must have the perfect resolution go ahead, but I'll stick with my DVDs for a while (Still don't like tapes, but that's me, my parents can't get their movies on DVDs still, and for some don't feel the need.)
Re:Bring on the Freebies (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.stupidco.com/aol_throne_finished.html [stupidco.com]
Re:Just like your first HIGH!!!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
Strangely enough, it seems that most of my TV/DVD-watching time is now spent watching TV show discs, instead of movies: Battlestar Galactica, Lost, Firefly, 4400, etc. There's a lot of great stuff coming out on TV while the latest movies aren't that great. We may even get to the point where TV shows just get released straight-to-DVD since TV execs are so incredibly stupid that they sometimes cancel the best shows (Firefly) in their first season.
Re:Big plasma and lcd screens are crap (Score:3, Interesting)