No Love For The Blu-Ray 303
macnificent7 writes "Market analysis firm Cymfony has combed through blogs and discussion boards, and finds online consumers aren't thrilled about Sony's Blu-ray DVD technology. Many users are still bitter about the limited availability of the PS3 because of the Blu-Ray. Also many are skeptical of the Blu-Ray because of Sony's past formats that did not succeed."
Simple Solution (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Simple Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, I'm going to upgrade my collection every time you add a zero onto the storage capacity?
Re:Simple Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. I don't give a shit about high def - I can afford but can't justify the cost of the tv/player/disks. DVDs are good enough for me, and I imagine it'll take longer for the price of this new stuff to come down in price because it'll be like the video equivalent of SACD disks - it solves a problem that simply doesn't exist for most people.
Re:Simple Solution (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally, I think both formats will fail for mainstream acceptance and the HVD format will most likely be the winner by the time it matures in about 6 years. By the time it's ready, the market will probably have a need for terabyte storage media when it happens.
Hi Def DVD will need to come up to the 1080p60 standard and HVD can definitely handle the storage needs.
Blu-Ray and HD-DVD will be like the Laserdisc; niche market.
Re:Simple Solution (Score:5, Interesting)
Your average consumer still don't know the difference between Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. A DVD is still a DVD.
Just observing what comes out of Wal*Mart and Best Buy, I'm still seeing your regular 27" CRT coming out over anything flat.
-Note: just watching what is in the back of pickup trucks and SUVs around town. May not account for delivery merchandise which is what your average large screen purchase would require.
People I know who bought flat televisions and wanted 4:3 content at full frame at 16:9 finally realized after weeks that it looks goofy.
The price for Hi-Def players is still cost prohibitive for discretionary income. By the time it becomes affordable, HVD will appear on the horizon and I will wait for that.
There really isn't that much difference between a 9Gig disc and a 50Gig disc besides 41Gigs. There's plenty of difference between a 9Gig disc and a 1TB disc for it to make a difference.
Re:Simple Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
But that only works for a limited set of people with enough money, and that's not even half of America any more. It is a great theory for products like games and laptops, because they're already owned by the rich half who can afford to play the churn game. But it doesn't work as well on mass market items such as TVs and DVD players. Look at how long it's taken to replace VCRs with DVD players. Most people consider a TV a "big-ticket" item, and expect them to last 20 years or more. And nobody with a non-HD TV has any reason to consider an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player.
Churn is great for cell phones, where they can continually "upgrade" them by adding more and more crappy features, and give them away (with expensive contracts.) But churn is not going to sell HDTV sets to everyone across the nation, and HDTV is a prerequisite to selling HD players.
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Re:Simple Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Think about the word "obsolete" for a minute. Does it mean your old console is worn out, eroded by time and usage? Did it break? Did your N64 games stop working when the Game Cube came out? Did your Game Cube stop working on the release date of the Wii? Did Super Mario Kart expire, or did Bowser refuse to come out and play? No, it's obsolete because you were the victim of successful marketing to your own greed. "Own the shiniest video game! Your old console sucks because we have a new one! Don't be the chump with last year's console!"
Nothing went wrong with your existing system, yet you replaced it on the whim of a corporation. Churn.
Mind you, my retirement fund is based in large part on people like you continuing to churn video games and the like. Feel free to continue your participation in capitalism.
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No, PC video cards are. A console generation lasts 5-10 years, which is far longer than a PC hardware generation does. A PS2 game bought today will work on a PS2 bought at launch. A "PC" game bought today may not work on your computer even if it relatively recent, just because it e.g. has a GeForce 4 card (sufficient for most tasks) and the game uses some cryptic technology that card doesn't support.
(Conclusion: PCs are not good for casual gamers. Consoles are.)
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Not really true, I had homemade windows box that could play every game for a five year span, up until Doom3, and Oblivion. Half the time it could handle near max settings too, like in UT2k3, Morrowind, and Unreal2, and the rub was tha it really wasn't that special a box, I think it was a AMD 2600 or somesuch random number (1.8Ghz?), with 720 megs of RAM, and a forgettable ATI card. If the dorm I was in didn't enjoyi
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Similar things are happening with HDTV adoption, which is going up in great rates and only last year HDTV growth was 150%, and market value exceeds $25 billion already. Analysts predict 25% home in US to have HDTV by Feb 2007.
These are awesome rates, and lowering prices on HDTV's help. Today you can buy cheap LCD's TVs for the price of 32" CRT's only 5-6 yea
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Personally I
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Well, many monitors qualify, so...
"Personally I think this whole thing is a gimmick."
No shit. At a viewing distance of ten feet, on a 32" TV, with a moving picture, I can barely tell the difference between a DVD and a good rip which is encoded to half that resolution. To see any non-imaginary difference between HD and SD I'd need a cybernetic eye upgrade.
On a 64" TV at the same distance it would be different. But that isnt on the purchasing plan for the foreseeable future
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by the time a new medium has been produced, the old software is worthless.
Again, it's not true that your old software "is worthless". Your old copy of Office 95 didn't stop working when Office 97, Office 2000 or Office XP came out. They didn't become worthless. You volunteered to stop using it.
Microsoft is a corporation that lives almost entirely on churn. Think about their cash flow, and where it comes from. Sales of new products is the bulk of their money, with a relative trickle from their professional services. Microsoft.com isn't a pay-as-you-go web site. They're
Re:Simple Solution (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Simple Solution (Score:5, Interesting)
When DVDs came out, you had the choice of buying DVDs and knowing that they would keep working, or buying VHS and knowing that it would become increasingly difficult to find hardware that would play them. Now, you have the choice of buying DVDs, which will keep working with your next player, or buying an HD disk that will also work, and will probably look better, but costs more. Until HD disks are close to the price of DVDs, there isn't much point in buying them.
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From the HD-DVD Best Seller List at Amazon:
$42
Forbidden Planet - Ultimate Collector's Edition
$28
Suoerman Returns - Std and HD Combo Disk
$20
V for Vendetta
Serenity
Superman - The Movie
Casablanca
Forbidden Planet
Tim Burton's Corpse Bride
The Searchers
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
You want a taste of what HD projection has to offer, Robin Hood or The Searchers would be a good place to begin.
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Re:Simple Solution (Score:4, Insightful)
And once you've GOT a 360 when you do eventually decide to go next-gen for movies that makes it £129 for HD-DVD (new drive for box you have) vs the full £425 for a PS3 for blu-ray.
And if blu-ray does win there's zero stopping them just bolting a blu-ray drive onto the 360 the same way they have with HD-DVD.
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Um.. You're comparing apples to oranges. According to Wikipedia (see the prices on PS3 [wikipedia.org] and Xbox360 [wikipedia.org]) the premium PS3 retails for $599 and the Xbox360 (not the Core, the other one) retails for $399.99 and the HD-DVD addon costs $199.99. Some math reveals that the roughly equivalent PS3 and Xbox360 are 599 and 599.98, respectfully. That's only a 2 cent difference in retail price.
Notable differences in this rought "equivalent" pricing - PS3 Premium has a 60G HD and HDMI output, XB360 is only 20G HD and com
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To me it seems like they've rushed both of these new "standards"...
I do wonder, though, how many more times will Sony have to lose because of their stubbornness before they realize it might be more beneficial playing nice with others... ah, well...
Completely offtopic: why can't I reply directly to the article anymore? What happened to the RSS feeds from Google? I'm away for a few days and all hell breaks loose...
Re:Simple Solution (Score:5, Informative)
Not helpful solution - no microsoft! (Score:2)
On a related note, I don't care about HD-DVD, SACD, or even Blu-Ray. They can all take their overly priced DRM-infected machines, and just sit on 'em. Why do I need Blu-Ray? I can't think of a single reason. In fact, after my experiences with the Playstation2 (We bought it as a DVD player -- it does not play most DVDs), I am very unlikely to buy any Sony product ever again. Hay, and where the hell are all the s
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Because it's not true, maybe? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm going out on a limb here, but maybe because it's not true [reghardware.co.uk]?
Some of the early players didn't recognize or support region coding. That doesn't mean that the format is incapable of it. And trust me on this, it is unfortunately going to be with us for a long time to come.
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To all intents and purposes that makes it region free regardless of any stable door closing.
Like one, like the other (Score:3, Informative)
1) Support the same codecs
2) Use the same copy protection system (AACS).
The ONLY difference between the formats is physical, as in space availiable or in the electronics neeed to play the disc.
Well that's not quite true, there is one software difference - HD-DVD uses a menu system specificaiton sponsored by Microsoft (and thus requires paying Microsoft a
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It isn't talked about much in the states because almost no one gives a damn. The American market for video produced in Asia, Africa and the Middle East remains very small.
Re:Simple Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm curious as to the rationale for this argument because I see it mentioned everytime an article on HD is posted. You do realize that nobody is forced to rebuy stuff they already have, right? Sure, some people will, but it's not like our existing DVDs are suddenly obsolete because we upgraded to HD-DVD/BluRay. Going forward, yes, I will buy some new things on HD-DVD. I may even rebuy a movie or two that I already have. All the while,
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Blu ray DVD technology search on Omgili (Score:5, Funny)
Many other interesting discussions as well:
http://www.omgili.com/omgili.search?q=Blu+ray+DVD
BROD ? (Score:5, Funny)
My idea: Sony must change the technology's name to something funny like "BROD: Blu-Ray Of Death"
Way too much blueray bashing (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Way too much blueray bashing (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds wise, doesn't it? Until you realize it will cost you a small fortune to get a chance to judge Blu-ray. So maybe it might also be wise to remember past performance too. Minidisc, rootkits and will Blu-ray be the third strike?
Want to know why I want Blu-ray to win? It's easier to say...
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Maybe you don't like ATRAC, but it is a decent codec, and requires far, far less computing power than MP3 does (or did anyways). Don't forget, the first portable MP3 player, the Saehan MPMan, was released seven years after Minidisc entered the market. And you still have to look around to find mp3 players that record. You'd have to look harder for an MP3 unit that records, and has optical input.
Maybe it's not the format for everyone, bu
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Sony's dumb decision, with historical precedent! (Score:4, Interesting)
How many ways are there to say it? Sony is stupid.
You would think it would learn from its mistakes. It tried to push out its proprietary format with Betamax, and it failed miserably. (I know, I know, "superior format" and all that, but it doesn't change the fact that VHS won the battle of the formats in consumers' living rooms.) It tried to push out its proprietary format with the MiniDisc, and it failed miserably. It tried to push out its proprietary format with UMD, and it failed miserably. Now, it is trying to push out its proprietary format with Blu-ray.
How many miserable failures is it going to take for Sony to realize something that, at least to me, is pretty freakin' obvious and stupidly simple: people do not want to get locked into proprietary formats controlled by one company. The thing that's so maddening is that when Sony does embrace non-proprietary formats, they have wild success. Their Walkman products sold like there was no tomorrow. Their CD and DVD consumer electronics have always been well-respected.
It's more than a little ironic, I think, that while Sony is trying desperately to convince people that they should be buying a PS3 for the Blu-ray drive, in fact, people are avoiding the PS3 specifically because of the Blu-ray drive! I mean, I don't know many people who actively don't want a Blu-ray drive, but it is definitely, at least indirectly, responsible for their woes:
I could go on listing items, but you get my point. Everyone that said and signed on with, "I have an idea, let's use the PS3 as a launching platform for Blu-ray!" should be fired, because they just don't get it. People will buy a game console that happens to also play movies, but they're not going to be force-fed a whole new movie format just to own it. And I may end up eating crow for saying it if history proves me wrong, but I think that when all is said and done, people are really going to resent Sony imposing such a high premium on their gaming for something that has nothing to do with gaming. I really think that five or ten years from now, people are going to look at Sony's die-hard pushing of Blu-ray at the expense of its consoles as the thing that killed its dominance in the gaming console market.
It's too bad, too. Nintendo, while clever, just isn't set up to own the hardcore gamer market. And while I'm not big fan of Sony, I'm certainly not a big fan of Microsoft, either. Still, it looks like Sony is bound and determined to hand Microsoft the console victory crown on a silver platter with this foolishness.
Re:Sony's dumb decision, with historical precedent (Score:2)
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The Word proprietary format is a lot different.
For one thing, people didn't have a choice between the Word proprietary format and another format that was agreed upon by the rest of the word processing industry. People only had a choice between the proprietary Word format and the proprietary WordPerfect format. Picking one over the other didn't really make much difference.
Second of all, early versions of Word were rather handily compatible with opening WordPerfect
Re:Sony's dumb decision, with historical precedent (Score:5, Interesting)
0) Belief in Communism (as practiced), MNC's, and Wealthy Over-lords. Here is Sony. Clearly Sony's rootkit showed they believe they operate above the law. Similar for monopolistic practices elsewhere.
1) Blind belief Sony and Microsoft are the leading creators of technology (the norm). For examples simply look at the recent discussion on Microsoft research team where many praised them despite Google's clear leadership and Microsoft's clear copy-ovation and buyout-ovation rather than innovation.
2) Thinking softie and sphoney are needed to keep the world running. This is evident in wanting to dual boot, running a doze Lose32 API layer SW, or emulate.
3) Realise the overlords are not the innovators. Once you realize this then you turn off your Windows box for good. No good can come of worshiping at the feet of the ultra-wealthy. Their interests are not those of yourself or any other commoner.
Sony is no different than the Plantation Owners of the Old South. Many slaves escaped to freedom. Softie and Sony slaves have a underground railroad to freedom as well. The greed of the English Kings allowed many indentured servants from the old world to become bona fide citizens by owning land because the King of England said serfs could become tree farmers after years of indntured servantdom as he wanted more longleaf yellow pine as needed to build his Navy. Once the serfs became citizens (voting and legal protection) then they never were to return to serfdom and, thus, won the freedom we all apprecate in the Revolutionary War. Likewise, Open Source pushed technology from the grips of the ovelords. Proprietary formats are one simple way the overlords hope to stop innovation. I personally believe they will fail. We can only hope our country will lead the innovation rather than see it happen elsewhere. The ability to look up land ownership in a ruling class stifled Europe for millenia and the ability to lock up innovation has stifled technology for a decade.
The strong legal system in the USA is a relic. The lack of international respect for copyright and patent law leave the USA at an unsurmoutable disadvantage on the world market. Either the Chinese come clean and pay up or the USA will have to eliminate such practices. Sony and others cannot both hope to run their business on illegal grounds (china et al) yet use legal grounds as foundations for their business in law abiding areas (usa etc).
Open Source is one innovation which removes the problem. Open Source is a return to before the Legalism Era when innovation was made for the sake of innovation rather than the sake of making competition impossible. The patent system of the USA is designed to disallow innovation in the USA; thus the antithesis of what it is supposed to be. Sony is so far from what is happening in the ground swell of Open Source that one can easily foresee Sony being cut down to size within a decade. Microsoft as well. The monkey business with Novell should be a nail in the coffin for the belief they had any redeeming contribution to make to innovation and technology. Seriously, does it take Billions in profits to write a Word Processor or come up with a 50G burnable disk? No. Look at OpenOffice, KOffice, GO (GnomeOffice), PlataSoft, and more. I suspect any of 1000 or so engineers and physicists in this country could come up with a 100G burnable disk within a year for under $500k. Sony's activity in the market is simply a reflection that the men who run Sony believe they are a class above those who buy their products. They are paid to innovate, not stifle innovation. Like the VHS, the cheapest and most u
Betamax vs. VHS (Score:5, Interesting)
Those little technical differences gave VHS an edge in the home market. Plus, Sony's excluding Porn from Betamax really screwed them.
Yeah, no love for Sony on this one. Everyone wants to bring up the M$ is teh evil argument, but come on: Sony's trying use their dominant market position as leverage into another sector. That's one of the reasons why people hate M$. Hate the game, not the players.
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There is no such thing as a 6 hour tape, it is a 3 hour tape using low quality mode moving the tape slowly past the recorder's heads to extend recording time.
The longest tape using media of reliable thickness is the T-120. Tape length is measured in number of minutes at SP speed. Therefore, the tape capable of recording 6 hours at EP speed is 120 minutes long--- 2 hours. There are 3 modes on a VCR: SP, LP, and EP. These correspond to three speeds of the motor: 1x, 2x, and 3x. They make T-180 tapes, which record 3,6, and 9 hours respectively, but quality is often poor. Now, while it's technically true that there is "no such thing" as a 6 hour tape by the standar
Video2000, betamax, minidisc (Score:3, Interesting)
Video2000: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_2000 [wikipedia.org] . Check out some of the reasons it lost out - only one was technical, slightly lower resolution.
Betamax, by the way, may have lost in the war for the consumer as well, but step into any broadcast facility and Betacam - derived from Betmax - will be all over the place. Those moving on to other for
Re:Sony's dumb decision, with historical precedent (Score:5, Interesting)
Having experienced the agony of a failed flash memory module while far from home, I would gladly pay more for a module with a better track record, but the lack of interoperability is fatal, especially for flash modules. My USB memory card reader will accept half a dozen formats, but not Sony's. I do not understand why they insist on proprietary formats when they clearly affect primary hardware sales.
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I wont sell people sony... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sony's dumb decision, with historical precedent (Score:2)
Tell that to Apple Computer which is d
Re:Sony's dumb decision, with historical precedent (Score:3, Interesting)
As was the DVD player in its day. So what? Prices for players will fall through the floor in the next few years. Doubtless the PS3 will sink in price too over time.
The Blu-ray drive is hard to manufacture
As I'm sure the DVD player was hard to manufacture in its day. Doesn't mean that it is hard now. The component that was (and probably no longer) makes the Blu-Ray hard to manufacture is the blue laser diode. This is a component shared with HD-DVD. So Blu-Ray's t
Re:Sony's dumb decision, with historical precedent (Score:2)
That's because... (Score:5, Funny)
EVD in China (Score:2)
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I don't know anything about EVD, but if this is true, it means that movie studios most certainly won't be releasing EVD discs with their movies on it. In places like China where piracy is rampant, people won't care too much, but in other places like the U.S., I just don't see people going out and buying a special player (which, if EVD actually becomes popular, will probably be made illegal) just to watch illegal copies of movies and television shows.
If someone does
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You really think movie studios want to cut themselves out of the Chinese market?
Well, I guess you may be right, they've done stupider things in the past (like opposing VHS when it became a vast money-earner for them).
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Yeah, you pretty much answered your own question.
I don't think they'll cut themselves out of the Chinese market, I think they'll continue to release movies in non-EVD formats under the rationale that they should all just buy DVD or HD-DVD players.
I see a likely scenario being that movies will be copied and distributed primarily either online or via pirate EVD in places like China, and using the same old DRM-laden formats here. The industry will continue to pay vast sums of money to try to have countrie
too different, too soon. (Score:5, Insightful)
Asking them to buy a DVD replacement when they've only just bought a boxed set of Friends DVDs is asking a bit too much of the marketplace.
Mod Parent Up (Score:2)
I'm smack dab in the middle of the target market for this, a movie freak with a good job and a penchant for the latest gadgets.
But I have no desire to replace my hundreds of DVD's just to get 1080p. My 60" (insert Darth Vader's Theme here) Sony (gasp!) tv and upconverting DVD player do a bang-up job of recreating the movie theatre experience in my home. Anything more isn't missed, I'll be hanged if Sony and the res
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Is there any way to convert HDTV signals to work with a VGA, 13W3 or DVI monitor? I don't want to buy a whole new TV just to play a few videogames and watch a small percentage of movies...
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The HDMI/DVI out of the cable box is HDCP enabled, so unless your monitor supports HDCP, then no for regular viewing.
However the cable box also has firewire out with HDCP disabled for regular viewing. You get no menu with this and you can't view PPV or onDemand media.
HDCP is a big ass raping. Instead of being able to use a $200 KVM switch to switch between various DVI sources, you have to get a $500+ piece of specialized junk to do it. HDCP do
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Opendocument came first, was agreed upon by multiple vendors, and microsoft were invited to join the committee that defined the standard and contribute towards it... They refused, and later created their own format, which is just going to hurt both formats and the consumers.
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By everyone I assume you mean "An exceptionally small subset of the media and technology industry" that includes, and only includes, according to Official HD-DVD site [thelookand...erfect.com]:
HP, Intel, Microsoft, Paramount, Toshiba, Universal, Warner, HBO and Newline.
This is as opposed to the companies that are part of the Blu-Ray Consortium [blu-raydisc.com]:
Apple, Dell, HP, Hitachi, LG, Mit
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Maybe you should try going to the right site and posting the right list [hddvdprg.com]: acer inc., acses co.,ltd., ad seeds co.,ltd, almedio inc., alpine electronics, inc., altech ads co., ltd., arcsoft, inc, audiodev ab, b.h.a corporation, bandai visual co., ltd., beko elektronik
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No, I wouldn't. Nice try though, Propaganda Boy.
Unlike the companies on the Blu-ray page, the companies listed on the HD-DVD page is not a complete list of the companies that have ever remotely thought of having something to do with HD-DVD. It's a list of the major media companies that will be putting out HD-DVD material.
The Blu-ray page, on the other hand, is a list of anyone and everyone that's applied to be a member of the so-calle
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Oh, and just to add insult to injury, I'm guessing that you're probably not aware that HD-DVD is being developed by the DVD Forum, the same folks who developed and continue to work with the plain ol' DVD format. If you want to compare comparable lists, you need to look at the DVD Forum's members.
I'd copy them all down in a display of immature one-upmanship, but I don't feel like sitting here and typing out the names of all 224 companies [dvdforum.org].
Still want to argue about which format has more support?
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Except that Seinfeld wasn't originally recorded in HD, so it will look the same. What, you think they're going to go back in time and add resolution to Elaine's wrinkles?
Bloggers != Consumers (Score:5, Insightful)
And what's the deal about 21 percent of the online consumers disliking Blu-ray because Sony included it in the PlayStation 3? I can see several reasons why poeple might resent Blu-ray, but this is definitely not one of them. The only conceivable explanation I can see behind such reasoning is peoples aversion against anything that is Sony.
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Most of the articles/blog posts about Vista in the internet show dislike/strong criticism.But that doesn't mean Vista will fail!
And,as you said, there is not much content out there that shows support for HD-DVD either.
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Really? Not because Blu-Ray adds a considerable amount to the price of the PS3? Not because the lack of blue laser diodes means that the PS3 is in very short supply? Not because Sony is using the PS3 to try to win the format war against HD-DVD by trying to make the consumers choice for
Welcome to the age of MySpace (Score:2)
Nowadays, I'm not so sure.
When you have a random 13-year-old kid blogging how much he loves the Wii on a site like 1UP.com [1up.com], you know that blogging isn't just something done by educated adults with Internet connections anymore. If we were to go to a random classroom of middle-school students, and asked how many of them read or posted in blogs/forums/etc. on the Internet, I have a feeling the percentage would be rather
Not yet giving up on Blu-ray... (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, if there is no huge gap between the two systems in terms of available titles or choice of equipment, then Sony might just win on simething as silly as the name alone.
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I mean, you play a DVD on a TV, so you'd play an HD-DVD on an HDTV. The prefix "HD" has become common.
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I think people are actually getting sick of the blue led everything. It's almost like XTREME marketing.
People don't understand it, and if they did, they certainly are not going be willing to bring a wheel barrel full of money to the electronics store that you'll need for the equipment to play it, the movies themselves, and the HD 1080p tv's that for the most part are not even available in most stores. Those things that have the $2500+ price tag on them are not
Digital age? (Score:2, Insightful)
HD-DVD? Blue Ray? EVD? (last option chinese format)
Last time I checked, we were living in the digital age.
This means that at least I won't be buying *anything* where the bits are locked to the media, and non movable - and I'll enlighten, family, relatives .. ok, in fact anyone who wants to know - that if they do, they will be buying their media collection all over again when new formats arrive.
It will be the "Video is dead - buy movies you already own again on DVD, chuck your LP's and g
Disruptive technology waiting in the wings? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's just a matter of ignorance (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody in the non-geek world knows what they are, so nobody cares.
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After all, if you've just bought a £1500 HDTV then you NEED a HD-DVD player, right?
EVD anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I don't agree (Score:2)
A Blu-ray writer [svp.co.uk] that can also write to all other optical disks (apart from HD-DVD of course) is coming in cheaper than the first gen cd *players* did. Give them a year or so and they will be affordable enough to be included in all OEM p
I call astro-turf! (Score:2)
And why wouldn't they? They've done it with other products previously. The threat is that as soon as Sony (finally) sorts out their production issues, Microsoft will have to eat hd-dvd's development costs. Sure they'll sell a few Xbox 360 HD-DVD attachments, but with no hdcp, I doubt the studios will cozy up to the format w/o a kickback. Sony will eventually, slowly, sell a lo
Don't like either format (Score:2)
A premium, I think, should only be earned if the content is truly spectacular and
Simple thing (Score:2)
I refuse to support any format where the playback device ever has to tell me "Operation not possible". Skipping an ad or just getting to the bloody movie, for example.
I don't copy DVDs because I'm a cheap bastard. I copy them because I can strip out all the crap that way, and just have the movie on the disc. I don't even have to recompress them anymore with dual layer burners available now.
Re:Simple thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed: I'm so tired of sitting through several minutes of bloody trailers and anti-piracy ads _ON A DVD I'VE BOUGHT AND PAID FOR_ every time I put it in the damn player. At least on my PC I can skip over that crap.
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However I do feel warm and fuzzy inside that people with mental disabilities can actually find a job in the entertainment industry.
Astroturf Alert (Score:2)
XBox 360 Users (Score:2)
Also, Blu-ray is not a Sony only format. There are a number of 3rd parties who are supporting it, both with media and players. It's taking a little longer, but it is
What if the PS3 pushed HD-DVD? (Score:2)
I can't help but think that if Sony had gone with HD-DVD, so there was only one high-def DVD format, things might be a lot different. Yeah, the PS3 would probably still be quite overpriced compared to the other consoles, but there's no longer the stigma that you MAY be spending $100-200 extra dollars on a format that may go no where. It's a much
Why they did not push a unified standard (Score:3, Interesting)
After all, consider that apaprt from the menuing system all the other software is identical - same copy protection (AACS), same codec support (including the Microsoft codec).
Why no HD-DVD shortage? (Score:2)
Where the HD-DVD people simply smarter and figured out early to order ahead, and so they are getting most of the current production, or what?
The real problem (Score:3, Insightful)
And many think that Sony is run by a bunch of arrogant asshats that treat their customers like idiots and theives. Let's not forget that one.
Re: (Score:2)