Breaking News!! Warner is soon to be Blu-Ray Exclusive!

Re: BREAKING NEWS!! Warner Brothers is now Blu-ray Exclusive

I purchased an HD DVD A3 player in December because of get 12 free movies,
2 with player, 5 at the store and 5 in the mail (still waiting on them) to see
if there was a big difference between SD upconverted and HDM. Video-wise, there wasn't the wow factor like it was with VHS versus DVD. Sound-wise, there was a marked improvement over regular DVD. I still consider both formats software to be too expensive. I've only purchased 8 more titles to go with my meager number of HDM titles (but they are catalogue titles that I will enjoy for years to come). Until BD titles become less expensive, I will wait for awhile before I purchase a BD player to enjoy their offerings. I am retired, so I don't have
a lot of disposable income anymore.

I prefer older movies since the new ones seem to be more CGI driven and have forgotten to tell a story (that's just my opinion). So I will enjoy my collection of SD DVD's (over 800, with sets being counted as one) and my meager HD DVD collection. And no, my HD DVD player will not become a
door stop and I see no reason to dump it.

Unfortunately, I picked the wrong format to begin with (it offered more of the movies I enjoy, even though the title offerings were small), but that's life and I will continue to watch and enjoy them. So, congrats to all you Blu-ray people and enjoy the movies, that's what it really is all about to begin with.

Re: BREAKING NEWS!! Warner Brothers is now Blu-ray Exclusive

Scott,
I was just responding to you comment that most of the on-line features were there to sell you stuff, which is clearly an incorrect statement that has often been repeated by Blu fan boys to dismiss that fact that connectivity is not a requirement. Not saying you are a fan boy just that this is a statement that has often been repeated by them in the past.

As someone who owns both formats I certainly wish that my Blu player had connectivity for nothing more than it would make it easier to upgrade firmware.

Re: BREAKING NEWS!! Warner Brothers is now Blu-ray Exclusive

I don't own either format, and haven't followed the "war" as closely as many here. I can't afford to be an early adopter and am currently quite satisfied with the quality of SD-DVD so I haven't looked at either format in detail (I guess that makes me format neutral?). But after reading this thread, there are a couple things that stuck out for me (and I may be more representative of the "mass" adopter rather than many of the "early" adopters found at HTF):

I'm confused as to how if the HD-DVD launch was so perfect, and the BRD launch was handled poorly, that BR software sales always seemed to out-pace those of HD-DVD? Given the "perfect" launch of the format and more affordable price, HD-DVD should have kicked BR to the curb from Day 1. But apparently that didn't happen?

As Jim and others have noted, if you buy into a technology with competing formats you are always taking a chance that your choice may be wrong in the long run. Anyone shopping for these players should have been aware of the competing formats. Racks of both HD-DVD and BR software were found in most every retail store over Christmas, so even casual shoppers should have had an inkling that there were two competing formats (just as with Beta/VHS 25 years ago) and that one would be going away sooner or later. In this case, it just appears that it is sooner.

I probably fall closer to this "don't care" group than many here. I currently have SD-DVD via a non-HD projector which is beautiful to my eyes, and often elicits compliments about the sharpness and clarity from anyone invited over to watch a film. I've seen HD pictures on the many displays in the electronics store and while I do see quite a difference, I almost think the increased resolution looks "unnatural." Combined with the fact that I don't anticipate being able to afford to upgrade any kind of HD display in the immediate future, I'm really quite content to stick with SD for the time being. I have no doubt I'll upgrade eventually, but I see no reason to do so anytime soon and likely won't consider it again until prices come down much closer to SD levels.

Also, if this war were to be truly decided by the consumer, all the studios would have to be supporting both formats so that the consumer could choose. No exclusives to one side or the other. And if that were the case, the consumer will always choose the most affordable option which likely would have meant HD-DVD victory in the long run. But with all the exclusive contracts and money changing hands behind the scenes, the consumer was never a legitimate part of this battle.

Perhaps HD-DVD should have issued full-screen discs. That would have been one way to win over the mass public and swing the war in their favor.

Re: BREAKING NEWS!! Warner Brothers is now Blu-ray Exclusive

So you're a fanboy if you think it's wrong for Warner to lie to it's customers. Once the cat was out of the bag, Warner should have said they were ready to go exclusive instead of issuing statements of support for blu-ray and hd-dvd, reaffirming their support for both even while they were negotiating to screw somebody. Of course, that would have jeapordized HP sales. The combined sales of HP 5 beat The Bourne Ultimatum. Basically Warner cheated their customers. I wonder how many of you would patronize a business that lies and cheats you.

I would also point out that bluray started the exclusivity BS. Sony, Fox, Disney, and MGM were founding members of the cartel. I never liked it and it smacked of anti-trust from the beginning.
I don't think there should have been any exclusivity from the beginning.

Why would someone go from HD-DVD to SD? I will not be dictated to by a bunch of media companies. I probably would have considered going to blu-ray at some point but I will not be forced to.

I do not trust the companies that have backed br from the beginning. Sony put rootkits into people's computers that could have damaged them. Now you are going to trust them with a device that they don't need rootkits to fool around with? I also look at what Fox and Disney have done. If they had their way, recorders would be illegal. It is very possible that in a blu-ray only world they could do technologically what they couldn't do legally. Also I really do think that divx is what the studios deep down really want. It is impossible in a sd world but very possible in a blu-ray world.

Rather than being short-sighted, I am far sighted. My impression is that most of the people on this forum want HD and don't care about the price. I want to know the price first. It makes me a contrarian and apparently annoys a lot of people.

Re: BREAKING NEWS!! Warner Brothers is now Blu-ray Exclusive

Anyone?

Re: BREAKING NEWS!! Warner Brothers is now Blu-ray Exclusive

The concept that HD handled it's launch better refers to the fact that HD players had minimum hardware standards that guaranteed that HD DVD discs produced today will play on first gen players without the loss of any features.

Blu-Ray on the other hand did not have strict hardware standards and most of the first generation stand alone players will not be able to take advantage of features that are being included in many discs being produced today. The disc will play but the features will not be available.

Re: BREAKING NEWS!! Warner Brothers is now Blu-ray Exclusive

Does it matter what we think? It´s not our decision and our thoughts on "when" will have no impact on the actual decision.
IMHO.

Re: BREAKING NEWS!! Warner Brothers is now Blu-ray Exclusive

CC near me has some BR players for $350 on sale, so I dont think itll be that long.

Re: BREAKING NEWS!! Warner Brothers is now Blu-ray Exclusive

That is so false. Fox refused to have anything to do with HD DVD without the option of single region coding. Warner has not released any titles with single region coding while New Line has and will likely continue. Disney and Sony release some titles with single region coding. The Blu-ray association does not force any company to release software with single region coding, it is entirely optional. Paramount and Universal are welcome to join and release all of the all-region software they want. It is the rights owners that get to decide whether or not to use single region coding and that is how it should be in my opinion. Don't give them the option of single region coding, expect to see no releases that require single region coding, don't ever expect to force a film rights owner to release software without whatever legal protection they see fit to use.

Blu-ray got the region coding issue exactly correct while HD DVD screwed it up big-time.

Chris

Re: BREAKING NEWS!! Warner Brothers is now Blu-ray Exclusive

I know whatever's said here is not going to make it so, but like everyone else, I'm interested in how this decision affects me. Considering the scenario I posted best describes when I will be purchasing a Blu-Ray player, I was wondering what folks more in the know than I am thought about how long it'd be.

For that matter, does anything posted here "matter"?

Re: BREAKING NEWS!! Warner Brothers is now Blu-ray Exclusive

Ditto.
They told you 3 months ago that they were shopping around. You knew what the risks were. Quit whining.
It's funny because Microsoft is an HD member and is just as bad.
Really? Why are they making BR recorders and BR camcorders then???

Re: BREAKING NEWS!! Warner Brothers is now Blu-ray Exclusive

True.

I guess that's the one good thing the PS3 has going for it, that the firmware is upgradeable.

F

Re: BREAKING NEWS!! Warner Brothers is now Blu-ray Exclusive

I could swear I saw a BRD agent handing off a bag of cash on the grassy knoll in Dallas.

Re: BREAKING NEWS!! Warner Brothers is now Blu-ray Exclusive

Either that or buy a specially converted for UK voltage region A machine from a specialist UK supplier. However, for the moment I'm happy with my Toshiba EP30 HD DVD player and my PS3 and a tried and trusted multi-format SD Denon player for my SACDs and DVD-As.

Having stopped ranting:

(1) reality check - this is a whinge about what we watch when we plant our asses down on the sofa; it's not like we're starving to death in Darfur wondering when the next murder and rape gang will pay a visit to our village

(2) at least this should end the uncertainty and encourage sit on the fence customers into committing themselves; and greater volume of sales = lowered prices and increased competition. I just hope now that HD's death is quick. The last thing we need is a slow lingering death holding things up.

(3) it's wildly improbable that HD DVD owners won't be able to play their discs for years to come. And even if all HD players were to disappear a few years from now, by that time the titles will be available on BD (and probably cheaper than now).

Re: BREAKING NEWS!! Warner Brothers is now Blu-ray Exclusive

Firmware isn't the issue since all players are firmware upgradeable, (at least I think they are) it's that the hardware for many first gen players don't have the minimum requirements for the features.

This was because even though the Blu-Ray group knew well in advance what would be need on the hardware side they didn't enforce any standard that fulfilled these requirements.

Re: BREAKING NEWS!! Warner Brothers is now Blu-ray Exclusive

As I was at pains to point out - at the moment there's competition from HD and so there's no concerted attempt to alienate consumers. If you think companies will behave the same when there's a monopoly, then you have a touching faith in the warm-heartedness of multinational companies that I certainly don't share. And remember that the Blu-Ray Association, by not imposing restrictions re region encoding allows companies (whether the disc manufacturers or the film studios is irrelevant - it's what's on the end product that matters) to do what they like in the future. And that will mean much more expensive discs for many parts of the world, unless multi-region players become available.

Re: BREAKING NEWS!! Warner Brothers is now Blu-ray Exclusive

I have the first players for both formats, the Toshiba HD-A1 and Samsung BD-P1000. In my opinion, the Samsung is the better player. I don't care about the interactive, web based features or any of the special features and knew it wouldn't handle those features when I purchased the player. Anybody that bought it or one of the other similarly limited players thinking it would handle those things has only themselves to blame in my opinion. Yes, the HD DVD players could do more and the discs offered more of the interactive things earlier. My conclusion is the market cares about that stuff as much as I do. I ultimately purchased a PS3 after reading so many rave reviews from owners and now wish I had waited and owned two PS3's which I understand will ultimately be updated to the final Blu-ray specifications. I have still never seen the early subpar MPEG-2 Blu-ray releases, but I have seen plenty since and they are exceptional as a group.

HD DVD was available to purchase for anybody that wanted it and the hardware was much less expensive than Blu-ray hardware, but the market chose to not purchase the product. This choice was made by consumers all over the world and was almost unanimous, less than a million players in total have been sold worldwide and I suspect quite a number that were purchased as Christmas gifts will soon be returned. HD DVD was a great product, but second best and should have never seen the light of day in my opinion. Two formats for a given home audio/video format type doesn't ever result in both surviving and thriving, there are no exceptions and I had no reason to believe this would be the first.

Chris

Re: BREAKING NEWS!! Warner Brothers is now Blu-ray Exclusive

What content owners are going to make their property available to record with this upcoming recorder? Unless Toshiba builds an IEEE1394 input recorder, I don't believe there is going to be much made available, at least not legally.

Chris

Re: BREAKING NEWS!! Warner Brothers is now Blu-ray Exclusive

This format war wasn't decided by the market, but by multi-national companies forming alliances based on financial exchanges between the parties involved with these formats.

Re: BREAKING NEWS!! Warner Brothers is now Blu-ray Exclusive

Even on my old 32" Proscan television, I could see a nice difference between DVD and VHS. But, discerning a difference between laserdisc and DVD was almost impossible. The advantage of such a small, analog setup was that VHS even looked acceptable, though it was discernibly softer than the optical disc formats. But, once you get to a 40" or bigger setup-VHS turns to pizza! It just looks like a smeared mess.

Sorry for the offtopic rambling. It's been a weird couple of days.

Re: BREAKING NEWS!! Warner Brothers is now Blu-ray Exclusive

No truer words have ever been written. Those how think differently are either ignorant of business realities or are just kidding themselves.

Re: BREAKING NEWS!! Warner Brothers is now Blu-ray Exclusive

I would have to disagree. The option for consumers to decide the war was there but ignored by both consumers and manufacturers. If consumers had bought HD DVDs in 5 to 1 terms then I think events might have turned out differently. Also if studios had been neutral from the start we might have also seen things differently. But as you said, the sales figures showed that consumers weren't interested in making the decision which I find disappointing. And since they weren't going to make the call that left it up to the studios and CE manufacturers to decide. In the end I'll just be glad when the war is truly over.

One thing I do want to make clear after re-reading the above comments. I'm absolutely not disappointed to see things fall in Blu-ray's favor. I own three times more Blu-ray titles then I do HD DvD so it's not like "my team lost". It was just my hope (or naivety...) that we, the consumers, would eventually decide this issue and not corporate politics. I don't blame/hate/etc Warner Bros. or Paramount for their actions, I'm only disappointed we didn't have a larger say in the end.

Re: BREAKING NEWS!! Warner Brothers is now Blu-ray Exclusive

Better that than two formats competing for market share well into the next decade.

Re: BREAKING NEWS!! Warner Brothers is now Blu-ray Exclusive

I can't believe this. I seem to have this luck. I was holding out, then finally made the plunge with the xbox 360 add on to get into HD. So now I have exactly 3 movies. Is it even worth it to continue buying more HD movies, if I'm now going to have to save my pennies to get a blu-ray player too? One thing - it is pretty discusting that they made this decision AFTER the holidays. There are going to be alot of other p**sed off people that plunged into HDDVD only to have their investment go south so soon.

Re: BREAKING NEWS!! Warner Brothers is now Blu-ray Exclusive

Unfortunately very true.

Re: BREAKING NEWS!! Warner Brothers is now Blu-ray Exclusive

As someone, who's HDM library will pass the 300 mark next week, I'm very happy the end of this format war appears to be near an end. However, with that being said, I refuse to let anybody go unchallenge, who trys to suggest that the consumers decided this format war or that Warner had the well-being of consumers as their key reasoning behind their decision to go Blu-ray exclusive. Let's be real here on what really happened which is the consumer/market didn't even have enough time, less than two years, to decide what they really wanted when it comes to HDM. That decision was made by business alliances that were formed to protect their financial interests, not those of the consumers. It is, what it is.....





Crawdaddy

Re: BREAKING NEWS!! Warner Brothers is now Blu-ray Exclusive

Well I'm 1 for 1 at this point. In 1975 I purchased a VHS VCR on the first shipment to the Salt Lake area and after much research and hearing about the negatives of Blu-ray, I bought a Toshiba A30 and about 9 HD DVDs just before Christmas. I for one won't be buying a Blu-ray. I still don't read or hear a lot of good about Blu-ray. I hope to pick up a few cheap HD DVDs and enjoy my over 500 SD DVDs (upconverted). There are a lot less problems with SD DVD and not a lot of difference verses HD. Send me your HD DVD lists if your dumpin them for cheap.

Re: BREAKING NEWS!! Warner Brothers is now Blu-ray Exclusive

I have seen many posts by Bluray supporters that said they would not have bought the HD-DVD version of a movie because it had DD True HD with Dialog Normalization and the DN would theoretically reduce the sound quality that they could theoretically hear. However they gleefully want Blu to be the HD format of the future with its whopping 50 Gig of storage. The current state of video on HDM for both formats is equivalent to 320 kB DD.

1. It would take at least 500Gig of storage to have a chance at anything near lossless video compression, something neither format has or is even close to having.
2. VC-1 and AVC are lossy compression techniques. Both quite good but lossy.
3. The HDM signal itself is 4:2:2 at best which means that while the luminance is at the full 1920x1080 resolution, the color is at one half or less resolution. Now I do a lot of LRGB imaging so I know that running RGB at half resolution has only a small impact on the final image but if you are complaining about DN, you should be screaming about this. Even with a lossless format we have a lossy signal from the start.
4. Resolution isn't going to stop at 1920x1080. We are no longer in a situation where display manufacturers are pushing the limits of technology trying to figure out how to get native HD. That has been solved with better technology that can go much further. We don't need HDM to be limited to 1920x1080 or at least, where is the very widescreen enhancement (20:9) in the format so as not to waste resolution with black bars? Better would be a format that was arbitrary in resolution and could be scaled to any display device.

The current format war was actually what HT enthusiasts needed since neither format is worthy of being the long term HDM format. These should be considered first generation or test HDM formats. The best possible outcome was for HD-DVD / BluRay competition to be a draw and for Sony and Toshiba to work together on a 3rd format that was superior to both existing formats. If BluRay becomes the dominant HDM format and then takes off, it will be 15 years before we have a chance at an HDM format that can actually take advantage of the full capability of displays we can buy today, let alone the displays we can buy tomorrow.

I find it so ironic that there are audiophiles constantly complaining about any soundtrack that isn't 24-bit, 192kHz and 100% lossless audio perfection but don't care one iota on how low quality the video is compared to video perfection on current displays that cost 1/10th of the money they spent on their top-shelf audio gear.

Re: BREAKING NEWS!! Warner Brothers is now Blu-ray Exclusive

So here's what I've been seeing in regards to how the deal went down with Warners. Maybe some others can confirm/deny as it's only rumor as far as I'm concerned.

Apparently Warner was in talks for a couple of weeks with Toshiba to go HD-DVD exclusive JOINTLY with Fox. Fox then got a payout from the Blu-ray camp to remain loyal to Blu and Warner wouldn't budge without Fox as ultimately they were looking to end the format war. Obviously there was money coming from both sides and Warner relented and took the blu-greenbacks.

I can see them wanting HD-DVD to win but relenting to blu to end the format war with no other options left.

Re: BREAKING NEWS!! Warner Brothers is now Blu-ray Exclusive

Robert Crawford:
Money money money. Ok, that´s what made Warner jump the red ship and nothing else. We get it. Check. You sound awfully bitter about their decision for going for the money.. It is a business venture after all.. they´re out to make money, not charity.

Were you as "bitter" when Paramount did the same thing 4-5 months ago?