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

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

The comparisons to the Paramount decision are completely unfounded.

I believe Warner Brothers made a very hard but inevitable decision in a classy way. They publicly stated that they would watch the 4th quarter sales closely and would most likely make a decision based on that. They gave HD DVD every chance they could possibly get, including keeping some of their biggest titles as HD DVD exclusive (Batman Begins, Matrix). Well the quarter is up and despite firesales of players below upconverting DVD player prices they still couldn't budge Blu-ray. The choice was clear and we have known for a while that they were going to make a decision one way or the other.

Here's the classy part, they aren't yanking HD DVD support tomorrow. They are fullfilling their announced HD DVD titles through May. New owners will still get new Warner titles for a couple months. It's not much, but it is something. It doesn't matter if Warner took money or not. What does matter is that they aren't screwing the new HD DVD consumer outright.

Paramount on the other hand is a completely different story. There was zero info out there to suggest that they were even being persuaded to HD only. Blu-ray was clearly winning in discs sold as well as total hardware out in the wild. Infact leading up the announcement their own encoding engineers were excited about making Blu-ray specific high bitrate encodes with lossless audio. They were as in the dark about the announcement as anyone else. They yanked all Blu-ray announced titles including ones that had already been pressed and were to be released the following week. They ran to the bank and yelled "F*** You" to the Blu-ray consumer. They literally took the money and ran.

So please don't try and compare this to Paramount and try justifying that Warner Brother's deserves the same backlash Paramount got. They are completely different situations even if WB took cash incentives.

Re: Warner Brothers is now Blu-ray Exclusive

Denon's already announced two BD players, shipping in January (?):

Denon USA | DVD-3800BDCI

Denon USA | DVD-2500BTCI

CES will probably have the production models to slobber over. I think they're off the main floor again, over at the Mirage or something with Marantz.

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

I'm just wondering for folks that have both formats... Will you continue to buy HD-DVD if it is an exclusive title (Especially big sets like Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica), or will you wait until it some day comes out in Blu?

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

I completely disagree. Ending in May doesn't mean Classy. Most likely another business decision.

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

I consider this to be the end of the format war. The biggest studio, WB, going blu-ray only is the final nail in the coffin. Even though I am format neutral, I will be much much MUCH more reluctant to buy an HD-DVD movie at this point. Congratulations Blu-Ray!

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

I think I'm still going to buy the HD DVD exclusives, besides, its not like the players or discs won't work anymore. And they're so cheap nowadays it would be easy to snag one as a backup. I just will now buy Future Warner titles only on Blu.

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

That's a good question. It depends on how quickly people plan to move their HD decks out of their main HT (if at all) and how long they're willing to wait for those titles.

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

As my sig indicates, there are a couple of titles that will be hard for me to pass up. The hard thing for me will be Paramount titles: one assumes that when they go back to Blu, they will once again do encodes that take advantage of the extra bandwidth and capacity, as well as lossless audio. That spells double-dip to me, and I would like to avoid double-dips. I also fear Universal will do TrueHD for all their Blu, even the ones that only got DD+ on HD. Basically, it's gonna depend on the title and the specs. A catalog title with lossless isn't likely to be re-encoded when it comes to Blu, so that's a safe bet. New releases will be a trickier beast, and Netflix will come in handy.

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

68% of Blu-rays released are region free. Also you wouldn't have day and date New Line releases if it wasn't for region coding.

Might as well dispell some other old misinformation that may creep up.

BD-50 is the dominant release format with over 50% of all titles being dual layer. 92% of the new releases in the last month were on DL.

Mpeg2 is all but dead accounting for only 36% of all titles. AVC is quickly becoming the standard with a few studios still playing with VC1.

Lossless audio:
Disney: 100% of their titles
Sony: 100% of their titles
Fox: 100% of their titles
Lionsgate: 30% of their titles
Warner Brothers: 27% of their titles

As you can see, with the exception of Lionsgate, all BD exclusive studios put lossless audio on all their titles. Hopefully now WB follows suit and we can finally enjoy their films optimised for the BD format.

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

Stunning news, indeed!

At this point, anyone that doesn't go out and get some sort of Blu-ray player is going to be missing some great titles. Warner has a very strong catalog. I hope their announcement also means they will open up the floodgates on that catalog sometime in 2008.

It will be interesting to see if we hear anything from Paramount or Universal at CES. But, sans that, I won't be selling my HD DVD player anytime soon. Those studios also have titles I want on HDM. If they remain HD DVD exclusive it will take a long time for HD DVD to die completely.

At any rate, congrats to the Blu team for a well played move! Now I know how the Blu fans felt in August with the Paramount announcement!

Mark

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

Well, all in all I'm happy to see Blu-ray pull this out. Yes, I'm sure Warner accepted a boatload of money from the BDA, but all indications are that the other side was offering their own boatload. Somebody had to win it. I think Warner was right on the money when they said that the war was getting in the way of selling HDM to consumers.

I really wish that Warner had made this decision two months ago, though. Turning newly opened Christmas presents into door stops isn't very classy.

I hope those who feel bitter about this will get over it and get behind supporting one format as quickly as possible. Believe me, most Blu-ray fans understand your feelings as we experienced Paramount's defection last August. It's time to end the war and start supporting HDM, which means supporting Blu-ray.

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

I am neutral, but oh how silly the die hards must be feeling. And the downside is we have to put up with the die hard BR guys.

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

we'll compromise Aaron.
Black & Blu Friday it is.

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

I would yes. I took the risks, I take the responsibility for the purchase.

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

Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!


I agree. Time to put away any animosities and be thankful we have
one format to move forward with.

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

If it's something I really,really want, I'll buy the HD DVD. But, at this point, I think I'll just be buying BD. I just wish Warner would have made this announcement a little sooner. I'm sure a lot of people who purchased HD DVD players and software over the holidays feel a bit burned by this. Still, all's fair in love and war.

Hopefully, BD studios and manufacturers won't start to slack off now that the war is over. Keep releasing quality software and players, BDA!

I'll still keep my HD DVD's for the forseeable future, and the Toshiba is a wonderful upconverting player.

Re: Warner Brothers is now Blu-ray Exclusive

Read the article on ALL of the HD format problems in the New York Times. It perfectly defines the problem.....NEITHER HD-DVD nor Bluray offer much of a REAL impressive difference between their formats and standard DVD. Put a standard DVD in an upconverting player or amp and 90 percent of the public is unable to tell whether it is standard or HD. They are BOTH formats that are NOT needed....and only wanted by we "techies." Laserdiscs went nowhere and the HD disc formats are gonna follow suit. It doesn't matter who wins the format war. The difference is so minimal (except to techie eyes) that the average person just doesn't care. I have BOTH formats and frankly, I can't tell even the SLIGHTEST visual difference between the two, and only a minimally improved image compared to upconversion.

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

Of course it's monitary gain. My point is that this decision is not comparable to Paramount's "blind" decision to just follow the cash of an exclusive contract (where the BDA weren't even involved until after it was signed). WB's decision, and how they handled it, was quite different.

The two choices were payoff with a future market for HD sales, and a payoff with a future market of stagnating HD sales.

Plenty of insiders have had quite a bit to say about this already, for those who cared to listen.

Warner would have made as much money had they chosen to go with HD DVD with Microsoft's pay-off. They were courted from both sides with enormous sums and this time Microsoft didn't hide behind the curtain of Toshiba like they did when they helped fund Paramount's pay-off.

Warner's decision for Blu over Red was because that's the decision that makes market sense, given that WB was going to get the same payoff no matter which way they chose to go. Warner was smart, and by holding out as long as they did, they raised the stakes on both sides and got a lot more than the measely 150-million Paramount embraced.

Choosing Microsoft's payoff for Red would have put money in their pocket but stale-mated the HD market completely. Choosing the BDA's pay-off put money in their pocket and opened up the valve allowing the HD market to flow... giving them increased profit in the future as well.

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

I'm breathing a big sigh of relief (I second Crawdaddy's recommendation for the Panasonic 30, btw). I was really afraid it would go down the other way.

Now it's time for Warners to get down to business and get Casablanca and Adventures of Robin Hood out on blu (and throw in Maltese Falcon too).

Again, relieved.
-Reagan

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

Of course it is a business decision, they all are. Disagree as you will, but WB had a tough decision to make. They could have easily done a Paramount and yanked everything today. Got a bunch of preorders? Screw you, we are going to burn the discs in a pit. Considering the situation, giving 3 more months of titles is classy compared to yanking already pressed discs. The best scenario would have been giving us one format 2 years ago so none of this would have happened in the first place.

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

Why would anyone move an HD-DVD player out of their rack solely because WB has announced they're going BD exclusive? It's not like HD-DVDs and nicely upconverted DVDs on an HD-DVD player are going to stop working because of this announcement. Hell, I'm pretty sure a lot of people still use Laserdisc players, VCRs and D-VHS players. I'm format neutral, but there's no way I'll be getting rid of my HD-DVD player anytime soon.

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

even though I've had to send back my first set of BSG due to scratches, I would be all over BSG S2 if it were announced tomorrow. I'm not going to let up one bit on HD DVD titles that I absolutely positively want.
I will however be a little more circumspect on things that are more of an impulse purchase.
Right now I have several titles on HD DVD that I cherish purely for personal nostalgic reasons. These are also titles that for one reason or another, will not likely ever show up on Bd. Maintaining access to these in HD will be a major factor for me. Whenever I see a good deal on a new HD DVD player, I will be snapping it up just for insurance...the same way people used to buy LD players just to have access to Star Wars.

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

Oh, and one bright spot to all of this(at least in my eyes): if the format war is effectively over there's a good chance Lucas and Spielberg will start releasing their films on Blu-Ray now.

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

It's really too bad that both Paramount and Warner couldn't have stayed neutral for longer, as having the market decide would have been ideal. However, I can't say this is surprising. I lucked out in getting a PS3, and I only bought it because I knew there would be games I wanted as well as the movies. But, in the end, I wish I had been able to enjoy HD-DVD for the last couple years as well as it's a nice format.

However, again I say as a QC tester this is simply awesome news. I can't tell you how frustrating it is to test Warner HD-DVD titles in the emulation stage as compared to Warner BD titles in the emulation stage. Night and day, primarily because of HD-DVD's lack of recordable media.

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

Well right now as far as the major studios go, everything is either exclusive HD DVD or exclusive blu-ray. Most of my discs are actually Warner at this point with Universal being a close second. So now I'll be buying Warner on blu-ray rather than HD DVD.

Doug

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

They're simply waiting for a replication and release window.

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

Yeah, I'm sure Lucas will be right on that.... in about 5 or 6 years.

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

Good news!

Personally I never really cared which format won, I just wanted this silly format war over and done with. I have been holding off on buying HD titles because I wasn't sure if the either format would last.

Hopefully this will decide it.

F

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

Nothing was final until the last minute. Of course. But this outcome and many of the details surrounding it have been known to others outside of this forum as well.

My point about Warner's decision not being merely a decision based on pay-off is that their decision is NOT like Paramount. Paramount made a decision based purely on pay-off which contrasted with their own sales statistics and long-term market strategy. On the other hand, because they could have had virtually the same "pay off" for exclusivity with either camp, Warner wanted to make the decision that makes the most long-term market sense, which is Blu-ray Disc given the way that the market trends have been going over the past year. They also wanted to make the most profit in a deal for exclusivity... a win win. What company wouldn't take advantage of such a great opportunity: getting paid vast sums to make a decision they would have wanted to make anyway to end the war and start to help ramp-up mass adoption as the format-confusion dust settles.

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

I'm dual format- but I'm not going to lay down my animosity until I see a multi page rant from Bill Hunt on why the Bd 'buying' Warners exclusive support was terrible for the consumer.
The worst thing about this news? People like Bill Hunt are vindicated.

Best thing about this news? pretty soon it will be clear to everyone just how many people actually were waiting for a format resolution- and how many couldn't care less either way. There have been a lot of intellectually dishonest- or at the very least, irrational and emotional- arguments bandied about the last 18 months. Here is where we start to see them proven either right or wrong.