The Digital Bits - "Officially Blu-ray" Soapbox - Page 3

Douglas Monce · 06-02-2007, 07:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DaViD Boulet

Laserdisc was niche and I don't want that again... release dates lingering months or years behind VHS and often never coming to market at all... and costing twice the price when they do.

Laserdisc was a niche.....but why? It really didn't have any disc based competition. (RCA's Discovision doesn't count) There was no format war. No one was waiting for someone to win to jump into Laserdisc.

It was a niche for several reasons, first and for most it was too damned expensive for the average consumer. Even when VHS prices dropped and you could get a movie for $20, Laser was still upwards of $80 for a movie. The players were over $1000. Add to that the fact that you had to flip the disc ever hour, or every half hour if you had the CAV version.

Laser just had too many things against it to be anything but a niche. Many electronics formats have had that problem Reel to Reel tape comes to mind.

Doug

DaViD Boulet · 06-02-2007, 07:14 PM

Quote:

They've been temporary issues for a year (BD-J, BD+). And while I don't think that BD will never actually get them working, that they haven't yet, while their competition has had the full feature set available for months and is busily lowering prices, makes the conclusion seem less inevitable than BD proponents like Bill like to make it sound.

Summer of this year has been the proposed date for these enhancements all along. No surprise there.

Since HD DVD does not offer BD+ protection, comparing the delayed implimentation on BD to no implimentation on HD DVD is moot. Regarding BDJ, yes, we all wish it would have been ready sooner. But again, no surprise about mid-summer 07 (it's also more complicated, and more powerful, than the xml-based HDi on HD DVD, though I wish BD incorporated both protocols).

Bill does an excellent job talking about how you're getting those cheap prices on all those Toshiba HD DVD players. I'm continually amazed how many folks seem to tout the cheaper prices of HD DVD hardware as a format-advantage given the unsustainability of Toshiba's pricing strategy. Toshiba is taking enormous losses on hardware sales to try to establish a format-foothold. If they can succeed in time for manufacturing costs to fall to match these prices, they might be ok. However, the bigger "cost" of their pricing model is that they've created an HD DVD hardware market model that no other major manufacturer will touch. I don't think too many economics/marketing experts would consider Toshiba's pricing an "advantage" given how those prices have been achieved.

DaViD Boulet · 06-02-2007, 07:18 PM

Quote:

It was a niche for several reasons, first and for most it was too damned expensive for the average consumer. Even when VHS prices dropped and you could get a movie for $20, Laser was still upwards of $80 for a movie. The players were over $1000. Add to that the fact that you had to flip the disc ever hour, or every half hour if you had the CAV version.

Any other laserdisc owners care to comment?

Where I lived, the average laserdisc title cost around $30, CLV with 60-minutes per side was the norm, and side-changing laserdisc machines cost less than $400 USD.

But laserdisc was inconvenient: you had to switch discs on movies longer than 2 hours (always got gasps of horror from my newbie friends) and the cost-increase over VHS didn't make sense to the average consumer who couldn't appreciate the increased picture quality on his 27" interlaced 4x3 TV. To make matters worse... laserdiscs were *letterboxed* which made that picture even smaller on his screen...

Douglas Monce · 06-02-2007, 07:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DaViD Boulet

Bill does an excellent job talking about how you're getting those cheap prices on all those Toshiba HD DVD players. I'm continually amazed how many folks seem to tout the cheaper prices of HD DVD hardware as a format-advantage given the unsustainability of Toshiba's pricing strategy. Toshiba is taking enormous losses on hardware sales to try to establish a format-foothold.

This exact strategy has been the secret to Microsoft's success for 30 years.

BTW Sony is taking huge losses on the PS3 for exactly the same reasons. I don't think anyone is making money on either of these formats yet. Except for maybe Warner Bros.

Doug

Douglas Monce · 06-02-2007, 07:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DaViD Boulet

Any other laserdisc owners care to comment?

Where I lived, the average laserdisc title cost around $30, CLV with 60-minutes per side was the norm, and side-changing laserdisc machines cost less than $400 USD.

But laserdisc was inconvenient: you had to switch discs on movies longer than 2 hours (always got gasps of horror from my newbie friends) and the cost-increase over VHS didn't make sense to the average consumer who couldn't appreciate the increased picture quality on his 27" interlaced 4x3 TV. To make matters worse... laserdiscs were *letterboxed* which made that picture even smaller on his screen...

I didn't see prices like that until the late 80s. And most of them weren't letterboxed until the middle 80s. They didn't have side changing laserdisc players when I got into it.

Jari K · 06-02-2007, 07:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jason Harbaugh

I disagree with this 100%. Having two competing formats that do basically the same thing is hurting the adoption of optical HD as a whole. No adoption, little chance of current HD on disc taking off. I support one format, and will only support one format. Would I love to see Universal's movies on Blu-ray? Absolutely. But there are 1000's of others I would like to see as well, and most of those have zero chance of making it to HD with the userbase split up the way it is.

This pretty much sums up also my thoughts right now. It just doesn´t feel "right" that I *have to* buy two players just to enjoy all films (that I want) in HD. It should be easier and more convenient - especially if HD really wants to dominate and someday replace the SD DVD. That "Average Joe" (or Jane) will not buy two formats (even that one would be great at the moment) and I guess those average people will eventually decide the faith of the whole HD-format.

Since I live in Europe, it´s not that easy for me to take advantage of the current (approx.) 250$ HD DVD-player offer, but I have admit that I probably would buy the player if I could just go to the store and pick it up easily. Even if HD DVD loses the "war", I still would´ve a pretty good upscaling DVD-player for a cheap price. But - I also have to admit that the cheap price would be the main reason why I would by the HD DVD-player *at this point*. Sure, I´m fully aware that HD DVD-releases are technically great (still I feel that good Blu-ray is "equal" to good HD DVD), using newer codecs (Blu-ray seems to be using more and more of them now also, and I don´t see that MPEG-2 is that inferior with higher bitrates anyway) and keeping most of the extras from the older SD DVD-releases (some Blu-ray-releases sadly doesn´t follow this). I also feel that I would mainly buy that HD DVD-player for Universal-releases only, since "VC-1 vs MPEG-2" or even "1.5 Mbps vs 640kbps" debates doesn´t tip the scale for HD DVD, since Blu-ray has more studio-support and other factors to compensate that.

So in a nutshell (my personal opinion): When the facts are in the table, I feel that Blu-ray has the upper hand and I also feel that Universal will go "neutral" sometime in next year (of course I can´t be fully sure and if that is the case, I´ll reconsider). Since Universal is basically the "only reason" for me to buy a HD DVD-player, I feel sticking to the one format for time being. Universal has many great titles (I still love movies more than formats), but I still don´t feel that I should buy two formats just for that. My guess is that many Blu-ray supporters think that way. Of course we all would like to buy e.g. Universal-titles, but "one HD-format" would be solution to this problem also.

I respect Bill Hunt and I have read his site for several years now. I don´t feel that he shouldn´t say his opinion, as long as the site gives a fair news-coverage to ALL formats (DVD, Blu-ray, HD DVD) and is sticking to facts OR well argumented opinions (let´s face it - many "format war"-related issues are opinions at the moment, since both sides are going relatively "strong", both releasing movies, etc). And I feel that he has always done that (most of the times, anyway).

To be frank here, HD DVD-camp needs "Bill Hunt" of their own. Someone who has guts enough to say his/her own opinion (of course not ignoring the facts), BUT without any hostile attitude or personal insults. Just go to the certain forums and you´ll see that this "HD debate" is about to get out of hand - like 15 year old kids arguing. At least I skip all the threads that come "hostile", since they don´t have any real info, just what I call "propaganda" from both sides.

Adam Gregorich · 06-02-2007, 07:38 PM

I for one am not too bothered by the format war. Like a lot of people here I only have one format at the moment due to $$, but will eventually get the other format. If they weren't competing with each other would we see $249 players at Costco? Would Sony be saying that they will have a player out later this year for under $400? Would Panasonic have a $600 (plus free movies) MSRP drop in one year? Would both sides be pushing interactivity? If every exclusive studio when neutral, nothing would change. It would still be up to consumers.

I don't know how much further along we would be with only one format. I remember when DVD came out, at the end of the first year not all studios were supporting it, and I bet there were fewer titles out than either HD format has now. Pretty much only Netflix rented them. I think we all forget just how slow of a start that was. If there are cheap combo players in 2 years when this is starting to take off all these "format war" arguments will be moot.

BTW I remember going to Tower Records with my wife every month to pick up a new LD (back in the days) and paying between $40-$60 each. The Criterions were $125. The cheapest auto flipping player was around $800. OUCH!

Douglas Monce · 06-02-2007, 07:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jari K

So in a nutshell (my personal opinion): When the facts are in the table, I feel that Blu-ray has the upper hand and I also feel that Universal will go "neutral" sometime in next year (of course I can´t be fully sure and if that is the case, I´ll reconsider). Since Universal is basically the "only reason" for me to buy a HD DVD-player, I feel sticking to the one format for time being. Universal has many great titles (I still love movies more than formats), but I still don´t feel that I should buy two formats just for that. My guess is that many Blu-ray supporters think that way. Of course we all would like to buy e.g. Universal-titles, but "one HD-format" would be solution to this problem also.

The reason that I bought an HD DVD player first was that I frankly couldn't find any movies that were Blu-ray exclusive that I wanted to buy. I eventually found a great deal on an open box blu-ray player so I picked it up. But I still only have 4 blu-ray movies, and can't find anymore that I want. This notion that blu-ray has more choices because of better studio support, at least for me, hasn't panned out yet.

Doug

Jason Seaver · 06-02-2007, 07:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DaViD Boulet

Bill does an excellent job talking about how you're getting those cheap prices on all those Toshiba HD DVD players. I'm continually amazed how many folks seem to tout the cheaper prices of HD DVD hardware as a format-advantage given the unsustainability of Toshiba's pricing strategy.

Because why should a consumer care? If you're following the industry, yeah, that's an issue, but I personally don't care much about Toshiba's bottom line. What you see as definitively "unsustainable" probably looks like a high-risk/high-reward strategy to them.

When my brothers with their new HDTVs ask me what the $300-400 more that a BD player costs over an HD DVD player gets them, there's not currently a great answer. "Unsustainable pricing model" means crap to them, more copy protection and region coding doesn't gain them anything, and the studio support thing cuts both ways (Universal + Weinstein right now seem to be worth Sony + Fox + Disney + Lion's Gate put together).

Adam Gregorich · 06-02-2007, 07:43 PM

Quote:

Just go to the certain forums and you´ll see that this "HD debate" is about to get out of hand - like 15 year old kids arguing.

I think that happened a while ago.