Yep. And as mass adoption never happens, MS cleans up with HD downloads and streaming in a couple of years.
End result in the format war, both sides lost.
We were so close, one studio away from ONE format and now MS pulls this crap for a format they really don't give a damn about. They just want to have a stalemate. J6P thinks, "Screw this. I'm not buying TWO new players, DVD is good enough for me..."
Anyone who wants good quality, high bitrate HD physical media are now going to be a "niche" consumer. Just like with DVD-a and SACD. Who won there? The ipod.
Evereone says, "So What? Get both Players! Be format neutral!" Yeah, except without mass adoption, many smaller or older films will probably NEVER make it into EITHER format.
Gotta hand it to MS, they know what they're doing.
Remember this...?
http://www.engadget.com/2006/01/09/t...l-gates-again/
"First off, I wanted to talk about some of the stuff you talked about your keynote, specifically Vongo, which is going to be the first of what I presume will be several online video subscription services that will be announced in the next few months. It's similar to the ToGo services that are available already for music, but do you think that online video download subscriptions have a greater chance of being successful than the rental model has so far been for music? Are customers already used to the idea of renting movies, but it's taking them some time to getting used to the idea of renting music?
GATES...
Yeah, I mean, movies are a bit different in the sense that it's often that you'll want to see it once, and then having it in a library wouldn't be that critical to you, whereas with music you're going to want to listen to it many, many times. In fact, you can hear it once on the radio and get that sample, so it's the ongoing use that's the real value there..."
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051017-5445.html
"For us it's not the physical format. Understand that this is the last physical format there will ever be. Everything's going to be streamed directly or on a hard disk. So, in this way, it's even unclear how much this one counts.
Will HD DVD or Blu-ray be the last physical format? You could certainly make a strong case for that..."
Some of us saw this coming months ago. Looks like we were right.
