Re: Breaking News!! Warner is soon to be Blu-Ray Exclusive!
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Originally Posted by Reginald Trent
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Mr. Hanks has either been paid by Toshiba to write this, or he simply has no clue about anything. He claims he understands business very well, but I seriously doubt he has any business experience at all. His arguments in favor of HD-DVD border on the ridiculous. According to him just having an Ethernet port for updates on all HD-DVD players, is enough to guarantee the success of HD-DVD over Blu-Ray. Ofcourse, he quite conveniently overlooks the fact that the most common Blu-Ray player, or for that matter HD player, the PS3, already has an ethenet connection. Also by the end of this year, if not sooner, there will be several Blu-Ray players, from several manufacturers, featuring an ethernet port.
The other argument that Mr. Hanks uses in favor of HD-DVD players, their low price, also does not hold much weight. Specially considering, that inspite of their higher price, Blu-Ray standalone players outsold HD-DVD players during the holiday period. The irony is that he talks about Apple's sucess with the iPod in the portable music player market, to explain, that all people care about is a "top notch system", as if Blu-Ray is somehow a lesser technology than HD-DVD. Someone needs to point out to Mr. Hanks that Apple's iPod is one of the most expensive amongst all personal music players and quite unjustifiably so, if you ask me. More importantly, after the recent price drops in Toshiba HD-DVD players, there is not much room left for further reductions, atleast not anytime soon. Whereas Blu-Ray still has room to play with their pricing, since costs for Blu-Ray will continue to drop for a long time, as the technology matures. This also includes reductions in the cost of disc manufacturing. HD-DVD has had the advantage of being closely based on DVD, and thus starting out with a lower manufacturing cost for discs. But that also means, that there is not much room further for lower costs on that front either, since DVD was already a very mature product.
Mr. Hanks also mentions having Microsoft as a supporter of HD-DVD, as a major key to winning the war for HD-DVD. This is when Bill gates and Microsoft, both have stated on numerous occasions that they believe some form of a download model as the likely successor to DVD, rather than any disc based system. If Microsoft really believed in HD-DVD and/or wanted to fully support it, they would have considered adding HD-DVD to the X-Box, but that is something that they have explicitly said they will not do. In fact Microsoft has very recently made statements, post Warner announcement, that they are open to the idea of a Blu-Ray addon for the X-Box. This to me clearly indicates their extent of support or rather the lack of support to the HD-DVD cause. Who is willing to bet that the Microsoft labs are already working on a Blu-Ray addon for the X-Box, that is if they already don't have one tested and ready to go as and when needed. Furthermore, he mentions the success of Windows as an example of how Microsoft's preserverance is a factor in this war, quite conveniently forgetting that Windows succeeded simply because of the huge support it had from the software and hardware manufacturing companies. While Apple floundered inspite of a superior, "more complete" product, due to it's monopolistic business manufacturing and sales model. The fact is, that Toshiba is the Apple, while Sony is what Microsoft was in the OS war. Also, in the VCR format wars between JVC & Sony, it was JVC with the software & manufacturing support while Sony was the one with a monopolistic model. Whereas, this time around, it is Sony with the software & hardware support, while Toshiba tries to push it's format almost single handedly.
Finally, the silliest of Mr. Hanks arguments, is reserved for last. He states, "If Blu-ray sells 100 machines and each customer bought 7 discs with it, that's good for studios and not great for player manufacturers. If HD-DVD sells 300 players and 1 disc with each, Toshiba is much happier than studios. Which of those groups can easily change direction? The studios". Am I the only one who sees the stupidity of his argument. If the studios sell 100 x 7 = 700 discs on Blu-Ray and only 300 x 1 = 300 discs on HD-DVD and if the higher disc sales, is what is "good for studios", as he himself states, then why in the world would they "easily change direction"? By the way, the very figures he uses, indicate how well versed Mr. Hanks actually is with the current state of the HD market. Where in the world did Mr. Hanks get the idea that there are 3 times as many HD-DVD players sold than Blu-Ray players? Even Toshiba's own figures admit that they have only a 49% share of the HD player market and this is not taking into account the PS3, which if included would give the edge to Blu-Ray players by almost 5 times, considering that there are around 3 million PS3s sold in addition to the half million standalone Blu-Ray players. Compare that to the half million HD-DVD players in addition to the approx 200,000 HD-DVD X-Box addons and it is quite clear where the dominating Blu-Ray disc sales come from. Last but not the least, Mr. Hanks needs to take a course in business, for he seems to be totally devoid of any understanding of the basic principle of business, ie. profit. Toshiba may be outselling any other single Blu-Ray manufacturer in HD player sales, but the question is at what price. While the Blu-Ray players sell for a profit, Toshiba continues to lose money with each new HD-DVD player they sell. In their goal to establish HD-DVD, or should I say to insure survival of the HD-DVD format, Toshiba has forever forsaken any profits from HD-DVD hardware sales. Thus, leaving absolutely no incentive for the other CE manufacturers to ever get into manufacturing of HD-DVD players. In fact with the current state of affairs, I don't see much of an incentive for even dual format players, for it is far cheaper to buy the two formats individually, than what it would cost to make a dual player profitabally. But obviously, Mr. Hanks lives in his own dreams, totally oblivious of what is happening in the real world. But then again, this may just be the only way he figures he could generate readership for himself and his blog.
I don't think anyone at this stage can, with even reasonable surety, guarantee which way the format war will end. But I think, with the way things already are, one can safely predict, that irrespective of what happens to HD-DVD, Blu-Ray is definately here to stay. Thus for Mr. Hanks to actually predict that HD-DVD will outrightly win over Blu-Ray, is just hog wash, to put it mildly.
But at least it will sound awsume with lossless audio even if it is Dolby True HD, which sounds great. 
