Breaking News!! Warner is soon to be Blu-Ray Exclusive! - Page 22  

Re: Warner Brothers is now Blu-ray Exclusive

The razor burn and pock marks were just as visible on film in the movie theater.

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

Well that comment certainly gave me a good laugh.

As someone who was involved for years with the people who run CES, I can tell you definitively what you can "read into that". Sony provided that gear free of charge or paid to fee.

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

Argreed.

Threads I've started have been [what if?] questions, not statements.

Two questions:

Is Paramount Pictures contract ironclad?

&

Is Universal Pictures, decline to comment a (between the lines) subsidy request @ Toshiba?

Paul

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

Oh I think the retailers and consumers are going to make Toshiba's decision a lot easier for them. If this news gets through to the portion of the consumer market that is ready to take the plunge into HD (people like me) then HD DVD players are going to be gathering dust on the shelves. Assuming retailers will even want to stock them anymore. Of course WB could always reverse their decision in a couple of weeks (unless they locked into a contract) and throw us back into the war. It's going to be interesting to see where the chips fall from now on out. If Universal or Paramount decide to go back to being neutral or even BD exclusive then it's game, set and match.

What I find interesting reading through these forums and others is the cut off the nose to spite the face attitude of some of the HD DVD supporters. It seems they would rather see HDM as a whole die then to have to go out and buy a BD player. What kind of attitude is that? To invest so much emotion into a piece of hardware is just plain silly. Also the HD DVD supporters now proclaiming that HDM is going to die now because BD seemingly won the war is ridiculous. Would they have the same doom and gloom outlook for HDM if WB has chosen HD DVD? I think not. They keep saying that they will be happy with upconverted SD so they won't need to move to BD. If you're that happy with upconverted SD why didn't you just stick with that until the war was over like I have.

Yet another conspiracy theory

I don't know about that Ron...my conspiracy theory tin-foil hat makes me remember that last year Parker changed the whole "look and feel" of the HTF "skin" over to a rounded blue-themed version - making it look like BRD packaging. Were you guys in cahoots with the BDA that far back?

Re: Breaking News!! Warner is now Blu-Ray Exclusive!

I know this is the Warner topic but I think the following is germane...

Someone on another forum has suggested that a good move for Toshiba at this point would be to offer a Combo player!!

I wholeheartedly agree with that! If Toshiba could offer a top notch player that fully supported all HD DVD and Blu-ray features (including Profile 2.0/BD-Live) and support for internal decoding of all advanced audio formats, I'd buy TWO of them!!

If anyone could bring this player to market under, say, $500, it's Toshiba!

I think it would sell extremely well!

Mark

Re: Breaking News!! Warner is now Blu-Ray Exclusive!

I don't know about that Mark. BRD is a clean new design: HD-DVD is more of an upgrade to existing DVD. I would guess that it's a lot easier for a BRD player to add support for HD-DVD as a "feature" than it would be for an HD-DVD to add support for BRD.

Re: Breaking News!! Warner is now Blu-Ray Exclusive!

Are you suggesting that Toshiba isn't capable of producing such a player?

Obviously, any new combo player wouldn't be an HD DVD design that had Blu-ray "added" to it. It would be a BRAND NEW design with both Blu-ray and HD DVD as part of the design.

LG and Samsung have produced such players, with varying levels of success. Samsung just announced ANOTHER new combo player yesterday. Why on earth do you assume that Toshiba couldn't produce one too?

It's the price point that would be the most difficult to hit. In order for it to be a successful product, it would have to retail for less than $500. Under $400 would be even better.

Mark

Re: Breaking News!! Warner is now Blu-Ray Exclusive!

But if you look at the Big Picture, the amount of adopters who would be stuck with a dozen or so HD-DVD titles is relatively miniscule, and wouldn't be worth making combo players for. It would have been like early SD-DVD players having included a Divx accomodation for those who bought into Divx.

Re: Breaking News!! Warner is now Blu-Ray Exclusive!

I think a lot of you are missing the point on the HDM format war. Just because Warner's is jumping ship later on this year doesn't mean the general public is going to jump on the HDM bandwagon. Also, I think the masses have spoken and aren't given the credit of being intelligent in their choice or lack of choice. Just as money is the big factor for corporations, spending money is a big factor for the masses. Until HDM, HD DVD and Blu-ray or whatever is left, comes down in prices on both hardware and software, they aren't going to make headways.
Software is what will drive the market, but with SD DVD being less expensive,
what choice is the logical one for the masses? Home theater enthusiasts will want the better product, but the general masses will prefer the cheaper product.

Re: Warner Brothers is now Blu-ray Exclusive

Joe,
The store setups doesn't give such HDM releases justice. When I watched the HD DVD of Casablanca on my properly calibrated setup and then conducted an "A" versus "B" test with the latest SD DVD release of the same film, it wasn't even close. Furthermore, the lossless audio of these newer films are even more pronounced over the typical 5.1 DD or DTS SD DVD sound.

I'm not trying to sell anybody anything, but as a movie buff, I urge those of you that haven't bought any HDM hardware or software to keep an open mind on such items because one day if you actually make that jump, you will be very impressed by what you're hearing and seeing.





Crawdaddy

Re: Breaking News!! Warner is now Blu-Ray Exclusive!

Not only that, but the economy is not exactly bursting upwards right now so people are becoming cautious with their discretionary spending. The adoption of HDM throughout the general public will take place in a steady stream over time. There might be some spikes in purchases, but overall, the market penetration will be much slower than it was for SD DVD.

Re: Breaking News!! Warner is now Blu-Ray Exclusive!

It is not good for some to focus to much on there investment and to refuse to support the winning format. I realize that its not a good feeling to invest you money into something that fails but its not like the player is going to stop working once HD-DVD calls it quits.

I to have purchased an HD-DVD player and while I have over 60 HD-DVD titles I will not get emotional over it when and if HD-DVD dies. I will just continue to enjoy my HD-DVD collection and I will just go on buying Blu-ray titles.

I am looking forward to seeing WB titles anounced for the Blu-ray platform. We should also see the WB titles that where on HD-DVD only come to the Blu-ray side, hopefully it will not take them to long to port everything over to a Blu-ray version.


I feel that once it gets out to the general public that WB has gone Blu-ray and that Toshiba has only two studios, Toshiba will not be selling alot of HD-DVD players. There is also a chance that retailers could take the choice out of the consumers hands. All it will take is for retailers to start taking HD-DVD players off the shelves and that could be all it takes for Universal to jump on board with Blu-ray. But if there is only two studios remaining and if players become difficult to find why would consumers not turn to Blu-ray instead? I am not saying everyone will run out and buy an HD player. But the ones that where planning on making a purchase of a HD player will most likely look at the big picture and pick the format that is going to win. It's not to say that Toshiba can not pull one out of the fire, but the truth is it would take a really big miracle for that to happen. There are only two nail holes left in Toshiba's coffin and it may only take one more nail to finish them off, only time will tell. But now matter what happens I will not only keep my HD-DVD player but I will keep and enjoy my HD-DVD titles until I can not play them anymore. I am exspecting to be buying Blu-ray only sometime after next year once Toshiba kills off HD-DVD.

Re: Breaking News!! Warner is now Blu-Ray Exclusive!

I will continue to buy HD-DVD titles so long as they are available. Will probably pick up a Blu-Ray player next fall/Christmas.

Re: Breaking News!! Warner is now Blu-Ray Exclusive!

Wish it were that easy.

The fact is for me and my kids to enjoy our 124 disc HD DVD collection in the family room or on the road, I would need to buy a third (portable unit?) HD DVD player. Only have them in the theater room and bedroom.

Paul

Re: Breaking News!! Warner is now Blu-Ray Exclusive!

Just wait. They might come really inexpensive.


Cees

Re: Breaking News!! Warner is now Blu-Ray Exclusive!

"But if you look at the Big Picture, the amount of adopters who would be stuck with a dozen or so HD-DVD titles is relatively miniscule, and wouldn't be worth making combo players for."



Pioneer still makes a LD/DVD combo unit. Problem is all the combo units Ive ever seen are expensive.

Re: Breaking News!! Warner is now Blu-Ray Exclusive!

I'm more curious about Universal's stance now. I can't remember where I read it (I thought Business Week about 6 months ago...) where Universal was quoted that parent company GE was very annoyed that Universal wasn't selling on Blu-Ray as well.

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

Hehheh. Jon, I can certainly understand what you mean. I (and my kids) started taking up the violin/viola(!) about 1.5 year ago, which kept me too busy and financially committed to worry about this format war -- and I pretty much ignored it until the Blade Runner release.

People should probably find better things to do, if this HT stuff is really stressing them out. There are plenty other good (and more important!) things in life than HT afterall. I also took up photography more seriously in recent years to name another (expensive) hobby -- and it was pretty much my main reason for dropping by HTF on occasion over the last 1.5 year too until this past month or so.

_Man_

Re: Breaking News!! Warner is now Blu-Ray Exclusive!

I don't think there is any doubt whatsoever that Toshiba has to put out combo players now. Unless they want to price HD DVD players under $100, that is the only way they are going to expand HD DVD capability beyond the less than one million drives out there in the field (and I would expect of that one million a good 25% at least is multiple units to the same household).
Otherwise the format is moribund now. Mass retailers won't give it shelf space (unless the price is ridiculously low ball so it can compete as a higher feature, bargain player). They have to smuggle HD DVD capability into peoples homes now under a Blu-ray coat. If they can do that, and their professed agility and efficiency with replication wasn't bunk- they can still carve out a niche within a niche. The HDM market is going to be relatively small for a while yet- and Universal at least has shown they will support a small market with a robust list of releases. Fox hasn't. I don't see that likely changing much (on the Fox side) in the near future either.
I would think the strategy for HD DVD now would be to bulk up the exclusive catalog to such a point that in the long run, any Bd player manufactuer is going to be compelled to offer it as a feature in a Bd player.
If 3 years down the road, HD DVD can make it into most of the Bd players- how exactly will they have lost? They will have spent considerably less money to essentially take advantage of the same pool of consumers that Bd has.

Its not sour grapes, or facing unreality to say this ain't over yet.

Bravo to the circumpsect position HTF is taking going forward. If Bd sews up Uni and Paramount support, then yup, its all over. Until then HD DVD has lost alot of pieces, but they still have a few on the board and couple moves left.
Interesting to see how they play it.

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

You may be right -- and I've been wondering about that myself. I'm not even a true early adopter as I only jumped in during the last month, but heck, I owned more DVDs than Blockbuster rented out for a long time -- and I still might be owning more compared to my local Blockbuster though I apparently pale in comparison to RAF. And at this point, I guess I already own more HDM -- ~30 all in Blu -- than my local Blockbuster too, LOL. Nobody I personally know comes close to me in DVD collection save one coworker -- and I only recently found out. Outside of that one coworker, I suspect I own more DVDs than all the people I personally know combined.

_Man_

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

I could have written that myself!

Of course, if you read enough of these threads, you may start to wonder when, exactly, did your SD DVDs become pieces of garbage.

Re: Breaking News!! Warner is now Blu-Ray Exclusive!

Per High Def Digest:

According to a company press release, Sony sold through 1.2 million units of the PS3 in the period beginning Friday, November 23, 2007 and ending December 31, 2007.

Re: Breaking News!! Warner is now Blu-Ray Exclusive!

I read an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal. You guys know most of the details, but it helped me get a little more perspective on what Sony did to get this far. I had tried to keep up, but there's stuff I missed. Like how Sony bet the farm with Blu Ray and insisted it's inclusion into the PS3, which probably tipped the scales.

And then Microsoft not having HD-DVD drives in the Xbox, boy that could have tipped it the other way.

Here's the link to the Wall Street Journal:

In Blu-ray Coup, Sony Has Opening But Hurdles, Too - WSJ.com

Re: Breaking News!! Warner is now Blu-Ray Exclusive!

Wow is that off the mark. I (and others I'm sure) would buy a BR player that meets the final 2.0 spec but there are none available now. Theoretically the PS3 will eventually be able to meet it but I'm not quite ready to take that chance. When I went to buy an HDM player, I became an "informed consumer" and went with HD-DVD for price and future compatibility. It is one thing to buy a player for a format that may lose but another to buy a more expensive player that when it wins (or has won), you still lose.

Re: Breaking News!! Warner is now Blu-Ray Exclusive!

2.0 is only important if you want to participate in online features. 1.1 is satisfactory to me and many consumers out there. I'd be curious to know a statistical breakdown of those who would use online features.

Re: Breaking News!! Warner is now Blu-Ray Exclusive!

I'm with Chuck. I bought into HD DVD when their final spec player hit the price point I was willing to pay. I'll do the same for BR. But a final spec BD player doesn't even exist at any price.

And let's be honest. Had this gone the other way, you'd see all the same type of posts from the Blu supporters.


I did. My HD DVD player was plugged into an ethernet port on the wall behind my HT. I accessed online features and it sure made firmware updates easy.

Re: Breaking News!! Warner is now Blu-Ray Exclusive!

What current LD/DVD player does Pioneer have???

Re: Breaking News!! Warner is now Blu-Ray Exclusive!

I beleive that Pioneer is still offering the DVL-919 DVD/Laser Disc player. The only thing is that I also beleive that the retail is about $999. Even though it offers component video out which I would love to have since I still watch some of my LD from time to time. But I do not think I would spend $1k on a DVD/Laserdisc player.

Re: Breaking News!! Warner is now Blu-Ray Exclusive!

Scooter-
Pioneer doesn't currently make a LD player and hasn't for some time.


Dan you and I rarely agree, but this is one of those times. I know the BDA has been lobbying retailers to drop HD DVD. If they do it's not going to matter if Universal and Paramount continue to release on that format.