Since WB went BluRay Exclusive, Any SD Fans Going Over? (1 Viewer)

[Bruce Morrison]

That's true - Blu-ray players observe region-coding for SD DVDs, although I understand at least one European company is now offering a Blu-ray player that will play Region 1 and Region 2 DVDs (I believe you have to specifically select the region via the remote each time, which sounds a slight pain).

It's worth remembering that there are also regions for Blu-ray but, just to confuse us, they are different from the regions for SD DVDs! It's not so significant from a technical viewpoint (unlike the PAL speed-up issue for SD, all BDs reproduce films at the correct speed!), but it may have some significance in terms of software choice and pricing, both of which will probably be better in the US than in the UK.

 

[Thomas T]

Nope, not yet. When Blu Ray starts releasing foreign films like Nights Of Cabiria and Breathless, silent films like Sunrise and Intolerance, classic American cinema like All That Heaven Allows, Double Indemnity, Stagecoach on hi-def and players drop to $99, then I will seriously consider it.

Sorry but I'm not into mainstream junk like Spiderman 2, Batman Begins, Pirates Of The Caribbean, etc. which seems to be the rock Blue Ray and HD DVD are building their consumership on.

 

[Mark Cappelletty]

Dude, have you been drinking the Bill Hunt/David Boulet shill Kool-Aid or what?

 

[Mark Cappelletty]

It totally depends. I have an Oppo 970 and it does a killer job. I got THE SIMPSONS MOVIE for Christmas and it looks great. I just depends on the source material-- CHILDREN OF MEN, which is a combo disc, looks stunning in HD on my Xbox 360 add-on, but the SD side is flat in comparison.

 

[JohnMor]

Absolutely not. Still waiting for the prices to come down and the quality to reach it's Zenith. I didn't jump into SD, and I'm not about to jump into HD (i.e. BR).

 

[Dave S.G.]

I'm in a similar boat. I've been buying quite a bit lately, but only used and ridiculously priced sale stuff. I'm dying to get 2001 and BLADE RUNNER but I'm holding off for HD stuff dust to settle. Even if it means another year or so. But those two will be my first two titles almost without a doubt.

Blind buys like SUNSHINE will also wait.

 

[mdnitoil]

The day I can purchase $5 Blu-ray disks and they will play in the Minivan for my kid, I'll jump right on board. Otherwise it'll be a niche in my life. Anymore, the idea of being constrained to the one physical location where my sole hi-def player/display would reside sounds more like a punishment than some sort of improvement. But that's just my family's viewing habits.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

If your prediction is correct and SD goes completely bye-bye in the next year or so - which is what your timetable sounds like - I will happily eat a big pie made of dog poop.

Which is my way of saying that there's absolutely no way SD-DVD vanishes overnight like that. There are skillions of SD-DVD players out there and not a whole lot of BD players. Even if they do drop to $99 by this time next year, not "everyone" will be getting one. Many, many people will be happy to stay with their SD players.

I think the BR/HD fanboys fail to understand that all the unwashed masses who've gotten into SD-DVD won't be eager to replace their old collections. It's gonna take a LOOOONG time - if ever - for BR to completely eradicate SD. I've always said that the average Joe isn't going to be interested in a new format that's not a radical change. The average person saw a big difference between VHS and SD-DVD, not only in terms of picture/sound but also in convenience and features. BR upgrades the visuals a bit but isn't the revolutionary step up that VHS to DVD is.

And those people are gonna balk at being "forced" to buy into a new format when they've just gotten settled with the old one.

Face it - the tiny fraction of BR/HD fanboys doesn't represent the real world. I've seen posts here that don't understand why they even MAKE SD-DVDs anymore... :rolleyes

 

[Colin Jacobson]

I'm finally buying myself a widescreen TV, and a special at Best Buy nearly enticed me into BR. I was tempted to do so because the Best Buy deal would've netted me the TV I wanted and a Panasonic BR player for about $2400 total plus 10 free discs. It may sound stupid, but the only reason I backed out of the deal was because BB didn't have five discs I wanted! (You pick 5 at the store and the other 5 via mail.)

If only they'd had Blade Runner - or let me combine titles so that the $70 Spider-Man trilogy would count as two instead of insisting that I get 5 separate $35 or under titles - I'd have a BR player right now. Instead, I'm gonna get me an upconverting SD-DVD player and sit out the whole thing until some other time.

You know what'll really push me over the edge? If my site's readers demand it. So far they've been on the side of SD reviews, and no one's seemed to care if I go high-def. If that changes, so does my rig...

 

[Mike_Richardson]

Newsflash -- if you have a HD cable box or satelitte, you can watch any HD programming on a SD set. Actually you could also watch an HD-DVD or BD disc on a SD set too if you absolutely had to. The "analog shutoff" deal is only apocalyptic if your only source of programming is an over-the-air antenna. Nearly every HD box I own has standard-def outputs on it of some kind.

Oh yeah, your standard-def DVDs can still be viewed on any kind of set, including an HD one with the miracle of upconversion.

I certainly hope you didn't throw away all your regular DVDs, because there will be hundreds of possibly thousands of titles that'll NEVER be released on Blu Ray.

Other than that, welcome back from Mars!

 

[MielR]

The WB move to blu-ray exclusivity has definitely nudged me closer to thinking about getting a blu-ray player, but the movie selection is going to have to get A LOT better first.

 

[Glenn Overholt]

Consider the stores today that carry all 3 formats. I am sure that they would love it if there was only one format again. They would be more than happy to dump the SD & HD formats without any problem. Any existing stocks in warehouses could be distributed to the stores, just to get rid of them.

My timeline is only a best guess - but if the HD format folds by May, the retailers will have 4 months to sort their shelves out - knowing that any "new" titles would fit nicely in the BD section.

The new TV's roll out in September - probably with cheaper prices. The price of BD players will go down as the demand for them goes up.

If you are collecting a TV series, they could easily put out the next season on BD only, and later put out the previously released SD seasons in BD again. (I know how everybody likes to double-dip here)

This way the studios' sales will go up. This is all about $$$ - isn't it? With only 1 choice available, you can either jump in or be content with what you have now. I am sure that the studios know full well why sales are down right now. With the format war, SD is still being produced because everyone knew that some of us would sit out the war until it was over. If it does end, why should they still make SD's if you can get a player for $99?

Glenn

 

[Mike_Richardson]

Glenn you seem like you've drunk every last ounce of Sony kool-aid left in the tank.

Why do you think there IS such a demand for Blu Ray? Have you looked at the sales numbers of either format? Have you seen how slow the marketplace has been to warm to them? Have you realized nobody (relatively speaking) is buying Blu Ray standalone players?

This audience isn't going to develop overnight. It isn't going to happen this year. Standard DVD took YEARS to garner the marketplace that it did -- and it's going to take much, much longer for Blu Ray to get there...assuming it even does, because to the average person who was content for years with regular DVD, they won't find Blu Ray to be as essential, I guarantee you.

More likely that the marketplace will be flooded with cheap upconverting players long before cheap Blu Ray players.

Why you think cheap Blu Ray players will be coming anytime in the forseeable future is just beyond me. Or why you think the appetite among the MASSES -- not message board junkies -- will be there either, just doesn't make sense to me whatsoever.

As far as "double dipping" on Blu Ray Paramount even admitted catalog titles have done nothing in HD and certain types of shows -- like sitcoms -- would have no appeal re-releasing them in HD. So your theory every title that's been released on DVD is going to make it into high definition is also something I would totally disagree with. It won't happen, ever.

And HD-DVD isn't going to "fold by May." I'm sure you'd like to see that happen along with Bill Hunt, but if Toshiba pulled the plug tomorrow they'd face a class action suit from everyone that purchased a player last week. Won't happen either.

 

[TravisR]

No. They love to carry a format that's selling. They don't care if they carry 1 or 100 formats if they sell.

I'm sure every studio would love to 'force' people to switch so they could resell all their titles again but there's no way that they can force it. People will still want to buy SD discs and the studios will gladly provide them while they still sell. Personally, I'd be surprised if SD releases stopped in five years (let alone one year).

 

[JeffMc]

Not stupid at all. I toyed with the idea myself with BB's deal this week for a Sony BR player with 10 free BD discs. I didn't look at what was available in-store as far as the 5 discs you can choose there, but the 5 discs you get through the mail are from 18 pre-selected titles they have chosen for you. I looked through those 18 titles and could barely find 2-3 titles I'd ever want even close to my collection, but could live with picking out 5 from the 18 and maybe giving away a couple. HOWEVER, when you actually print out the application form, you realize that they have also broken down those 18 titles into 5 separate categories and you can only pick one from each category! Therefore, if you really wanted the three horror titles, for example, you couldn't pick them because they were all in the same sub-category. You could only pick one from each sub-category. Can they make this deal any less attractive please! In any event, the only incentive for the free DVD's would be to sell most of them off on Amazon or ebay to recoup some of the cost of the player. Sounds like more of a hassle than it's worth right now.

I'd like to jump into BR, but the majority of titles available so far are recent blockbuster type films which I have no interest in. I couldn't make it through PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN on SD so I don't need to see a sharper version of it on BR! Titles mentioned by a few others here such as 2001 (most wanted and my biggest incentive to enter BR) and BLADE RUNNER are really the only type of film I'd want, and so far, there's just not enough movies in that vein available to make it worthwhile at the current cost for jumping in.

Now if those 10 free DVD's didn't include such forced-picks as WILD HOGS, POTC - BLACK PEARL, SWORDFISH, THE PATRIOT, SWAT, ULTRAVIOLET, CHAIN REACTION, HART'S WAR, THE OMEN (2006), and other crap, it may have been worth the plunge.

 

[Douglas R]

I know plenty of people who have only just got into DVD. For the public in general (not obsessive film fans like us) SD DVD is a new format. The idea that these people are going to jump into yet another format is pie-in-the-sky so I suspect that Blu-ray is going to be a niche market for a very long time.

 

[Joe Karlosi]

While I'm inclined to agree with you, I have to play Devil's Advocate for a moment here to remind you that this was the exact same argument I heard against music CDs ("too many record and turntable owners") and SD ("too many VCR and VHS owners"), but then SD and CD did, in fact, take over.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

While an end to the format war takes away one issue I was waiting to get resolved, I still plan on waiting until after I upgrade my old component-only HD monitor and for the prices on the actual BluRay discs to come down.

I was considering a TV upgrade this past Christmas, but a new kitchen floor won out (darn wife ). Maybe next Christmas...

 

[Bradley Newton]

Eventually I may move to Blu, right now I'm just buying smaller art house titles and Criterion on SD. I do have two questions about Blu-Ray that perhaps someone can help me with. I keep reading about discs not playing properly and how owners of Blu-Ray players have to do "firmware updates". What's all that about? I want a simple player I can hook to my TV and play movies on. My office and internet connection is upstairs. Will I have to occasionally unhook the player, take it upstairs and connect it to the net to do "firmware updates"? If so, that's plain nutty. And do Blu-Ray players up-convert standard DVDs?

 

[Will Krupp]

well Bradley, you'll do the firmware updates on your computer and burn them to disc. The player won't be hooked to your internet connection. I did a firmware update on my SD Oppo to correct the colorspace and it worked fine (if I can do it, you can do it...trust me!)

That being said, I have been wanting to pull the trigger on blu-ray and this seems like the perfect excuse. Problem is, all of the players seem buggy or have issues that are making me decide to wait a little longer. I want a blu-ray player that also does a kick ass job of upconverting SD-DVD's. Sounds simple, but it's not. For example, the Samsung 1200 has the reon chip which is supposed to do a stunning upconvert job, yet the player has tons of bugs, won't play certain discs, and...UNFORGIVABLY....plays all 4:3 material stretched to 16:9. Newer Samsung models that fix the 1200's bugs lack the reon chip...and on and on and on with all of the maufacturers it seems. One thing fixed and something else screwy. All of the unsupported audio formats are another thing. I got such a headache reading the AVS forums yesterday trying to settle on something that I decided to wait until the perfect blu-ray player comes along at a reasonable price. It HAS to upconvert my classic SD collection as well as the two players I now have (Panasonic for 4:3 material and Oppo for widescreen/multi-region material) as well as play ALL the blu-ray discs I put in it.

Until then, I'll wait.