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

While I am pleased that it finally sounds like the format war may indeed be on the road to its conclusion (it was always idiotic to have two competing HD formats) I am in no hurry. I've predicted from the very start of this, a year and a half ago or whenever it was, that the only way any HD format would replace SD is if the companies forced it on the Average Joes and stopped producing regular DVDs. Otherwise, HD will remain a niche item.

I am curious as to the feelings of other fence-sitters who have remained out of the HD circle and are satisfied with SD. Does Warner's recent announcement in supporting Blu-Ray exclusively sway you at all?

I've been sitting on the fence as well. To make matters worse for the studios, I've significantly cut back on my SD DVD purchases so as not to have to double dip once an HD format was settled. The funny thing is that the two HD titles that I want to buy are from Warners - "2001" and "Blade Runner". Looks like I may be making the plunge. Maybe things will be settled by the time I get my tax refund!

It is a problem deciding what to purchase. I've also been resisting the recent new versions of Kubrick SD's like 2001 and A CLOCKWORK ORANGE... if BD does become the main format, why bother? I had the same dilemma recently when I tried to decide if I should get all the James Bond films in the Ultimate Set... I mean, Bond is a great example of a franchise which will be prime choice for BD. But for now, I went with the SD Collection. Who knows where this will go?

no actualy this has made me stop and reasses even more if its time to up grade, price being the biggest setback, i know all the places that have BOGO deals and all, but really what is the cost of pressing a HD DVD or BR disc compared to SD, how long befor the dump bin at walmaty has eithr at 5 bucks a pop, at that point then they will see the numbers in sales rise to what they the studios had expected, and no more of this half-assed stuff, lets see you buy a hd format disc and all of the special features are in standard def, come on, its like buying a color tv and the only station in town only shows black and white.

my biggest concern is how much longer this is going to drag on, and how its going to affect actual catalog titles from getting released, if wb or any of the studios wanted these to work it was a simple process, given title , sd version cost $19.00 the day of relkease, then the competing format HD versions should be the same, lower the cost and see how many make the switch. as for me. i have to wait till it falls in the better price range.

I've got a friend who has a Blu Ray player (and an HD DVD player) so I've bought a few Blu Ray titles here and there that I watch at his place. Now that the format war seems to be over, I'll probably start picking up more and more BR discs. However, I buy alot of titles that won't be available in high definition for years (if ever) so I'll never be the guy who says "I stopped buying SD in 1998 because I'm waiting for HD". Over time, I have no doubt that I'll replace alot of my titles with HD counterparts but it'll take years and years so I have no problem with buying both SD and BR discs as of now.

I don't see going Blu-Ray before the 2008 Christmas season. First, DVD's are just fine for me. Yes, I see the improvement HD offers, but IMO, it's not as significant as the jump from VHS to DVD (all considered). I'm still enjoying my DVD's just fine. When prices reach a decent level for both hardware and software, and there's stability, then I'll look into jumping. All the stuff with HDCP, different profiles, etc. are issues I don't want to deal with to sit down and watch a movie.

What I've done is simply stopped buying "new releases" of contemporary films that I might have otherwise purchased, knowing they are obviously going to be released in hi-def. So I've cut my buying back to strictly golden age Hollywood, classic foreign, experimental, new-wave and art-house releases. Stuff that's not likely to show up in any other format for many years. When I eventually reach the point in my collection where I'm ready to catch up on more modern releases which may be of interest (there are significantly fewer); I'll switch over and slowly begin to upgrade certain titles that I feel are greatly improved. It's nice to hear that this format war is on it's last legs.

As an owner of both I was banking on HD DVD as the winner because of the price, but it now seems I bet on the wrong side (sorry mom and Bestfriend for the HD DVD players for christmas.. at least it upconverts!) I had only been buying the HD DVD versions of the movies I wanted, but after this whole deal I feel bummed, so I won't be buying anymore HD Discs for awhile, maybe never again.
I still have my netflix account and I'll be renting from now on....

Absolutely. The moment the BluRay players are $99, I'm there.

I've been holding off going to an HD disk format. I *DO* have an awesome HD set and enjoy HD programming, but my current 600+ DVD titles look pretty damn decent when up-converted.

Until there is a decisive winner, I'll be waiting a LITTLE longer. However, I had been leaning towards BluRay...and hopefully I'll be able to adopt the format later this year...

On the fence but not willing to jump off yet. I can get most new SD releases for under $7 and my Oppo player upconverts beautifully on my 40" widescreen TV.

If players come down to under $200, and titles available for under $12, I might consider making the jump. Until then I am perfectly happy with what I have now.

I agree completly and I am in the same boat!

Eventually Ill upgrade, probably around this time next year.Blu Ray players will probably have fallen in price, even more by 09 .

I've been purple (having both Blu and HD) since a little after Christmas (was HD-DVD on the Friday b4 Black Friday) and I guess I'm glad that the war is supposedly close to being over, but I've found it hard to pull the trigger on a few on-sale Blu's because I have the SD and mentally can't justify getting the Blu edition.

I'll agree that the upconversion makes SD look pretty damn good.

I only have 2 HDs (Blade Runner and Batman Begins, Hot Fuzz on the way) and 4 Blus (Cars, Ratatouille, PoTC 3, Casino Royale, with Road Warrior, Deliverance, and PoTC 1-2 on the way).

Most of my purchases of late have been because the Blu/HD version had stuff the SD didnt (commentary for Warrior and Fuzz has the stuff the 3 disc SD has). There's been some deals that I've let slide because I had the SD (was interested in some of those deals for 14.99 at BB but changed my mind in the store today).

Still really waiting how all this shakes out. I don't know that any studio is going to go Blu only with any release since SD still is where the $$ is.

It's taken me nearly 10 years to build my SD DVD collection. I'm not at an age where I can spare another 10 years to rebuild it - even if many of my 'Golden Age' classics are reissued on Blue-Ray which I doubt. Also, many of my DVDs are from different DVD Regions - is it not true that there's no such thing as a mulit-region Blue Ray player?

IMO, I don't think that some of you understand what is going to happen. As soon as the war is formally over, the only new releases will be on BD. There will be a massive SD close-out sale, and once they are gone, there will be no more.

By the end of this year, BD players will be down to about $99 and everybody will be getting one, regardless of their display. Do not forget that in 13 months (2 months after the upcoming holiday season, the TV channels will be dropping their current broadcasts too.

For those of you that will cry "foul" because everything that the studios have isn't in a BD format yet, what is to stop them from releasing - err re-releasing - anything with an SD format - but on a BD disk?

Glenn

There's literally no chance of that happening. If SD keeps selling, they aren't going to stop producing SD discs.

This is a joke, right?

Regardless of the HD DVD format war, I'm planning to invest in a full-HD TV within the next few months, and my main viewing emphasis will be DVDs, whether SD or HD. I already have a good upscaling DVD player, so I'll first see how upscaled SD DVDs look on the new TV. However, I suspect that I will invest in a Blu-ray player later in the year. The Warner announcement has certainly encouraged me to take the plunge, although I will still be interested to see how quickly Universal and Paramount react to the news and start supporting Blu-ray - both those studios have significant films that I'd want to have in any HD collection.

Another point is that, as far as I know, no current Blu-ray player can internally decode DTS HD Master Audio. I hope at least one player with this capability will be appearing during 2008. Once BDs are mastered with advanced authoring, which will happen quite soon, the lossless audio codecs (DD TrueHD and DTS HD MA) can not be output as bitstreams to be externally decoded by a receiver - they will have to be decoded by the player to allow any required mixing of additional audio tracks such as commentaries. The resulting mixed audio track will then be output as PCM.

I'm not HD capable right now but have a big SD collection. What do most SD DVDs look like upconverted?
I've heard that it looks really good regardless.