Digital Bits Reports: APPLE joins Blu-Ray. Brace yourself for a format war! (1 Viewer)

[Patrick McCart]

[url=http://img102.exs.cx/img102/5302/bluraywar4qj.jpg] [/url]

"3 million DVD players' lives ended in the autumn of 2005. The survivors of the nuclear fire called the war Judgment Day. They lived only to face a new nightmare: the war against the HD formats. The computer which controlled the formats, Skynet, sent two types of high definition home video back through time. Their mission: to muck up the high definition DVD market. The first format was sent to strike in October: HD-DVD. It failed. The second was set to strike while HD-DVD was still a child: BluRay. As before, the resistance was able to send a lone warrior, a protector for home theater buffs. It was just a question of which one of them would reach consumers first."

 

[John C]

If we want the best HD has to offer, Blu-Ray must win. HD-DVD is too much of a compromise IMHO. Hopefully Sony gets its act together and allows component video connections at full resolution or else a lot of HDTV owners won't be upgrading for a very long time.

 

[Vader]

LOL.... perfect!

 

[Brett_B]

I will take the "wait and see who wins" stance. Kind of like the DVD vs. DIVX war.

 

[BrettB]

The DVD-1000?

Finances preclude me from being an early adopter anyway so hopefully the war will be over about the same time I can afford to jump in. Praying for Blueray.

 

[Jack Briggs]

Here we are: Home Theater Forum, a huge group known for "early adoption" -- and everybody in this thread is talking about waiting this one out. Hmmm.

Though Blu-ray is the storage king, HD DVD will win this one (I think). So, I'm going the HD DVD route.

 

[TheLongshot]

Also, not to be forgotten, but DVD is "good enough" for the vast majority of people out there. Hell, I wonder what the percentages of people out there who have a display that can take full advantage of any HD format.

The combination of this and the two formats is probably going to keep any sort of HD DVD as a niche product for a while. I'm still thinking it is in the same category as SACD and DVD-A.

That being said, the subject of this thread is interesting by talking about Apple. It is going to be interesting to see how DRM is going to work on HTPCs, if at all. The fact that there are going to be Blu-Ray drives are probably going to be a plus for that format, if just for the storage properties of Blu-Ray. There is always a need for more storage space.

Jason

 

[DeeF]

DVD was a shocking change in quality of picture and sound, for most people. Whatever the next solution is, it won't be so shocking. I'm guessing, that by the time most of us (let alone the population at large) get around to rebuying all our current collections, there will be multiple formats, and players which will play all of them.

I'm not at all worried. I don't plan to wait, but I don't plan to jump in, either. If something intrigues me, I may try it.

I was intrigued by the Warners announcement of HD-DVD "Music Man." But now that I've recorded it off of HD-NET movies, I have less of a need to get a new disk.

 

[ChrisMatson]

I'll repost from the Blu-ray discussion thread (why isn't this discussion taking place in that thread?).



Everything will be answered in May at the E3. Here is the latest on PS3 development (no mention of Blu-ray, however):
http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/0...ws_6120123.html

 

[Vader]

.... and yet a lot of us here were "early adopters" of HD-capable displays (relative to the onset of wide acceptance - no pun intended - among J6P). Without question, the phenomonal success of SD DVD (and the growth of HT in general) is largely due to our fanaticism and loyalty to this hobby. Personally, I would love to see HD DVD snag the few "early adopters" who simply "have to have to newest thing". Then, Blu-ray has a revelation (the vast, untapped, DVI-less, pissed-off demographic), and releases their players equipped with full bandwidth analog connections. IMO, this would be a quick, decisive death blow to HD DVD. Then we can get on with our lives...

I am also unwilling (DVI or not) to buy a player that may become an expensive paperweight. I realize the situations are somewhat different, but this smacks of the DVD-DIVX war. I know a lady that bought into DIVX hook, line, and sinker. She would not acknowledge the writting on the wall (even though I was the one holding the marker), and now she has a very expensive ($4k) coaster collection. She doesn't like me very much. I cannot see this as becoming any more than an extreme niche market, even more so than LD (at least there we only had one format)...

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Exactly, Jack.

It all starts here. The people that are going
to be the first to buy these players are right
here on this forum and other related Internet
forums. Believe it when I say the studios
and manufacturers will be watching this forum
like hawks once the formats go live. The
success of any format like this relies heavily
on the early adopters and Internet word-of-mouth.

Remember, forums like this helped kill DIVX.

Since Home Theater Forum is quite representative
of the current early adopter "attitude" it is
very clear that there is a major problem brewing
here that will prevent either format from
prospering.

If you think this is all scary to the early
adopters who are sitting this all out, wait
till the average consumer learns that he/she
has to buy two players in order to buy
all the movie selections available.

Right now this doesn't look like a war with
a clear winner. To me it looks like you have
a very equal split of studio commitment. To
determine that one format will cancel out another
is something I just don't buy. This is going
to get very ugly and in the meantime we the
consumers are sitting on the sidelines without
a player/recorder to show for it.

 

[Tim_Stack]

From point of view of the companies on both sides of the war, the risk/reward of the fight is too great for them to avoid a fight. The additional revenue they will gain if their format wins out will dwarf what they will lose if their format loses...unfortunate for us.

I'm most concerned about if the players will support 1080i output over component cables - if not, I'd have to get a new HD display. That's a big early adopter niche that the format should support.

 

[John H Ross]

I'm sorry guys, but these two formats are NOT going to exist, side by side, and be popular. Look at the past:

1. VHS beat Betamax
2. DVD beat DIVX
3. SACD and DVD-Audio exist together, but neither is truly "popular".

One of these formats (Blu-Ray and HD-DVD) is going to die and then you'll be tempted to re-buy those films again on the winning format.

ANYBODY who buys into this now is an idiot IMHO. Wait for the winner.

John

 

[Benson R]

I think the opposite about ps3, i think it means squat to the format wars. The big between this generation and the last generation of video, is that to see a difference in pic quality you need an hd display, which most people dont have yet.

In fact I think ps3 could create confusion. Some kid buys a ps3, hooks it up to his sd tv, then pops in a blueray disc, and is severely dissappointed that it doesnt look any better then regular dvd.

 

[TravisR]

'Idiot' may be a strong word but I definitely agree with waiting. The funny thing is that if so few people (even at this forum) want to early adopt, it will take a long, long time for a winner to come out.

 

[Aaron Silverman]

The way I see it, the most likely possibility is that both formats will coexist as niche formats, just like SACD and DVD-A. The average consumer has no reason to upgrade from DVD, just like they didn't have a reason to upgrade from CD. There just isn't that big a difference for them.

Of course, there's also the possibility that the studios will simply stop producing SD DVDs. They couldn't do that with CDs, because it had been the standard for 20 years. The studios may be short-sighted enough to not realize that DVD is the video version of that long-term standard. This would, to put it as mildly as I can, suck beyond the known limits of suckage.

On the other hand, the PS3 is a huge factor here, just like PS2 and XBox were a factor in the explosion of SD DVD. Unless the next XBox plays HD-DVD, then if there is a winner in this format war, it will most assuredly be Blu-Ray.

Jack Briggs -- just curious, why do you think that HD-DVD will win out?

 

[Chris Farmer]

I think HD-DVD has a very tough battle to win, and they're gong uphill. Their biggest asset is getting to use the DVD name, but even that has limited value. The PS3 supporting Blu-ray will be a huge factor (as mentioned, look what the PS2 did for SD-DVD), and it seems like the computer world is coming down squarely on the side of Blu-ray as well. The only place where HD-DVD is getting support is from a few studios themselves, and while having the software is obviously critical, having hardware to play them is important as well. With the increased popularity of HTPCs, as well as plenty of people wanting to watch movies on their laptops on long plane trips, their computers in college dorms, and different things like that, if Blu-ray wins the computers and the PS3, it will be a nearly insurmountable hurdle for HD-DVD to cross. That gets the installed base of Blu-ray players too high and in places where HD-DVD can't reach, and people aren't going to want to re-buy their movies to watch them on their laptops. I don't think this format war is going to last that long, I think Blu-ray has just too much momentum going into things.

 

[Will_B]

Do these formats work with my existing projector? If the answer is yes, then I am interested. If the answer is "no", well, I don't have an extra thousand to blow to buy a new set, and I don't know ANYONE in my circle of friends who is having a good enough time in this economy to do that either.

 

[TravisR]

One thing that HD-DVD has going for it is name recognition to the average consumer. "HD means high defintion. That's good. DVD is good too. So it must be a super DVD! What's a Blu-Ray?"

As people have said, the PS3 will probably put a big dent in that lack of knowledge though.

 

[Vader]

Will, that's the big question. The studios want DVI support only, due to copy-protection issues (they suffer from acute paranoid dementia and greed). This would cut out all of the early adopters with RPTVs/projectors earlier than about 2004. On the other hand, the hardware manufacturers are afraid (rightly so) of the backlash if they impose this limitation, and want full band-width analog. These two factors alone may cripple quick adoption if they don't setttle soon. No specs have been released as yet, so I think (hope) it is still up in the air...