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DVD Empire speaks on the format war (1 Viewer)

ppltd

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Toshiba Entertainment is a production house involved in film production and additionally releases all HD-DVD's in Japan.
 

Harpozep

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It will be a sad time when optical or at least some form of hard copy purchasable video content is supplanted by "On Demand". Why, because of the content providers total lack of commitment to anything but the bottom dollar which equals limiting bandwidth. I seriously doubt any 30-50 gig HD downloads will be making it to us in even the far future. More compression and limiting bandwidth is the rule of the day.

1080P over our current cables system or satellite? I think not. But content providers will stream some compromised messed up versions for the masses. I cringe when I see all the blocking in the HD network shows on our 60" Sony.

More to come I fear. Heck, most non pay movie channels are worthless as there is not enough bandwidth given to the channel to even give the movie a chance to look decent.
The pay high-end channels do look better, but suffer also from a lot of compression compared to an optical HD source.
So in the end a compromised "good enough" product will be streamed to the Hoi Polloi at the expense of driving packaged HD to the LD ghetto of elite obsurity. This is what Gates wants, what will stop him?

Cheap Asian HDplayers and software that is priced on par with DVD may help, but that is not happening ,....yet.
 

Carlo_M

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Oh, okay. Are they a big player in the U.S.? I ask because they're listed there as if they have the same type of volume like Universal, Warner, MGM, Disney, Sony (Columbia Tri-Star), etc. Does DVD Empire sell a lot of Japanese HD-DVDs to U.S. customers?
 

Ryan-G

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It doesn't matter, as I've gone over before, the very worst scenario is a silent migration to HD formats as SD Players are replaced. Yes, it'll take a decent amount of time, but it's inevetible because the Players are fully backwards-compatible. Like CD's and DVD's before them, the HD Players will drop in price until they are at the same price point today's Players are at. They'll not stay at the same price margin, because in the interim, PC Drives and PS3's will drive down pricing as production ramps for those two markets. Heck, Pioneer's releasing a sub-$400 PC Drive in the next few months.

As far as lost sales goes, I'd say alot of people are losing sales. Right now I can think of probably a dozen titles I would have bought if there were only one format, and I refuse to buy on SD because I have no desire to replace them in 6 months if I really like them. I've gone from 2-3 purchases every other week to 2-3 purchases in 4 months.
 

John H Ross

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Yep, I would certainly have bought into BD by now if it was the only format. And bought a lot of software too most likely.
 

ppltd

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They are just listed, nothing more. As far as DVDEmprire selling Japanese DVD's, I believe the answer would be no. But they are simply listing the studios supporting each format. It makes no difference if they are US or non-US studios on either format, as these formats are international, not domestic.
 

Torquil

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I have to say that I think what DVDEmpire is doing is great. They're making the market truly transparent and taking away the ability of the spin doctors of each camp to hypothesise as to why their format is winning over the other.

The figures tell an obvious story - despite HDDVD's early launch, PS3s are the dominant force in driving BluRay into homes (and will be, especially when it launches here in the UK).

Personally, I think it's all irrelevant - this all sounds like the DVD+R vs DVD-R rubbish we heard years ago which has been conveniently solved by burners that read and burn both formats. I bet we'll see the same solution here - then the studios won't have a prob. Dual format frives will become the defacto standard - will sony make one? Did they make VHS video recorders? You betcha.
 

ppltd

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While I agree that what they are doing is fun, it would only be useful if they supplied some numbers to support the percentages. Are we talking about 10 disks per week, or 10,000. Until they post the numbers, it is nothing more then a talking point.
 

Shawn Perron

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I think you don't understand what Sony is trying to do. They are trying to make the PS3 such a large percentage of the players on the market that stduios would have to put out Blu-Ray discs or lose a large amount of sales. The dual format scenario only works if 90% of the people have dual format players. If Sony can keep the PS3 at a very high percentage of existing players, then the PS3 cannot be ignored, and therefore Blu-Ray cannot be ignored.
 

Eric Carl

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Well, to be fair it isn't really his fault. I mean, Apple and Sony have shown that consumers want cheap and, quality doesn't matter.

Just because he his trying to get a lead on a new market (or idea), does it mean that he, solely, should be blamed for the downturn in quality.

I think everybody here can see the difference between high and low quality video and, hear the difference in the same for audio; or have I assumed wrong and, that seeing a feature film on a screen the size of my palm is considered quality? (Yes, that was called sarcasm.)

Obviously, these innovations do not appeal to us but, see how big the market has become? Downloading music has killed the industry; to deny that would be insane. To say that anything that is downloaded sounds as great as on a CD is like my saying: "I am God and you must accept it as fact". Yeah, I might be crazy but if enough people believed it, it would be true. In a similar vein, owning CDs has almost become a sign of your age and not that you have a good ear.

Yes, the general public will kill the DVD just as they have killed the CD; It does not mean that the new way will be improved.

-Eric, sitting out the format war until there is a winner and, if HD on Demand wins, well, I won't be surprised.
 

dkny75

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If DVD Empire was truly transparent they would tell us the actual number of units sold and not a percentage. That being said I don't think they'll ever do that.
 

Yumbo

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This week sales were!

HD DVD 4 (boo hiss)
Blu-Ray 8 (yipee ki yay!)

HD DVD new release - 1
Blu-ray new releases - 8

Analysis - HD DVD outsells Blu-ray 4-1!

And that ends our world changing report.
 

BrettB

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I thought we couldn't tell anything from these percentages and that they were pretty much worthless. I'm really getting confused now.
 

ppltd

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Until the qty of sales is posted, you can make anything you want out of the percentages. They are posted simply because they a fun, not necessarily meaningful numbers.
 

Dave_P.

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They don't update the chart totals every day (more like every 3-4) days. The 58-42 number up there now has been there since Sunday and is for the week of 2/6, not 2/13, as indicated here: http://www.dvdempire.com/Content/Fea...99365291527966

Also, they did not receive any of the Fox releases for this week and The Departed BD only showed up yesterday for shipping (one is being held for me). They're all listed as out of stock, as my preorder status indicates. DVDEmpire only counts charged and shipped titles, not preorders on their chart.
 

BrettB

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So when you said This is certainly not storng BD support. that was just your interpretation of fun, yet meaningless numbers. Got it. :P
 

Dave_P.

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Amazon was out of stock yesterday on The Departed on the BD side. I was going to order it from them when they didn't show up at DVDEmpire, but it said backordered.
 

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