So what happens now? HD-DVD ponderings (1 Viewer)

[Stephen_J_H]

I'm enjoying the "fire sales" going on right now. Picked up Hot Fuzz for $8.99 on Monday and Pan's Labyrinth last night for $7.99. Unfortunately, not being DTS capable yet, I have to manually switch my player to PCM on the optical out every time I watch Pan's, but it sounds SO good.

 

[Jari K]

You mean "DTS-HD" capable (meaning "Pan's Labyrinth")? I´m sure you get out the DTS "core" from the "DTS-HD master"-track, which is quite healthy 1.5Mbps on its own...

 

[Jerome Grate]

Where are you guys getting cheap HD-DVDs. I"ve been all over the stores, Circuit City, J&R, Walmart, and I can't find any that would say ok I'll pick it up.

 

[Jeff Swindoll]

I got mine used at Hollywood Video (2 fer $20) and I imagine they've never rented the pristine condition they're in. My Movie Gallery has this as well. However, they come in regular DVD cases and not in the red HD cases. I've bought replacement cases off of Ebay.

My Walmart had some titles marked down but they were $17, so nevermind. I've not checked BB or CC but I hear that they're shipping them back to Toshiba. The CC half off sale turned out to be on MSRP and not sale prices so it was a bust (if your CC hadn't sent them back that is).

There's always the internet....

 

[Stephen_J_H]

No, I mean DTS capable. My receiver is rather archaic.

 

[Scott Hall]

ive been digging around trying to find that article about the re-release thing and cant seem to find it now but if i do ill post a link to it.

it seemed kinda strange to me that they would site incompatibility issues as why they would be re-releasing them but who knows. what do you mean i cant believe everything i read on the internet?!

PAUL BECK - "I am NOT a gamer, and my feeling it that the gamers and the heavy advertising by the Blu-ray Association turned the tide. "
being a gamer i dont think thats what turned the tide. Again im just going on what ive read so if there is something wrong please feel free to call bullshit and correct me but...

Sony was bleeding money like a slit throat cause of the PS3 along with lagging sales across the board and they kept dumping money into the PS3 pit to try and make it work and get people interested in bluray but it wasnt working in the manner they needed it to and not fast enough so they had to take drastic measures and do some pretty big payouts to the movie studios to "win" the format war cause they being the proprietors of bluray had a lot to lose if they format didnt win on the gaming front and on the players market and movie market as well...

So i dont think it was much about gaming to be honest knowing that most gamers didnt care about the bluray aspect and would joke mostly about how they could watch TALEDEGA NIGHTS until something decent came out on the PS3

 

[Jesse Blacklow]

How do you "hope to be a productive member" with these comments?

Your first statement is not only untrue, but disingenuous as well. Sony wasn't "losing" on the gaming front in anything but a PR war. It's consistently at or near the top of both the theatrical and home movie market, so that's out too. And Sony's player/consumer electronic division brings in so much revenue, that it not only balances out any divisions in the red, it generates hundreds of millions (and sometimes billions) in profit. As for the payoffs (assuming they exist), not only is Toshiba/MSFT guilty of the exact same thing (see also: Paramount, Dreamworks), but it also appears they lost more money on the deals for no effect. Not to mention, it pissed off their potential partners and was spread between one or two companies rather than a association made up (not coincidentally) by the entire major consumer electronics world minus Toshiba.

And the second comment? I'm not surprised you couldn't dig up a link, because such a thing doesn't exist. Not only did no one make the "100 discs" claim (the closest I could find was Fox mentioned 1 or 2 of their titles), but the newer discs run on the older players. They may require a firmware update (as did quite a few HD DVD titles), but the movie and most features play just fine.

 

[Patrick_S]

I'd sure like to see a link to back that statement up.

As it stands now the PS3 will have to out sell the 360 for the next 8 months by greater margins than it has in the last two just to just make up for the sales delta it experienced in December 07.

I'm certain that if Sony keeps the PS3 in production long enough it will eventually out sell the 360 but by then Microsoft will probably have moved onto its next console.

 

[Patrick.C]

Here you go - EA predicts PS3 will outsell Xbox 360 in 2008 - Joystiq

 

[Cees Alons]

Gamasutra reporting on Sony's results financial year 2006 (includes 1Q2007) (April last year).


We should be expecting the results of FY 2007 soon.


Cees

 

[Lance Rumbolt]

Christ it didn't take long for this thread to devolve into Sony bashing!

 

[Lance Rumbolt]

And if your going to call someone on what they've written why don't you look at the whole post? The original poster has been rehashing shit we thought was buried months ago.

 

[Stephen_J_H]

To paraphrase George Lucas:

"Stay on topic! Stay on topic!"

 

[Scott Hall]

jesse - heres a shorter version of the article i was speaking of since i cant find the original but it says what i was trying to convey.

ok, apparently im not "old enough" to post links yet cause of spamming issues so here the entire story or well one of similar content about the rerelease of bluray movies.
"We warned you that one reason to hold off on boarding the Blu train is that movies released in the past year without sweet BD-Live interactive features might be re-released. A lot of them. Today, we got first confirmation of this from Fox, which told us it'll be re-releasing Alien Vs. Predator later this year with a suite of new interactive features. And that's just the beginning.

Sony Pictures is also reaching in with both hands, though they're "not 100 percent sure [they're] going back on every disc" and will be looking at "different ways [they] can allow people to connect to a BD-Live site" for stuff that's already come out sans the BD Launcher. But they haven't figured that second part out yet.

To be fair, of all the Blu-ray studios, Fox is currently the most pumped about the interactive aspect—a big reason they helped build Blu along with Sony and friends. What Fox is adding doesn't make this a crap double dip, either: It's a multiplayer game woven into the film that you play as it progresses, attacking and killing other players in hopefully the most genuine film interaction to date. Not only do you upload your own avatar, it'll stay in memory and reappear when you buy future AVP titles. Sven Davison, Fox's VP of Worldwide Product Development and Production, said nothing he's seen on HD DVD has come close to this.

Davison also said Fox was looking at three other major franchises for a heavy interactive component. But other studios probably aren't going to be as scrupulous, because they primarily see interactivity as "icing on the cake" rather than potatoes to the 1080p-and-uncompressed-audio meat.

This of course opens the door for nearly everything already on BD to be double-dipped in the coming year—especially in cases like Warner's, since that studio has already launched more interactive versions of movies on HD DVD while simultaneously putting out lower-featured editions on BD. Would this have happened if the 2.0 spec had been mandatory from the start?"


JESSES "Considering that both formats had at least half of their players made up by video game products (360 add-on for HD DVD, PS3 for BD), I think Paul's comments are pretty valid. I've heard the argument that "HD DVD was for film lovers, PS3 was for gamers", but it doesn't make sense. After all, the biggest films on HD DVD ("Transformers" and "300") were not aimed at film lovers but were most definitely aimed at gamers. Unless I'm missing something, no one made a video game out of "The Departed". Added on top of that was the fact that the PS3 was one of, if not the, best Blu-ray players, and the fact that many early Blu-ray adopters bought it for that reason"

WHAT? transformers and 300 were targeted at gamers and not film fans? im not really sure what your saying there but thats pretty biased of you to say something like that, being a gamer and a film fan i think thats a pretty empty statement and making the assertion that there wasnt a DEPARTED game made has anything to do with anything doesnt really help your arugument.

Also i cant really speak to why early adopters bought the ps3 but as a gamer i know most if not all gamers i know and interact with on a regular basis were not happy with the games selection then and even now and that most of them used it primarily as a BD player cause it was the cheapest one available.

"How do you "hope to be a productive member" with these comments?"

I hope to be a productive member by bringing an opinion based on my own experiences and possibly contributing to intelligent conversation with others on the forms and not coming here and disparaging others who have differing opinions. Im not here to fight anyone but you seem to be a little pissed off already and are directing a fair amount of rancor in my direction.

like i said please feel free to engage me in intelligent conversation but you dont have to get nasty calling my good intentions into question with your somewhat unpleasant comments.

Cees Alons - thanks for the stats link on the ps3 i appreciate that. i can never seem to find things when im looking for them kinda like my damn car keys

Again thanks for having a look everyone and adding to the discussion.

 

[Patrick_S]

Why not try adding something intelligent to the discussion instead of a fan boy reactionary response?

As for your other comment I did read the post I responded to and asked for a link and Patrick_C provided one so thanks Patrick.

The PS3 is off to a good start this year and it should be interesting to see how much ground it makes up on the 360 this year.

Any additional discussion concerning system sales can continue in the gaming forum.

 

[Scott Hall]

Lance - "The original poster has been rehashing shit we thought was buried months ago."

being new here i didnt know this was a dead and buried subject.

And yes getting back on subject im very curious to see where the hddvds will end up.

I was reading hddvd.com and its funny cause they just posted an article about this very subject but really didnt offer any new insights to the problem of where they will all go.

 

[ChristopherDAC]

See, that article was about re-releasing BDs with new features to take advantage of new equipment features, not new releases being unable to play on older machines. I know it's sometimes difficult to make perfect sense of something the first time you read it, & I know recollection can sometimes be deceiving, but it's best not to get stirred up until you're clear on what you are talking about.

 

[Scott Hall]

ChristopherDAC - i didnt say that new release wouldnt play on older machines, i said that the the older title were being re-released with new feature sets and i had made the comment about how i vaguely remember something being said about how the older releases wouldnt play on newer machines but this isnt the actual article was referring to and i wasnt sure about why they would say older titles wouldnt play on new machines cause that didnt seem to make sense at all and believe me i wasnt getting stirred up about anything i was just mentioning something i had read granted i maybe phrased what i as trying to say a bit awkwardly but i knew what i was trying to say. seriously i wish i could find the article cause i could swear they said something about older titles not working on newer machines but as we are all probably aware thats pretty silly.

 

[Lance Rumbolt]

Reactionary response? I think you'll find that was exasperation! and as for the accusation of fanboyism, grow up, I'm way to old to be getting emotionally attached to a manufacturer of electronic goods.

 

[Lance Rumbolt]

Fair enough Scott but you did post as if it were fact. I'm no fanboy as was mentioned earlier in the post but a father of three boys who has to be careful of how i spend my money, i've been in this home theatre game
for a long time now, long enough to know you can be burned easily. I went for the PS3 primarily as BD player but my kids play games on it as well. I'm even looking at a cheap HD DVD player for upscalling my existing DVD collection as I've read it is one of the best out there and they are bloody cheap over here in the UK

Cheers and welcome to the forum.