Warner Bros. Pledges Exclusive Support to Blu-ray
Quote:
The next-generation movie format war may have just taken one step closer to being over, as the Blu-ray camp has secured the exclusive support from major studio Warner Bros. Entertainment. Warner up until this point had effectively been neutral, offering its movies in both HD DVD and Blu-ray. Now, "in response to consumer demand" the studio will begin releasing its HD library later this year in Blu-ray only.
HD-DVD cancels CES press conference
Quote:
The HD-DVD group has cancelled its pre-CES press conference as a result of Warner Bros' decision to go Blu-Ray exclusive. In an email sent out to invitees they stated that they are "currently discussing the potential impact of this announcement with the other HD DVD partner companies and evaluating next steps." This is a clear indication of the gravity of Warner Bros' announcement - to cancel a press conference is an undesirable and, usually, very public action to take.
Is it truly time for Toshiba's HD-DVD video format to call it quits and go the way of Betamax and Divx? Has Sony's Blu-ray finally triumphed? Does this look like 20 questions to you?
Yay for technology nobody needs winning!
It's important to note that this isn't just Warner Bros. movies, but New Line too (Hi-Def Hobbits!) as well as BBC and HBO home video.
It is, indeed, the end of this format war. I look to Toshiba releasing Universal and Paramount Dreamworks (I want my Transformers Blu-ray!) from their contracts and developing Blu-ray players of their own (or at least dual-format players) over the next month or so.
i can barely afford normal DVDs.. let alone the most-likely to be waay more expensive blue type. oo; is this about quality or just money grabbing?
The latter.
Home video is a very lucrative market, and both companies were willing to shell out millions of dollars in advertising in order to convince the consumer that they were "the right choice". They stand to make so much more in licensing fees and revenues if their format survives the early adopters and becomes the mainstream pick.
Blu-Ray is just a DVD in high definition. I don't consider it worth the money to spend, but if and when companies start renting Blu-Ray movies, it'll be well worth it. I don't know why so many people say HD isn't that much better - I'm thoroughly impressed all over again every time I see a program in HD.
As for Blu-Ray and HDDVD, HDDVD is just an expensive way to watch Universal movies in HD now. Blu-Ray has pretty much everything else.
Curses! There goes the arguement to let me put my inevitable 360 in the front room =(
I wonder if that rumoured Xbox 360 Ultimate with the HD-DVD Drive is going to be canned?
From a technical level, was there a superior format or were they just the same but different? You know what I mean.
There may be some fine details I don't know about, but I believe blu-ray has a greater storage capacity per layer than HDDVD. Other than that I'm not sure of differences.
Quote:
It's actually about bribes to many, many companies.
When it comes to corporate warfare that goes without saying! However, right now that particular bit of news is only rumor. Naturally, the heads at Warner deny they were paid off and say they only went exclusive "for the health of the industry"... i.e., "We're tired of all this fencesitting, we want to make money now kthx".
Blu-Ray holds about 10GB more per laye than HDDVD. I don't know for sure but I think HDDVD costs like five bucks less to make per disk.
Personally, I am going to stick with what I have for the time being since it does what I need it to do.
The new technology (Blue Ray / HD) is nice and fancy - but it's not really mainstream enough yet.
Just wait a little while and it will all come down in price and you can see if it is going to be a success or a failure.
In 2009, the US is switching to High Definition TV signals. I think it'll be much more mainstream when HD is standard.
Still, technology prices fall, it's worth waiting. Also it's worth noting that no Blu-Ray player on the market today is worth buying. No, just buy a PS3, it costs hundreds less ($399), plays Blu Ray movies just fine, and does so much more.
I thought we were switching to digital next year? That's not the same as HD is it? And it won't make a difference if you don't have an HD TV will it? HD is about to be standard?
I'm really confused about the whole thing. I wiki'd it, because someone told me that because I have a dish I won't have to get the digital box thing to adapt, but I know that none of my channels are in HD, or at least I can't see them.
I to thought the USian change was just from analogue signals to digitals, similar to that of the analogue switchoff in the uk which started back in october and will finish in 2012.
Also with faster and faster internets, video on demand, sky sat hd etc both HDDVD or BR physical media might lose the format war. And those that don't want vod/hd etc will be the ones that stick with their 99 w/s crt teles and 15 dvd players.
Quote:
I thought we were switching to digital next year? That's not the same as HD is it? And it won't make a difference if you don't have an HD TV will it? HD is about to be standard?
The switchover from analog to digital will only affect those who receive their TV signal over-the-air via antennae. Households who use cable or satellite will not (presumbably) be affected much if at all. Those who depend on over-the-air broadcasts will need to resort to HD converters to be able to watch on their old sets.
Since the switchover is only mandatory for over-the-air broadcasts, it isn't presently known what's going to happen with those who use cable/satellite. I assume they will continue to transmit SD until such time as HDTV sets have a larger penetration, while also offering HD program packages for those who can swing it.
the whole digital thing sucks for those of us with a bad signal, but at least you can get digital channels with cheaper things like a freeview box as cable/satalite channels are pretty pricy.
i feel sorry for those who don't know much about technology. i'm not terrible with it, but it still took me and my dad 2 hours yesterday to set up my sister's TV with a freeview box. it wasn't until we rang the helpline that we realised that we were missing a cable needed to connect it to the TV.
rather annoying as the instructions only mentioned one cable, and both cables had to be bought seperately. ^x;
i'm going to have to leave clear written instructions for both my grandmothers on how to make digital TV work. ^^;; mobile phones are a sticking point too.
PSX is totally right. We aren't switching to HD here in the US... We are switching from analog to digital. There's a website where you can check if your tv will receive digital signals or not. Those that can't can buy a converter. The government is handing out 2 $40 vouchers per household.
I don't care who says what, HD isn't standard yet. Maybe it is with the 'upper class', but most mid and lower class families still use standard TVs. An HD conversion is still at least 5 years out, if not more.
Unfortunatly Becca, some people's signals are so weak they cannot even receive freeview. I know certain parts of Cheshire are particularly bad for that (I wonder if Crim has this problem as well?). Shame the government didn't seem to take them into account.
My Grandad, whose signal was so weak he couldn't even get Channel 5, was forced to convert to Sky just so he could watch his cricket and motor racing =/ Costly.
That's why I'm against the analogue switch-off =/
Sorruy, got that bit of information from Dad, didn't check it.
ahh. that was my point exactly trudi.. i just worded it really badly. ^x;
where some freinds of mine lived recently was exactly the same.. they got no freeview signel and channel 5 was fuzzy at the best of times.
whenever this point gets raised on programmes about the switch-over, they just say that by the time it happens the coverage will have improved to reach everyone.. and if they still live in some dead signel area, then they will just have to use the extra services that the wonders of cable/satalite will provide.
i read that as blocking off the poor and those who aren't modern technology-knowlegable from the joys of watching TV. the heck are we even paying TV licences for nowadays?
i read somewhere that dispite all the adverts and etc, a large amount of the population are still unaware of the switch to digital, or how to get TV once it happens. and i can only guess that it's very true.. oo;
*huffs*
Aha! I see!
So together we make the most solid of points! >=D
indeed! *poses alongside you!*
That said, when analogue is switched off, the digital signals can be boosted and make use of the extra bandwidth from the previous 4/5 channels. Also it is said that over half the uk population has access to a digital based television service (freeview/sky/nthell/teleworst/virgin etc). That and freeviews boxes cost less than 15 from some supermarkets.
epic PiEchart from ofcom:
I other news, DAVE! 😀 DD
Apparently Universal and Paramount are dropping exclusive HDDVD support.
Meaning? a. they're gonan release Blu-Ray films sooner or later, and b. HDDVD is screwed.
Quote:
Unfortunatly Becca, some people's signals are so weak they cannot even receive freeview. I know certain parts of Cheshire are particularly bad for that (I wonder if Crim has this problem as well?). Shame the government didn't seem to take them into account.
Since I live in a neighbourhood where the terrestrial signal I get on the four channels we can receive is basically unwatchable, the switchover's a moot point. Up here, you need digital or satelite to get anything at all.
The average age around here is over seventy - but most people're reasonably tech-savvy, because you don't have much choie if you just want to stay in touch with the outside world.
Wal-Mart's announcement yesterday to go exclusively Blu-Ray was the final nail in the coffin for Toshiba's media format. I think anybody considering purchase of an HD-DVD player at this junction should seriously re-evaluate their priorities. As for the rest of you who've already plunked down on one... my condolences.
Or... OR you can wait a couple weeks for the prices to get slashed, and then go and pick up some discount HD stuff =)
Like vultures to a fresh carcass. 
Blockbuster and Target, too.
i've only just managed to get some of the things i wanted on DVD.. and now they're switching everything to an even more expensive format? ox;
Don't worry @ Becca... Blu-ray is a long ways out still. At least 4+ years away from being mainstream, at least.
Hell, HD sets aren't even mainstream yet.
Whilst region free dvd players are 15 in Asda or Tesco and that the cheapest br player is still in excess of 250 (ps3) it'll probably take a lot more than 4 years for it to become mainstream and by that time the next thing would've come along.
Also for price comparisons: Ratatouille on DVD was 8 from tesco, on BR it's about 18+
There is no "next thing" I bet. I think Blu-Ray will be the last physical format before things finally move completely to digital ownership.
Quote:
There is no "next thing" I bet. I think Blu-Ray will be the last physical format before things finally move completely to digital ownership.
I wouldn't bank on that myself. Bear in mind, there's still a huge factor in using physical media - several factors in fact.
One of these would be the quite obvious point of royalty fees. It's a lot easier for the massive corporations that churn out film releases and so forth to collect from sales of a physical medium than it is for them to collect on digital sales. Which is inter-linked with...
...piracy. If entertainment releases were moved entirely to a digital format, it makes the releases a lot easier to be illegally copied hither and yon with no form of protection against it. There currently exists no fully reliable form of protection against digital piracy - not that there're any truly foolproof means for protection of physical media either, but that's still more demanding than digital means.
And lastly, there's the issue of compression versus quality. The average film release these days comes on a DVD-9 format disc. That's about 8.5GB of space it's taking up. The majority of that is taken up by the film itself - most of that's in the video, but there're usually about 2 or 3 audio tracks as well, plus subtitles. For the audio and video, as little compression as possible is applied in order to preserve picture quality.
If you're going to make a digital release, by which I assume you're meaning, for example, via downloads, Then you're going to have to apply some pretty severe compression to it - not everyone has high-speed internet access with which to download a file of that size, or stream it for that matter.
Come to think of it, not everyone has a cavernous hard disk upon which to store it either. Let's say for example you bought about 10 movies that were of DVD quality and stored them on your PC. That's 85GB gone in a snap. Whilst it's true that hard disks are getting bigger and bigger, so are the things we store on them. And that point there was only for DVD releases - imagine the hellish amounts of space you'd need if you wanted something that was HD on there.
So in short, I'd say we're still going to be looking at stuff coming out on physical media for quite a while yet. It's not that digital ownership is impossible - it's just that there's no way yet of it being as profitable for the industry giants as current means, and unfortunately those are the people that need convincing.
Another factor is people like having PHYSICAL copies of items. Hell, that's even the case with the DVDs I copy... For example, I copied the Indiana Jones triology from NetFlix a year ago. Yesterday I bought a copy of the set from my buddy's used DVD store.
When the price is right, I'd rather have a physical copy of something.
