Re: HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray, and other matters....

A good point hyde makes is that it would be a shame if bluray won because of ps3, the only bluray player with a selling price close to hd dvd. that is why it sold so well. how cheap is that? i mean c'mon! why can't bluray win this war off their stand alone players? wher i'm from bluray stand alone players just sit on shelves. yet the most common bluray player out there, bought by most bluray fans, was blurays cheapest! well if bluray fans had such a problem with price then why did they go out and buy bluray cheapest player? why didn't they just go with hd dvd? i have been an hd supporter from the beginning and i would not mind if bluray won because they dominated in disk and stand alone player sales. but it erks me that they use the back door on this one. and it frustrates me that bluray sales benifit mostly because of their cheapest player which was one of hd dvd's strongest selling points, price.

I'm thinking now the future is dual format, and some analyists think $199 dual format players are coming in 2009, which I think is soon enough if that happens. There is just too much money on both sides of the table and too much entrenchment. Neither side will "surrender", particularly Microsoft, Toshiba and Sony and WB will be producing THD discs (probably) this year.

Think about it. Do you think a major studio like WB would like to have a replication choice? They would replicate based on what's cheaper, and maybe sometimes it would be Blu-ray, who knows. But I think studios would love this flexibility and I think WB is actually hoping for a stalemate.

By the same token, I think Universal also realizes that dual format is the future and thus they will never go nuetral because their HD DVD movies will play in the dual formats players that will sucede the HD DVD players.


See WB ad on page 19
- EXTERNAL LINK -

Sales of PS3's have slowed down a ton since christmas. Most retailers can't get them off the shelves. My Store has three that have been sitting in the stock room since early january and no one has shown and inkling of interest in them X Box 360's and Wii's, we can't keep them in stock they fly off the shelves. Right now the PS3 owners are starved for good games. The launch lineup for the PS3 was pathetic and a lot of the games were also availible for the 360 and looked the same or better on the 360. So a lot of this spike in Blu-Ray sales was due to people desperate to justify their 600 dollar 񢁜 if they bought it off ebay) purchase. Most people I know who bought a PS3 were mad that they were being "forced" to have a Blu-Ray player in their game machine whereas the 360 gives you the option. The PS3 launch is already considered by most in the gaming community to be a huge bust. The blunders with the PS3 are too many to count but here are some of my favourites. Sony touting "true" 1080P HD with the PS3 and shipping it with only Composite video connections. Sony's online system which they touted as being better then X Box live and most game developers can't get there games to work on it.

A lot of people in the gaming community don't know if the PS3 can hold out until the end of the year. There aren't any Killer games in sight and the 360 and the Wii have built up very large shares of the market already.

So as a Blu-Ray Trojan horse, it really isn't doing it's job at all. I know the spike in Blu-Ray sales has a lot of Blu-Ray fanboys rejoicing but I work in a Electronics department and I judge trends by what I see. We have a Sony Blu-Ray player side by side with a Toshiba A2 both playing Superman Returns. Pretty much every customer that comes in says the HD-DVD looks better then the Blu-Ray. This is taking into account the Blu-Ray player is hooked up to a Sony 1080P TV and the Toshiba is hooked up to a 1080i TV. Now according to Sony's logic the Blu-Ray should look a million times better then the HD-DVD because it's "true" HD. We've sold every single Toshiba player we have to the point of having to order them in. The Blu-Ray's? We still have the same three that Sony sent us sitting in the stock room. When people look at the price tag they immediately go to the Toshiba.

Movielover316, you got exactly my point!... even so WS TVs are sold EXPENSIVE still, only a few offer true 1080p resolution, therefore most of the TV sold in the past years, don't exploit the HD offered in Blu-Ray and HD-DVD releases, a step back for consumers acceptance of HD media. Again i mention... if consumers think that standart DVD releases are overpriced, you can guess their thoughts about prices for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD releases.

It's true that previous DVD releases are sold at an average of $10, but the goal for us consumers is not to wait several months or years for a discount in overpriced DVD releases, but to get a low price from the first day a DVD release is availible. If the goal is to win the consumer's preference, specially to establish Blu-Ray or HD-DVD as the new HD format, the worst way to do so is offering overpriced products.

Any newcomer consumer in HD media, will notice a substancial difference in the price in a standalone HD-DVD player, from a standalone Blu-Ray player, and surely will choose to purchase the HD-DVD player, because the consumer will always put first the advantage of a CHEAPER price than a higher picture and sound quality.

Also consider that video and audio quality in standart DVD releases is much higher now than a decade ago, to influence a consumer to upgrade to HD media, standalone DVD player are really CHEAP to purchase, and most consumers rather rent a movie for $1 than buy a overpriced DVD (a movie that most will watch once in a lifetime)

Finally consider that not all DVD consumers are videogames consumers also. That's why not all who purchase a X Box 360 got the HD-DVD player, and those who purchased a PS3, did it for the videogames, not for the Blu-Ray player which you get even if you don't need it, and recent burst in sales of Blu-Ray releases, is due to lack of good PS3 videogames... if you bought a PS3, surely will prefer to buy a good videogame than a movie.

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[Post edited by genbar dardren on Feb 20, 2007 - CST 2:52 AM]