THX Chief Scientist: ...too late for Blu-ray

I will download music, but I will NEVER download movies! I like looking at my large collection of DVDs, HDDVDs and blu-ray discs. If the hi-def industry moves solely towards digital downloads they will lose one very frequent buyer of their products. I hope that THX rep reads this and realizes how insane her comment is. Why in the world would a movie collector want digital downloads?
I'm very sick and tired of the industries ignoring the customers. For instance, the HD-DVD demise... what consumers said they prefer blu-ray over HDDVD (besides the biased ones that purchased blu-ray instead of hd-dvd)? I have both formats and HDDVD is FAR SUPERIOR! And if its because of disc capacity, HDDVD was working on a 51gb disc... isn't 51 a larger number than 50? LOGIC, PEOPLE! C'MON! I purchased A Clockwork Orange on blu-ray because no Bay Area stores had it on HDDVD when it first came out. The presentation on blu-ray was pitiful! I was able to finally exchange it for the HDDVD version, and was much more satisfied with the presentation, it was worlds better! Maybe blu-ray will get better, maybe its a work in progress... but why would someone pick a work in progress rather than a product that is already finished, a product that can still receive updates on ANY of the players, even the first generation players... and on top of that, it costs less! Its common sense!
Blu-ray may have a lot of exciting things coming in the next few months and years, and I suppose its better that the format war is over, but this still is an example of how the industry did not listen to the consumers. If studios want to start/continue with digital downloads, that is another way to make money, so by all means do it, but dont stop production of hi-def discs without listening to the consumers first... we're the ones giving them money, we control the market, not them... without us they are nothing!

FYI...

> THX responds back to DVDTOWN inquiry and magazine quotation

"THX recognizes the quality and benefits that the Blu-ray HD format brings to the home theater experience. We are dedicated to supporting Blu-ray with new THX technologies and other initiatives. At its very core, THX is about advancing the quality of the entertainment experience, whether that is on optical disc, downloads or other emerging media. I believe Mr. Fincham's comments reflect that broader goal." Graham McKenna, Sr. PR Manager at THX Ltd., wrote in a statement to DVDTOWN.com.

-JIMI (the Voodoo Child)

I think this chief scientist guy doesn't know the format that well. The Blu-ray playback system uses a Virtual File System (requirement for profile 1.1). This means that it doesn't matter where the movie is stored, the VFS abtracts any storage device... so, do you want to play a movie stored in a 128gb usb flash drive? plug it into the USB port of your Blu-ray player, it will be abtsracted by the VFS and the player will play it... so, you don't need the spinning format... the Blu-ray playback system doesn't need the spinning format either after all...

Right on nategeorge! Hd-dvd got it right out of the gate...while Blu-ray went oops and now their are quite a few standalone players out that can't do the new profile! And these players were very expensive at that! But they had the ps3 brand and that bought them their studio support. Without that system, Hd-dvd would have been the stand alone high definition format and we wouldnt even be talking about Blu-ray. Everybody would be buddies on here,just talking about how great Hd is and trying to promote that,instead of formats.

And I too am not looking forward to the day when there are no discs of any kind...just zeros/ones and a big fat harddrive....what fun is that? But you know it is coming. And we will still be here talking about the good ol' glory days of when we could actually "hold" our precious media.

And Hd-dvd packaging just looks better......I like the RED.

[Post edited by bladerunner1 on Apr 4, 2008]