Why This Format War Was Unfair From The Start

[BDVrentsBlu-ray]

Great posts, AV Integrated!

[bish]

When that's the case, then HD players will sell and there is no reason for Blu-ray to be a niche format. This is not LD... LD never was the marketing juggernaut that Blu-ray is. LD also was only avaiable in a few select locations back in the pre-Internet days.

Just for the record, Laserdisc while a niche format, was first introduced in 1978 by Pioneer and lasted all the way up until 1996-7 when DVD killed it off. So even if blu-ray ended up being that kind of niche market I'd be happy. It's not going to be a niche product though, Best Buy never sold Laserdisc.

Also I own the first Panasonic DVD player that came out, it's not anamorphic, it has no component out, it can't play any recorded dvd media and it can't play a lot of DVD media that came out several years later when better dvd authoring techniques started being used. Example, the Disney dvd of Dinosaur stops playing about 10 minutes before the end of the movie, there are countless others. So shame on Toshiba and the rest of the DVD Consortium for putting out an unfinished format and forcing me to buy a newer better dvd player later on. (that was sarcasm by the way)

Get over it, I as an early adopter bought both HD DVD and Blu-ray. And I have been overwhelmingly happy with Blu-ray over HD DVD.

So I as a consumer chose Blu-ray, Sony didn't choose anything for me.

-bish

[McSquisherton]

I keep reading statements from studios claiming that "the consumer has chosen", or what not. But honestly lets look at it from the beginning. From the get go, HD-DVD was the underdog because of more studios supporting blu-ray. Now just coz more studios supported blu-ray doesn't mean, blu ray was superior, and it also didnt mean the consumer chose blu-ray. But naturally, since 1 format has more support people would tend to go for that. Now HD-DVD had a chance to stay in it if Warner would have gone HD exclusive. Blu would still have a 1 sudio advantage, but HD would have 3 exclusive studios so it would be more fair.

Still, to have a true format where where the consumer really chooses the winner, studios should support both formats, thus the consumer's decision should be solely based on incentives that each format offers technologically. Blu-rays disk space, HD-DVDs interactive features, combo disks and price.

But since from the start blu ray had more studio support (god knows why, or how much money sony paid them), it was obvious that HD-DVD had to fight hard. And since most consumers dont even know what these 2 formats are, they will choose the 1 with more movies available. Hence the consumer didnt choose, the studios chose. So I'd just like for once to hear blu supporters tell it the way it is, "the consumer didnt choose, we chose for them, more studios supported our product coz we paid them excessive amounts of money, in an effort to sabotage the competition, hence we won". If they would be honest and say that, maybe I would consider blu ray in the future if HD-DVD dies.

But until then, if they keep up this consumer's choice BS, ill stick to HD until its death, then just standard DVD.

what?.. what your saying dosent benefit the studio at all. so by the logic you are proposing the sutdios should print and release on every single format the comes out and let the consumer choose what format they want. this dosent sound business smart to me. companies cannot hand out everything and they are not charaties they are businesses and businesses need to make money to you know, stay in business.

[DarthXan]

I keep seeing people state that blu-ray has better bit rates and such. How come then, High Def Digest disc reviews have identical reviews for both HD & Blu Ray, except in some cases HD is better in terms of features. Audio and video are almost always identical except for Departed, where I believe Audio was half a star better on Blu-ray than HD. Extra space is useless if you won't do anything with it.

The fact is that, HD-DVD's capacity is enough for 1080P video and good audio, sometimes even lossless. The only thing I see on Blu-ray discs to fill up the space is various languages (Chinese, Portugese, Spanish, Dutch, etc). They only put those on to justify the 50 GB of space.

If you really want features, put the movie on 1 disc for HD-DVD and put the featurs on a second disc, like Transformers. Its cheaper to make 2 HD discs than 1 blu disc anyways.

[bish]

I keep seeing people state that blu-ray has better bit rates and such. How come then, High Def Digest disc reviews have identical reviews for both HD & Blu Ray, except in some cases HD is better in terms of features. Audio and video are almost always identical except for Departed, where I believe Audio was half a star better on Blu-ray than HD. Extra space is useless if you won't do anything with it.

The fact is that, HD-DVD's capacity is enough for 1080P video and good audio, sometimes even lossless. The only thing I see on Blu-ray discs to fill up the space is various languages (Chinese, Portugese, Spanish, Dutch, etc). They only put those on to justify the 50 GB of space.

Actually since you can really only compare movies from studios that were dual format most of those releases were encoded only once for the lowest capacity disc (HD DVD) and then used for both HD DVD's and Blu-ray. Now that Warner isn't supporting HD DVD, I suspect we will see higher bitrate encoded video and audio. It will be very intersesting to see if they redo Batman Begins at a higher bitrate so we can do a real comparison.

And the real truth is that Blu-ray does not significantly cost more then HD DVD to produce . Also the more you manufacture and sell the less something costs to produce. With Blu-ray media outselling HD DVD media that is a factor you have to consider.

-bish

[Htown-D]

I keep seeing people state that blu-ray has better bit rates and such. How come then, High Def Digest disc reviews have identical reviews for both HD & Blu Ray, except in some cases HD is better in terms of features. Audio and video are almost always identical except for Departed, where I believe Audio was half a star better on Blu-ray than HD. Extra space is useless if you won't do anything with it.

The fact is that, HD-DVD's capacity is enough for 1080P video and good audio, sometimes even lossless. The only thing I see on Blu-ray discs to fill up the space is various languages (Chinese, Portugese, Spanish, Dutch, etc). They only put those on to justify the 50 GB of space.

If you really want features, put the movie on 1 disc for HD-DVD and put the featurs on a second disc, like Transformers. Its cheaper to make 2 HD discs than 1 blu disc anyways.

That;s an easy question. Because a neutral studio makes an encode that fits on both releases. If warner maximized the master for bluray it wouldn't fit on hd dvd. Hence both releases get the same review minus the crap no one really cares about. pip, web etc.

[mkone]

To OP, I'm glad the war was not fair. Recent history is riddled with stories of the consumer choosing the inferior technology or standard. The average consumer watches 4:3 movies S T R E T C H E D without even noticing; I recently pointed this out to some friends and showed them the difference, but they still much preferred it stretched because the picture was bigger!

Thank GOD the average consumer didn't decide. They may very well have chosen HD DVD, not knowing how inferior the specs were, or unaware of the superior specs and long term, broad-based potential of Blu-ray. Perhaps their reasoning would be: "eh, I liked DVD, so I think I'll go with the HD DVD, besides, I want my old DVDs to play on the new format."

Fuck the opinions of the average consumer!

I don't know how many times I have seen friends prefer to see people with seriously long faces because they wanted the picture shot in wide screen to "fill the screen". Just stretch the bugger. It's jarring.

But regardless, the argument that consumers should choose is really silly. The studios should also choose, and Toshiba forgot its other customers, the studios. The studios would be paying fees for using the technology, and therefore their needs needed met. Studios do want to release films at different times in different countries, and BD+ helps that. It made the format more attractive to them. Toshiba thought it could strong arm them into supporting the format by selling many players quickly. Sony outflanked it and sold many more players much more quickly (yes I am counting PS3s). It was a decisive factor, and in retrospect, Toshiba might have elected to take losses on a HD DVD drive in the Xbox 360 instead. We would have been talking of a different story today.

But the bottom line is customer chose, but not just the customer people were expecting.

And this rubbish about this being unfair, well, everyone was trying to get an unfair advantage. Toshiba wanted to get license fees, so it could take losses upfront on the hardware. If its format became dominant, then they could recoup their initial expenses. Their gambit failed. Sony's one worked.