What Does It Mean? Sony Give Up Br

shack · November 2007

I'm a happy guy...right now.

(see my happy emoticon?).

If I have to spend any money to get HD video, I will not be happy

(ie: the sad emoticon.)

sucks2beme · November 2007

I guess I would care if I had a really large screen, but at 42"
I'm not pushing the envelope. Not a big movie fan and not willing
to let a TV take over a room. That's what 2 channel is for...........:D

disneyjoe7 · November 2007

jakelm wrote: »

In short, SD-DVD cant touch HD-DVD with a 10 foot poll.

This is something I'm just can't swallow, a SD-DVD with a mid level upconvert looks 90% or better of a HD-DVD IMHO. So I have trouble justifying the cost to replace DVD which I already own as SD-DVD. In the end the price to value is just not there.

jakelm · November 2007

disneyjoe7 wrote: »

This is something I'm just can't swallow, a SD-DVD with a mid level upconvert looks 90% or better of a HD-DVD IMHO. So I have trouble justifying the cost to replace DVD which I already own as SD-DVD. In the end the price to value is just not there.

I guess it depends on your display, and your perseption on whats better and by how much.

I have been through Denon 1910 and Oppo 981, the HD is alot better.

disneyjoe7 · November 2007

I don't know the Oppo 981 heard good things but never seen it myself. A Pioneer elite dv-79avi player looks really sweet to me on a panny 42" plasma feeding 1080i. I can't see a HD player playing a HD DVD being 20% better then what the 79avi does to a SD-DVD. I could be wrong, but hell I love to see it.

Dennis Gardner · November 2007

The **** industry chose VHS over Beta, and ended that war, I wonder if they still have as much impact. I doubt it with all the downloaded material these days.

WilliamM2 · November 2007

I don't think most consumers buy movies, they rent them. I know I don't buy them, I love movies, but have rarely wanted to watch one twice. I already know how it ends.

I think the winner will be whoever can get market share in rentals. I believe that is why VHS won back in the day. I had both, but most places only rented VHS.

Sherardp · November 2007

I hope both formats stick around for awhile. I would like to see both Blu Ray and HD DVD still on the shelves. Perhaps they will make a combo player in the less than 200 price range. Those will smaller displays will only see a small difference in PQ over SD DVD. Those of us using 50 inch or larger, will see a huge difference in PQ. The HD formats using Front PJ is a must have.

jakelm · November 2007

WilliamM2 wrote: »

I don't think most consumers buy movies, they rent them. I know I don't buy them, I love movies, but have rarely wanted to watch one twice. I already know how it ends.

I think the winner will be whoever can get market share in rentals. I believe that is why VHS won back in the day. I had both, but most places only rented VHS.

What I do is, rent the movie. If I enjoy it and want to buy it, I get it in HD.

My XA1 does a great job of upconverting, so watching the SD version is good, but if I wanted to own it I get it in HD, if its not in HD I get it in SD.

Block Buster is my guinea pig.

fatchowmein · November 2007

I keep thinking that while BR and HD fight it out, they'll get crushed and blindsided from another direction. SACD vs DVD-A became a stalemate while iPod stomped both of them. I wonder if BR and HD will get stomped by Cable/Satellite/fiber-to-the-curb-on-demand at 1080P.

I think the average consumer would welcome 1 cable connected to their TV with 1 remote, accessing the entire Paramount movie library and no DVD case to store and dust. Ultra high WAF.

MGPK · November 2007

fatchowmein wrote: »

I keep thinking that while BR and HD fight it out, they'll get crushed and blindsided from another direction. SACD vs DVD-A became a stalemate while iPod stomped both of them. I wonder if BR and HD will get stomped by Cable/Satellite/fiber-to-the-curb-on-demand at 1080P.

I think the average consumer would welcome 1 cable connected to their TV with 1 remote, accessing the entire Paramount movie library and no DVD case to store and dust. Ultra high WAF.

The internet will do that. As one poster reported earlier, Bill Gates stated that the days of packaged media are numbered. As one stubborn media collector (mostly music) I will lament on the old days when that happens.

As for watching HD and watching new releases that come out on DVD, the internet will be able to provide the means to deliver, on demand whatever content you wish to view. A computer can do anything if not better than any new digital stand-alone device that's on the market now. Plus with a PC based HT system, you can have one cable connected to your TV with one remote and access any media that you have stored on your HDD or download from the net whatever you choose to view or listen to. And, if you do own packaged media, you can use your computer as a playback device as well.

JimBRICK · November 2007

I love how everyone leaves out the fact that Bluray discs hold 3 times the info of a hd disc. soon to be alot more with the engineering that is going on.

BaggedLancer · November 2007

JimBRICK wrote: »

I love how everyone leaves out the fact that Bluray discs hold 3 times the info of a hd disc. soon to be alot more with the engineering that is going on.

I don't think people leave that out on purpose.....I think that the consumers that care about how much info a bluray disc are 1%-2% of consumers.....the rest could care less and only go for the Ohhh Ahhh of the HD picture.

Price will decide this war....it's as simple as that. The low price will always win in this country and right now HD DVD controls the price department

izafar · November 2007

BaggedLancer wrote: »

Price will decide this war....it's as simple as that. The low price will always win in this country and right now HD DVD controls the price department

Low equipment price has a certain weight on the war, but so far it doesn't have the drastic effect that Toshiba is hoping for. Since inception HD DVD's price is admission is relatively low, but so far more movies are being sold on Blue ray, even last week when HD-A2 was selling for $98, the split of software sales was 71%:29% in Blu-ray favor. I think the price of media needs to come down, average Joe who is buying $98 dvd player isn't going to spend $30 on a HD movie.

BaggedLancer · November 2007

izafar wrote: »

Low equipment price has a certain weight on the war, but so far it doesn't have the drastic effect that Toshiba is hoping for. Since inception HD DVD's price is admission is relatively low, but so far more movies are being sold on Blue ray, even last week when HD-A2 was selling for $98, the split of software sales was 71%:29% in Blu-ray favor. I think the price of media needs to come down, average Joe who is buying $98 dvd player isn't going to spend $30 on a HD movie.

No, but they will use that $98 player to upconvert their standard DVD collections that they built from the $5 DVD selection in Wally World until the price falls. See where I'm going?

danger boy · November 2007

I think this holiday shopping season will determine who wins. if sony drops the prices on some of their lower end players.. maybe they will win. no one knows. but I think on Jan 1, 2008, we'll have a better idea as to what format reigns supreme

disneyjoe7 · November 2007

izafar wrote: »

Low equipment price has a certain weight on the war, but so far it doesn't have the drastic effect that Toshiba is hoping for. Since inception HD DVD's price is admission is relatively low, but so far more movies are being sold on Blue ray, even last week when HD-A2 was selling for $98, the split of software sales was 71%:29% in Blu-ray favor. I think the price of media needs to come down, average Joe who is buying $98 dvd player isn't going to spend $30 on a HD movie.

True ok I give you that. But with with higher number of HD DVD players out there, that got to build sales and lower price of disk. This in return will kill Blu-Ray, if Sony wishes to get back in the game they need to lower price. Its Sony greed is why we're in the boat we're in.

Sami · November 2007

shack wrote: »

The PQ I get from my HT rig is way better that you get in a movie theater

If you're watching SD-DVD, that's wishful thinking I'm afraid. On a high end CRT FP SD-DVD looks pretty good but not nearly as good as in the theaters (unless you have different kind of theaters in town than we have). Granted, the sound effects at home can be much better easily but to approach PQ at home you need at least a 720p projector with HD-DVD or BR. Film vs. SD-DVD? Forget about it.

Sami · November 2007

disneyjoe7 wrote: »

I don't know the Oppo 981 heard good things but never seen it myself. A Pioneer elite dv-79avi player looks really sweet to me on a panny 42" plasma feeding 1080i. I can't see a HD player playing a HD DVD being 20% better then what the 79avi does to a SD-DVD. I could be wrong, but hell I love to see it.

On that size screen you will see a good improvement, just not the same huger improvement you would see on a fairly decent size big screen. It's definitely a HUGE difference if you have the right screen for it, on smaller screens (and especially ones that do not support 1080) it will not be an eye popping experience.

cheddar · November 2007

disneyjoe7 wrote: »

True ok I give you that. But with with higher number of HD DVD players out there, that got to build sales and lower price of disk. This in return will kill Blu-Ray, if Sony wishes to get back in the game they need to lower price. Its Sony greed is why we're in the boat we're in.

Interesting take that Sony's greed is keeping prices high. Sony could easily make a cheap player and basically give it away like Toshiba to increase their dedicated player share (remember there are a much higher number of blu-ray players out there, they're just ps3s -- already presumably sold at a loss by Sony -- and that's why the software sales are so lopsided in blu-ray's favor).

But then all these player makers would basically be priced out of the market from an earlier list in this thread:

Sharp
Mitsubishi
Loewe
Samsung
Pioneer
Phillips
LG
Lite-On
JVC
Denon
Daewoo
Panasonic

It's no wonder that Toshiba is the only prominent manufacturer of hd-dvd players. At the current sale prices, there is simply no money to be made on hd-dvd hardware. Toshiba even ran afoul of anti-dumping laws in several states with their $98 deal. So if it's greed that's supporting the prices, it's a collective greed in that many of these companies can't subsidize their player sales with movie sales like Sony or licensing fees like Toshiba, so Sony is actually helping these companies by supporting profitable prices on the low end players from these other companies. I guess you can fault them for holding the line on price, but I think more hardware companies, not less is better for competitive features and pricing in the long run.

Toshiba deserves a lot of credit (maybe Microsoft behind the scenes too) for staying in the game. But all this predicting that blu-ray is now losing the war is a little premature IMO. If A2s continued to sell 90,000 a week, sure, blu-ray is dead. But I'm pretty sure the sale is over and stocks are depleted with new production shifting to the higher priced A3 replacement model. I agree with others, though, that it should be really interesting seeing what everything looks like after Christmas.

jakelm · November 2007

Lets look at it this way...

If you had a friend with about $200 to spend on DVD with a couple of good movies. What would you recommend?

I picked $200 for the reason of , many of us (consumers), thats about what we would like to spend on players. Not much more.

There are the "lucky" ones who have alot more to spend on players, but the majority has about $200.

cfrizz · November 2007

I'm simply not interested in getting caught up in another format war. I sat on the sidelines until a multiformat dvd player was introduced. I still have that player. It does the job it's supposed to do. When it breaks which will probably be years from now, I'll see what is available.

I have always been an audio person over video, so the supposed extra definition just isn't important to me.

bykes · November 2007

BaggedLancer wrote: »

I don't think people leave that out on purpose.....I think that the consumers that care about how much info a bluray disc are 1%-2% of consumers.....the rest could care less and only go for the Ohhh Ahhh of the HD picture.

Price will decide this war....it's as simple as that. The low price will always win in this country and right now HD DVD controls the price department

HD DVD may have cheaper players, but they just don't have the CE support or studio support. Sorry to sound like a fanboy, but I don't see how HD DVD can survive another year. This holiday season won't decide a victor, but will surly show where the trend is leaning.

Monster Jam · November 2007

cfrizz wrote: »

I have always been an audio person over video, so the supposed extra definition just isn't important to me.

You probably don't need me to tell you that you are in a decided minority where audio vs. video are concerned. Its fair to say that anyone that follows the audio market closely (like those who post to this forum) care for the quality of music/sound.

The large majority of electronics consumers just don't care very much about sound. They care about picture quality. Frankly, it could be argued that seeing the difference is easier than hearing the difference past a certain threshold. I think we've reached the audio threshold, but still have miles to go for video.

I am a consumer that is interested in both audio and video, both being equally important.

dkg999 · November 2007

Quite frankly, neither camp (BR or HD-DVD) has been able to carve out a profitable market, and even combined together there isn't a market to support the current investment. The analysts are basically telling Sony they need to dump the investment in BR and move on. Even with Sony/BR out of the picture the HD-DVD side will need to more than double prices on movies and gear to make the financials go positive. Basically this looks like a losing venture all the way around.

I think the comments about the average consumer not seeing the value of the new formats are correct. They are not going to see a considerable improvement over SD-DVD that justifies all the costs and hoopla! I'm not sure there will be any true winners.

Sami · November 2007

dkg999 wrote: »

The analysts are basically telling Sony they need to dump the investment in BR and move on.

Not going to happen. You will always lose money in the front end bringing a new technology on the market.

Systems · November 2007

bykes wrote: »

HD DVD may have cheaper players, but they just don't have the CE support or studio support. Sorry to sound like a fanboy, but I don't see how HD DVD can survive another year. This holiday season won't decide a victor, but will surly show where the trend is leaning.

I have to agree with you. I still have only really bought 1 new movie on HD-DVD since I got my A30 (Transformers) and the others are older movies that I missed on dvd and in the theater. On the flip side, I’ve gone nuts with BR, Shrek 3, Ratatouille, Siderman3, etc...etc... up to 15 new hot titles. The only "older" titles I bought were like Terminator 2 and Fifth Element. Look what’s still coming out… Pirates, Simpsons move, Harry Potter, super bad, Die Hard 4.

I’m still not sure whether Toshiba dropping the price out of their units is a move to clear inventory or get out.

People keep saying price will win this war. I still don’t think so. Its very odd to me that someone who can afford the required HD format TV would really have that much of a problem picking between the formats if the hardware is a few hundred apart up what you get for the difference is worth it (what you pay for is what you get and the Toshiba HD-DVD players are cheap).

To boot, why would Sony give up BR??? That’s almost crazy talk if you ask me. Seriously, I want to see these "analysts".

Don’t forget that the PS3 needs the BR player in it for games and such as much as any thing else. Even if BR "movies" died, Sony would still be using BR in the PS3 which is at the near what.. 10 million sold mark? Even then, why target "Sony", like I said before, Sony isn’t even the top 3 in the BR consortium.

dkg999 · November 2007

Sami wrote: »

Not going to happen. You will always lose money in the front end bringing a new technology on the market.

That's only a good strategy if there is a market that you can gain enough share in. Investments in new technologies are being hammered by the drastically shortened payback times demanded by investors, analysts, etc. I'm not sure either of these formats will be around, except in videophile offerings at high prices, in three to five years. I hope I'm wrong, and would love to be proven wrong quickly!

Sami · November 2007

dkg999 wrote: »

That's only a good strategy if there is a market that you can gain enough share in.

There definitely is market for HD movies and the winner of the format war gets to replace SD-DVD is the next few years. You don't see HD-DVD and BR being around in the next 4-5 years, I don't see SD-DVD being around at that time.

Why wouldn't they invest for something that's going to be the next video standard? Either the HD-DVD or BR camp are going to cash in after the war is over.

bykes · November 2007

Dennis Gardner wrote: »

The **** industry chose VHS over Beta, and ended that war, I wonder if they still have as much impact. I doubt it with all the downloaded material these days.

No. Besides **** is also available on Blu-ray.

What Does It Mean? Sony Give Up Br

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