Hd-dvd

Me too... I still have and use my Toshiba XA2 and XA1.

leroyjr1 wrote: »

So why did Sony win the battle?

PS3 would be my guess.

bobman1235 wrote: »

PS3 would be my guess.

They won largely due to more successful negotiations with studios, and partly due to the ps3 as well.

The picture quality was never better on either one, they both used the same codecs, and usually the same transfer for movies that were on both formats. Picture quality still varries a lot though- but especially early on due to how much effort they put into the transfer.

The HDDVD remote is a lot easier to use then the Java based Bluray remote. I kept my XA2 for watching SD and some HDDVD's that I have in my colection.

Bill

The PS3 is THE biggest reason bluray won. While Toshiba struggled to sell set top boxes (as did Sony with set top blu-ray players), the PS3 was selling millions of built-in bluray players to an unsuspecting population. Even after bluray's victory, according to one study by the NPD Group, 60% of PS3 owners were unaware it was capable of playing blurays. I myself, doubt the number was truly that high at the time, but you get the idea.

The coalitions behind both camps swayed back and forth around for a bit, but when Warner Bro.s made the exclusivity jump to Sony just before CES, it spelled doom for HD-DVD. Because of Sony and Warner Bros massive catalog of movies, 70% of all available movies would be bluray.

They jumped to Sony because of sales (and a rumored payoff). Bluray outsold HD-DVD 3 to 1 around that time. This was only possible because of the inclusion of bluray into the PS3.

danger boy wrote: »

the better format usually loses out every time.
RIP HD DVD

Amen brotha!

As for why Blu-Ray won, you can google it and find 16,000 reasons. Personally, I am quite happy with my XA1 for now.

manman wrote: »

They won largely due to more successful negotiations with studios, and partly due to the ps3 as well.

The picture quality was never better on either one, they both used the same codecs, and usually the same transfer for movies that were on both formats. Picture quality still varries a lot though- but especially early on due to how much effort they put into the transfer.

It was all who gave the money and having Disney was a huge factor IMO. I followed closely in the trade mags, I own a video store and thought HD DVD would actually win do to the fact that Blue Ray wasn't even a finished product when brought to market. Blue Ray is not really main stream yet do to price of hardware and disks, some studios are talking about bring the cost of a blue ray down to the same price of a standard DVD but I personally do not think BR will ever be what DVD is today.

I think with the most current generation of players and Blu Ray discs that BD has now caught up to where HD DVD was already. I was reading that HD DVD players were already ready to handle the lossless audio tracks from the start. Namely DD TrueHD, and DTS HD MA. I think it took BD a while to catch up with the discs and players.

I'm glad that one format won out.. I really didn't care which one is was either. I just think that early on HD DVD was better prepared to bring Hi Def media and players to consumers. ie: a lot of the bugs, and finalization of the discs had been ironed out already. BD was still stuck figuring out the profiles and BD live, etc.

If microsoft put a HD dvd player in the xbox 360 from the start we would be talking about how blu ray did not stick around. You can attribute the success of blu ray to the playstation 3. Marketing genius. Anyone know if netflix is going to do blu ray?

timmythugs wrote: »

Anyone know if netflix is going to do blu ray?

Netflix has been doing bluray for almost 2 years.

bigred7078 wrote: »

I dunno, i dont necessarily agree. PS3 is not the only reason why Blu-Ray won. They had a unit to buy separate, that could be had for pretty cheap, by integrating it alone i highly doubt they would have suddenly sold millions of more units.

It would absolutely have sold millions of units. The PS3 (ingeniously) bundled a bluray player with every unit. The sales of the PS3 DWARFED set top boxes on either side. In November of 07, HD-DVD bragged about having sold 750,000 players up to that point. At the same time, more than 5 MILLION PS3 bluray players had been brought into homes around the world. When the 07 Christmas season hit, it paid in spades for Sony as bluray disc sales destroyed HD-DVD sales.

Now think about this: XBOX360 had a HUGE lead over the PS3 at that time. It was released a year earlier than the Playstation and it's install base was around 10 MILLION units worldwide. IF every 360 was packaged with an HD-DVD player, the HD-DVD player would have made the bluray sales look silly. HD-DVD's mistake was making the player optional on the 360.

I bought the PS3 close to its launch. I wanted bluray to win. But if Microsoft had allowed its partner, Toshiba, to bundle HD-DVD players with the 360, I'd be trying to sell old blurays on ebay right now and buying HD-DVD.

timlitton wrote: »

It would absolutely have sold millions of units. The PS3 (ingeniously) bundled a bluray player with every unit. The sales of the PS3 DWARFED set top boxes on either side. In November of 07, HD-DVD bragged about having sold 750,000 players up to that point. At the same time, more than 5 MILLION PS3 bluray players had been brought into homes around the world. When the 07 Christmas season hit, it paid in spades for Sony as bluray disc sales destroyed HD-DVD sales.

Now think about this: XBOX360 had a HUGE lead over the PS3 at that time. It was released a year earlier than the Playstation and it's install base was around 10 MILLION units worldwide. IF every 360 was packaged with an HD-DVD player, the HD-DVD player would have made the bluray sales look silly. HD-DVD's mistake was making the player optional on the 360.

I bought the PS3 close to its launch. I wanted bluray to win. But if Microsoft had allowed its partner, Toshiba, to bundle HD-DVD players with the 360, I'd be trying to sell old blurays on ebay right now and buying HD-DVD.

Bigred is right- in the situation that was given, you can't say that HD-DVD definitely would have won. If I'm getting your scenario right, there is also one major flaw... you are counting in Microsoft's lead saying if every xbox sold had an hd-dvd player. But that lead wouldn't have come into play as much as you're saying.

The 360 was released in November of 2005. The first toshiba hd-dvd player in Japan was not released until march of 06. It only came to market a few months before Blu-Ray. Now- /Microsoft's/ hd-dvd player wasn't even released until November of that year, only about a WEEK before PS3...

So if you're talking bundling in from the very beginning, MS would have had to delay their launch until about a week before the PS3, blowing that huge lead you're talking about. Even if they had gotten development started early, Sony would have known about it and could have made some business decisions to push their release up to. Happens all the time...that's the main reason blu-ray was incomplete when released- they rushed to market to compete.

Basically it would have just been a whole different scenario with different business moves, so you can't just say flat out HD-DVD would have won. You're ignoring marketing, and many other factors too. Also- PS3 sales did not dwarf set top box numbers for blu-ray. Around the months surrounding the end of the 'war', it was reported that ps3 accounted for about 50% of blu-ray players sold. So it dwarfed any one model maybe, but not blu-ray set top boxes in general. Blu-ray disc sales have pretty much almost always been higher than hd-dvd due to the greater studio support too- long before christmas of 07. If you look back, I believe there wasn't even one week from the start of 2007 on where hd-dvd disc sales exceeded blu-ray disc sales.