HD Disc Format War Not Over By a Long Shot

[1more4HDDVD]

Originally Posted by TheMoose

Well Circuit City may think the format war is over.
They have clearance prices on HD-DVD players!
A30 for 149.99
A3 for $100.04

Not a good sign, but until we know the official story, it’s just speculation.

[Lotus]

Originally Posted by 1more4HDDVD

Not a good sign, but until we know the official story, it’s just speculation.

Circuit City is clearing the items. They will sell the HD-DVD software but not the players.

[deacongreg]

Why did we have to have this war, in the first place? Nobody wins here.

[Lotus]

Originally Posted by deacongreg

Why did we have to have this war, in the first place? Nobody wins here.

Because the previous Sony CEO couldn't reach an agreement with Toshiba. Toshiba insisted on the Network capabilities and HDi. Sony wouldn't budge and pretty much didn't want to combine the two techs.

However Sony was really scared about losing with another technology (SACD, BETA, MD, etc) so they decided getting Studios to sign exclusive contracts was the answer.

Thus the war. The sad thing is that because of the PS3 there was really no need for the Studio exclusivity. The PS3 guaranteed that BD would survive.

[PRO-630HD]

And here we have BDJ that is problem city and 2.0 players most of which will not even be released till Oct. of 07 at the earliest. 3 profiles of players, WTF!!! Who in their right minds makes this stuff up. So players are $1,000 to $1,500 right out of the gate and they can't afford to put secondary audio and video encoders in their players, ethernet ports and 1 gb of persistant storage (so they can keep prices down LOL!!!) and the last 2 features will still be optional.

Though I must admit they did the same with SACD. It was 2 channel when it first came out. Then when dvd audio has 5.1 sound they add that too! Hey next gen CD should be 5.1 since most people have surround sound in their home theaters anyway! Brilliant!!
I love it when the BDA gets into Dewey Cox mode and the lightbulb turns on LOL!!! CES 2008 was all about the interactivity of bluray with downloadable ringtones and the like, so original!!! Where have I seen that before. I liked the PIP in Resident Evil 3, though it was better in May of 2006 with The Bourne Supremacy.

[DaViD Boulet]

And here we have BDJ that is problem city and 2.0 players most of which will not even be released till Oct. of 07 at the earliest. 3 profiles of players, WTF!!! Who in their right minds makes this stuff up. So players are $1,000 to $1,500 right out of the gate and they can't afford to put secondary audio and video encoders in their players, ethernet ports and 1 gb of persistant storage (so they can keep prices down LOL!!!) and the last 2 features will still be optional.

Agreed. It's my primary criticism of the BDA's hardware strategy (or lack thereof).

Because the previous Sony CEO couldn't reach an agreement with Toshiba. Toshiba insisted on the Network capabilities and HDi. Sony wouldn't budge and pretty much didn't want to combine the two techs.

However Sony was really scared about losing with another technology (SACD, BETA, MD, etc) so they decided getting Studios to sign exclusive contracts was the answer.

Don't forget that Toshiba was the first studio to pay for exclusivity (ie, Disney wasn't paid for an exclusive contract, just given subsidies on BD replication for a while). And the reasons that both Disney and Fox supported BD had nothing to do with Sony: Disney wanted Java, 50GB, and region coding and Fox wanted BD+ security.

Oh, and in those "unification" talks... where Sony/the BDA worked hard with Toshiba to try to reach an agreement: the real point of contention was with Toshiba who refused to accept the physical structure of BD (with its 50-100 GB potential) as they wanted to stick with the DVD platform to maintain royalties which they get from the (inferior) disc-structure. Worth noting is that it's that DVD structure that limits the bandwidth of HD DVD as well. But since Toshiba's primary motivation with pushing HD DVD despite the industry's and CE companies' support for BD was to continue their DVD royalty stream, naturally the weren't about to elect for a different disc structure, no matter how much better it might be for high-fidelity HDM.

Also worth noting is that Sony actually went to the BDA and pushed to include HDi in the spec at Microsoft's behest, but the BDA declined the request. The BDA did concede on some points, which is why we now (thankfully) have VC-1 and AVC in the BD spec.

Blu-ray is NOT Sony.