HD Disc Format War Not Over By a Long Shot

[PRO-630HD]

I think many people have financial reasons when they have invested in the format. This could be a good chunk of change they have invested in it. Some people are very good with the dollar and some are very frivolous.

I own some very niche formats such as SACD which I bought a few more a month ago and see them as superior to CD in every way. I own DVD audio as well and I regret none of these purchases. They were priced the same as CD and offered a vastly superior product that failed in the marketplace. The amazing thing is look at how many universal players are out there for 2 failed products. Quite frankly any semi high end universal dvd players will play these 2 formats. I am sure 10 years from now I will still be able purchase a universal dvd player.

Now look at hddvd. An excellent format that was fully equiped out the gate and affordable. Most discs that are provide better picture, sound and extras than the dvd counterpart. This format is easily more successful than either dvd audio and sacd but has a real lack of players. For all intent and purposes Toshiba is the only manufacturer. I hope their labtops continue to have hddvd playback and newer 4th gen players come out. As of now this remains to be seen. Say 10 years from now my XA2 craps out. Without the hardware to play the discs I am out of luck. I fully see these 2 HD formats as the last forms of physical media we see in films.

I have no intent on trading my Warner hddvd's for the bluray version as I am gaining nothing in PQ, could be going from True HD to DD and am missing IME extras and the like. The same goes formy Paramount hddvd's. I would far rather have the film with 1.5 mbps DD+ than 640 kbps DD. I would far rather have a VC1 or AVC encode than MPEG-2 and yes I have compared them back to back.

[1more4HDDVD]

Originally Posted by DaViD Boulet

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)

Technically, Toshiba didn’t pay for exclusivity either as the money was buried in marketing budgets of select films. You can’t have it both ways, if Disney was given replication subsidies then they were paid off, plain and simple.

So far, the BDA has paid off Disney, Warner Bros, Target and Blockbuster. Their business plan of eliminating competition and keeping prices high is working.

[faberryman]

How is it that Blockbuster was paid off? My local Blockbuster carries both HD and BD titles.

[PRO-630HD]

Neither of mine do or ever have carried hddvd, bluray only.

[bootman]

Originally Posted by DaViD Boulet

Blu-ray is NOT Sony.

Panasonic holds more Bluray patents than anyone in the BDA.

[DaViD Boulet]

Technically, Toshiba didn’t pay for exclusivity either as the money was buried in marketing budgets of select films. You can’t have it both ways, if Disney was given replication subsidies then they were paid off, plain and simple.

Disney did not sign a contract for Blu-ray exclusivity: The agreement with Sony was not one to prevent them from releasing on another format, only one to incentivise BD production. That's very different than Paramount's exclusivity deal with Toshiba which, by contract, instructed them to hault Blu-ray production.

Agreed that the financial incentives were similar in both cases.