End of the Blu-Ray / HD-DVD Format War? 266
Next week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas should shake up the format war. The NYTimes reports that Warner Brothers will announce the Total HD disc that can store both Blu-ray and HD-DVD content. The article also mentions that LG (along with "possibly other gadget makers") is expected to announce a player that can play both formats. According to Yahoo, LG has not announced pricing, but the Times notes that such dual-format devices are bound to cost more than existing players. And the Times outlines the many considerations that would come into play before studios decide to release their content in both formats on a single disc.
Only hope (Score:2, Interesting)
Has Sony sold a License? (Score:5, Interesting)
or has some one (LG?) gotten around this some how?
Re:As much as I hate Sony... (Score:5, Interesting)
HD-DVD is currently much less expensive for consumers, and manufacturers of both discs and hardware. This may not be the case forever, but (hypothetically) if it is cheaper to produce 2 or 3 HD-DVD discs then to produce 1 Blu-Ray disc the storage capacity advantage is not really important.
Re:Total HD Player (Score:5, Interesting)
Or look at it this way:
People don't know which way the market will swing. Some manufacturers are trying to win either way with a disc that can be played in both players. However, once the market is decided, nobody will buy them, what'd be the point? If the market never gets decided, consumers will just get bored, buy an HD/Blueray drive and still ignore Total HD.
Whatever happens, I reckon a year from now Total HD will be all but forgotten.
Re:As much as I hate Sony... (Score:4, Interesting)
The current "big thing" with TV programs is to package them in seasons for sale on DVDs (sometimes along with Extras).
If this idea makes the jump to HD media (which is a reasonable assumption), then the extra space means less discs in the set, or the same number of discs with more space for extras.
Just because the extra space doesn't seem relevant for one application (storing a movie with some extras) doesn't mean it couldn't be used for some other parallel application that might need it.
Thats like saying "people will never need more than X amount of HardDrive space in their machines, since all you need is X to install WindowsXP and a word processor". Some people do things like Video or Audio editing which might need more space. Others need to run large Databases for businesses.
Re:Total HD Player (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Death To Discs (Score:3, Interesting)
Yea, because all those people that don't have access to broadband are not worth selling to. All those people who are too poor to pay for internet connection consistently every single month (or Cable TV with digital and pay-per-view fees, or plain old standard telephone line even) , but who could afford a DVD or two now and then are also not worth selling to. You'd be suprised how many people that don't have any phone, TV cable, and other basic services have quite nice stereos, TVs, game consoles, DVD players, etc. They just choose what to save up for and what to not keep paying for again and again and again. Do neither of those two groups of people deserve to watch movies?
Sorry, but we're not quite to a point where your everything from the internet and nowhere else market works.
And it isn't about whether someone "deserves" to watch a movie. It is about whether it makes economic sense to offer a particular product. I think there is a lot of life left in standard def DVDs. I think that some kind of next generation DVD format will succeed - and I think it will be HD-DVD. I think it will take longer than most people think for HD-DVD (assuming it wins) to surpass standard def DVDs. My guess is that it won't happen until 2012.
You're right but reached the wrong conclusion (Score:3, Interesting)
Blu-Ray will obviously win because they have these things going for them:
1) The studio that makes content that looks most impressive in HD (Disney with Pixar, which can re-render at true HD resolutions with no grain or noise in the image).
2) Star Wars
3) The number of PS3's in homes now and in the future mean there are already an order of magnitude more Blu-Ray players in consumers hands than HD-DVD, and that gap will only grow wider.
4) The support for Apple and Dell in burning home HD movies to Blu-Ray (Dell ship s aBlu-Ray burner already and HD camcorders are already in the prosumer range).
By the end of this year, all will be clear.
Re:Total HD Player (Score:3, Interesting)
Speaking of anecdotal evidence...
I think that is true only of people who really haven't seen HD. Even my mom, who watches approximately no TV on average, is stunned by HD quality and will sit in my brother's room watching something like Discovery HD for 60-90 minutes. That's pretty much unheard of for her in most cases.
She wants an HD TV. She just can't justify the cost right now because, in her words, "there's nothing wrong with our TV." When either the costs come down a bit more or something goes flaky with the TV, she's going to be in the HD world. And she's probably going to beat me there!