Hi-Def Disc Format war over?

[cavalierlwt]

For those you sitting on the fence, looks like Format War might be over, looks like Blu-Ray will be the winner. We will probably know by the end of this month. I thought the winner would be HD-DVD with the lower price, but in the end it was some major studios going Blu-Ray exclusive instead of HD-DVD exclusive or format neutral. Warner Bros, followed by New Line, just dropped the bomb on HD-DVD. The press is piling on and it should reach critical mass pretty quickly.

This thing as gone back and forth. Just when it looked like Blu-Ray had it in the bag, when Blockbuster announced Blu-Ray only, Paramount studios announce HD-DVD exclusive and that pumped air back into HD-DVD. Supposedly this is the last bombshell.

I just hope Toshiba throws in the towel this month and let's this whole stupid thing be over. Sony has a Blu-Ray player for $300, I can deal with that. As soon as Toshiba capitulates I'll be getting off the fence and buying a Blu-Ray. It will be nice to have one format, maybe studio will start cranking out the titles faster.

[Hat Rack]

I always felt that BlueRay would win. Having Blockbuster supporting that format is huge. Then with so many Playstations out there, it is just to difficult for HD to get a foothold. I dont know which is the better product. I have the Playstation and got "Planet Earth" for Christmas and it is absolutly spectacular!

[cavalierlwt]

The only thing left to screw things up is if Microsoft decides put an HD-DVD player in every new XBox360. I still think Blu-Ray wins ultimately, but a move by M$ could maybe drag it out for few more months. At this point I think the only studios making HD-DVD will be Universal and Paramount.

[Chacal]

I thought the war was over when the porn industry decided to go HD-DVD.

[cavalierlwt]

Porn is not having the impact it did back in the VHS vs Betamax wars because of the Internet. Back then, being able to skip the sleezy movie theaters was a watershed moment for porn--so porn had a big audience via videotape. I think people turn to the Net for porn today, so the whole HD disc thing is minor outlet Don't get me wrong, they'll sell plenty of HD porn eventually, but right now HD discs are not the 'killer app' that the Net is.

[Jungle_Fowl]

I thought the war was over when the porn industry decided to go HD-DVD.

lol yeah so did I, isn't that what happend with Beta and VHS?

[Chacal]

There's porn on the Internet?

[BladeRunner]

There's porn on the Internet?

Yes, you can find porn on the Internet but you can also find
tons of "corn"

[Cleatus703]

There's porn on the Internet?

As Dr. Cox on Scrubs once ranted, if they took all the porn off the Internet, there would only be one website left and it would be called, "Bring Back the Porn."

I would think there's a point where HD gets to be a bit too much information for the average porn viewer...butt zits, shaving pimples, stray hairs, cellulite and all the other things that VHS/low-res Internet porn managed to conceal with a little bit of soft focus might be a touch too vivid in HD.

I'd agree that BluRay is the likely winner of the format war. I don't think anything Microsoft could do with the 360 now would make a difference. This is, what, the start of year 3 of deployment of the 360? If people were going to buy a 360, they've already got one and it probably didn't have a HD-DVD in it. Now, if they're looking to buy a HD gaming console, PS3 is probably what they're looking for (or the Wii). I've got a standard DVD in my 360, and wouldn't go out and buy a HD-DVD drive for it if it cost more than about the cost of a game at this point. I haven't seen much in the way of announcements for the next generation from Microsoft, but it's probably too late to leverage the 360 for a major move in DVD format.

[Wesley]

Had M$ had a HD-DVD player standard, HD-DVD would probably already have won this battle. On the flip side their console would have cost $150-$200 more to start. PS3 sales will get a lot better if HD-DVD goes the way of the BetaMax. This will cost M$ in the long run unless their next console is out sooner than later, plus then I think they still need Sony's permission to use it, which could be tough considering M$ wants to push Sony out of the console world.

Funny how the PS3 is becoming more and more of a great investment.

[Darknut]

I just wish they could produce a cheap high-capacity solid state medium.