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[iwannadie]

QUOTE(warmaster_670 @ Jan 4 2008, 07:00 PM)

and? none of them won, not that umd had anything to win, blu ray is winning here, they have nothing in common.

Winning, meaning what? Winning meaning the consumer gets a better format? Looking at sonys history I dont see what they have to offer the consumer as far as a Better format.

I dont want to be locked into a single format from a company with the type of record sony has.

[ILLusions0fGrander]

I don't think it was forced as much as weighed down by the humongous sum of money they received to cooperate.

I always knew id end up with a PS3, its just a matter of another price break or two, accompanied by hopefully at least a 10% off coupon from somewhere.

soon enough.

[HackMy360]

I guess this means that I can finally afford to buy some HD DVD movies for my 360 player since it hasn't played anything other than king kong and thats because it came with it....Although this will only give blu ray more market share i don't think HD DVD will give up and so I don't see and end in sight to this format war...

[Sc0rpion]

Well if the war lasts a while lets hope the multi-format players improve in price and performance:

also a good article on the format war here:

http://www.tech.co.uk/digital-home/general/blogs/2007/12/17/how-to-lose-friends-and-influence-people

[ezhack]

if MS was so gung ho about HD-DVD then it would made the 360 with an HD-DVD internal drive. the fact is MS is not in the movie business, they are in the software business therefore it seems to me that they were on the fence themselves the whole time.  or they would have comitted to the format. MS has no games on HD-DVD and no movies on HD-DVD why would they care about what format wins, in all honesty this doesnt hurt them at all.  sony on the other hand is knee deep in the format war because they make and distribute movies on blu ray. they took the risk and stood there ground with bluray. they integrated it into the ps3 and produce games actually on the bluray discs themselves. not on regular dual layer dvds. im not a MS hater i have both the 360 and the ps3 and to be honest i play games on my 360 and watch movies on my ps3. Bluray movies on ps3 plus pioneer profhd1 elite is the shiznit, ill tell you that!!!

[boyla001]

I'm calling BS on this story. Where is the source of this story? I don't see ths announcement on Warner Bros website anywhere? And the consumer didn't decide anything. We haven't had a say in this "format war" since it started. Until I see this on Warner Bros. website I say its fake.

[joemm210]

I think things are just going to start to get interesting, why would Warner announce this before CES, this seems to be something they would announce at CES, unless Microsoft and Toshiba have a bigger announcement at CES and Sony and Warner wanted to get their announcement out first.

Since Toshiba said they would continue to fight, I am guessing they have something for CES and Im going to guess that it will be either xbox 360 with hd built in, if not then maybe regular price sub 100 hd dvd player. If they dont counter with anything then hd dvd is going to die. The only reason why I think Toshiba already had a plan for CES is because this anouncement is a few days before the show.

[Flagg3]

QUOTE(boyla001 @ Jan 4 2008, 09:18 PM)

I'm calling BS on this story. Where is the source of this story? I don't see ths announcement on Warner Bros website anywhere? And the consumer didn't decide anything. We haven't had a say in this "format war" since it started. Until I see this on Warner Bros. website I say its fake.

It is official, Warner announced it in a press release:

http://ap.google.com...maSU3QD8TVCROG3

And for the record, Warner has flatly denied that they received any compensation for making the switch, unlike Paramount and Dreamworks, which were offered an amount of money that they couldn't poissibly refuse for such a short exclusivity window.

And I hate to say I told you so, but for those that doubted my assurances that this would happen, I will reiterate that the best that HD-DVD can hope for is a tie.  They need to remain viable until their exclusive window with Paramount and Dreamworks runs out.  If they can continue to retain a significant market share for the remainder of 2008, they may be able to force manufacturers to make dual format players the standard.

Say what you will, but the inclusion of Blu-ray in the PS3 was genius for Sony.  It is the single reason that they will ultimately win the format war, and it will become more and more significant for gaming in the next couple of years, despite Microsoft's protests otherwise.

QUOTE(joemm210 @ Jan 4 2008, 09:30 PM)

I think things are just going to start to get interesting, why would Warner announce this before CES, this seems to be something they would announce at CES, unless Microsoft and Toshiba have a bigger announcement at CES and Sony and Warner wanted to get their announcement out first.

Since Toshiba said they would continue to fight, I am guessing they have something for CES and Im going to guess that it will be either xbox 360 with hd built in, if not then maybe regular price sub 100 hd dvd player. If they dont counter with anything then hd dvd is going to die. The only reason why I think Toshiba already had a plan for CES is because this anouncement is a few days before the show.

Agreed.  The only counter for Toshiba now is to release a sub $100 player as soon as possible.  The only problem is that unless Microsoft subsidizes a large portion of it (Which is very doubtful) then realistically Toshiba can't afford to absorb the hardware losses for the amount of players that they would be required to sell at a loss to make much of a difference.  

[trey85stang]

great news,  cant wait for more to jump ship.  As soon as the other two major players jump ship I will be buying.

[dmitri]

QUOTE(Flagg3 @ Jan 5 2008, 02:36 AM)

And for the record, Warner has flatly denied that they received any compensation for making the switch, unlike Paramount and Dreamworks, which were offered an amount of money that they couldn't poissibly refuse for such a short exclusivity window.

Are marketing incentives the same as bribes?  Make no mistake, you don't want to be the last studio off of the sinking boat.  Now Sony, Fox and Warner are exclusive to Blu-Ray, Universal to HD-DVD.  I can guess which gets the worse distribution deal if (I guess WHEN) the world goes Blu-Ray.

There's no longer the need for either to slit their wrists on prices..  Content will begin drying up for HD-DVD once Warner goes away and it will happen.  And prepare to repay all the fantastic deals and prices with $40 BluRay movies.  You have to subsidize the R&D somehow..

I'm waiting for digital distribution.  That will change the world.

[running_wild]

Hmmm, Yeah - I suppose 30GB is pretty good... And with Warner on their side, how could they lose now?

I dunno, but if you ask me, I'm putting my money on these guys.

The future is soon gentlemen! I'd like to see both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray make back their research costs if these fellas get their product out on the timeline they expect to. While enterprise markets are going to be the biggest initial market, consumer markets should be very soon after.

[The_Flash]

QUOTE(iwannadie @ Jan 4 2008, 09:41 PM)

So what if blu wins and hd is forgotten, my disks still work. People act like suddenly tomorrow HDdvds will suddenly be coasters.

Well said.  I own standalones for both formats (Tosh A30 & Philips BDP9000) and could really care less if I have to keep both hooked up for some time.  In fact, I hope this announcement does make people unload their HD-DVDs cheaply.  I'll gladly play them when not viewing Blu-Ray.

[FCTE]

QUOTE(bucko @ Jan 4 2008, 06:14 PM)

I'm just dam glad I got a PS3 now hehe though I will still be buying HD-DVD's since I don't want to sit on the fence but Warner Bros is still producing HD-DVD's right just means movies will come out first on Blu-Ray? So I doubt it's that bad, oh and I still think HD-DVD's have an edge over movie price, play.com has awesome titles for really cheap. I'm tempted to buy the Matrix collection my self.

In May Warner will drop the HD DVD format completely. That means that HD DVD will only have 2 studios supporting them, everyone else is on Bluray.

And I agree about having a PS3.

QUOTE(dmitri @ Jan 4 2008, 09:16 PM)

I'm waiting for digital distribution.  That will change the world.

I would imagine broadband has to get better and more widespread before that can become a standard and it's still loss quality as of right now. I'd be more worried about the state of the internet by then.

If you order an HD movie off of your cable box or Xbox and play an HD DVD or Bluray disc, the discs look much better.

[NoMention]

I'm saddened by reading this.  I've always been skeptical of Sony ever since the days of Beta.  They really are no different than a few other major money-hungry corporations (AOL Time Warner being another).  Sony has had a history of hits and misses with their attempt at coming out with their own versions of things

The Walk Man - success
The Disc Man - success
Beta - failed on the mainstream vs VHS
BetaCam - success in media outlets
Multimedia compact disc (MMCD) - failed, the opponent called Super Density disc eventually became DVD
Minidisc - failed on the mainstream
ATRAC and ATRAC3 - ever heard of MP3?   Yep, failure
SDDS - Sorry but again you lose to DTS
Memory Stick and Memory Stick Duo - Anyone without Sony products never uses them, CF and SD rule here
SACD and DVD-Audio - both failed (as I imagine Blu-Ray and HD-DVD will)
UMD on the PSP - yep, what happened to that?  It was supposed to take the world by storm...

Now, I'm not saying Blu-Ray is bad.  It isn't and I certainly see a major benefit to the recordable format for data storage in large corporations. I could take advantage of the extra disc space when I do physical media backups of my large SQL databases.  But for media, the extra space that is being touted isn't even needed.  The encoding mechanism is far more important than the disc space.  DVD currently goes up to 8.5GB but the average 2 hour movie is rarely any more than 6.5GB in size with the rest of the space on the disc as extras, behind the scenes etc.

Assuming that studios maximized the bitrate (anyone remember the DVD Superbit discs) then Blu-Ray would have the advantage with the extra space but numerous people have made the following statement "I don't see a quality difference between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray" which is funny because they will then turn around and immediate state that "Blu-Ray holds X GB but HD-DVD holds Y GB".  Basically what is being admitted is that HD-DVD can produce the same quality but use less space.  

I have the XBox HD-DVD player and nothing else.  It works fine for me and I bought it when I could get a total of 10 movies for free with it which pretty much means that the player was free (10 x $20 a disc = $200 which is more than the package was).  

I think that the standard DVD format has made such an impact that people are not ready for HD movies.  The majority of people don't have 1080p sets so making that claim is ludicris.  Even with the FCC ruling of all broadcasts to be HD, they are going to make converter boxes to dumb down the signal.  I think that there will be a whole lot of those being sold.  Not everyone can afford their $1500 1080p set.  It would be nice if they could.  I think that the HD media was released slightly before its time.

I (and I think others like me) have a 1080p set and still watch standard DVDs on it because I just have more and they are a whole lot cheaper.  1080p in HD is nice but a standard DVD on a good 1080p set looks pretty good too.  I think many people are going to either buy both or buy neither.  My gut tells me that more people will sit on the sidelines and do nothing.  In 5 years we'll have another format anyway with a silly name like "Super Purple MultiMedia 4x Definition Disc".

[slipstream]

QUOTE(NoMention @ Jan 5 2008, 06:18 AM)

I think that the standard DVD format has made such an impact that people are not ready for HD movies.  The majority of people don't have 1080p sets so making that claim is ludicris.  Even with the FCC ruling of all broadcasts to be HD, they are going to make converter boxes to dumb down the signal.  I think that there will be a whole lot of those being sold.  Not everyone can afford their $1500 1080p set.  It would be nice if they could.  I think that the HD media was released slightly before its time.

your right, most people are NOT ready for a new format, and everyone cant afford a 1080p set right now. But HD-media being released early was a smart move, especially since there was going to be a format war. Figure now, by the time all the dust settles from the war, HDTV's will become much, much more common, and then the average consumer can buy the only format left and not have to research for months before making a risky choice (which i did - used PS3~$350).