The format war is over...Warner goes BluRay exclusive!
- Thread starter Mr. Laser Beam
- Start date
All of this shit will be obsolete in five years.
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Yeah, I get the impression that HD is a sort of 'stopgap' technology. Not very innovative, compared to previous improvements in media technology.
I also like how the 2.0 profile basically specifies a fully-fledged PC, with permanent storage and Java. Say hello viruses, crashes, and strange errors on your Blu-Ray player.
HAving seen a friend's HD-DVD version of the remastered Trek on 60" DLP screen, I'm afraid I'm going ot have to spring for an HD player regardless. I can't wait for Paramount to decide that they MIGHT put remastered Trek on Blue ray in a nother couple of years. And yes, I'm buying it JUST for remastered TOS. I've tasted the fruit and I want it now. Dammit.
Oh well, the price of players can only get cheaper after this announcement.
Oh well, the price of players can only get cheaper after this announcement.
There is still no pressing reason to buy a Blu-ray player. The BDA manufacturers were in no hurry to reduce prices on the players, and that was before they "won" the war. They must be setting up Blu-ray as the "Cadillac" option and want to pull in the high-end money before bringing it to the masses.
USS KG5 said:
Now - the question is how long Blu-Ray lasts before streamed HD over the net takes over!
Pioneer's players already come with a ethernet connection and can playback any file & codec that your PC can play using Windows Media Player 11. The PC is networked either directly or through a hub or switch to the Blu-Ray Player. The player then can pull the files from the PC and playback and/or up-rez them. Pioneer's new receiver will also do this and also has the same 100baseT ethernet connection and playback software. Pioneer is way ahead of everyone in this function and it works very, very well!!
I am personally very glad to see Warner's decision.
wws
This frakking SUCKS!!!
I was an early adopter of HD-DVD with the Xbox 360 add on and I've greatly enjoyed each and every title I've purchased, with quite a number of them being from Warner Bros.
As much as I enjoy HD quality with my movie watching, I'm not buying a blu ray player any time soon nor am I continuing to buy HD DVDs as it's practically a dead format with this anouncement (which is a bummer, cuz I had been holding out for the Zodiac director's cut on HD DVD.) Any new HD title, I'm just gonna have to netflix at this point.
Blu Ray is a lousy format that was born out of spite, still has frakking region coding (HD DVD never did,) and required another year AT LEAST of product development before its release. F*** Sony. Eventually yes, I'll get a blu ray player, but not until the price is reasonable and the hardware dependable. So, I'm gonna be waiting a while.
Oh well, my region free pioneer DVD player does a great job with 480p. I'll just have to be content with that for now.
I was an early adopter of HD-DVD with the Xbox 360 add on and I've greatly enjoyed each and every title I've purchased, with quite a number of them being from Warner Bros.
As much as I enjoy HD quality with my movie watching, I'm not buying a blu ray player any time soon nor am I continuing to buy HD DVDs as it's practically a dead format with this anouncement (which is a bummer, cuz I had been holding out for the Zodiac director's cut on HD DVD.) Any new HD title, I'm just gonna have to netflix at this point.
Blu Ray is a lousy format that was born out of spite, still has frakking region coding (HD DVD never did,) and required another year AT LEAST of product development before its release. F*** Sony. Eventually yes, I'll get a blu ray player, but not until the price is reasonable and the hardware dependable. So, I'm gonna be waiting a while.
Oh well, my region free pioneer DVD player does a great job with 480p. I'll just have to be content with that for now.
True but any conceivable advancements in media technology in our lifetime would only result in storage size improvements. There wouldn't be any real evolutionary advancements such as the addition of touch, smell and taste to the media experience until if somehow the holodecks as seen in popular Scifi is invented. Until then I don't see how any media technology would not be characterized as "stopgap" as you put it. Of course there is the possibility of different distribution methods becoming dominant i.e. HD content over the internet but video unlike music isn't portable due the necessity of a very bulky HD television so any incentive for owning a smaller and lesser quality version of the content in the case of digital music doesn't exist plus people will always want to own the physical medium instead of just "renting" a virtual copy as prescribed in the Microsoft Live HD model. There is also the matter of bandwidth requirement which far exceeds the capability of our current internet infrastructure and that status will not change within 5 years or even 10. Any likely improvement in the immediate future would just be incremental increases in the max video resolution which unfortunately require people to throw out their current HD televisions. However I think even the most technophilic consumer will be reluctant to do so because the current maximum HD picture resolution (1920x1080) is already approaching the threshold in which any higher resolution would result in very little apparent improvement to our eyes on a reasonably sized TV (unless you think people will start to buy 120 inch televisions to put in their living rooms!)
As far as the robustness of the software goes well that is mainly a quality control issue. Windows XP rarely crashes nowdays unless there is a bad driver. The PS3 is a fully-fledged PC when I am running gentoo Linux on it. I haven't experienced any problem with the PS3 OS either.
Wasn't Paramount actually paid to go HD-DVD exclusive sometime ago? I don't know how they could get out of that. But if/when HD-DVD folds, they may not have a choice.
I'm sure Paramount have a clause that let's them get out of the contract if something like this happens.
One ironic thing is that I'm a Blu-Ray-supporter that haven't bought anything (player or discs) High Def yet, except one thing:
Season 1 of TOS Remastered in comboformat.
Wonder if this box will be released into one Blu-ray, one DVD-box in the future and what will happen to season 2 and 3 when they are released.
One ironic thing is that I'm a Blu-Ray-supporter that haven't bought anything (player or discs) High Def yet, except one thing:
Season 1 of TOS Remastered in comboformat.
Wonder if this box will be released into one Blu-ray, one DVD-box in the future and what will happen to season 2 and 3 when they are released.
^ As far as I know, TOS-R season 2 was supposed to be out sometime this summer. I'm sure they will have plenty of time to make sure it comes out in BluRay. (Is it not possible to have a BluRay/standard DVD combo?)
If Paramount does manage to get out of their HD-DVD exclusivity, that is. But since HD-DVD is effectively dead now anyway, I doubt that will be a problem.
If Paramount does manage to get out of their HD-DVD exclusivity, that is. But since HD-DVD is effectively dead now anyway, I doubt that will be a problem.
Well Microsoft really have been quite canny in paying a lot of lip-service to HD-DVD but not forcing the price of their console up by integrating the drive - but they have gotten something clever in place right away.
The current X-Box live service is the fist step to providing a subscription service for HD movies in a simple piece of mass market consumer electronics. If you have the bandwidth you will soon be able to download or stream an HD movie and watch it on your TV - without the involvement of a PC, which isa crucial for the average joe as most do not have a PC and TV/home cinema setup in the same room.
All that is needed is for the average available bandwidth to go up, both for the home user and throughout the Internet.
Interesting post must respond to bits of it...
It is another cunning way of pushing media prices back up and getting everyone to buy their movie collections again. The industry was surprised by the amount of money they made with CD and their main priority since has been to repeat this with video formats. DVD helped but corporate greed is universal and eternal...
OK, first off...
1. Portable video is extremely popular, the current range of ipods almost all support it as do most digital media players. They are great - kill loads of time on planes etc. There is a significant market for lower-res portable video.
2. Hi-def streamed HDF content for big TVs does have a future on the Internet, for certain. The costs are so much lower for the manufacturer (no big factories making discs, no distribution, no big heated shops and store rooms). The problem is that the average joe's bandwidth is currently too low to make it practical. This will change over the next decade however.
SOME people will, the success of music downloading of all kinds indicates that people over-estimate the power of tangible possession.
There are a lot of people working on changing it right now, it is a big job but there is general agreement that it needs doing. Already cable providers in Britain are offering 20mbps to the home, and the infrastructure is being modernised, albeit slowly.
Nuts to them if they try that.
Agreed - TV sizes are already getting silly for the average room (I've lost count of the number of stories I've heard of people whose entire living rooms are basically a TV).
I expect our friend is referring more to Java - which has always been a bit slow and buggy. It has improved greatly since the early days though.
It is another cunning way of pushing media prices back up and getting everyone to buy their movie collections again. The industry was surprised by the amount of money they made with CD and their main priority since has been to repeat this with video formats. DVD helped but corporate greed is universal and eternal...
OK, first off...
1. Portable video is extremely popular, the current range of ipods almost all support it as do most digital media players. They are great - kill loads of time on planes etc. There is a significant market for lower-res portable video.
2. Hi-def streamed HDF content for big TVs does have a future on the Internet, for certain. The costs are so much lower for the manufacturer (no big factories making discs, no distribution, no big heated shops and store rooms). The problem is that the average joe's bandwidth is currently too low to make it practical. This will change over the next decade however.
SOME people will, the success of music downloading of all kinds indicates that people over-estimate the power of tangible possession.
There are a lot of people working on changing it right now, it is a big job but there is general agreement that it needs doing. Already cable providers in Britain are offering 20mbps to the home, and the infrastructure is being modernised, albeit slowly.
Nuts to them if they try that.
Agreed - TV sizes are already getting silly for the average room (I've lost count of the number of stories I've heard of people whose entire living rooms are basically a TV).
I expect our friend is referring more to Java - which has always been a bit slow and buggy. It has improved greatly since the early days though.
With Trek on HD only, I do not see any victory in a practical sense.
This is great news.
New Line Cinema (i.e. Lord of the Rings trilogy) has just announced their plans to go Blu-ray exclusive as well. Bill Hunt, over at www.thedigitalbits.com has already heard from a Universal insider that they are already planning Blu-ray Disc releases for later this year.
I have been carefully following the development of both hi-def formats for several years, now - long before they were released to the marketplace, and chose the Blu-ray Disc format as a result last year. I have nearly 100 titles in my collection and have never regretted going with this format.
As much as I love the original Star Trek (for obvious reasons), it was not incentive enough for me to adopt the HD-DVD format (now, effectively HD-DUD), and I now anxiously await Paramount to make an effort to save face and find a way out of their HD-DVD exclusive contract and go back to releasing in the Blu-ray format, including releases of the original series on Blu-ray Disc.
New Line Cinema (i.e. Lord of the Rings trilogy) has just announced their plans to go Blu-ray exclusive as well. Bill Hunt, over at www.thedigitalbits.com has already heard from a Universal insider that they are already planning Blu-ray Disc releases for later this year.
I have been carefully following the development of both hi-def formats for several years, now - long before they were released to the marketplace, and chose the Blu-ray Disc format as a result last year. I have nearly 100 titles in my collection and have never regretted going with this format.
As much as I love the original Star Trek (for obvious reasons), it was not incentive enough for me to adopt the HD-DVD format (now, effectively HD-DUD), and I now anxiously await Paramount to make an effort to save face and find a way out of their HD-DVD exclusive contract and go back to releasing in the Blu-ray format, including releases of the original series on Blu-ray Disc.
HD-DVD is now obsolete - it's dead. Paramount will now have no choice but to release it in BluRay.
I think five years is probably overstating it, but I do think that this Hi-def format war will probably be the last hard-copy format war before the industry switches to download able content.
There are still a LOT of people who want to buy hard copies of their music and movies the traditional way, however, and that isn't going to completely change in just five years. I've heard there are even people out there who don't own computers and iPods yet. Imagine that.
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