Warner Bros. picks Blu-ray over HD-DVD

[AYHJA]

Congrats HW, you and Jig have shouldered the load here lately, I can't even imagine the site without you guys...Thanks for your efforts brothers, from the bottom of my heart man...You guys are amazing peeps...

** wipes tear **

I'm just still not sold on Blu Ray...Again,I guess I'll find out soon enough as I may be in PS3 land in the near future...

[happywonton]

Toshiba quits HD DVD business

TOKYO - Toshiba said Tuesday it will no longer develop, make or market HD DVD players and recorders, handing a victory to rival Blu-ray disc technology in the format battle for next-generation video.

"We concluded that a swift decision would be best," Toshiba President Atsutoshi Nishida told reporters at his company's Tokyo offices.

The move would make Blu-ray — backed by Sony Corp., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., which makes Panasonic brand products, and five major Hollywood movie studios — the winner in the battle over high-definition DVD formatting that began several years ago.

Nishida said last month's decision by Warner Bros. Entertainment to release movie discs only in the Blu-ray format made the move inevitable.

"That had tremendous impact," he said. "If we had continued, that would have created problems for consumers, and we simply had no chance to win."

Warner joined Sony Pictures, Walt Disney Co. and News Corp.'s Twentieth Century Fox in that move.

Nishida said his company had confidence in HD DVD as a technology and tried to assure the estimated 1 million people, including some 600,000 people in North America, who already bought HD DVD machines by promising that Toshiba will continue to provide product support for the technology.

Both HD DVD and Blu-ray deliver crisp, clear high-definition pictures and sound, which are more detailed and vivid than existing video technology. They are incompatible with each other, and neither plays on older DVD players. But both formats play on high-definition TVs.

HD DVD was touted as being cheaper because it was more similar to previous video technology, while Blu-ray boasted bigger recording capacity.

Only one video format has been expected to emerge as the victor, much like VHS trumped Sony's Betamax in the video format battle of the 1980s.

Nishida said it was still uncertain what will happen with the Hollywood studios that signed to produce HD DVD movies, including Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation.

Toshiba's pulling the plug on the technology is expected to reduce the number of new high-definition movies that people will be able to watch on HD DVD machines. Toshiba Corp. said shipments of HD DVD machines to retailers will be reduced and will stop by end of March.

Sales in Blu-ray gadgets are now likely to pick up as consumers had held off in investing in the latest recorders and players because they didn't know which format would emerge dominant.

Despite being a possible blow to Toshiba's pride, the exit will probably lessen the potential damage in losses in HD DVD operations. Goldman Sachs has said pulling out would improve Toshiba's profitability between 40 billion yen and 50 billion yen ($370 million-$460 million) a year.

The reasons behind Blu-ray's triumph over HD DVD are complex, as marketing, management maneuvers and other factors are believed to have played into the shift to Blu-ray's favor that became more decisive during the critical holiday shopping season.

Once the balance starts tilting in favor of one in a format battle, then the domination tends to grow and become final, said Kazuharu Miura, an analyst at Daiwa Institute of Research in Tokyo.

"The trend became decisive I think this year," he said. "When Warner made its decision, it was basically over."

With movie studios increasingly lining up behind Blu-ray, retailers also began to stock more Blu-ray products.

Friday's decision by Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the largest U.S. retailer, to sell only Blu-ray DVDs and hardware appeared to deal a final blow to the Toshiba format. Just five days earlier, Netflix Inc. said it will cease carrying rentals in HD DVD.

Several major American retailers had already made similar decisions, including Target Corp. and Blockbuster Inc.

Also adding to Blu-ray's momentum was the gradual increase in sales of Sony's PlayStation 3 home video-game console, which also works as a Blu-ray player. Sony has sold 10.5 million PS3 machines worldwide since the machine went on sale late 2006.

HD DVD supporters included Microsoft Corp., Intel Corp. and Japanese electronics maker NEC Corp.

Microsoft's Xbox 360 game machine can play HD DVD movies, but the drive had to be bought separately, and Nishida said about 300,000 people have those.

Worldwide sales of personal computers with HD DVD drives total about 300,000 worldwide, including 140,000 in North America and 130,000 in Europe, he said.

Recently, the Blu-ray disc format has been gaining market share, especially in Japan. A study on fourth quarter sales last year by market researcher BCN Inc. found that by unit volume, Blu-ray made up 96 percent of Japanese sales.

Sony said it did not have numbers on how many Blu-ray players had been sold globally.

Toshiba's stock slipped 0.6 percent Tuesday to 824 yen after jumping 5.7 percent Monday amid reports that a decision was imminent. Sony shares climbed 2.2 percent to 5,010 yen after rising 1 percent Monday.

Also Tuesday, Toshiba said it plans to spend more than 1.7 trillion yen ($15.7 billion) for two plants in Japan to produce sophisticated chips called NAND flash memory, which are used in portable music players and cell phones. Production there will start in 2010.

Source: Yahoo News

GG. I wonder what the porn industry will do... but most of all, I'm glad i bought a ps3 and not xbox. I thought about getting xbox and the hd drive but I really lucked out there.

[jag]

Less competition I guess that means it'll take longer for blu ray stuff to get cheaper (as in as cheap as dvd tech is now).

[AYHJA]

My brother told me that where he lives, they are selling HD DVD players for $120 w/a HD DVD, and with proof of purchase, you get 5 more HD DVD's in the mail...I'm pretty sure you'll never see Sony drop prices to a bargain rate...PS1 games still cost cake, and even the PS2 games are still $20-$40 with the PS3 on the market...Sony still sells 8MB memory cards for the PS2 that cost $40...I bought a 32 MB memory card for $14...Blu Ray price cuts..? Even in the face of competition, I wouldn't hold my breath...

[raum]

i said it before and I'll say it again:

Debates over blu-ray and HD-DVD are like arguments over what kind of wheels you are going to put on a jetpack. Digital Distribution is the future.

I say give blu-ray the belt and end the dam match before more money and more resources are lost in this stupidity. The companies in the Blu-Ray association are a good bit of healthy competitors, and the format will still not define what company wins the market share outright.

[Sir Jig-A-Lot]

i'll stick with regular dvd. this whole blu vs hd thang is no different from the mini-disc vs dcc thing in the nineties. a waste of cash & time. the corporations dropped this shitheap on the public's asses too soon after most folks have just converted to regular dvd. ditto for that battle in the previous decade. most peeps had just made the switch to cd after years of vinyl and cassette. i'll agree with raum here,the next format to be embraced by the masses will be digital in some shape or form.

[Sir Jig-A-Lot]

source: TheMovieBlog

Best Buy Offers Disappointed HD Owners Complimentary 50 Dollar Gift Cards
Well as you may already know, the format war is over! I bet there are a lot of you jaded people out there that are pissed that you spent tons of money on HD Dvds and the atrociously priced HD player, only for the software to be discontinued. Well, Best Buy is offering you guys a reward…..sort of.

Engadget.com gives us this news:

In this case, anyone who bought an HD DVD player from Best Buy before February 23, 2008 can request a complimentary $50 gift card for each player. For those too traumatized to even look at their discontinued hardware and software, Best Buy also announced it’s adding HD DVD players and media to its Trade-In Center program, starting March 21. No word on how much a player can net you, but once it’s updated, check BestBuyTradeIn.com to get an estimate and decide how much holding onto the past is worth.

Wow, this reminds me of the days of the Betamax/VHS war. I remember my parents were furious when the Beta player got discontinued. It’s nice that Best Buy is offering a free complimentary card, however, if I had an HD DVD player, I think I would wait for the the Trade-In Center. Fifty bucks is better than nothing, however, it’s probably about 1/20th of the cost of the player itself.

This is why I never bothered to get a Blu-ray/HD player. I remember when the DVD player first came out and it was a thousand dollars. Also, the DVDS were about 40 dollars each. Now, you can easily get DVDS and DVD players for under 20 bucks. Patience is a virtue and I suggest if you don’t have a fancy sound system or big screen TV to enjoy the full experience, just wait a year or two. (But that’s just my advice!)

So, are there any of guys who have felt the wrath of Blu-ray/HD format war? Tell us what you think of news!

[happywonton]

Well, that's nice of Best Buy...

As far as the format war............... apparently there's porn on blu-ray! Well according to asian porn rips that is... I'm not really down with wasting many gigs over one movie.

[Sir Jig-A-Lot]

I'm not really down with wasting many gigs over one movie.

:ssh: :?: :disappoint:

[AYHJA]

I don't know how many HD DVD titles there are, but...Man, for what you'd pay for them with this debacle, you'd probably have some cash well spent...If you can get 50 HD DVD titles for the extreme low low, there's no way you can look at this as loosing...Shit, as a matter of fact, I need to go to Sam Goody tomorrow and see what's up...