Blue Ray loses its battle
I was one of the folks who thought that Blu-ray was going to eliminate HD-DVD and by this time HD-DVD would be toast. In fact, I was one of the analysts who helped convince Time Warner to hedge its bets and go with both formats. However, this was all before I knew the cost of the Blu-ray technology, and it was based on the assumption that Sony would never be stupid enough to price itself out of the game console market.
This week, we’ll look at why DreamWorks and Paramount backed HD-DVD, effectively assuring that Blu-ray will lose whether HD-DVD wins or not — and it may still not win either.
PlayStation3 Impact
Not only was Blu-ray too expensive, the technology wasn’t as far along as Sony led us to believe. The delays not only make the PS3 too expensive; they made it late. That was effectively a one-two punch, knocking Sony out of the lead so far in the game console business. Now, Sony is dead last by a significant margin.
So instead of the PS3 ensuring Blu-ray’s success, right now it appears that Blu-ray may have effectively killed the PS3, at least in terms of market leadership. We’ll have to wait until the PS4 before Sony has a chance to come back.
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Filed under: Blu Ray News
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Wow this guys opinion is like over half a year late. BD has already proven it’s worth it, and is just showing more promise with the UT3 devs saying they’ll have more maps on PS3 cause of the BD size, and you have a Killzone 2 demo being 2GB big.
And Blu-ray continues to outsell HD DVD.
I agree with Spector. Did this guy just come out of a time warp or something? BD is outselling HD-DVD still and with PS3 now pushing a lot of new fresh titles like Lair and Warhawk they are going to boost and sales which will also increase BD sales. I think this guy needs to go back to his time capsule.
Yeah, the article also failed to mention (or maybe I missed it) that…
“Notable exceptions to this announcement, however, are Steven Spielberg films, which will continue to be distributed in either hi-def format.”
That’s a pretty big item to leave out of the discussion don’t ya think?
Also, I think I read that both Paramount and Dreamworks received like $250M for this deal. Maybe they just figure HD-DVD will go out of business anyways and they get the cash anyways…YOINK!
Neo
Also not mentioned….
Blockbuster video, one of the largest rental franchises we have….
Dropping HD DVD and making the move to Blu-Ray movies only. You can already see it in most of their stores.
Venge
Errrm.. this article is going almost as if the format war would be over.
This is just a battle won not a war.
I think that eventually bluray will regain ground.
This guy obviously has no clue what he’s talking about. In my eyes he’s just another person that got paid to write a false eye opener article to trick people that do not know any better.
During the Beta/VHS war, most of the studios sided with the Beta format due to better quality. However in the end VHS won because consumers were more interested in the cheaper price. So the format that sells is the format that wins, regardless what the studios want. I think some studios forget their place, and just assume they can control the consumer populous. Especially with the internet these days and the level of information available to consumers it’s not going to be like the old days. Blu-ray 2 to 1?
Just because we don’t get a few universal and paramount titles for awhile, doesn’t mean HD-DVD has sunk the entire HD ship.. Which is basically what this guy is saying. Blu-ray long term still has most of Hollywood under it’s belt. I doubt any of the monster films will be released like Star Wars till a winner is declared. However if you look at the big Hollywood picture, and you had to be stuck with one player or the other, I would hate to be stuck with HD-DVD. Especially when Fight Club comes out on Blu-ray
What this guy is writing is complete nonsense.
He either wants to mislead people who do not know better or he simply has no clue of what is going on.
Blu-ray is getting more and more popular day by day while HD-DVD is loosing ground.
Main reason:
Blu-ray is supported by all the major brands such as Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, LG, Philips etc.
HD-DVD players are only available from Toshiba. Toshiba against all the other guys? I don’t think they stand a chance in hell in the long run.
In the end, the market will decide which format will survive.
At the moment it seems that Blu-ray will be the winner and HD-DVD is already on the way out.
If the HD-DVD consortium gets lucky, they can convince the other consumer product manufacturers in the market to produce combo-products which support both formats (similar to what we saw with DVD-R and +R).
Then they can at least collect some licence money.
Because that’s what it is all about.
From a technical point of view, HD-DVD has no advantages over Blu-ray.
Blu-ray is the more sophisticated technology.
And did you know?
Until very recently, the HD-DVD guys could not even write (burn) their own format. It is unbelievable! There was no such thing as a HD-DVD recorder. Neither as a stand-alone product nor an optical disc drive for PC/notebook. They could simply not find any way how to burn their own format.
It just wold not work!
They kept anouncing it again and again.
But whenever I went to the Toshiba booth, they kept telling me that “it will come soon”.
Blu-ray drives could write/burn the Blu-ray format from the very beginning.