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Sony Media PlayStation (Games) Technology

Sony Set to Market Blu-ray as Winner of Format War 353

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the self-serving-prophets dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Citing the recent sales numbers, Sony exec David Bishop is claiming that the high-def format war can officially be declared over. With a movie sale ratio of almost 2:1 Blu-ray discs are being declared the victor over rival HD-DVD by Blu-ray supporter Sony. 'And yet while all agree that it was a strong month for Blu-ray, opinion is split on whether the surge in sales is an indicator of stronger user adaption of Blu-ray compared to HD DVD, or simply a reflection of the larger number of new Blu-ray titles that hit the market over the month -- 25 new Blu-ray titles were released in January, compared to just 11 titles on HD DVD for the same period.'"
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Sony Set to Market Blu-ray as Winner of Format War More

Sony Set to Market Blu-ray as Winner of Format War

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  • Number of movies (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SnarfQuest ( 469614 ) on Monday February 12, 2007 @04:34PM (#17988454)
    Aren't the number of movies available related to the popularity of the format?

    • Re:Number of movies (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ngtvtw13ve ( 989605 ) on Monday February 12, 2007 @04:36PM (#17988500)
      If that was true then wouldn't we still be buying vhs tapes?

      • Re:Number of movies (Score:5, Insightful)

        by SnarfQuest ( 469614 ) on Monday February 12, 2007 @04:41PM (#17988582)
        But, how many new VHS movie titles were released last month?

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Ucklak ( 755284 )
          Doesn't really matter.

          As crappy of a movie it is, I still want The Incredible Melting Man [imdb.com] on DVD and it's not available legally in the US of A.

          I remember seeing that at the local grindhouse with trailers for Suspiria and other shlock fests back in the day.

        • lets see (Score:5, Informative)

          by way2trivial ( 601132 ) on Monday February 12, 2007 @04:58PM (#17988854) Homepage Journal
          last VHS by publication date

          amazon.com
          #1 the mystery of love
          VHS Release Date: February 6, 2007

          #115 Dora the Explorer - Save the Day! was Jan 10, 2007
          #116 Here Comes the Big Red Car ~ Wiggles was Jan 3rd, 2007- so 115 seems to be a safe bet for new vhs titles in the last month.

    • Re:Number of movies (Score:5, Insightful)

      by LiquidCoooled ( 634315 ) on Monday February 12, 2007 @04:36PM (#17988502) Homepage Journal
      If thats the case, divx avi movies rule the world ;)

    • Re:Number of movies (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Andy Dodd ( 701 ) <atd7@ c o r n e l l .edu> on Monday February 12, 2007 @04:37PM (#17988530) Homepage
      Number of movies released in a particular month != total number of movies available

      I believe that prior to this particular month, HD-DVD was consistently ahead of Blu-Ray. Declaring a winner based on a single months' worth of statistics (especially at this early point when both formats are in their infancy) is utterly idiotic.

      • Re:Number of movies (Score:5, Funny)

        by Dorkmaster Flek ( 1013045 ) on Monday February 12, 2007 @05:03PM (#17988914)
        Sony doing something idiotic? Naw...

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by packeteer ( 566398 )
        Its not idiotic, its smart. That is, it's smart marketing for the people involved with Blu-Ray.

        • Re:Number of movies (Score:5, Insightful)

          by pluther ( 647209 ) <pluther@nOSPAM.usa.net> on Monday February 12, 2007 @06:16PM (#17989840) Homepage
          I think the problem with this is, that most people don't know there's a format war going on.

          Those that do are the ones paying attention, and they probably won't be fooled by the marketing hype declaring Sony the winner.

          25 titles release in a month, compared to 11 for the competition, is far too small of a number to actually draw any kind of conclusion. Sure, it's more than twice as much, but with numbers this small impressive-sounding percentages are easy to come by.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by oh_bugger ( 906574 )
        you hit the nail on the head when you said it's too early to tell. Sony can't decide at this point which product is the winner. That's like Al Gore saying he's the president just because he's got the most votes. (yes bad analogy, I was going to say something serious but that came into my head)

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Itchyeyes ( 908311 )
      Yes, but they're also related to how much the studios like the format's DRM and how much money the format producer is willing to throw at them.

    • Re:Number of movies (Score:5, Informative)

      by Babbster ( 107076 ) <aaronbabb AT gmail DOT com> on Monday February 12, 2007 @04:52PM (#17988764) Homepage

      Aren't the number of movies available related to the popularity of the format?

      You're absolutely correct, and that would be a good measure of a particular format's success. Here's the problem: The number of HD DVD and Blu-ray titles currently available is a virtual dead heat. The last time I did a count (about 2 weeks ago) via a popular website that sells both formats, the numbers differed by less than 10, with the total being in the mid 100s.

      As regards the most recent numbers, it's pretty obvious that more Blu-ray titles have been released and purchased in the last two months because a) Sony finally released the PS3 and there is nothing else to do with that hardware other than playing Blu-ray movies and play Resistance and b) they're trying to catch up with HD DVD which had a significant lead in available titles prior to the holiday season.

      It's obviously way too soon to declare a winner, but I'll give Sony props for trying to turn lemons into lemonade...

      I should note, as I often do, that I don't care who wins. If Toshiba and company stand pat and don't push their format then Sony could indeed win the thing because the PS3 is going to sell as time goes by, even if it doesn't become the dominant game console that the PS2 and PS were. The HD DVD folks need to get a standalone player out ASAP for under $400 and by Christmas they need to have players under $300. If they don't, then they'll have to rely on the Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on to compete with the PS3, and that's a dangerous road - not because the HD DVD add-on is a bad deal (it's actually a pretty good one), but because 360 owners already have what they need and want to play games without the bonus of an HD format, while PS3 owners are "forced" into possession of the HD format as a consequence of desiring PS3 gameplay.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by DesertBlade ( 741219 )
      If you look here. [movieweb.com] A majority of the Blue Ray movies are older. I counted 15 that are about a year old. For Example:
      Resident Evil
      Scooby Doo
      Hitchikers Guide
      Courage Under Fire

      HDDVD has a a few too (counted 6), but I think blue-ray flooded the market with older movies.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Yvanhoe ( 564877 )
      So 36 movies were released in HD format this month. Clearly, regular DVD are more popular by an order of magnitude. Until one of the HD format outperforms DVDs using this metrics, I wouldn't call the war over.

  • cool. (Score:5, Funny)

    by President_Camacho ( 1063384 ) on Monday February 12, 2007 @04:36PM (#17988484) Homepage
    Sony Set to Market Blu-ray as Winner of Format War

    Are they also going to market their laptops as the winner of the battery war?

  • Head Sony Exec: (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 12, 2007 @04:36PM (#17988488)
    MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by UbuntuDupe ( 970646 ) *
      That's kind of unfair. If you look carefully at the banner the ship actually put up, you'll note it *really* said:

      this specific ship's MISSION has been ACCOMPLISHED

  • Sure.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 12, 2007 @04:36PM (#17988490)
    And these are the same people who already believe that the PS3 is the winner of the console wars against the 360 and the Wii, even though sales numbers in the US and even Japan say otherwise.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by pionzypher ( 886253 )
      I don't [penny-arcade.com] know what [72.14.253.104] (google cache) you're talking about. (second link has a great pic below the PA comic.)

  • Will they say the same about the PS3? (Score:5, Funny)

    by vjmurphy ( 190266 ) on Monday February 12, 2007 @04:36PM (#17988492) Homepage
    "Citing the recent sales numbers, Sony exec David Bishop is claiming that the next gen console war can officially be declared over. Looks like the Wii and 360 are the winners."

    Perhaps they shouldn't be gloating.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by sl3xd ( 111641 ) *
      You know, joke aside, it's a very good point. And, in fact, the same lesson should be taken: Just because one is selling well, it doesn't spell the doom of a competitor.

      Sony's just doing a bit of grandstanding to try to get more people to buy Blu-ray: "The format war is over! We won!" Fear sells, and they're attempting to boost their sales by saying the competition is doomed; one of the oldest sales tactics in existence.

      Just like consoles, the success of one does not mean the demise of another. There's

  • Nice of them .... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Monday February 12, 2007 @04:36PM (#17988496) Homepage
    Nice of Sony to declare themselves the winner. Now we can all get on with out lives.

    Seriously, is this the same Sony who last week said the fact that they're being outsold by Nintendo doesn't mean they're losing, it means we shouldn't be counting Nintendo.

    I'm fairly confident a company can't unilaterally declare themselves the winner in a 6 month old format war. It doesn't work like that.

    Oh well, it's their Kool-Aid, they can drink it all they want. :-P

    Cheers

    • My thoughts exactly (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Weaselmancer ( 533834 ) on Monday February 12, 2007 @04:45PM (#17988646)

      How many coaches at halftime ever say they're going to lose the game?

      That being said, IMHO this won't be a VHS versus Betamax thing. There is too much manufacturing set up for both sides to simply abandon one format. What I'm hoping happens is that one of the two becomes the dominant format (which it almost certainly will), and the other one will become the "ghetto" HD format.

      The loser in this format war will still make money, but it will have to do it by underselling the winner. Lower prices, bigger numbers. When that happens, the loser will most likely wind up as a cheap burner you can stick on an IDE cable. And I'm really looking forward to that for data storage.

      • Re:My thoughts exactly (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Not_Wiggins ( 686627 ) on Monday February 12, 2007 @05:24PM (#17989180) Journal
        When that happens, the loser will most likely wind up as a cheap burner you can stick on an IDE cable. And I'm really looking forward to that for data storage.

        More likely, it'll wind up like the format war between DVD-R and DVD+R: you'll get a player capable of reading both formats, so it won't matter and the prices of the movies will be roughly equivalent.

        If anything, consumers will pay for the war indirectly through hardware costs that integrate both solutions transparently.
      • Assuming that our telecoms stay fubared and we don't make the jump to streaming video on demand as quickly as we could, BluRay will probably clean up, for the same reason that the PS3 will probably do well in the long run: They're both built on long term extensible tech (Well, the PS3 will do well because Sony will eventually stop making PS2's and people will upgrade so they can keep playing their old games...yay backward compatibility).

        HDDVD is just fancy encoding on last generation hardware...BluRay has a

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by AaronPSU777 ( 938553 )
        "What I'm hoping happens is that one of the two becomes the dominant format (which it almost certainly will), and the other one will become the "ghetto" HD format."

        I think another likely scenario is dual format players. Remember we had a format war just a few years ago with DVD+R and DVD-R and it was negated when dual format burners came out. If we do get dual format players it seems possible HD-DVD could become the more prominent format since it has plenty of space for full length movies *and* is cheaper

        • Re:My thoughts exactly (Score:5, Informative)

          by Pluvius ( 734915 ) <{moc.liamg} {ta} {3suivulp}> on Monday February 12, 2007 @05:49PM (#17989474) Journal
          DVD-R and DVD+R are nearly indistinguishable from each other, unlike BD and HD-DVD which are very different. It's a lot cheaper to make a dual-format player for the former than it is for the latter.

          Not that it really matters; the massive amount of studio support that BluRay has over HD-DVD makes it rather unlikely that HD-DVD will long enough to where dual-format players would be a viable option.

          Rob
      • HD DVD is inferior in terms of both studio support and data storage so your prospect for cheap media for data storage looks unlikely. Anyway the winning format will become cheaper by mass production in the end.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kabocox ( 199019 )
      I'm fairly confident a company can't unilaterally declare themselves the winner in a 6 month old format war. It doesn't work like that.

      Um, sure everyone "can" decalre themselves the winner, but no one will listen to them though. I'm too lazy to read the article. I'm wondering how this even got outside of some marketting/PR guy's office/e-mail system. I mean come on, can't they have atleast bribed a few consumer electronics mag reporters to write a few articles declaring them the winner? I mean come on if yo
  • Set to market it as the winner? They've been doing it for over a month now [engadget.com] without the help of your puny "statistics"

  • Why is it either/or? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Pluvius ( 734915 ) <{moc.liamg} {ta} {3suivulp}> on Monday February 12, 2007 @04:37PM (#17988528) Journal
    'And yet while all agree that it was a strong month for Blu-ray, opinion is split on whether the surge in sales is an indicator of stronger user adaption of Blu-ray compared to HD DVD, or simply a reflection of the larger number of new Blu-ray titles that hit the market over the month -- 25 new Blu-ray titles were released in January, compared to just 11 titles on HD DVD for the same period.'

    Wouldn't the fact that there are over twice as many new releases for BD than for HD-DVD in itself be an important indicator of stronger adoption of BD?

    Rob
    • Maybe, but if it is, it is indication of stronger studio/publisher adoption, not user adoption.

  • Wait for adult titles to enter full production (Score:3, Informative)

    by topical_surfactant ( 906185 ) on Monday February 12, 2007 @04:40PM (#17988576)
    Here's some more info on the HD formats courting "behind the scenes" to porn producers. http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/local/la-fi-p orn12feb12,0,4934876.story?coll=sfla-business-head lines [sun-sentinel.com]

  • In other news (Score:5, Funny)

    by TinBromide ( 921574 ) on Monday February 12, 2007 @04:43PM (#17988618)
    HD-DVD proponents throw up arms and say "That just about wraps it up for us". They began packing up the manufacturing plants and began work on other projects.

    In other news, Apple declares victory over vista because of the ratio of new apple ads to new microsoft ads.

  • Numbers?? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Kelz ( 611260 ) on Monday February 12, 2007 @04:43PM (#17988624)
    25 new Blu-Ray releases and 11 HD-DVD releases in one month?

    Beta was still around for 27 years. I have a feeling that the two sides will be able to co-exist for quite some time (especially with the duel-format players that are close to release).

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Duel-format player? There's a typo that deserves a whole cartoon devoted to it.

  • Two major advantages (Score:5, Interesting)

    by elrous0 ( 869638 ) * on Monday February 12, 2007 @04:44PM (#17988640)
    The two major advantages that Blu-ray has right now is
    1. EXTENSIVE marketing. It's almost impossible to watch an HDTV cable network and not be innundated with Blu-ray ads (they should rename "HDnet" the "Blu-ray channel"). And Best Buy and other retailers all have blu-ray kiosks touting the glories of blu-ray. I've yet to see a single HD-DVD ad or kiosk, by contrast
    2. Studio support. HD-DVD just doesn't have the support to turn out enough titles. Warner and Universal alone just aren't going to cut it.

    Oddly enough, what everyone THOUGHT was going to be a big advantage for blu-ray--the PS3, hasn't really been that great, as so few people are buying them. Conversely, the supposedly big HD-DVD advantage of price (both HD-DVD players and media are cheaper) hasn't really helped it, apparently.

    -Eric

  • Alien Technology (Score:5, Funny)

    by ngtvtw13ve ( 989605 ) on Monday February 12, 2007 @04:44PM (#17988644)
    Of course Blu-Ray is the winner, it is by far a superior format. HD-DVD is nothing but DVD with 2 extra letters who wants to buy something unimaginitive, but Blu-Ray thats new and exciting. Its "blue" wich means advanced cause aliens are blue, and ray makes me think of an awsome ray gun from all those sci-fi movies. Its friggin advanced alien technology that Sony got its hands on hundreds of years before any other company. How could it not be the leader.

  • Problem with Ratios (Score:5, Funny)

    by flynt ( 248848 ) on Monday February 12, 2007 @04:45PM (#17988648)
    With a movie sale ratio of almost 2:1

    Unfortunately, he forgot to mention that those were also the actual numbers of discs sold.

  • Free Movies, really sales? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Innova ( 1669 ) on Monday February 12, 2007 @04:45PM (#17988656) Homepage
    Also to note...All PS3's came with a coupon for a free Blu-Ray movie. How many of those were included in the strong sale numbers?

  • whichever sells first $99 player is the winner (Score:3, Insightful)

    by u19925 ( 613350 ) on Monday February 12, 2007 @04:45PM (#17988658)
    i ain't gonna buy till price drops to $99. so 4 me, whichever one sells first for $99, is the winner.

    • And I will wait until HD is consistent both in availability of content and quality of content. The major problems I have with HD right now include:

      • Costs more than standard content
      • Just 'cause it's shown in HD doesn't mean it was filmed that way
      • HD standards keep changing -- my HDTV has DVI and component video, but by the time HD actually hit HDMI is the only acceptable transport/connection for anything over 480p
      • HD is far from regulated -- the government can't even put its foot down to require digital br
  • Remember when Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" and the end to all combat operations in Iraq? And how since then, there's been very little combat operations and the country has been a bastion of democracy?

    Yeah, I'm thinking the same thing.

  • Is there or can there be a split format player? I don't know a whole hell of a lot about BR vs HD-DVD. I was just wondering if we might see players of this nature in the future like we had seen as we had DVD/LaserDisc players during the transition phase of the formats.
  • I really don't give a rat's hindquarters who claims victory, just as long as one of them does soon, and it sticks and we're left with ONE HD movie format. Please can this HD war be over?

    Please?

  • Yeah, we trust them (Score:5, Funny)

    by GweeDo ( 127172 ) on Monday February 12, 2007 @04:49PM (#17988702) Homepage
    This coming from the same company that owes me $9,600 for all the PS3's at my local walmart! source [penny-arcade.com]

  • BluRay has a Case (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Monday February 12, 2007 @04:49PM (#17988706)
    With BluRay in every PS3, HD-DVD not an integral part of any shipping product yet, and BluRay movies starting to outsell HD-DVD, there good reason to be betting on the BluRay horse. BluRay market penetration should outstrip HD-DVD, unless they're able to pull a VHS in pricing or capacity.

    • With BluRay in every PS3, HD-DVD not an integral part of any shipping product yet...

      I'm fairly certain that HD DVD is an integral part of the standalone HD DVD players that sell for less than the cost of a PS3 and less than half the price of a standalone Blu-ray player...

      • I'm fairly certain that HD DVD is an integral part of the standalone HD DVD players that sell for less than the cost of a PS3 and less than half the price of a standalone Blu-ray player...

        Yes, but right now, more people will buy a PS3 for gaming than will buy a standalone player for HD media.

        Once they already have the PS3, they are much more likely to buy a Blu-Ray disk since they only see the cost of the media as the price, instead of the player also (as opposed to the standalone player).

    • One thing to consider is that one of the main reasons there is such a push to HD formats is because of companies like Apex Digital; when many companies were selling $400 DVD players Apex Digital came along and produced the $99 DVD player that ended up making them (at the time) the #1 DVD player manufacturer in the world. If you notice, Apex Digital (and similar companies) are not part of either groups at the moment.

      If the DVD forum wants to win at all costs all they have to do is allow (and encourage) the i
  • 25 vs 11 releases in one month? Could anyone remind me how many DVD titles are currently out there? 100,000? 500,000? Any decent porn studio releases 36 DVDs in a week.

    I liked their products for a long time, but Sony has officially jumped the shark, first on product development, then on reliability, then on screwing their own customer, and now on being in the same universe as the other 8 billion humans.

  • Actually yes, all over but the shouting (Score:5, Informative)

    by DumbSwede ( 521261 ) <slashdotbin@hotmail.com> on Monday February 12, 2007 @04:53PM (#17988778) Homepage Journal
    The first week of January it was 2 to 1 for sales of BD
    The second week of January it was close to 3 to 1 for sales of BD

    The HD-DVD camp Shot back that there where more title released on Blu-Ray the first two weeks (11 vs 21).

    So what to make of this weeks releases? 12 titles to 1
    It seems the distributors have decided for us.

    HD DVD and Blu-ray releases on February 13th, 2007 [engadgethd.com]

    Blu-ray

    * Broken Arrow (Fox)
    * Chain Reaction (Fox)
    * Chronos (Koch)
    * The Departed (Warner)
    * Entrapment (Fox)
    * Ladder 49 (Buena Vista)
    * The Marine (Fox)
    * Phone Booth (Fox)
    * Planet of the Apes (Fox)
    * Reign of Fire (Buena Vista)
    * The Sentinel (Fox)
    * The Usual Suspects (Fox)

    HD DVD

    * The Departed (Warner)

    Titles to date HD DVD 159 vs Blu-ray 171.
    and remember HD-DVD had a big head start and is now fading fast.

    • Re:Actually yes, all over but the shouting (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Yakman ( 22964 ) on Monday February 12, 2007 @05:21PM (#17989150) Homepage Journal
      From that list it looks like both formats got the new release (The Departed), and Blu-Ray got a bunch of old movies that won't be significantly better in quality than the SD DVD version anyway.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Apotsy ( 84148 )
        bunch of old movies that won't be significantly better in quality than the SD DVD version anyway

        WTF? Those movies are all less than 10-15 years old (unless they are talking about the original Planet of the Apes). They certainly will look better in HD. Even if they were 50 years old, they still would show improvement in HD. There is a tremendous amount of image detail in movies going back decades that is simply not visible in traditional home video formats, not even DVD. All it takes is a fresh high resolu

      • Blu-Ray got a bunch of old movies that won't be significantly better in quality than the SD DVD version anyway.

        You don't know much about film, do you?

        Scans of 35mm film exceed even the top HD resolution (1920x1080) you can get on today's HD discs.

        As an example of just how wrong you are, on HDNet some time ago (when I still subscribed to Dish) I was watching Charlies Anglels, the original TV series, in full HD. It actually looked quite amazing. Even old stuff on film can look good (if a bit messy as the ne

  • In other news ... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Ace905 ( 163071 ) on Monday February 12, 2007 @04:56PM (#17988838) Homepage
    Citing recent sales numbers, local used car dealer frank "the lone testicle" johnson has declared that he is in fact the best car dealer in all of north america.

    "It was a toss up between me and every single other person, that is until I decided on the criteria by which we were all graded.", said the lone testicle.

    Some other sales people are confused by the unanimous victory, but have to admit that Johnson is the best at dealing cars he himself is authorized to sell - in all of north america. One of johnson's opponent dealerships claims, "He only gets those numbers because he's counting sales of the very rare 'Delorian' cars that he sells. Of course when they offered 2 delorians for sale this year, his numbers doubled and every single other dealer in north america that doesn't sell those got a zero on his rating scale."

    Confused by semantics, my editor has decided to just give free publicity to Mr. Johnson because he came up with a self-fellating story that almost sounds legitimate. congratulations lone testicle, please take all of my readers and try to sell them your over-priced crap.

    ---
    lone testicle? [douginadress.com]
  • They just declare themselves (rightfully or not) the winner, dumb people (aka (Best Buy, Staples, ...) employees and their customers) might read it or hear it and even believe it. They go now to the store with the pre-conceived notion that HD-DVD is going to be old pretty soon.

    Imho I would rather buy Blu-Ray over HD-DVD just because of the internal technology (Java vs. Microsoft's-Java-Rip-off) used and the extra storage space (30G vs. 50G). But I won't choose either for now as long as it has DRM. Let's see
  • Plain DVDs won, with many good reasons. There are not enough movies to justify player prices. For the ones that are out, HD is just not that compelling of a feature to attract attention - remember SACD and DVD audio? There are no portable players at all, either with hard drive transfer or with an actual HD-DVD/Blu ray drive. H264 or DivX allow storing a high definition movie on a plain dual layer DVD, so its not clear whats the whole deal about new hardware is about.

  • So the winner is the one with 14 titles more?

    Hell, *I* could still win the format war.

  • And he's right (Score:5, Interesting)

    by melted ( 227442 ) on Monday February 12, 2007 @05:09PM (#17988982) Homepage
    The primary thing that decides the success or failure of a format is content available on it. There's only one HD-DVD exclusive studio (Universal). There are quite a few that are Blu-Ray only, including all of the Sony studios and Disney. There are rumors of Universal throwing in the towel on HD-DVD.

    Besides, Blu Ray is a better format. 50 GB per disk allows for lower compression ratios and uncompressed multichannel sound. The only advantage HD-DVD has is the "extras" and "interactivity features". I don't know about you, but I don't give a shit about picture-in-picture that they push so heavily. I just want to watch the goddamn movie.

    As if this wasn't enough, Blu Ray also enjoys much broader industry support, including Apple (which gives you a hint as to what Final Cut / DVD Studio types will be using) and Dell. PS3 is by far the best value on the market as far as 1080p players are concerned. The fact that it plays games as well is gravy. Xbox HD-DVD add-on has an abysmal attach rate, and even if it did have a better attach rate, Xbox doesn't support HDMI, so it's not an option for folks who want an entirely digital signal path.

    So there you have it.
  • The President might have a used sign he could loan them. Seems he won a war a few years back.

  • Reminds me of famous historical headlines: (Score:4, Funny)

    by vertinox ( 846076 ) on Monday February 12, 2007 @05:31PM (#17989274)
    1812
    France to market Napoleon as winner of battle of Waterloo!

    1862
    Southern states to market General Lee as winner of Battle of Gettysburg!

    1944
    Germany to market themselves as winner of World War 2!

    2003
    Fox news to market US as winner of Iraq war! Oh wait...
  • HD has big headstart in p0rn. [arstechnica.com] Sony would not duplicate blu-ray p0rn disks while HD would.

  • Experience with Blu-ray/HD-DVD (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MrJynxx ( 902913 ) on Monday February 12, 2007 @06:22PM (#17989914)
    So, I actually own both Blu-ray/HD-dvd players (PS3, and HD-dvd addon for 360). I have both systems hooked up to a 50" sony SXRD LCD projection TV and so far . . . I think HD-DVD looks better even though it's displaying at 1080i. (My PS3 is @ 1080p)

    I've now come across quite a few instances of really grainy video with the blu-ray movies I have. This has not been a problem with HD-DVD.

    In terms of quality both are identical (except for the annoying grainy video on blu-ray). I've shown this to quite a few friends and they all see the exact same thing (so I'm not crazy). So from experience, I'm hoping HD-DVD overcomes blu-ray.

    ***SIDENOTE***
    So far I've been really disappointed with the PS3. It's probably been the worst purchase I've made in years. Sony had better get their shit together, and get it together FAST!!!

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