Official: HD-DVD format is DEAD
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 - 3:14pm
Sorry for the new thread, but this is big news.
Paramount switches to Blu-ray. They were previously the only major company to support HD-DVD. Apparently a clause in their contract allows Paramount to back out if Warner Brothers supported Blu-ray.
New Line went Blu-ray exclusive 3 days ago. Sister company Warner Brothers is also blu-ray only.
Of course, the HD-DVD "Promotion Group" canceled their CES presentation.
HD-DVD is (edited) on life-support.
We shall grapple with the ineffable, and see if we may not eff it after all.
"What misconception traveled down the road and made you want to be here?"
The Kotaku article is reporting something from a Financial Times article that has been directly denied in a statement today from Paramount themselves. Paramount going Blu-Ray is still iffy if you believe their statements.
If that clause does exist then I think they'll switch as soon as possible. If it doesn't then they may linger on with HD-DVD until their 18 month exclusivity contract is up.
XBLive: Thin J
PSN: Thin_J
I don't imagine master craftsmen leaping away from completed projects and shouting "Done, motherf*ckers! - 1Dgaf
I see, Wired is reporting this as a rumor, and Paramount denied the rumor.
Hmmm. Not quite the nail I had thought.
We shall grapple with the ineffable, and see if we may not eff it after all.
"What misconception traveled down the road and made you want to be here?"
It seems like it's a matter of when and not if.
The nail's still there. They're just not smacking it with the hammer yet.
XBLive: Thin J
PSN: Thin_J
I don't imagine master craftsmen leaping away from completed projects and shouting "Done, motherf*ckers! - 1Dgaf
It's no surprise that Paramount is denying it at this point. Wouldn't look too good if they hectically jumped ship, they also might be in talks with Toshiba about, you know, getting a nice compensation - and then switch later.
What a bit surprising to me is, however, that Warner's move really seemed to catch the HD-DVD camp off-guard. (Cancelling their CES press conference etc.) It's hard to believe that no insider was aware of Warner's decision before it was made official. Hell, there were rumours all over the place in late 2007 already.
Also, more 'Warner fallout' talk.
I originally posted that people should stop buying HD-DVDs. If Paramount publicly drops HD-DVD, then the format is essentially dead and HD-DVD movies would plummet in price. But I'm only comfortable making that statement if Paramount actually goes public. For all we know, it's a nasty rumor spread by Sony.
I still agree with you all, though. Between Sony, Warner, and New Line, we've got Spiderman, Bond, Batman, and Lord of the Rings. Blu-ray is the horse my money's on.
We shall grapple with the ineffable, and see if we may not eff it after all.
"What misconception traveled down the road and made you want to be here?"
It's a shame too because from an economics, feature and encoding point of view, HD-DVD is the better overall format. Oh well.
"We're taught from a young age how to dodge rock hard objects moving at incredible rates of speed while simultaneously beating folks half to death with sticks. We do this for fun." -kung fu grip
http://blog.digital-lifeline.ca
I'm confused. I don't know about the economics, but when it comes to features and encoding, doesn't Blu-Ray have greater storage capacity and greater transfer rates? Both formats support the same audio and video codecs.
WAR: Isembold (Volkmar)
I thought so to, the only difference at the moment is the special features are better on HD-DVD but Blu-Ray is coming out with the same type of web features but yeah I thought they were basically identical formats other than space.
Xbox 360 Live Tag: Lothar71 PSN - Lothars
"With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility"
Mex refering to Actresses:
Make no mistake, I'd hit them all so hard that my pelvis would have to be classified as a deadly weapon, I just don't think they're all
The economics are better simply because HD-DVDs can be produced on retrofitted DVD manufacturing equipment whereas Blu-Ray requires all new production lines. As for the technical means, they both look good but several Blu-Ray titles have had some artifact issues and have had poor encoding that's resulted in some things like shadow popout. I'm not sure if that's been corrected yet.
"We're taught from a young age how to dodge rock hard objects moving at incredible rates of speed while simultaneously beating folks half to death with sticks. We do this for fun." -kung fu grip
http://blog.digital-lifeline.ca
I saw this chart over at Appleinsider.com. There was a frustrating lack of explanation, I assume the size of the pie indicates the studio's overall market share.
We shall grapple with the ineffable, and see if we may not eff it after all.
"What misconception traveled down the road and made you want to be here?"
I thought It was a fairly big announcement with Warner Jumping Ship to Blu-ray But I didn't think it was that big, that's pretty crazy though with that Pie Chart.
Xbox 360 Live Tag: Lothar71 PSN - Lothars
"With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility"
Mex refering to Actresses:
Make no mistake, I'd hit them all so hard that my pelvis would have to be classified as a deadly weapon, I just don't think they're all
The pie chart has at least one wedge wrong, though, because Paramount is HD-DVD.
---Todd
The Nut and the Feisty Weasel: A place where a deranged Ohio State Buckeye and a rabid Michigan Wolverine fan come together... and air grievances.
Spore Page
From the consumers point of view that "cost savings" was never passed on. Generally the cost of a movie was the same between the two except when there were HD-DVD/DVD combo disks.. those were usually $5 more. Since the demand for either format hasn't been very high, production lines haven't been taxed on either side.
As for the poor encodes that was really only the first couple of movies released on Blu-Ray over year and a half ago because they were rushing to catch up and get to market. The biggest disappointment was the 5th Element which was a stinker in terms of PQ. They have since remastered it and it's very nice indeed... Sony even had a trade in program and didn't double-dip.
Yes, it's showing the effect of Paramount moving to Blu Ray.
Live: LiquidmantisGWJ | PSN: LiquidmantisGWJ
Web: Mantis on the Mountain
--
Women can't be in the same room with me without abandoning men forever - rabbit
Happy?
We shall grapple with the ineffable, and see if we may not eff it after all.
"What misconception traveled down the road and made you want to be here?"
Happy? No. I'd love for both Paramount and Universal to jump off the decks of the Titani... er, HD-DVD.
Interesting story out of The Digital Bits today. Last week they'd talked about how the Blu-Ray camp should make some kind of good will offer to HD-DVD owners. For example, allowing owners of HD-DVD movies to exchange them (at least at a discount) with the Blu-Ray versions as titles shift between formats. Even offering discounts on players for people that bought HD-DVD. The sort of thing that sounded kind of too good to be true. Today, however, they have this:
I think this would be an incredibly good PR move if they handled it properly. You can read the full link here, if you're interested.
---Todd
The Nut and the Feisty Weasel: A place where a deranged Ohio State Buckeye and a rabid Michigan Wolverine fan come together... and air grievances.
Spore Page
The real question is, where is the porn industry on this? Weren't they the deciding factor for going VHS?
Xbox Live Gamercard - bennard
Beer For Ben
I believe it's available on both formats right now.
XBLive: Thin J
PSN: Thin_J
I don't imagine master craftsmen leaping away from completed projects and shouting "Done, motherf*ckers! - 1Dgaf
I don't know about you guys, but if the video quality of my porn is even decent at full-screen, I'm pretty happy. I can't think of a good reason for it to be in HD, but there are many aspects of porn that seem to exist without good reason.
Universal was always the biggest studio backer of HD-DVD. If they're not announcing anything new either I can't imagine this can go on much longer.
XBLive: Thin J
PSN: Thin_J
I don't imagine master craftsmen leaping away from completed projects and shouting "Done, motherf*ckers! - 1Dgaf
I thought the porn industry didn't like HD because it showed far too many blemishes they'd rather keep hidden.
Fedaykin98 wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:
The thing about porn's role in the Beta/VHS war is there wasn't the Internet. With everything the porn industry does online, I don't think what they choose for a tape/disc-based format is as relevant anymore.
---Todd
The Nut and the Feisty Weasel: A place where a deranged Ohio State Buckeye and a rabid Michigan Wolverine fan come together... and air grievances.
Spore Page
They initially started by supporting HDdvd, but just the past month or so added BlueRay
Gamer Tag: Rantyr
Dundundun.
Dead, dead, dead.
We shall grapple with the ineffable, and see if we may not eff it after all.
"What misconception traveled down the road and made you want to be here?"
Yeah, that's all she wrote.
Glad it's over, though I do still wish it had gone the other way.
*edit*
Or not.. because there's a statement on Highdefdigest from Universal stating they'll be continuing their HD-DVD support. So I guess Universal's just going dual-format now? What's the point? Why even bother anymore?
I don't get it.
XBLive: Thin J
PSN: Thin_J
I don't imagine master craftsmen leaping away from completed projects and shouting "Done, motherf*ckers! - 1Dgaf
Didn't really think it was new thread worthy, but for those that have taken the plunge, Amazon is having a sale (40-50% off) on both Blu-ray and HD DVD with a pretty good chunk of movies going for $15.
Mr T broke the speed of light in the A-Team van because he wanted to prove that quantum physics was a bunch of Jibba Jabba.
Universal still has a bunch of HD-DVD discs lying around, no doubt. They can't really expect to sell them if they start saying they're going to drop HD-DVD completely, now can they?
WII FRIEND CODE: 6936 4764 8384 6058
Gaming / PC Tech Blog: www.blastprocessing.net
Xbox Live: Legion SB / PSN: Legion_SB / Steam: legion028 / Twitter: legion
Germany's biggest retail chain is apparently starting to drop HD-DVD and remove it from their shelves, citing Warner Bros.' decision to switch to Blu-ray as reason.