Thieves choose Blu-ray over HD DVD in mass disc heist

The high definition format war took an unexpected twist Sunday morning, when a group of thieves broke into a video store. What they took -- every Blu-ray movie in stock -- isn't as interesting as what they left behind. The gang ignored the HD DVD selection entirely, apparently deciding that only the BDA's baby was worth a five finger discount. Blockbuster choosing Blu-ray for its nationwide rollout is one thing, but being ignored when the price of acquisition is the low low price of free is a reality check for any fledgling standard. We suppose such early morning escapades are one way to build your library after getting the now lower-priced PS3, but it's not recommended. No word yet on if HD DVD fans are planning a coordinated group theft to reestablish the popularity of their chosen format.


[Via DVD Dossier, thanks everyone who sent this in]

[TheGuy @ Jul 25th 2007 11:55AM]

Wow, I guess Blu-Ray has truly won then. They have the most industry support, most consumer support, and even more criminal "support" lol. Universal really should go neutral and end this stupid format war now.

[mightytomahawk @ Jul 25th 2007 12:07PM]

Love the monty python picture.

[MDB @ Jul 25th 2007 12:27PM]

They use that recycled picture every single time there is Blu-ray news.

[mdv @ Jul 25th 2007 12:02PM]

Sony absolutely needs to use this in their advertisements:
"Blu-Ray! The Hoodlum's Choice!"

[Ashish @ Jul 25th 2007 12:02PM]

The war is decided then?

[Mr. Sneakery @ Jul 25th 2007 12:02PM]

More than anything, this is hilarious. The real question is, Did they have enough money to buy the Bluray Player? Or was that an earlier heist we missed hearing about? Even if they got it for free, they are still choosing Bluray.
And its giving some attention the the format either way! To think had they just bought the LG combo player they could have had 5 movies for free without the need of a heist.

[Jared @ Jul 25th 2007 12:11PM]

Well of COURSE you have to steal Blu-Ray players and discs! Unless you LIKE second mortgages...Where as most everyone can afford a $199 HD DVD player. And with HD DVD movies selling for $5-$10 LESS than Blu-Ray, why would you need to steal those? They're more affordable as well.

[dmek @ Jul 25th 2007 12:36PM]

"And with HD DVD movies selling for $5-$10 LESS than Blu-Ray, why would you need to steal those? They're more affordable as well."

what crack are you smoking? I thought the HD-DVD combo discs make HD-DVD's MORE expensive.

[Dan @ Jul 25th 2007 1:07PM]

There is no $199 HD DVD player.

[Dan @ Jul 25th 2007 1:09PM]

Just that 360 one.

[Matthew @ Jul 25th 2007 5:25PM]

So I have to buy a $300 XBOX 360 to get a $199 HDDVD player?

[Jared @ Jul 25th 2007 6:09PM]

WOW! you're right! Right now Circuit City has the HDA2 for $238.88

MY BAD, I was $39 off. I fail at the internets.

And yes, the COMBO HD DVD/DVD-9 Discs are more than the Blu-Rays discs. However, I wasn't speaking of those as there was nothing in my post about a combo, ya slouch.

At Target.com the prices for HD-DVDs hover around the $22 mark with some selling for $16. The Blu-Rays average around $27 with the lowest being $19.

So, WOW, looks like your arguments are squashed.

Good day.

[paloooz @ Jul 25th 2007 12:13PM]

So do these count towards the software sold in the statistics?

[Aaron @ Jul 28th 2007 1:47AM]

Haha, I think it damn well should. I mean, they obviously have them now, so what's the difference?

[liqwid @ Jul 25th 2007 12:14PM]

Umm... doesn't that mean that the store and the studios lost money on those movies? What exactly are you people cheering about? Plus, the guys probably sold the stuff on ebay for epic profit and zero loss.

[Carlton @ Jul 25th 2007 12:21PM]

Of course, it was bad, but is sure as hell is funny.

[BestSnowman @ Jul 25th 2007 12:47PM]

probably the same people that stole launch PS3s...

[bob @ Jul 25th 2007 12:37PM]

You'd have to be a moron not to take BDs for that PS3 you shot someone for.

[Mark @ Jul 25th 2007 12:41PM]

The police have narrowed there search to local PS3 owners, a surprisingly small list of suspects.

[Martez @ Jul 25th 2007 12:50PM]

I lol'd.

[ytrilynth @ Jul 26th 2007 10:02AM]

lolz

[Spooch @ Jul 25th 2007 2:15PM]

SCORE!

[TekGuy @ Feb 19th 2008 10:45AM]

No, but be sure to see them tallied up as "1 billion dollar in prospective sales lost" by the RIAA tomorrow. Pillagers be pirates too!

[Andy @ Jul 25th 2007 12:54PM]

Even denon seesm to be on the blu ray bandwagon now. hopefully the end is near for HD DVD.

[WhackMushroom @ Jul 25th 2007 1:00PM]

you hear that Universal? you can write up any unsold stolen stuff as a tax write off or some kind of insurance expense.

[impressme @ Jul 25th 2007 1:16PM]

All I gotta say is it'll be a very sad day to see Blu-ray win the format war over HD-DVD. Tell me one good reason why it should other than storage capacity.

[Gil @ Jul 25th 2007 1:19PM]

What do you mean "other than storage capacity"?
The whole point of these new formats is increasing the storage capacity of optical discs. Duh

[JDigital @ Jul 25th 2007 7:27PM]

Why dont you tell me one reason whatsoever why HDDVD should win?

exactly.

BR ftw.

[desmond @ Jul 25th 2007 1:39PM]

So, let say "storage capacity" is the only benefit of blueRay over hdDvd, now, what benefit does hdDVD have over blueRay??

[Grant @ Jul 28th 2007 9:17PM]

I'm pretty sure that lower liscensing fees(Sony takes a nice chunk), thus an over-all eventual lower cost is one benefit.
plus there are no combo Blu-ray/SD DVD, so if you want to watch that movie on one of your 12 DVD players as opposed to your ONE blu-ray player, your SOL.

Sure, the list isn't long, but both formats have their advantages

Not to meantion, this isn't the first time anyones heard of theives doing illogical or plain out-and-out stupid things.

[Ruben F @ Jul 25th 2007 1:57PM]

What else do you want? More storage capacity means potentially higher bitrate movies in the future. It also means higher frame-rate movies, since more frames per second means more space required to store it.

Capacity is key, as well as cost. The type of data you store in it is quite irrelevant when just looking at the optical media. The camps differentiate themselves by using different codecs to compress their movies, a different encryption system, as well as different standards for extra features.

Its easily possible to take the data from an HD-DVD and put it on a blu-ray. Now is it viewable in a blu-ray player, no. But put that in a PC and there you go, you can watch it.

Blu-ray was the first with burners available, which is big for alot of early adopters (especially piraters). Blu-ray still has the cheapest burners available, if not the only one's that a consumer can buy (without getting a laptop). That really indicates to the user that it is pretty far ahead of the competition. Not to mention, all blu-ray players have the capability of outputting at 1080p (regardless of the fact that very few people have 1080p sets).

Its a good format. The only reason people hate it is because they hate sony. No other reason other than that. The price is making its way down, and they are pretty much on par with HD-DVD if you match 1080p outputting devices.

[joejoejohnson @ Jul 25th 2007 6:23PM]

HD-DVD has DVI technology which allows you full interaction with the Movie and the elements that appear in the movie. It also allows you to interact with the internet on the spot (if your player is hooked up to the internet oh like with say Windows Media Home Server or an Xbox 360) then you can buy things you see in the movie. Talk about motivation for Studio's, production houses, consumers, and consumer goods manf co's. Product placement at a whole new level from a buisness standpoint, let alone consumer standpoint. Ah but a marketplace to transact is the problem you say...oh wait there are also 8 million users already signed up to a monitized system to allow such purchases (Xbox Live). These are all things Blu-Ray can not do.

[Matt @ Jul 25th 2007 6:34PM]

"plus there are no combo Blu-ray/SD DVD, so if you want to watch that movie on one of your 12 DVD players as opposed to your ONE blu-ray player, your SOL."

Is this the same as the VHS/DVD combo that insured DVD's success?

[skrati @ Jul 25th 2007 1:27PM]

Maybe it's because teh bD is more fully hax0rd, allowing the pir@tes to copy and s3ll exponential profits FTW!

[paloooz @ Jul 25th 2007 1:34PM]

Blu-Ray has BD+ now, which has yet to be cracked. Don't worry, it will be hacked soon. But to say that Blu-Ray's several layers of DRM is "more fully hax0rd" than HD-DVD's pure AACS is just ignorant.

[TrentD @ Jul 25th 2007 1:47PM]

*What advantages does HD DVD have over Blu-ray*

Over half of the Blu-ray releases use 1990's video compression technology (MPEG2), which is the whole reason they need the increased disc space and bandwidth. HD DVD almost exclusively uses MPEG4 and VC1, more efficient, better looking codecs that require less disc space and less bandwidth. How's that?

Saying Blu-ray's increased disc space means better picture is like saying a fat chick's 44DDs mean she's hot! (No offense to chubby chasers)

[Brian @ Jul 25th 2007 4:35PM]

Yes, but all new BRDs are in VC-1 and they even reissued Fifth Element in VC-1, allowing owners of the previous version to exchange them for $5 I believe, maybe for free.

[ferry @ Jul 25th 2007 4:48PM]

The best high def I have ever seen is a 38Mbps (bitrate) Samsung demo called "beauty of nature", in Mpeg 2, still blows away any AVC or VC-1 I have seen yet.

[anonymouse @ Jul 26th 2007 7:04AM]

the advantages HD dvd has over bluray is - its still available at the local Blockbuster? anyone considered this is a variation on the classic denial of service attack?

i also think the 300 buck 360 to use a HD dvd player is a bit unfair... you post on the internet, does that mean you have a pc? you can drop that 300 investment and just use the pc to use the drive if you are so inclined. the math might work that way for the non tech savvy crowd but 200 bucks for an HDDVD drive i can use on my pc is DEFINITELY competitive with standalone players in Aus... let alone the PS3 (a 1K AUD investment).

Cheers

[TrentD @ Jul 26th 2007 1:09PM]

**Yes, but all new BRDs are in VC-1...**

This simply isn't true. More than 40% of this year's Blu-ray titles are MPEG2. Almost none use VC-1, including the Fifth Element, which uses MPEG4 (AVC). Get your facts right, man, it's embarrassing to watch you Blu-ray guys regurgitating the same old lines of false information.

[no3rdw @ Jul 25th 2007 1:49PM]

Maybe not a standalone one for $199 in stores, but I got my HD-DVD player with 10 movies for $299 during an Amazon sale, making it just as good of a deal, if not better.

[joejoejohnson @ Jul 25th 2007 1:54PM]

HD-DVD has DVI which allows you full interaction with the Movie and the elements that appear in the movie. It also allows you to interact with the internet on the spot (i.e. to buy something you see in the movie) as well. There are also 8 million users already signed up to a monitized system to allow such purchases (Xbox Live). These are all things Blu-Ray can not do.

[Ben Hobbs @ Jul 25th 2007 2:06PM]

lol

They just stole the more expensive format.

[Josef F @ Jul 25th 2007 2:09PM]

This whole "BRD vs HDDVD" is funny as hell. Right now, in Sweden, there's a 75 year old women (for some reason) test driving the world's fastest internet connection. She can download a full length hi-def movie in 2 seconds. The only thing this "format war" is going to decide is which one gets to reign supreme over the end of tactile media. In 6 years, it won't matter.

[Jmmni @ Jul 25th 2007 2:10PM]

I don't understand what numbers they go by. Last weekend Fry's electronic store ran and add that said when you buy a PS3 you get five free Blue-Ray movies. Are these counted in the battle for our money?

[Broo @ Jul 25th 2007 7:55PM]

If Sony counted the free Taledega Nights from the PS3 coupon as sales then I am sure Sony is counting the 5 free disc as well.

I am also sure that the HD DVD group is counting the 5 free ones they are giving away with their players as well...

Ironic that a good chunk of the HD DVD/Blu-Ray disc 'sales' could be discs that are given away; maybe this is how they stimulate consumerism: 'buy this because everyone else is!'- but then not a lot of people are not actually 'buying' either...

I think the general populance are actually winning as many of the good 'old format' DVDs often o on sale for $5 - $7 at Best Buy/Circuit City; these still look awesome to me on a $80 upsampling DVD. (I have almost doubled my standard DVD collection since the 'war' started!)

[Phil @ Jul 25th 2007 2:29PM]

I think a lot of people aren't taking into account how dumb thieves are in general.

They probably confused HD-DVDs with regular DVDs and thus left them behind.

[jackryan @ Jul 25th 2007 2:42PM]

BlueRay has a lot more native capacity. As for codecs...that's the choice of the studio. MPEG4 is supported in Blueray.

And HD-DVD isn't cross platform as Blueray BTW.

[Patrick @ Jul 30th 2007 4:20PM]

What do you mean, not cross-platform?

What platform? They make both kinds of STBs so that's cross. There's both kinds of computer burners, I think, but you know what? I don't care about using these things on a PC or Mac. The files I need to backup are too big for either disk format.

How is a BD or HDDVD going to help me backup a 300GB drive? Or a 500GB? By selling me six or ten or 15 burn-once blank disks?

Geez, I can by a whole new hard drive for that same money (300GB regularly on sale for $50; 500 for $80) and make a 1-1 backup and skip all that time burning stuff to disk. And what comes out the other end is a living bootable hard drive, not a big pile of disks that require expensive readers which nobody has.

These disk formats are too small, too slow, and too expensive to be of any use to me. Give me a stack of inexpensive, replaceable, 5yr-warranted 500GB drives.

[Ryan @ Jul 25th 2007 2:59PM]

So when is the HD-DVD camp going to announce that twice as many HD-DVD's were stolen when you subtract out robbers that own a PS3?

FYI, I saw an HD-DVD drive used at Gamestop for 130. So if you have a 360 there is no excuse!
Also with a decent computer you can pick this up and get going (of course you have to buy the player software and AnyDVD).