HD DVD's CES 2008 booth tour
By Ben Drawbaugh 
posted Jan 10th 2008 3:34PM
posted Jan 10th 2008 3:34PM
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Well people do feel uncomfortable visiting the deceased.
I LOL'd.
What if you threw a party and nobody but the 4 guys you hired to cater the bash showed up?
Happened to me once. I woke up 3 days later on a train in Zurich
Red is Dead.
Is it official yet?
BlueRay crowned winner?
Blu Ray is what we thought it was, but we let it off the hook.
If you want to crown their ass, then crown 'em.
They are who we thought they were, but we let them off the hook.
@Eddie
LOL! Classic Denny Green. Now he's out of Arizona. It's pretty sad hearing that some of the benefits of this great format will disappear. But hey, Blu-haters still have HD-VMD!
@Eddie
LOL! Classic Denny Green. Now he's out of Arizona. It's pretty sad hearing that some of the benefits of this great format will disappear. But hey, Blu-haters still have HD-VMD!
Who has the power to make it 'official'?
That picture is actually pretty funny
I think if they would have found a way to have had it standard in XBOX 360 it might have had a fighting chance.
I agree. The price on the HD-DVD add-on for the 360 is great, but I can't bring myself to buy it knowing that BluRay could become the standard. If the HD-DVD drive was bundled with my 360, there is no question what I'd be using now.
If HD DVD actually goes under, and Blu Ray becomes the standard.. will 360s ever see a Blu Ray drive, or are we screwed?
I would say screwed... Pretty much.
MS will add $300 and a blu-ray-player built-in in their console, remove the non-blu-ray-edition and then tell everyone that the extra charge is what happens if you don't listen to daddy.
I would still visit. I love to look at nostalgic media. Might as well put eight tracks and tape cassettes in the same booth.
The future is Blu skys!
it looks like hell
but the population is the complete opposite
|RIP|
They needed V. Belmont up in there.
Someone should distract the reps while another crazed BD Fan should get a Sharpie and draw X's through Warner, HBO, and New line in the sign above.
That photo is kinda sad.
I know, no need to make fun of them :(
I'm not making fun. It does look sad.
I'm not making fun. It does look sad.
I'm not making fun. It does look sad.
Did any of you guys catch pictures of the tumbleweeds at the booth?
Did any of you guys catch pictures of the tumbleweeds at the booth?
Want to know what it's like to be dead? Then click the link below...
• http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.engadgethd.com/media/2008/01/hddvd0032008.jpg
"What if HD-DVD threw a party and nobody came?"
I'd go, but only because I'm the guy who would go to the loser kids Birthday just so he wouldn't feel bad
There was even going to be a party for you. A big party that all your friends were invited to. I invited your best friend the companion cube. Of course, he couldn't come because you murdered him. All your other friends couldn't come either because you don't have any other friends because of how unlikable you are. It says so here in your personnel file: Unlikable. Liked by no one. A bitter, unlikable loner whose passing shall not be mourned. SHALL. NOT. BE. MOURNED. That's exactly what it says. Very formal. Very official. It also says you're adopted, so that's funny too.
It really is lonely at the top.
It's pretty sad if you ask me. I love Toshiba as a Brand. I can't stand Sony products because I've had pretty bad experiences with them. Not to say Sony Sucks. I think it's sad that Warner made the call the right before CES. There was speculation last year. Why not announce your jump back then? I don't own HD DVD or BLU-Ray so this is just the perspective of an outside looker.
I LOLed so hard when i saw that picture with the empty booth.
Look at the guy in main picture with his hand up, looks like hes gesturing "turn out the lights the party's over." I'll give you some ABC gum if any of you older guys know where that quote is from.
Naaah i think he is trying the imaginary noose around the guy in the HD-DVD shirt.
I was really pulling for HD-DVD to win, but I guess Warner had to shoot its wad in trying to please customers and investors, and now HD-DVD has a bit of a mess on its hands.
And I totally agree with Juice that an integrated drive in an XBOX360 would've allowed for much better penetration into the market.
I thought people would atleast stop by to check out what movies that blu ray doesn't have, and won't get. That in fact could have been a last ditch effort by Tosh. But yeah WB is a bunch of punks. HD DVD was probably going to fail at some point, so they could have atleast finished their contract.
WB is finishing their contract. Their announcement was that they'd go Blu-Ray exclusive as soon as their contract expires in May. The ones that behave like complete thugs was Paramount. As soon as they received the check from Toshiba, they packed their bags, recalled all Blu-ray titles, canceled all future orders, and gave their Blu-ray customers the middle finger. Now, that's crappy. When they come back to Blu-Ray with their tail between their legs, I hope customers boycott all their titles for a month. So, they'd learn to treat their customers with a little more respect. At least WB told the world that they'd release their scheduled titles until May.
Cheaper players, DVD/HD DVD Combo discs, ability to copy...wow, it's so great Blu-Ray won right? I look forward to at least getting bargain-bin deals on HD DVD movies and I'll continue to buy myself Blu-Rays.
Come on guys, not even the winner of this "war" is going come near the sales numbers of DVD and VHS. The era of the discs has simply passed.
What is it with everybody beliving the era of discs is over? DVD quality is possible to download without too much hassle. but HD quality? I can't see joe regularguy donload 20-40gb of data for one movie on current broadband connections in us. even on 10mbit it would be tiresome. And who on earth is going to store their 20-40gb movies for backup?
But why would you regular guy want to buy such equipment? Seriously what are the drivers behind it? Actually most people DO store large amounts of data on a relatively cheap exernal HD, so don't overestimate the backup use of BR/HD-DVD
DVD broke through, but remember that the quality difference with VHS was huge (and on many existing TV sets as well), not only in the way that it offered better picture quality but also because it allowed random acces and the degradation of your media after playing it a lot was much less. And let's not speak about the fact that those old VHS tapes were quite large.
So now BR/HD-DVD. First of all you'll have to go and buy a new TV set for it, and then what you get is better picture quality. Those are a lot less advantages than DVD had over VHS... so why would you average (who still represents the gross of the market) buy equipment like this en masse?
the degredation was not alot less, it was 0. Dvds are digital.. no degredation. Watch the movie 100000000 times and it will look the same (providing the disc still physically reads after that many viewings lol)
LOL the WB logo's still there.
http://www.engadgethd.com/photos/hd-dvd-booth-tour/573495/
Okay, so I want Blu Ray to win, but I hate pictures like this. It's very easy to capture a picture that makes it look like there is no interest in a format. We got these stupid pictures for PS3 launches too, often snapped by people either before or after the event had run. I expect that HD DVD got plenty of visitors, even if many were gawpers visiting to see the trainwreck that Warner made of their show.
I'd like to know when this picture was taken, because every other picture I have seen from CES you can see bunches of people in isles. I don't see any in these sets of pictures.. (and for ALL the people that have flocked to BD and they are next to each other.. you would expect some)
Yes.. It's a format war, but seriously. Can we try any harder skew this view?
It was probably taken today (Thurs), because I took much the same photo around 11am - the booth was deserted except for a couple of reps who were looking kind of lonely. I felt kinda bad for them...
Is because it was taken today. The ps3 ones they took weren't from the day; it's engadget. Do you think they'd laught on HD DVD that bad?
All of our reps are back from CES today, does anyone have a photo from Saturday - Tuesday when actual business was being done? This seems sketchy, though I remember the Ngage booth at E3 looking like this.
And you know, Engadget is pro Blu-ray.
But if you looked at Blu-ray's CES booth there is a bunch of people using they orange square chairs.
Think to the genius that said "uhh huu Beavis the WB sign is still there uhh huuu." Do you think they put this booth up in one day. It was up before WB made their switch.
Now its funny how ENgadget puts the one photo with all the most people in it as the last photo in the bunch. Come on Engadget we get your editorial bend. No need to beat us over the head with it.
Gee, liven up, and the world wouldn't be so dull for you.
Blu-Ray managed to get the WB logo up "in one day".... where were you headed with this?
I bet WB knew it was comming since they wrote the check!
I attended CES. That is how the HD DVD booth looked "pretty desolate" during all 4 days of CES.
Was that a Toshiba HD-A30? Awe, come on guys! At least try to put up a fight! Come out to CES with some new stuff, not a player that was pushed out as "Black Friday" specials!!
Now all they have to do is cry, shed some tears and everything will be just fine... Look, It worked for Hillary...
this war is not over.
For digital downloads to work you need to have a PC linked up to your TV or a media extender, which is Microsofts plan.
The vast majority of consumers do not have a PC linked to their TV and never will. Unless TVs come with built in terrabyte drives with ethernet ports and an easy to use interface, digital downlmoads will nevr take over the mainstream. I'm also not putting anything of value on a hard drive without a backup. To this people say SSD will take care of that but it will still be years before the cost of a 500mb or higher SSD hits the mainstream price level.
If you want HD you still need a disc. If you want ok quality you can have a download but it will never look as good as the HD disc on a 42" 1080p TV.
Correct.
But I think that day will come sooner rather than later.
The future is in digital distribution. Bottom line.
Until then, long live Blu-Ray, I guess...LOL
I guess Sony and the BDA were handing out Benjamin's to anyone coming to their booth. They seem to be good at handing out cash here lately!
This childish marketing is getting old, I personaly don't like Sony's products but they know how to market their products. Toshiba has well made products but are realy weak in the advertising dept. We need someone on the out side to step in and put it on the table for the two sides. Here is a thought, Dolby Digital and Dts both do the same thing in different ways and both co-exsist on the same dvd's so we the customers can chose what we feel is best. They co-exsist just fine and we the customer don't suffer. One will win but we the customer won't loose! It's time Sony and Toshiba realize that the only way Hd will thrive is if they co exsist! HOW ABOUT A COMBO DISK, HD DVD AND BLU-RAY ON OPPOSITE SIDES! I think this battle needs to be ended by us, the consumer not the two childs at battle. The technology is there, put both formats on one disk!!!
Just a thought,
Digitalhiss.