HD DVD camp issues sad little response to Netflix, Best Buy snubs
By Evan Blass 
posted February 12th 2008 10:52AM
posted February 12th 2008 10:52AM
"We have long held the belief that HD DVD is the best format for consumers based on quality and value, and with more than 1 million HD DVD players on the market, it's unfortunate to see Netflix make the decision to only stock Blu-ray titles going forward. While the Best Buy announcement says they will recommend Blu-ray, at least they will continue to carry HD DVD and offer consumers a choice at retail."
Doesn't sound like there's too much fight left there, does it? If the best you can do to support your dying format is to rehash the same canned argument and celebrate your remaining shelf space, well, there would seem to be a bigger problem than you're willing to admit. At this point, we're just curious to see how it will all end: after investing so much time, energy, money, and vitriol on this bitter format war, how does Toshiba move forward in a world almost completely dominated by its rival in blue?
[Via High-Def Digest]
Yet another nail in the coffin!
Wait, I thought the final nail in the coffin was hammered home a few days ago?
Hmm, must not be quite so dead, yet.
well, there's nothing wrong with kick a dog when it's down, is there?
A few nails already in there, but it won't stop more nails from going in. After all, it's too much fun watching Toshiba formulate their weak response.
For the last year it's been the last nail in the coffin...
Owning a PS3 and an A30 and now an equal amount of movies on both formats (18 on each), I have to say that I think this is about it for HD DVD. Like I said before, I think it's too bad that the cheaper, complete format won out over the more expensive, incomplete format, but kudos to Sony for finally getting a format right by buying up studio support. Toshiba could have handled this so much better, like by putting the player in the 360. I want a sub-$200 2.0 standalone player to replace my PS3 to watch Blu-rays on. When can I get one of those? Until that time, I'll be watching them on Sony's little trojan horse that (most likely) won them the war.
how many nails do you need? Those nails have been popping out the coffin for the last year... "Nail in the coffin" POP "Nail in the coffin" POP "Nail in the coffin" POP...
Every engadget blog entry has one dumb ass that either says FIRST or "Nail in the Coffin"....... POP
I'm not a coffin expert here, but I don't think they still use nails to seal coffins. Seems like they would have some sort of latch or something.
So when does the next round of price-slashing take place? At this rate they'll be paying people to take a HD-DVD player with 6 additional movies....
XD
behold for the coffin made out of nails!!
This coffin's been nailed more than Paris Hilton.
The coffin was already nailed shut some time ago, now they are just pounding stakes in the body to be 100% sure.
Carbonize Hard Drives will be big enough and cheap enough when you can get a 4tb hard drive for around 80 bucks. And thats still pushing it, 10 HD-DVD/Blu-Ray's are about 300 to 350gigs a 4tb drive would hold roughly 100 Movies, so that would be about the sweet spot for normal users and cheap enough for avid fans to purchase multiple drives. This of course is not taking in account internet bandwidth, currently ISP's couldn't handle everyone downloading instead of purchasing and as we have discussed before its definitely not fast enough. Physical distribution will be faster for years to come. Thats not to say AI wont welcome digital downloads when they become feasible. Like when I have about 30tb of space im my media center pc.
@anon
"Like I said before, I think it's too bad that the cheaper, complete format won out over the more expensive, incomplete format.."
Why is that too bad? Cheaper and more complete sounds like a good thing to me...
it was fun while the war lasted
i was sort of cheered on HD DVD for a while too...
Toshiba are you into S & M?
Burn Baby Burn!!!
Disco Inferno!!
Burn this motha' down...
Josh... you went too far with it!
"Doesn't sound like there's too much fight left there, does it? If the best you can do to support your dying format is to rehash the same canned argument and celebrate your remaining shelf space, well, there would seem to be a bigger problem than you're willing to admit."
Exactly. Stop with all these press releases, the HD DVD Group. It's making a fool of yourself.
How about a simple "no comment?" Don't they feel a little bit ridiculous having to defend themselves like this all the time?
They still have "Blades of Fury!"
"how does Toshiba move forward in a world almost completely dominated by its rival in blue?"
By manufacturing Blu-Ray players, of course!
is it more honerable to fight until the end or cut your losses and run?
well, it depends: are you a democrat or republican?
haha, or it depends on how you word it:
"Fight to the end? or cut and run?"
sounds very different than:
"Keep kicking and screaming? or bow out gracefully?"
Are they still producing new items? This fight might just be their way of trying to get as much liquidated as possible before that final nail (or latch as it were) seals the coffin for good.
Might not be a bad strategy, even if it does tick off the people that go into a store and buy without knowledge.
OK, here's a question:
If you were a Democrat, what format would you support?
And if you were a Republican, what format would it be?
And if you were an independent or a Green-party minority, what would you choose?
Blu-ray? HD-DVD? Or that other third format (VMD) mentioned in Engadget?
Green Party supports Charades. Its eco-friendly. Boo on you tv watchers.
They have fallen and cant get up
What's funny is that both formats are dead. The day of tangible media
is gone. Downloads are the way to go. Apple TV, Netflix, all starting
to offer downloadable service.
Your 400 dollar blu-ray players are just as dead as the 150 dollar
HD-DVD players.
Don't deny it!
Hurray for the sacrifice of quality for the sake of convenience!
"Your 400 dollar blu-ray players are just as dead as the 150 dollar
HD-DVD players."
True story friend, true story... It doesnt matter which side of the war youre on... BOTH sides are screwed... HD because we may not have anything left to get, Blu cuz their overpriced players wont be "compatible" by Xmas...
Kudos for you!
Those downloads are in lesser quality than DVD. Why would someone want to go backwards in quality?
I want your 1Gbit/s internet connection.
Unfortunately streaming over 25GB of content over the internet won't happen any time soon. Not until telecom companies start upgrading their infrastructure, which looks unlikely at the moment.
Hasn't America been sacrificing quality for convenience throughout the past century? Fast food, automatic carwashes, etc... This isn't anything different. Besides, the more you push digital downloads, and the more popularity it gets, the higher the quality will get.
No matter how you slice it, it's just a matter of time before digital downloads are the norm.
I'm sure PlayStation 3 owners would beg to differ. And there are a lot of those.
Nearly every movie I've watched in the past few years has clocked in at 700 or 1400 MB, and has been watched on a PC, PMP, or PC connected to a TV. The difference of quality between what I'm watching and what's coming on 4-50 GB optical discs is not worth having a seperate box, storage space filled with DVDs, etc.
I think you'll find that most people could care less about the quality vs the convenience of a download (look at mp3, for example - if people cared THAT much about quality, mp3 would have never taken off).
Sure, there's a few people out there that will repurchase all of their film catalog in Blu-Ray or HD-DVD or whatever physical format promises 1000 more pixels of awesome, but not that many.
right no one cares for quality, those sky rocketing HDTV sales are just a fluke.
It's called novelty you dweeb. Nobody cared about the quality of DVD until HD came along and showed them it could be better.
As to those going on that downloads will never replace HD because you can't stream that fast. No I can't stream that fast but I can sure as hell download the whole file and then watch it. What's the difference between downloading a complete HD movie in say WMV and buying/renting the disc? Still quicker and more convinient to download it.
I like owned the DVD. I like being able to take it to a friend's house and watching it there.
Maybe I've been doing it wrong all these years...
What people need to realize is that HD downloads won't be reaching any sort of meaningful market penetration for a while now. Most countries do not have the bandwidth to support that kind of infrastructure; in fact if all the people in the US that bought B;u-ray and HD-DVD suddenly started downloading them, I'm pretty sure ISP's would be filing for bankruptcy on a daily basis.
HD downloads ARE the future, its just not coming as soon as you think. Think about what it requires to do.
1. An HTPC
2. Uber fast internet connection
3. the infrastructure to support said service
4. A whole new round of studio and provider disputes
I don't see mainstream HD downloading in the near future.
So you are saying no one cared about DVD quality when they were replacing VHS wow Carbonize just wow. People don't spend those amounts of money on novelty. The hard fact is that Digital Downloads wont catch on until hard drives are large enough and cheap enough to support ownership of such distributed files. As for the actual act of downloading an entire 25 to 40gig file in the time it could take me to rent buy a disk is preposterous. I can run to the store and back in 30 to 40 mins, and bring back anywhere from 1 to 100 HD-DVD/Blu-Ray's, Can your connection download one file in that amount of time? BTW Bravo on the "Dweeb" remark really gives a firm foundation to your argument.
Hard drives are big enough and cheap enough. And no people did not care about the quality of VHS until DVD came out and showed them it could be better. Same applies here. But then we have seen that HD is already in line to be made obsolete by about 2020.
People are buying HD NOT because they suddenly want HD (although some do. I did for my 360) but because they are being forced to buy a new TV due to the analogue signal turned off so rather than just buy a TV with built in digital receiver they buy a HD one so they are ready for the next step since some stations are already broadcasting it. That and the fact HD tv's and equipment outnumbers non-HD equipment in most shops now.
You're an idiot if you actually believe that. Lotsa stupid "Physical Media Is Dead" pundits on Engadget, so I'm not surprised.
THJ please. Dont say a 700 mb file, which is sub 480p most of the time, will look ok compared to a 720p signal or a 1080p signal. Please.
I think the itunes rentals are pretty good, some people may go for that. You don't need an HTPC to watch downloaded movies, people can just watch it from their computer.
Internet connections are getting faster and better all the time, Verizon is rolling out FiOS and AT&T has Uverse.
Lets not forget Pay per view and VOD.
I think you're seriously delusional if you believe Blu Ray will take over DVD anytime soon. First off price comes before quality. HDTV's didn't sell when they first came out, they're now only selling because their prices are pretty low. DVD's still will have the market for many years, even though Blu ray is the undeniable winner. Also don't forget that the economy will decide who can buy what. The economy is getting worse all the time, so who can afford paying for Blu?
I'd rather have a 50GB flash card that plays full 1080p than scratch vulnerable disc media or low-quality downloads.
my 55" plasma is a good reason i shouldn't download
It's really amazing how everyone in the world has massive download speeds and a very good way to archive these 25GB video files to say that these HD formats are dead.
Have you actually watched a movie with uncompressed audio with a good 7.1 system? I guess you're just content with "youtube video quality", or just happy with watching videos on your phone or portable media player.
The physical media isn't dead yet. Just when you think that 50GB is good enough, someone will come up with an even higher definition, multiple-screen support for surround video, etc, then 50GB may not be good enough but maybe 150 GB. Try downloading that. Try archiving that.
Oh wait. You just wanted to watch that video on your phone, and think that the physical media is dead.
Carbonize Hard Drives will be big enough and cheap enough when you can get a 4tb hard drive for around 80 bucks. And thats still pushing it, 10 HD-DVD/Blu-Ray's are about 300 to 350gigs a 4tb drive would hold roughly 100 Movies, so that would be about the sweet spot for normal users and cheap enough for avid fans to purchase multiple drives. This of course is not taking in account internet bandwidth, currently ISP's couldn't handle everyone downloading instead of purchasing and as we have discussed before its definitely not fast enough. Physical distribution will be faster for years to come. Thats not to say AI wont welcome digital downloads when they become feasible. Like when I have about 30tb of space im my media center pc.
Both of these formats are doomed. I mean, hello! the MacBook Air doesn't even have a disk drive.