Warner Bros. plans to support CBHD, the format war is back on -- at least in China
By Richard Lawler 
posted Mar 2nd 2009 11:31PM
posted Mar 2nd 2009 11:31PM
[Via Format War Central]
posted Mar 2nd 2009 11:31PM
The percentage of sales people that recommend Samsung HDTVs.
Salespeople are also becoming less likely to recommend LCD sets over plasma sets, which goes against the industry trend.
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Xbox 360 CBHD player?
im sorry but ROFL.......
no one else got this?
Hahaha, honestly, fuck China this isn't going to go anywhere. And Blu Ray is picking up huge slack where I live, almost all of my friends including myself have a player and lots of discs.
why do the Chinese always pick bad names
with regards to this one, the Blue makes it seem like a cheap rip off from Blu-Ray
and the China would probably make it hard to bring outside the Chinese market
You do realize that both names refer to the blue laser used, rather than the red laser used in older generation optical disks, right? And China is probably satisfied with a 1.3 billion person market.
@ zomg0t
you do realize that many of that 1.3 billion people in China can't even afford a TV right?
1.3billion Chinese own the USA so I'd be careful who I talk shit about.
The Chinese are already past this CD/DVD crap, and are watching movies online. Wake up. The era of buying plastic discs is over.
You think the Chinese are stupid enough to PAY for those discs when they can stream them off things like www.tudou.com?
Fools.
The real question is, what do you say to those geniuses in the US who bought a PS3 because "Bluray is the format of the future".... ?
@ Daniel
lol, yeah, I intentionally ignored that little fact for the sake of argument.
mike just sounds fucking crazy. Realize this mike: the Chinese have developed a little plastic disc of their own. It's called CBHD. You might want to look into it before posting your self-humiliation next time. As for streaming content, I'm smart enough to download higher quality for free rather than stream it, so America is still intellectually superior to the Chinese.
zomg0t -- "As for streaming content, I'm smart enough to download higher quality for free rather than stream it..."
Thank you for that admission of guilt. Your e-mail address has been passed on to the relevant authorities. You will be hearing from the lawyers at the MPAA shortly.
--- Engadget (part of the Time Warner group)
@Mike
are you actually serious? Have you been to any major city in China lately?
Up until a couple of years ago, the Chinese were still watching movies on CD-I. Yep, that failed "interactive" MPEG-1 CD format from 1991. So they don't really have the credibility to set any kind of future "standard."
@Information Central
I hope you know what you are talking about... Or maybe not, for you it's probably still 1999 instead of 2009. Being at 5-10 yuan per disk, DVDs have been popular in China for nearly 10 yrs. I'm Chinese and I know that's a fact.
about 1 billion of those people still live on farms in the most rural parts of China and make $1-2 per day. Those who are fortunate enough to have a job in the city at a factory make less than 0.20¢ per hour. One DVD = One Weeks Wage. In other words, very small % can afford it at this point.
For $7.30 to $10.22 a HD movie it certainly seems a better deal then Blu-Ray. Next up, learn Chinese...
if more people bought blu-ray , it'd be just as cheap (well, probably more like 15-20 dollars just because thats what we pay for new DVDs) The problem is, when they're producing limited amounts of them becuase less people are buying them, they have to charge more.
And many movies are that cheap. I have several BD movies and havent paid more than $20 for any of them.
BD movies are cheaper now than DVDs were at this point in the lifecycle.
Or you could say that because the price is too high, people aren't buying them.
At first I thought its not a good enough deal in China. and if they could bring the price down from 50 to around 30. They will stand a much better chance against pirate disks.
But with an average of $6000 annual income per capital, it will appear a lot more affordable to Chinese than DVDs back in the old days. so good luck...
You guys just gotta stop with the double--hyphen...the suspense...too much.
It's not a double hyphen, it's a dash, and is grammatically correct.
I know it's an en dash...and I never said anything about grammar. But you could have gone with an em dash or switched your first comma to a semicolon and gotten rid of your second comma.
FAIL
I lol'd at the irony...
Bring back HD DVD!!!
Oh well, I tried.
Sign'd..
:)
I'll sign too. Let's see how many signatures you can get for this impromptu petition. I'll LOL if we can get more signatures!
sign'd
Signed by Microsoft ATTN: xbox 360 R&D Division
Ditto! Even though the HD DVD 360 addon is louder than the damn console... >.
I'll sign,
Bring that HD-DVD goodness back
Looks like Skynet has become self-aware in time for the holidays.
The different format allows them to price discriminate between the markets more effectively. It's not that the media is inherently cheaper, it's just that the western market will support an inflated price target.
Well I support Warner.
They are for value and stuff working well. They were all pro HD-DVD from day 1, but it was the customers who picked unfinished Blu-ray standard...
HD-DVD was ready from day one with great players, lower cost, but the PS3 made blu-ray win. But now players are about half the cost of the PS3 and Blu-ray still does not have a set standard and pending on the player you get can still give you major problems while trying to watch a movie.
I bet now if HD-DVD were to come back with full support it would beat Blu-ray. Players are about the same and Toshiba players just work. At least better than the blu-ray players. I have a blu-ray player now...
The customers?! It was Sony that picked Blu-ray to win, by buying support from literally every major studio. By the time they got through buying all the studios, there was nobody significant left supporting HD-DVD. The consumers never even had a chance to say.
I really, really, REALLY hope Blu-ray fails. Serves Sony (yeah, yeah, the "Blu-ray Association" or whatever prop organization supports Blu-ray...it's Sony) right. In the meantime, I'm enjoying my $5 HD movies.
hexydes:
Delusion is a powerful thing.
Toshiba bought tons of support for HD-DVD. Why do you think Paramount switched from being format neutral?
HD-DVD was never a viable format anyway. It was impossible for hardware companies to make money off it. Toshiba was selling their players for under cost, losing $200 per unit sold, hoping to make the money back on disc sales. So if you are another hardware company, you have a choice: price your player so that you won't lose money on every unit sold, but you can't sell any either because Toshiba's players are cheaper. Or you can price it to lose $200 on it, but you'll never make that money back since unlike Toshiba, you don't get a cut of disc sales.
HD-DVD was never anything more than a go-it-alone format for Toshiba and Microsoft. It could not have succeeded and all it did was succeed at was in muddying the HD disc format waters.
@ why not the LS2LS7?
i wonder if u know that the ps3 loses money up front as well. it always has and they keep talking bout bringing the price down, so theyre gonna lose even more money. sony has been in the shtter since trying to win the hd war which they did, but at what cost? they had to lay off a bunch of people just a couple months ago. they tried to kill 2 birds with one stone with the ps3 and so far right now they havent hit either of them.
The PS3 does lose money.
But it's not the cheapest BluRay player out there, pricing on it has presented little to no downward pressure on the BluRay player makers. Most importantly, it has not made it impossible for BluRay player makers to make money selling players, unlike what Toshiba did with HD-DVD.
Look at with HD-DVD, what players were there that weren't from Toshiba? There was the Xbox 360 drive. There was the Samsung and LG combo players (which were $1,000). And there were two copies of the Toshiba players made by Venturer and another company, both of which retailed at about $200 more than the Toshiba players they were exact copies of. No standalone player could match Toshiba on price.
Now look at BluRay. How many non-Sony players are there? There were far more than this number even when the format war was still on, and several companies undercut Sony's prices.
HD-DVD was never a viable format as far as the anyone but Toshiba was concerned. The only way it could have become viable is if the equipment go so cheap that Toshiba finally was able to drop their subsidies on their own units without killing the format. That wasn't likely to happen any time soon, so it never became a format adopted by anyone but the principals, Toshiba and Microsoft.
Everyone is laying off people right now, including Sony, Microsoft and Toshiba.
i'm not trying to start a format war that's dead. i added really wanted to add the fact that sony did and does lose money too. i dont own either, i do own a western digital hd media player tho that can play 1080p mkv files ;-)
there's a handful of players that are cheaper than the ps3, i totally agree but the ps3 is what put so many blu ray players out into people's living rooms to begin with. also it's easily the best blu ray player hands down.
both formats in my opinion are not viable formats. if u get the cheap blu ray player it doesnt decode hd sound, u have to upgrade ur reciever($300 minimum). $399 is the cost of a ps3 which does decode the hd sound internally so no need for reciever upgrade if u got that sweet 5.1 setup already. before the recent price drops the high end blu ray players that did this costed more than a ps3 @$450. in the end the cost to get that "blu ray experience" is the biggest fault of these new formats. even now its still way over priced and with the recession we're in you would not believe how many people would rather prefer to just get a upconverting dvd player.
i worked at circuit city...lol, which is why i'm up as i'm laid off and my sleeping is all screwed up but only twice did i ever see the samsung players under cut the sony's. that was just a sale thing. msrp is the same price, same with the panasonic players. sony has had their own sales to match samsung's sale price as well. they even started selling sony tv's with free sony blu ray players as package deals. they are trying just as hard even after the fact they won the war. they knocked out the competition but havent crossed the finish line.
Personally I think this is a good thing as it will (hopefully) stir some competition and make the prices of blu ray movies and tech go down.
here's to hoping :)
Most people in China buy DVD's that range from $1 to $3. Good luck selling $7 HD disks. Besides, there is bit torrent.
Hmm.
On the one hand, we have Blu-Ray, an expensive bag of hurt that is not really much an improvement over DVD and had won its hand by using the Playstation as a Trojan horse and bullying stick (this, in spite of the fact that it is last in most regions in the current generation console wars).
On the other we have CBHD, which is being made for the sole purpose of the CPC having their OWN format, in order to control the market like they do their citizens. And it's also a format they've created because they can't create a global standard to compete with (hell, even the Russians aren't this bad). In other words, the standard is a piece of nationalistic bullshit.
Hard to choose who I'd favor. It's like choosing a method of death penalty.
this made me laugh.
hard.
$10 is way too much in China for a disc. DVD's cost about $1, so HD should be like 2-3 bucks at most.
apostrophe + S = POSSESSIVE
lol granted low price point and all, but still... i buy bluray for 2 reasons..
theatre like picture and sound :]
LOADS OF EXTRA CONTENT & ONLINE CAPABILITIES :P
i think thats worth alil something for now untill blurays get to be like 10-15 bucks :D
50-70 yuan?? You know all DVDs in China are only 5 yuan? Thats like 70 cents.
exactly. like i said. the Chinese are already streaming movies online, the market for these things is shrinking by the minute.
They're just looking for another handout. Warner, you whores. You don't really care if you destroy the entire HD disc market, do you?
What is it with China inventing funky standards and going their own way instead of following the rest of the world?
For example, this CBHD disk format instead of Blu-Ray
And the Chinese special WiFi encryption instead of WEP and WPA
And Chinese TD-SCDMA instead of UMTS
And so on
Because people there can't afford to buy movies with huge licensing fees for the format?
New Blu-Ray titles launch at $35-40 and they're saying these titles will launch at $7-10.
At $7-10 you at least have a chance that people won't just pirate your movies because there's no way in hell they can justify buying your movies, so it makes sense that Warner signed up. Selling HD movies for $7 beats trying to sell them for $40 and getting no buyers.