Comments on: How Blu-Ray Won the Fight and Why It Probably Won?t Matter

By: Nick

Nick — Mon, 19 May 2008 09:22:22 +0000

I think that we (the commentaries) have spoken. I have downloaded movies and it sucks. I have T4 here at my home/office. It might be fast but there are limits to the movies and most of all, my server is the only place to store 5TB of HD movies. Then if it crashes I lost my money.

Downloads are great if you want to watch something like Friday, get stoned, and forget that you ever saw it. That way when your 24 hours of owning it are up you can feel good not knowing where it came from.

By: ken

ken — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 19:15:52 +0000

I just got a 1080p HDDVD player from Tesco last night for £179 with 2 HDDVD movies included (one of them the awesome looking '300') and a HDMI cable, all in the the box.

I am very happy with my purchase and it plays normal dvd's aswell (i can use the other side of the disc in a NORMAL DVD PLAYER TOO!) ... something you CANNOT do with bluray. and you cant get bluray for that price.

Once I can download movies (HD MOVIES) i will move to them permanently though. That is the future.

By: Marcel Schoen

Marcel Schoen — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 09:57:23 +0000

So according to Rob HD-Downloads will probably become the new mainstream.

Maybe Rob should be a bit more careful with his predictions.

Aug. 2005:
http://news.digitaltrends.com/talkback67.html

Dec. 2006:
http://news.digitaltrends.com/talkback234.html

Just saying...

By: Randy

Randy — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 15:34:57 +0000

I had comments but got a e-mail to verify my e-mail I put a lot of good info in there I hope you can post it. The e-mail told me to go to this link and verify my e-mail this is the only place I see to put a e-mail in.

By: Randy

Randy — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 15:29:05 +0000

Real good thing about blu-ray. Benefit right now there is no way to broadcast in 1080p the bandwith is to large for the resolution and the 60 frames per seconds thats a lot of information and the really one of the only ways to watch a movie besides in movie theater to watch 1080p and it looks great! Downloads will probably be if not already are in 1080p but who groups around a computer and watches a movie usually its only one person maybe two who sits and watches a movie on a computer, but you could use your computer and run it to a tv (via hdmi). you run into a lot of computer format ratios. A lot of tv's don't agree to well with computer resolutions. In lamers term watching a seting up a Blu-ray playes is quick and easy and majority of the customers like plug-n-play put the dvd in and go with it and the pix is outstanding. Blu-ray is here to stay and eventhough were in this digital and download world. Blu-ray one make a lot of customers like simplicity happy. (Besides the software uprgrades to these players which that helps me out of being a TV Repairman and other home electronics). Thanks that was a great article!!!

By: JVM

JVM — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 22:40:32 +0000

I quite enjoyed your post on the format wars. Yours was one of the few I found that analyzed the demise of HD-DVD, instead of solely forecasting the future. I especially liked your argument about the Nintendo Wii. As much as insiders and tech aficionados may not want to believe it, what drives sales is the average consumer, generally clueless but looking for a good buy. Sony's brightest idea was using the average consumers in the video game market as a fulcrum for Blu-Ray sales. The average consumer is generally unsure of which direction to go (especially in a format war), so when they saw one item bundled with a complete game console, the advantage was obvious.
In fact, I would argue that the real clincher in the format war was definitely the PS3, because it had the lowest barrier to entry. If you looked at either format, you had steep requirements to get anything out of it – an HDTV, an HDMI cable, and the unit itself. Two of those units costed at least 800 to a thousand dollars. For any average consumer, the price was ridiculous. However, the PS3 doubled as a game console, and one which had multitudes of fans. They may not have had an HDTV, but it was okay, because the blu-ray player they were using also happened to be enjoyable without an HDTV, because of the gaming ability. Right there, one of the barriers to entry was lowered. Obviously, to get the full experience, upgrading to an HDTV was necessary, but not immediately. The Playstation 3 was also the cheapest blu-ray player around (much cheaper than a good HDTV), so it had a definite advantage.
Sony, of course, used this to its full advantage. It always touted the number of players, claiming it had its format in a million and a half homes. Of course, 1.4 million of those were PS3s. ( http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2007/06/20/ps...
And while the North American adoption of the ps3 may not have been huge, it was rather large in Europe and Japan, where the rival Xbox 360 was unpopular, and where the Wii was nowhere to be found, as you stated.
In fact, it this could be best illustrated by looking at the shifting allegiances of a very lucrative industry: Adult videos. Say what you want about the adult industry, it is a perfect litmus test for a format. In the beginning, Blu-Ray tried to adopt a family-friendly stance, and banned pornography from its film repertoire. The porn industry responded by going to HD-DVD. However, companies were bombarded with requests for HD adult content on the shiny new Blu-Ray player that they got when they bought their PS3. Since there was such a market for Blu-Ray pornography, and since Sony desperately needed a way to pull ahead of HD-DVD, a compromise was found, and adult films were made in Blu-Ray HD. The point here is that once an industry which cares very little about the technical advantage of HD media decides to adopt a format, it has become desired by the mainstream. And, since Sony had spent an arm and a leg getting Blu-Ray players into the PS3s and into homes, the momentum for mainstream demand rested solely in the camp of Blu-Ray. ( http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2007/0... I think that, while Time Warner's decision may have capitulated the change, the real underlying reason that the format war was won by Blu-Ray rested solely in the lowest barrier of entry that the PS3 represented.

By: Will

Will — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 12:41:45 +0000

Bjorn, have any facts to back up your statement?

By: Bjorn

Bjorn — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 11:49:21 +0000

Did this guy do any research before he wrote this? Half of it doesn't make sense and the other half is wrong. Where ever he got his sources, he should start looking some where else.

By: paul smith

paul smith — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 11:20:07 +0000

i think people are going to be really disapointed in download offerings. this article talks as if we are ready to go. perhaps you should speak to a few ISP's and see just how happy they will be with people downloading 10gbs per movie (and that compressed to a level that is not comprimised), not to mention the 'extras' and also the increased cost in additional harddrives and power they consume.

By: Kevin Van

Kevin Van — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 15:37:07 +0000

I wonder if we don't have two boat anchors instead of one in our HD players. It seems like the claim to fame of Blu-Ray is the PS3.

Unless your TV is 60 inch and 1080p and you are sitting 2 feet away from the TV I just don't think HD gives that much. I did enjoy March of the Penguins in HD, but that's the only movie I've seen where it mattered and that didn't matter to the tunes of hundreds of dollars.

I think the main concern of the movie companies is that DVD's really AREN'T copy protected. Blu-Ray provides slightly better security in that regard.

From my viewpoint, I think the movie companies are trying to entice us away from DVD with a marginal improvement in picture quality. Let's get serious about the claimed sound improvements too... Unless you have dog hearing, you couldn't tell the difference between DVD and either HD format.