Blu-Ray versus HD-DVD (old)

[d94]

This thread has been continued here

Notable Excerpts:
"Blockbuster Inc. will rent high-definition DVDs only in the Blu-ray format in 1,450 stores when it expands its high-def offerings next month, dealing a major blow to the rival HD DVD format... Blockbuster has been renting both Blu-ray and HD DVD titles in 250 stores since late last year and found that consumers were choosing Blu-ray titles more than 70 percent of the time."

http://slickdeals.net/?sduid=6...ter_blu_ray.html?.v=11

finally someone is getting there
i already spent $200 on an HD-dvd player
now im glad i picked up a ps3 last night for $300


-Schadenfroh

 

[Schadenfroh]

Ouch,

BTW, how did you swing a PS3 for $300?

 

[newb54]

That really doesn't mean much. Blockbuster will still be purchasing hundreds of HDDVD titles for the online program. HDDVD is actually gaining momentum with their much cheaper players. Highest seller last month at Amazon was Planet Earth HDDVD at #2, whereas Blu Ray Planet Earth was #17.

 

[spacejamz]

Originally posted by: newb54
That really doesn't mean much. Blockbuster will still be purchasing hundreds of HDDVD titles for the online program. HDDVD is actually gaining momentum with their much cheaper players.

Where exactly are they gaining momentum? just on the sales of Planet Earth? It sure isn't in overall disk sales...

The numbers below are the Nielsen weekly numbers (i copied them from the AVS forums)...the first number is the percentage of blu ray sales and the second number is the HD DVD sales...the weekly and Year to Date Totals are listed...you can see clearly from the chart that blu ray has had a steady 67% to 33% lead all year...

so where exactly is this momentum again? Toshiba only has a 61% lead in stand alone sales (this doesn't the PS3 as a blu ray player after selling players for hundreds of dollars cheaper than blu ray players and giving away 5 (sometimes more) HD DVD movies with each player purchased...

Day.......Week....YTD
01/07....63/36...63/36
01/14....68/31...65/34
01/21....67/32...66/33
01/28....68/31...67/33
02/04....69/31...67/32
02/11....69/30...67/32
02/18....65/35...67/32
02/25....68/31...67/32
03/04....65/34...67/32
03/11....68/31...67/32
03/18....81/18...69/30
03/25.....n/a.....70/29
04/01.....n/a.....69/30
04/08....62/37...69/30
04/15....61/39...69/31
04/22....52/48...68/32
04/29....71/29...68/32
05/06....60/40...68/32
05/13....62/38...68/32
05/20....58/42...67/33
05/27....69/31...67/33
06/03....61/39...67/33
06/03....66/34...67/33

 

[gobucks]

this is kinda pissing me off, i just bought the xbox 360 HD-DVD drive... oh well, at least i can still get HD-DVDs through blockbuster's online program.

I'm really pretty surprised, considering HD-DVD drives are only like $200 compared to $400 for a blu-ray player. maybe in a few months things will change?

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: gobucks
I'm really pretty surprised, considering HD-DVD drives are only like $200 compared to $400 for a blu-ray player.

People willing to pay a higher initial cost for a superior technology?


Not that I am a bluray fan, I hope that neither win and prices continue to fall.

 

[d94]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
In case any of you missed it, Toshiba drastically lowered the sales outlook for HD-DVD.


and how did you swing a PS3 for $300?

oh believe me i noticed, how do else would i gotten a new toshiba player with 5 hd-dvd movies for $200

the el cheapo 60gb ps3, a friend of mine got one for his bday 3-4 months ago..hadnt even opened it and offered it to me for $300 since i scored a new 1080p tv a few days ago, so i couldnt resist

 

[cubby1223]

Originally posted by: newb54
That really doesn't mean much. Blockbuster will still be purchasing hundreds of HDDVD titles for the online program. HDDVD is actually gaining momentum with their much cheaper players. Highest seller last month at Amazon was Planet Earth HDDVD at #2, whereas Blu Ray Planet Earth was #17.

Here's the current sales data that includes more than just one retailer:
http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbook...ex/hom061707/index.php

Planet Earth is the exception to the norm. Of the current top 10 selling movies, 9 are on Blu-ray, including the top 3.

 

[Wreckage]

found that consumers were choosing Blu-ray titles more than 70 percent of the time

Yeah I would drop HD-DVD as well if that's all they were pulling in. It's not like HD is a big market to begin with so only having 30% of an already small market is not a good thing.


I hope Best Buy and others follow Blockbuster so that this stupid format war can end. That way more consumers will start buying and players\movies will become more available at less cost.

 

[mlm]

Apparently there are rumors that Target is about to follow.

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: mlm
Apparently there are rumors that Target is about to follow.

That would not surprise me as Target does not devote much shelf space to either format as is.

 

[Rio Rebel]

This is a significant event, but it's not the end. This is a war, not a battle.

I believe Blu-ray will win in the end, because of Sony's control of such a large part of the content, and the higher storage capacity of Blu. Over the long haul, I think these will win out. But Toshiba is really making a fight of it, with their lower priced players and Universal's full support and steady release of movies. In all honesty, Sony should have won this already.

My biggest fear is not HD-DVD winning, even though I own a Blu-ray player. My biggest fear is the "war" continuing to confuse consumers and the whole thing goes the way of SACD/DVD-Audio.

 

[tatteredpotato]

Yea, I was at my Target and they had about 12 BR and 12 HD DVD movies.

That loss would be monumental to HD DVD lol.

 

[LegendKiller]

1. BLockbuster sucks. In the last 3 years they have lost 1.8bn in net income. Their profit margin last year was 2.5% with 10% less revenue (falls about 10% every year). Their stock price ($4.50 or so) is 1/5th that of Netflix (25 or so) and their market capitalization (850m or so) is 500m less than netflix.

2. Of their 5,500 locations only 1250-1700 will stock BR. Of those 250 will also stock HD-DVD. Both formats will be availible online. The number of stores they have has been consistantly declining, the brick and mortar store is dying. In NYC there are 5 stores total, the closest is a mile from me.

3. Netflix still carries both as does BBL online. This means that BBL has acknowledged that the rental store paradigm is dying.

4. The people who are adopting these formats are not renters. They are early adopting technophiles who have money and buy stuff. If they rent they are savvy enough to know they could pay a small monthly fee and have unlimited rentals with no return or late-fee hassle through either BBL online or Netflix.

This is nothing but a marketing gimmick from Sony, who is a close buddy of BBL. If anything it only validates that B&M stores are being marginalized and the next-gen battle is online, which BBL is losing already.

You want to know how much of a non-event this is? I live in Manhattan with about 1.6m other people. There are 5 blockbusters on the island. That means that 1.25 blockbusters will carry BR and/or HD-DVD discs. That means that I have to haul my ass to the nearest subway station, take it to X number of stops, perhaps switch trains, get there and come back. For somebody without a work-reimbursed ticket, or an unlimited monthly fair, that's $4 more. The whole trip will probably take me an hour. Yeah, that's gonna happen.

I have yet to see any significant evidence that BR is a "superior technology". People tout larger discs, but I find that argument irrelevent. Sure, 50GB discs might be nice, but they aren't practical for most people. Keep in mind that J6P doesn't have gigs and gigs of mp3s or movies (or pr0n). The higher bitrate touted is probably not even measurable and it's something used as a marketing gimmick, akin to 1080p for most cases. Comparing movies from the two formats yields the same pictures.

Sure, one could argue for 1440p, which would require more bandwidth, but for what? When will 1440p sets come out? When will source material be availible? When will actual pick-ups able to access it be around? Without answering that then all of the space that BR has won't be used, since AFAIK 1080p with current less lossy compression doesn't need 50GB. Even if it did HD-DVD could always chuck extras on the 2nd disc as has been done with DVD since the day it was introduced.

 

[Noubourne]

Originally posted by: spacejamz

Originally posted by: newb54
That really doesn't mean much. Blockbuster will still be purchasing hundreds of HDDVD titles for the online program. HDDVD is actually gaining momentum with their much cheaper players.

Where exactly are they gaining momentum? just on the sales of Planet Earth? It sure isn't in overall disk sales...

The numbers below are the Nielsen weekly numbers (i copied them from the AVS forums)...the first number is the percentage of blu ray sales and the second number is the HD DVD sales...the weekly and Year to Date Totals are listed...you can see clearly from the chart that blu ray has had a steady 67% to 33% lead all year...

so where exactly is this momentum again?

With less than 50,000 in sales for both formats COMBINED for most of the HD titles, calling what either format has right now "momentum" is pretty much just pissing into the wind.

This "war" will be decided by average-joe at a sub-$200 price point. And it will likely take a good 50% of market saturation of HD device sales to call for certain.

In other words, not for another 5 years.

 

[cubby1223]

Originally posted by: LegendKiller
1. BLockbuster sucks. In the last 3 years they have lost 1.8bn in net income. Their profit margin last year was 2.5% with 10% less revenue (falls about 10% every year). Their stock price ($4.50 or so) is 1/5th that of Netflix (25 or so) and their market capitalization (850m or so) is 500m less than netflix.

<snip>

I have yet to see any significant evidence that BR is a "superior technology". People tout larger discs, but I find that argument irrelevent. Sure, 50GB discs might be nice, but they aren't practical for most people. Keep in mind that J6P doesn't have gigs and gigs of mp3s or movies (or pr0n). The higher bitrate touted is probably not even measurable and it's something used as a marketing gimmick, akin to 1080p for most cases. Comparing movies from the two formats yields the same pictures.

Does Blockbuster suck because you really believe it sucks, or just because it's not pushing the media format that you prefer?

And the reason why the same movie on both formats yields the same picture... is because in almost all cases, it is the exact same picture with the exact same codec with the exact same bit-rate. Only a few recent Paramount releases have used VC-1 for HD DVD, and a different AVC encode for Blu-ray, and those titles do look different.

I just watched Apocalypto last night, and it's just an unbelievably amazing picture. You don't know what you're missing being so one-sided in this format war. The video and audio quality that Disney / Buena Vista has been achieving with their latest releases on BD-50 discs are absolutely stunning. Blu-ray really has matured a lot since the days of House of Flying Daggers & The Fifth Element (which was re-mastered and will be re-released in July, and Sony is providing a trade-in program).

 

[Rio Rebel]

Originally posted by: LegendKiller
1. BLockbuster sucks. In the last 3 years they have lost 1.8bn in net income. Their profit margin last year was 2.5% with 10% less revenue (falls about 10% every year). Their stock price ($4.50 or so) is 1/5th that of Netflix (25 or so) and their market capitalization (850m or so) is 500m less than netflix.

2. Of their 5,500 locations only 1250-1700 will stock BR. Of those 250 will also stock HD-DVD. Both formats will be availible online. The number of stores they have has been consistantly declining, the brick and mortar store is dying. In NYC there are 5 stores total, the closest is a mile from me.

3. Netflix still carries both as does BBL online. This means that BBL has acknowledged that the rental store paradigm is dying.

4. The people who are adopting these formats are not renters. They are early adopting technophiles who have money and buy stuff. If they rent they are savvy enough to know they could pay a small monthly fee and have unlimited rentals with no return or late-fee hassle through either BBL online or Netflix.

This is nothing but a marketing gimmick from Sony, who is a close buddy of BBL. If anything it only validates that B&M stores are being marginalized and the next-gen battle is online, which BBL is losing already.

You want to know how much of a non-event this is? I live in Manhattan with about 1.6m other people. There are 5 blockbusters on the island. That means that 1.25 blockbusters will carry BR and/or HD-DVD discs. That means that I have to haul my ass to the nearest subway station, take it to X number of stops, perhaps switch trains, get there and come back. For somebody without a work-reimbursed ticket, or an unlimited monthly fair, that's $4 more. The whole trip will probably take me an hour. Yeah, that's gonna happen.

I have yet to see any significant evidence that BR is a "superior technology". People tout larger discs, but I find that argument irrelevent. Sure, 50GB discs might be nice, but they aren't practical for most people. Keep in mind that J6P doesn't have gigs and gigs of mp3s or movies (or pr0n). The higher bitrate touted is probably not even measurable and it's something used as a marketing gimmick, akin to 1080p for most cases. Comparing movies from the two formats yields the same pictures.

Sure, one could argue for 1440p, which would require more bandwidth, but for what? When will 1440p sets come out? When will source material be availible? When will actual pick-ups able to access it be around? Without answering that then all of the space that BR has won't be used, since AFAIK 1080p with current less lossy compression doesn't need 50GB. Even if it did HD-DVD could always chuck extras on the 2nd disc as has been done with DVD since the day it was introduced.

To paraphrase:

Blah blah blah blah blah I LOVE HD-DVD AND I HATE BLU-RAY blah blah blah blah.

Blah blah.

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: Wreckage

found that consumers were choosing Blu-ray titles more than 70 percent of the time

Yeah I would drop HD-DVD as well if that's all they were pulling in. It's not like HD is a big market to begin with so only having 30% of an already small market is not a good thing.


I hope Best Buy and others follow Blockbuster so that this stupid format war can end. That way more consumers will start buying and players\movies will become more available at less cost.

This will take a few years to pan out so dont get excited yet. For starters HD-DVD players have been outselling Blu Ray stand alone players for a long time and it is usually a 60/40 split. I expect this split to widen as HD-DVD players continue to tumble in prices as more vendors enter the market.

Once that happens it will be interesting to see how the movie sales picture changes.

 

[LegendKiller]

Originally posted by: cubby1223

Originally posted by: LegendKiller
1. BLockbuster sucks. In the last 3 years they have lost 1.8bn in net income. Their profit margin last year was 2.5% with 10% less revenue (falls about 10% every year). Their stock price ($4.50 or so) is 1/5th that of Netflix (25 or so) and their market capitalization (850m or so) is 500m less than netflix.

<snip>

I have yet to see any significant evidence that BR is a "superior technology". People tout larger discs, but I find that argument irrelevent. Sure, 50GB discs might be nice, but they aren't practical for most people. Keep in mind that J6P doesn't have gigs and gigs of mp3s or movies (or pr0n). The higher bitrate touted is probably not even measurable and it's something used as a marketing gimmick, akin to 1080p for most cases. Comparing movies from the two formats yields the same pictures.

Does Blockbuster suck because you really believe it sucks, or just because it's not pushing the media format that you prefer?

And the reason why the same movie on both formats yields the same picture... is because in almost all cases, it is the exact same picture with the exact same codec with the exact same bit-rate. Only a few recent Paramount releases have used VC-1 for HD DVD, and a different AVC encode for Blu-ray, and those titles do look different.

I just watched Apocalypto last night, and it's just an unbelievably amazing picture. You don't know what you're missing being so one-sided in this format war. The video and audio quality that Disney / Buena Vista has been achieving with their latest releases on BD-50 discs are absolutely stunning. Blu-ray really has matured a lot since the days of House of Flying Daggers & The Fifth Element (which was re-mastered and will be re-released in July, and Sony is providing a trade-in program).

From a purely financial standpoint and a equity analysis standpoint (which I study and practice IRL in NYC), Blockbuster sucks.

What is your basis of comparison for differences? The comparison on AVSforum shows nothing significant. Your subjective opinion (and mine for that matter) about what may be better on non-parallel releases is not relevent either. Leaving the theoretical discussions aside about bandwidth or potential differences, I doubt there is much of a difference at all. Human visual acuity won't pick up anything beyond a certain point and even if it did it wouldn't be anything but marginally different, statistics dictate that.

I watched all three matrix movies over the weekend in HD-DVD and I thought they were spectacular also, much better than DVD, but is it better than BR or worse? Who knows. As far as your BD-50 discs, I don't think that the there is a difference considering the bitrate is the same. You can have all of the storage you want but as long as the bandwidth doesn't change it doesn't matter. Now, if bandwidth increased and the entire BD-50 disc was used AND there was a difference in quality, I might give you credit, but there is no indication there is any difference.

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: Wreckage

found that consumers were choosing Blu-ray titles more than 70 percent of the time

Yeah I would drop HD-DVD as well if that's all they were pulling in. It's not like HD is a big market to begin with so only having 30% of an already small market is not a good thing.


I hope Best Buy and others follow Blockbuster so that this stupid format war can end. That way more consumers will start buying and players\movies will become more available at less cost.

This will take a few years to pan out so dont get excited yet. For starters HD-DVD players have been outselling Blu Ray stand alone players for a long time and it is usually a 60/40 split. I expect this split to widen as HD-DVD players continue to tumble in prices as more vendors enter the market.

Once that happens it will be interesting to see how the movie sales picture changes.

Many people have been buying PS3s to play Blu-ray movies on. PS3s have sold more in a month than HD-DVD has sold in a year. The more telling tale is movies sold and pretty much it's 70% Blu-ray.

I'm sure Blockbuster looked at all of this when they made their decision.

 

[mlm]

Originally posted by: LegendKiller
Now, if bandwidth increased and the entire BD-50 disc was used AND there was a difference in quality, I might give you credit, but there is no indication there is any difference.

You can't ignore extras. The POTC releases both came with 2-discs for a total of 75 GB each.

 

[spacejamz]

Originally posted by: Genx87
This will take a few years to pan out so dont get excited yet. For starters HD-DVD players have been outselling Blu Ray stand alone players for a long time and it is usually a 60/40 split. I expect this split to widen as HD-DVD players continue to tumble in prices as more vendors enter the market.

There are 1.5M PS3's out in North America that we will never now how many are being used exclusively for games or movies. All we do know is that since the PS3 was released last NOV, it wiped out the disk sales lead that HD DVD built up in 7 months. Four months after that, blu ray has outsold HD DVD by over 450K disks...

Total Disks Sold (as of 05/27)
Blu-ray: 1,637,090
HD DVD: 1,192,410

The past two weeks after that blu ray has won by over 60%, so it would be safe to assume that lead of 444K has grown...

Toshiba projects that they will sell 1.0M players by the end of the year (they lowered the number from 1.8M to 1.0M last week). Alot of people who were sitting on the fence are going to be less inclined to buy an HD DVD player after seeing this press release today. The average person will only hear 'Blockbuster prefers Blu ray' and that is what they will remember...Unless they start giving them away now, there is no way they will reach that number...they have only sold 150K this year, so they think they can sell 850K in just over 6 months??? Not likely...

 

[LegendKiller]

Originally posted by: Wreckage

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: Wreckage

found that consumers were choosing Blu-ray titles more than 70 percent of the time

Yeah I would drop HD-DVD as well if that's all they were pulling in. It's not like HD is a big market to begin with so only having 30% of an already small market is not a good thing.


I hope Best Buy and others follow Blockbuster so that this stupid format war can end. That way more consumers will start buying and players\movies will become more available at less cost.

This will take a few years to pan out so dont get excited yet. For starters HD-DVD players have been outselling Blu Ray stand alone players for a long time and it is usually a 60/40 split. I expect this split to widen as HD-DVD players continue to tumble in prices as more vendors enter the market.

Once that happens it will be interesting to see how the movie sales picture changes.

Many people have been buying PS3s to play Blu-ray movies on. PS3s have sold more in a month than HD-DVD has sold in a year. The more telling tale is movies sold and pretty much it's 70% Blu-ray.

I'm sure Blockbuster looked at all of this when they made their decision.

Yes, but lets look at the facts. Attachment rate for PS3 is ~20%. For the last two months there has been ~80k in PS3 sales for each month. That means that HD-DVD stand-alone players (not even counting xbox 360 add-ons) only have to sell 16,000 players to keep up with PS3 sales. That means that HD-DVD only has to surpass BR stand-alones by 16,000 to keep up. Anything above that is gaining ground.

Sure, you can tout this huge 1M BR players and I am sure Sony is using it to sell to others, but in reality nobody is winning at this point.

 

[LegendKiller]

Originally posted by: mlm

Originally posted by: LegendKiller
Now, if bandwidth increased and the entire BD-50 disc was used AND there was a difference in quality, I might give you credit, but there is no indication there is any difference.

You can't ignore extras. The POTC releases both came with 2-discs for a total of 75 GB each.

And you watched all of that? I don't know, I am not a big "extras" guy. So what if HD-DVD has 3 disks, it matters little in the long run. I have many DVDs that are dual or even triple disc sets.

 

[cubby1223]

Originally posted by: LegendKiller
From a purely financial standpoint and a equity analysis standpoint (which I study and practice IRL in NYC), Blockbuster sucks.

What is your basis of comparison for differences? The comparison on AVSforum shows nothing significant. Your subjective opinion (and mine for that matter) about what may be better on non-parallel releases is not relevent either. Leaving the theoretical discussions aside about bandwidth or potential differences, I doubt there is much of a difference at all. Human visual acuity won't pick up anything beyond a certain point and even if it did it wouldn't be anything but marginally different, statistics dictate that.

I watched all three matrix movies over the weekend in HD-DVD and I thought they were spectacular also, much better than DVD, but is it better than BR or worse? Who knows. As far as your BD-50 discs, I don't think that the there is a difference considering the bitrate is the same. You can have all of the storage you want but as long as the bandwidth doesn't change it doesn't matter. Now, if bandwidth increased and the entire BD-50 disc was used AND there was a difference in quality, I might give you credit, but there is no indication there is any difference.

What do you expect anyone to say? I am only aware of 2 movies that are not the same encoding on the HD DVD & Blu-ray release. There is no indication because the one studio who is really putting the most effort into their Blu-ray releases is Disney / Buena Vista, and they don't release on HD DVD. And actually, that brings me to the real reason why I bought a PS3 - CONTENT FIRST. Capacity is just a bonus. And why would I ever reject that?

And your Matrix you seem to like, should be coming to Blu-ray probably by the holidays. I'm not concerned with a delayed release. Yet again, we arrive back at the real reason why I bought a PS3. I have no control over what studios support what formats. I just won't reject one because it is associated with the word "Sony".