Earlier the week Best Buy, and Net Flix announced that they were pushing Blue Ray, and now Wal-Mart says today that they will not carry HD products by this summer.
I hope so because we just sold our HD player and all our movies on ebay. The prices on those things are dropping every day!
Shots are still being fired and the armistice hasn't been signed yet, but yeah. Blu-ray has beaten HD DVD. I've still got my HD DVD player for the occasional Universal or Paramount movie I want to watch (and to watch the ones I already own) but I certainly wouldn't tell anyone to buy an HD DVD player anymore. My bad. :whoops: Signs are pointing to Toshiba having their own BD player on the market late 4Q or early 1Q2009. Hopefully dual format. On the positive side, this whole thing forced the BDA to drop prices on their hardware much faster than they'd planned and to take a bit more care with how they master discs-some of the early BD releases were awful, but anymore the discs that are being released are looking REALLY nice.
Meh. I give it 9 months before Microsoft has come out with an add-on Blu-Ray player for the 360. I give it 24 months before I even buy a Blu-Ray player.
I noticed that the PS3 outsold the 360 in the US for the first time last month. I believe a portion of this is because the format war has pretty much been resolved and people are buying the PS3, in large part, for its Blu-Ray capabilities. Other than the fact that it looks kinda goofy in an entertainment center, I'd get the PS3 over a standalone BR-player.
I hate format wars. Content should be the focus, not format. Do we think this means the DVD will be going the way of the VHS tape eventually? Is there a portion of the population that will stick with the DVD instead of upgrading?
DVD isn't going anywhere. I think it'll be around another 10 years. I think Blu-Ray will be a lot more widespread than say, SACD or DVD-Audio, but it's going to take some time. Most people are perfectly satisfied with their DVD player.
i'd imagine that eventually they will stop making DVDs but it's a lot easier to play old DVDs than it is to play old tapes. i'd imagine the discs will get cheaper as well
DVD will maintain market dominance at least until they put out a BD player for under $100. DVD didn't get that widespread until they hit that price point. Sure, there's going to be a portion of the population that stick with DVD for a long long time. The thing is that HDM is kind of a connisseur product-Joe 6 Pack doesn't see the massive advantages to an upgrade. He's right, too-it isn't a major shift like the change from analog tape to digital DVD was. It's an incremental change.
Yep. Sure, I can see the difference on a 47" 1080p screen that I'm sitting 5 feet from. If you tell me you can see the difference on a 30" 768p screen from 10 feet, well, you've got better eyes than I do. Sound-wise, I can (most of the time) tell the difference between a DD or DTS track and a DTHD or DTS-HD MA track. But consumers have told CEs with their wallets time and again that video>sound when making buying decisions.
It's interesting that from a resolution perspective, it probably is a bigger shift but from a visual perception perspective, it clearly isn't. I think a high quality transfer anamorphic DVD still looks really good but when the kids put in an old VHS tape I feel like my eyes are going to bleed. And while I can definitely see the difference in a quality HD transfer, the change doesn't blow me away like DVD did when it first came out.
Not that this should surprise anyone but Japanese media is reporting that Toshiba has decided to stop production on HD-DVD and shut down their production facilities. http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNewsAndPR/idUSL1627196120080216 http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080216/bs_nm/toshiba_hd_dvd_exit_dc_1
