Hd dvd to Blu ray?

[blindedcoon]

Hi everyone, I was just wondering, that if blu ray does win this war, and universal becomes an avid backer- do you think they will put movies already out- on to blu ray?

[theknub]

yes

[phloyd]

I hope that if Universal decides to release BDs it will create new encodes for the BDs, and not just recycle the HD DVD encodes to save money.

I am not too optimistic, but you never know...

[BuyHDOnline]

If Universal comes out with Blu-ray then it's over for HD DVD.

[jbuttler007]

That's what we all want

[seanjohn21276]

Universal, like any other movie studio, is out to make money. They'd be stupid to not release their movies in blu-ray when the format war ends. Now if only Warner can see the light and stop treating blu-ray like a step-child.

[G-money]

Originally Posted by BuyHDOnline

If Universal comes out with Blu-ray then it's over for HD DVD.

pretty much already over for HD DVD.

[jubaiweaponx]

and....it can`t happen too fast for me

[blindedcoon]

I think it`s all but over now also, potc is the best looking picture i have ever seen!!-- but i still would like to have "feast" on blu ray. lol

[aaronwt]

Originally Posted by G-money

pretty much already over for HD DVD.

Are we looking at the same data? Both formats have a strong enough foothold right now to drag the war out for years.

[Blu-Ray Buckeye]

Originally Posted by aaronwt

Are we looking at the same data? Both formats have a strong enough foothold right now to drag the war out for years.

Disagree somewhat. While 30-something percent is still enough to make some money, the retailers do not want to play this game forever. They'd rather dedicate all of their floor space to a single HD format. If 2:1 persists throughout the year or worsens it will be over. The data is still to new for companies to make the official call. It won't be after a full year.

[David Vaughn]

No studio is making money at this point on the HD formats (was stated by the studios on the Home Theater Cruise). Both formats are planning to be in this for the long run and maybe some bigger titles will make some money overall (Casino Royale, Batman Begins, The Matrix, Superman Returns), but most of the catalog releases are loss leaders for the studio's.

The cost to master a disc and to encode it for BD or HD DVD is about $250,000 (or so an insider told me). With that being said, many discs need to be sold in order to just break even. It is cheaper to produce the actual HD DVD discs at replication, which doesn't really matter at this point because a few cents (or as much as $1) doesn't matter when you are only pressing 25,000 copies....this becomes a big deal when millions of discs start to get pressed because at that point, the pennies start to add up fast into real money. that is the only advantage that HD DVD has right now over BD...they are losing a little "less" money on the discs being sold at this point compared to BD. The only studio that may be inking a bit of profit is Warner. Why? Well, they encode on VC-1 for HD DVD, then use a conversion tool to use the same VC-1 encode on BD. That will make their upfront costs much cheaper and they get two SKU's out of the deal that applies to the whole HD market, not just 1/2 of it (or 40% for HD DVD vs. 60% BD).

[Ascended_Saiyan]

I was told that Sony was barely breaking even about a month or so ago.

[GasCat]

Originally Posted by aaronwt

Are we looking at the same data? Both formats have a strong enough foothold right now to drag the war out for years.

A good question is what is considered "over"?

I think a 2 to 1 advantage (with sufficient units sold) means it is over. The problem is not that many people have bought in to either format. Blu previously achieved a 2 to 1 sales advantage but now it is at 60 percent. I think the next months will be heavily in Blu-Ray's favor. Stil not that many people have bought into either format. The question for me is when will people start to buy HDTV's and HD players. Then we will know.

"In six months, the VCR format war was practically over," the CEA says. "Sales of VHS machines caught and passed Beta as the video-recording format of choice. By the summer of 1979, VHS was outselling Beta by a margin of two to one." There were two reasons, Shapiro says: the larger capacity of VHS tapes, and widespread licensing of the VHS technology by JVC to other manufacturers. Sony did not widely license the Beta technology.

http://www.firstglimpsemag.com/edito...1e06.asp&guid=

[haiku_aubade]

i really hope this format war ends soon with Blu-ray as the champion and Universal will finally distribute their films onto BD. I really want Season 1 of Heroes in a blue case

[TallCoolOne]

I think calling the war over is quite a bit premature...both will stick around for quite a while yet...when we see the under $300 players widely available (not through some rebate on some site or another) then things will start to happen. Also, if retailers start giving hd dvd less shelf space then you can start speculating...i know some have mentioned seeing this already but here in san francisco the best buy still has even coverage for hd dvd and bluray.
For the first 3 or so months this year it looked like bluray was really taking over, but then hd dvd did come back at least a little bit. also, how planet earth hd dvd has managed to stay in amazon's top 10 for such a long period of time really blows my mind...i didn't think there was enough hd dvd player owners to keep it there for so long...doesn't it have to sell thousands of copies every day to stay there? and yes i know amazon isn't an accurate measure for either format's success.
as to get back to the original thread's topic, someone mentioned warner saves money by doing one transfer for both hd-dvd and blu-ray, so why do they (and paramount) waste extra effort to downconvert the audio to a lower bitrate and/or inferior codec for their BD discs?
anyway, i'm going to watch both pirates films now...