"Club Penton" - Ask questions to Hollywood insider "Penton-Man"

[WickyWoo]

Why would the retailers be upset with Toshiba? It was also the retailers decision to sell HD-DVD not JUST toshibas.

Toshiba also wasted everyone's time with the stupid format war, did things like in kjacobs post and made a heck of a lot of promises that were never delivered on. Remember how Max was saying that if Toshiba didn't dump HD DVD soon retailers were going to start doing it for them?

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by lgans316

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/06/01/stu...ef=mpstoryview

This is a good cutting edge source of information for the *event* ……….
www.knbc.com

with actual video
http://video.knbc.com/player/?id=257798

They should have the 9:00 A.M.(P.S.T.) press conference up soon but there is some technical transmission glitch.

[Penton-Man]

Livestream RAW just showed a truck hauling away video containers.........

http://www.knbc.com/videostream/10954229/detail.html

[ThatArtGuy]

Man, that's just horrible. I wonder how it started?

[Alan Gordon]

KABC just stated that it sounded like all of the videos were not the masters...

~Alan

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by mhafner

I'm aware of the 'problem'.

That’s good.
You may also want to remind them of this……………
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...postcount=3161

^
esp. in regards to more modern day features.

[MerrickG]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

Toshiba also wasted everyone's time with the stupid format war, did things like in kjacobs post and made a heck of a lot of promises that were never delivered on. Remember how Max was saying that if Toshiba didn't dump HD DVD soon retailers were going to start doing it for them?

Im told that many executives in Toshiba are still pretty bitter towards the BDA and especially Warner Brothers.

I guess they truly never believed or understood that they were the underdog in this.

[Anthony P]

Oh please. HD DVD failed because of the lack of studio support and the lower install base.

so how is that different from me saying "most people that cared were willing to pay for quality and to have the movies they wanted "

the studios="movies they wanted" and the installed base was bigger because BD offered what most people that cared wanted (movies and quality).

If Blu-ray didn't have more of the major studios behind it,

agree

and the PS3 didn't get Blu-ray players into millions of homes, things might have been different.

and they might not have been different. Think, use your brain, Have you heard of the PSP have you heard of UMD, millions of PSPs did not nhelp UMD go main stream. # PS3 would be useless if people that have them don't use them for movies. I know like most demented HD DVD fanboys that try to justify their bad decisions you are blaming the PS3 for helping with BD disk sales but the truth is that most people that do care for PQ and AQ made a conscious decision to buy a BD player and many times they did buy a PS3 and most of the disk sales where to these people and not the kid that bought a PS3 for games.

I don't say that in a "HD DVD almost won!" kind of way, because Blu-ray DID have those things, and those things were very important. But I do say that to discourage this mindset of "HD DVD was total crap and anyone who bought it didn't care about quality." Yes, Blu-ray technology offers opportunities for slight PQ/SQ increases. But HD DVD was hardly crap and there were a number of absolutely gorgeous discs, and anyone who can't admit that is simply delusional.

I did not say it was crap (on the other hand I might have) the truth is HD DVD was and could not be as good as BD. By definition the best it could be on HD DVD someone could easily port it to BD but since in every respects BD specs where better the opposite is no where near true. My point was not that HD DVD was crap (but I can't argue with that- since I tend to use the term crap to describe "not as good") but that it is simple human nature, the person that wants higher quality and is willing to pay and upgrade his set-up most likely will pick the better (offers more) format when there are two then go with the one that is second rate (and I gave two -out of the three, less support and quality, the third was chance of winning- reasons HD DVD was second rate - which also apply to this new format).

[Anthony P]

Toshiba also wasted everyone's time with the stupid format war, did things like in kjacobs post and made a heck of a lot of promises that were never delivered on. Remember how Max was saying that if Toshiba didn't dump HD DVD soon retailers were going to start doing it for them?

don't forget that until the last minute (literaly) Toshiba was saying "All is well and we will never drop HD DVD". If you are a retailer that "believed" the BS they where saying and then passing it to customers then the retailer gets the bad publicity. I know a few CIs (custom installers) that got burned that way, with customers annoyed that they bought a useless player.

[WickyWoo]

Im told that many executives in Toshiba are still pretty bitter towards the BDA and especially Warner Brothers.

I guess they truly never believed or understood that they were the underdog in this.

Toshiba is mad because they saw it as their right to define High-def because they did so for DVD, and because they know that awesome royalty stream is going to dry up, plain and simple

Toshiba has had a very long and fruitful relationship with Warner under the Lieberfarb and Nickerson administrations, and so it was like their best friend turning on them. They see it as a major betrayal.

Toshiba has invested a fortune in the Cell chip for use in future devices. It will be going in their new flat panels, and eventually in their blu-ray players as well. They're not going to ship a Blu deck before 2010 though I'll wager.

[neo_reloaded]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

Whole bunch of words.

Look, I'm not trying to make some big statement about how HD DVD could have won or any bullshit like that. If you're reading that from my statements, then I'm truly sorry for not being clearer. The install base and studio support comments were just to isolate the point I took issue with - the quality.

People around here keep trying to say that anybody who bought HD DVD (even when HD DVD was the only horse in town, or the first few months after BD launched and they had severe quality issues) was a fool and didn't care about quality, only the cheapness. It gets reworded over and over again, trying to be clever - but the point is always the same. And it's a lie.

I don't care enough to write a big 2 page response isolating every comment of yours I have issue with. If you can't see what I'm saying from this post, then it's truly not worth my time even continuing this discussion.

[MerrickG]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

Toshiba is mad because they saw it as their right to define High-def because they did so for DVD, and because they know that awesome royalty stream is going to dry up, plain and simple

Toshiba has had a very long and fruitful relationship with Warner under the Lieberfarb and Nickerson administrations, and so it was like their best friend turning on them. They see it as a major betrayal.

Toshiba has invested a fortune in the Cell chip for use in future devices. It will be going in their new flat panels, and eventually in their blu-ray players as well. They're not going to ship a Blu deck before 2010 though I'll wager.

In fact it was Lieberfarb who orchestrated the plan to get Warner and Paramount to go HD-DVD exclusive last year. Thankfully, he was only successful in luring Paramount over to the dark side, while the higher ups at Warner such as Ron Sanders and Jeff Bewkes had the hind sight to see that it was not in their best interest to dump bluray, leading to the dismissal of Steve Nickerson. Eventhough it was publicly denied by Warner that his dismissal had anything to do with Warner's neutral stance, the truth is the higher ups in Warner were upset that he tried to go behind their back and go HD-DVD exclusive.

[Anthony P]

People around here keep trying to say that anybody who bought HD DVD (even when HD DVD was the only horse in town, or the first 6 months after BD launched and they had severe quality issues) was a fool and didn't care about quality, only the cheapness.

not at all. That is what POed HD DVD fanboys like to think. I have many friends that bought HD DVD players and let's face it, if somoene said "I don't care what happens, I don't care how much I spend, I want the most movies at the best quality" then it makes perfect sense for those people to have bought a BD player and HD DVD, lets face it there where some titles you could get in the past on HD DVD and not BD. My original statement had litrtle to do with HD DVD and everything to do with this supposedly new format/concept, where Toshiba possibly thinks that some middle ground exists of people dumb enough to buy this format but demanding enough to not stick with DVD or what they have. It was the exact same mistake they did with HD DVD. In the end some HD DVD players got sold to people who said "it was first" or "it is the only way to get Universal titles" but anyone like that would also buy BD so it would not have helped HD DVD (did you buy every title that came out on both on both format, no you buy just one) the only way it could have won (or helped this war to continue) would be if there were enough people that cared enough about quality to upgrade from DVD but not enough to go to BD. I never said HD DVD would win because it is cheaper because that made no sense what so ever, it was dumb HD DVD fanboys that thought pointing out a fire sale helps.

The point I was making was that HD DVD tried the "it is not as good as BD but it is cheaper so it will win" with HD DVD and if they will try the same with a new thing they will have the same result for the same reason people willing to pay for something want that something and something cheaper but half assed won't help.


As for “or the first 6 months after BD launched and they had severe quality issues” this shows exactly that you are one of those bitter HD DVD fanboys because I had BD in the frst few months after it came out and there where no quality issues, actuyaly what I remember was that I was having lossless audio back thgen while all the HD DVD owners needed to live with lossy.

[neo_reloaded]

The rest of your post didn't even apply to the point I was making, so it's not worth quoting. I never said a single thing about the viability of HD DVD as a format, sales tactics, sales numbers, etc. I fully agree that from the starting point, HD DVD was the underdog, and even that became an understatement as time progressed. I purposefully created a hypothetical situation to rule out those issues to merely talk about audio/video quality.

But this:

Originally Posted by Anthony P

As for “or the first 6 months after BD launched and they had severe quality issues” this shows exactly that you are one of those bitter HD DVD fanboys because I had BD in the frst few months after it came out and there where no quality issues, actuyaly what I remember was that I was having lossless audio back thgen while all the HD DVD owners needed to live with lossy.

I never was an HD DVD fanboy (I had both formats shortly after they were released in 2006), and I'm not bitter about anything - in the end, I'm glad Blu-ray won for a couple of reasons. But the first couple of reviews for Blu-ray discs were extremely discouraging, and people were wondering if there were firmware issues or bad encodes or something. The very first wave of Blu-ray discs received very poor reviews. I don't say that as any kind of criticism of Blu-ray - there are always problems when a product first launches, and these issues were all fixed very quickly for Blu-ray. I say this to put things in perspective. I could easily list just as many negative things about HD DVD, but there's no point in that - no Devil's Advocate position to play - because 90% of this forum jokes about those on a regular basis.

It's almost impossible to have any kind of discussion on these boards, because any single positive item about HD DVD or negative item about Blu-ray is interpreted as the ravings of a bitter fanboy. I'm not saying there should be pro HD DVD discussion, because a) the war is over and b) this is obviously a Blu-ray board. But when discussing something about HD DVD can be used to illustrate a point about Blu-ray or HD media in general, what is the harm? There is no need to attack everyone who dare mention the name in a non-negative light. The war is over, Blu-ray is the undisputed champ - please get your minds out of the warzone mentality.

[Anthony P]

It's almost impossible to have any kind of discussion on these boards, because any single positive item about HD DVD or negative item about Blu-ray is interpreted as the ravings of a bitter fanboy

no only when the person is posting BS

But the first couple of reviews for Blu-ray discs were extremely discouraging, and people were wondering if there were firmware issues or bad encodes or something.

I agree many (RED ANTS) tried to portray BDs as being bad (or at least worst then HD DVD) but if you did have a player early on in 2006 and did try them you would see that it was not the case and it was RED ANTS BS. Yes fifth element had some major flaws, but it had lossless sound (so better then any HD DVD for sound at that time) and the main flaw was that they used a bad master (which has nothing to do with formats). On the other hand let's forget that for a second, you talked about 6 months, the Samsung bug that softened the image was fixed in Sept and by the end of 2006 there where many BDs that are still considered reference, also if I remember correctly, towards the end of 2006 dobyblue had started maintaining a list of all review sites and had BDs vs HD DVDs score (per site) and BD had higher marks.

There is no need to attack everyone who dare mention the name in a non-negative light

you attacked me because I dared to point out that missing studio support and lower quality makes cheaper a useless argument and I dared to use HD DVD as an example


PS this is PMs thread and I don't feel like discussing it further.

[Penton-Man]

Today I’ve received a lot of PM’s in the nature of “what if a similar catastrophe occurred at another studio”, or “what if the fire had destroyed Universal’s ‘film vault’ rather than the ‘video vault’ “, etc.

Ans.--
There is redundancy by many Hollywood studios regarding the protection of their assets, in case one particular location is ever compromised.
Already noted back in March here……………….

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...postcount=2038

Not to worry.

[lgans316]

Originally Posted by sonyfangirl in AVS

I assumed it was an HD DVD bonfire that got out of hand.

[Squozen]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Life of Brian came out de-grained and sharpened, post Lowry processing.
I have no idea if the reviewers picked up on any DNR resultant artifacts or annoying edge enhancement but, the later is clearly evident on several scenes.

My major annoyance was the grain frozen in place in the sky in most scenes. I would have far preferred to see the original film negative than this over-processed image.

[Squozen]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

I’m all for a “film-like” presentation because if anything I love *the look* more than anything I’ve seen that compares using digital camera capture……exception being the Panavision Genesis which can be made to look exactly like film if you know what you’re doing and desire that *look*.

Can you name a title that looks like film using this camera, Penton? The only one that I've seen that I know was on the Genesis was Apocalypto, and I picked that it was a digital camera about 10 minutes in when things started moving fast - there's something about the fast motion in that film that looks video-like to me, maybe the shutter design...??

Slow-moving or still shots looked very good to me.

[lgans316]

I thought Superman Returns and Next were shot using Panavision Genesis cams ? Please correct me if I am wrong.