Warner HD DVD only?

[atdm71]

For what it's worth (likely not much), I'll throw a prediction into the ring. Warner indeed stays format neutral for the remainder of the year. Why? Simple. They are the ones that own 300, and there has been quite a bit of media coverage around the splits between the formats, all to which they publicly and repeatedly attributed their unique success to their strategy of supporting both formats. With their being the only format neutral studio remaining, they not only gain from maintaining their dominance in the high definition media sales category, their growth rate will likely accelerate which will continue to reinforce their brand and collect some better PR and IR in the process. One could speculate their 'delay' of dual format discs influenced by a renewed intent to commit to a single format, but it could also be the logistics of manufacturing and general project managing its execution and delivery.

As for Warner going BD exclusive, you never know what's happening behind the scenes. They've seen better volume and market promise from Blu-ray in their own sales to date. Hard to ignore that trajectory, and it's hard to deny its influence on loyalties over time. If they were that biased toward HD DVD, they never would have gone neutral in the first place, so as unprobable as a BD exclusive arrangement might be, it wouldn't surprise me now given the surprising precedent setting events of late. They could certainly come up with better reasons than Paramount given their publicly stated sales experience with Blu-ray.

But my bets are on nothing changing on the studio front for the balance of the year.

[stockstar1138]

im sorry, but im not buying this at all. the para dream deal was like the sixth sense all this stuff happening (delays) and it appeared for no reason then once everything was said and done it all made sense. none of the signs that lead up to the para deal have been expressed with WB, except for poltergeist, which could deal with speilberg not wanting to do jack on hd dvd as he has yet to announce anything on hd dud but has on BD. Now lets also remember where he keeps a lot of his flcks: universal. im sure uni is not gong to release anything of his with out it being on bd and possibly hd dvd. that is a huge money maker right there. if you ask me steven gave the ok go to uni to release his movies if they went nuetral, hd dvd heard rumor, got desperate and threw out some big $. i believe uni will be neutral in 5 months. paramount is going to look absoultly retarded.

[Lord_Stewie]

a thought, this format war is beginning to turn into an interesting, and cruel war. i think the outcome of paramount taking a side with hddud, will confuse consumers and even convince many of them to stay either neutral or wait until clearly there is a winner. i don't see many people putting alot of many on both formats.

[stockstar1138]

we are going to see standalone units stay fairly level with where they are at, but ps3 is another story, because of its multi functions. its going to keep selling while both BD and HD DVD standalone sales are bad and thats whats going to bring a lot of force to BD. Paramount you are wrong, PS3 will be the dominate HD player for the next 2 years, and it don't support HD DVD, so why are you???? Warner would be idiotic unless paid half a billion to go neutral, it would stop THD, make them look hypocritcal and take them out of the PS3 factor. Im sorry but with the failures of the Zune, XBOX, XBOX 360, and HD DVD MS is not going to be able to justify spending 650 million dollars out of its entertainment budget to simply stall the war for 18 months, because ps3 will keep at least one side of this thing afloat that long.

[ps3andlovinit]

Originally Posted by stockstar1138

we are going to see standalone units stay fairly level with where they are at, but ps3 is another story, because of its multi functions. its going to keep selling while both BD and HD DVD standalone sales are bad and thats whats going to bring a lot of force to BD. Paramount you are wrong, PS3 will be the dominate HD player for the next 2 years, and it don't support HD DVD, so why are you???? Warner would be idiotic unless paid half a billion to go neutral, it would stop THD, make them look hypocritcal and take them out of the PS3 factor. Im sorry but with the failures of the Zune, XBOX, XBOX 360, and HD DVD MS is not going to be able to justify spending 650 million dollars out of its entertainment budget to simply stall the war for 18 months, because ps3 will keep at least one side of this thing afloat that long.

Excellent point about it potentially freezing the hardware market - except the PS3 - playing into BD's favour big time. I like the way you think.

[dobyblue]

Originally Posted by ps3andlovinit

Excellent point about it potentially freezing the hardware market - except the PS3 - playing into BD's favour big time. I like the way you think.

I like the way he thinks too.

[WickyWoo]

PS3 is drastically more expensive to make than virtually any of the other players

THey won't freeze anything till they hit $199. Toshiba is right that's the magic number

[Blu-Light]

I will go on record as saying that I believe warner will soon be switching to an exclusive distribution agreement with HD-DUD. Probably will happen in the next 3 to 4 weeks...Sooner rather than later. I hope I am wrong.

[stockstar1138]

Originally Posted by dobyblue

I like the way he thinks too.

Thanks!

[ps3andlovinit]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

PS3 is drastically more expensive to make than virtually any of the other players

THey won't freeze anything till they hit $199. Toshiba is right that's the magic number

That wasn't the point...the PS3 doesn't cause any confusion since you already have it in your living room.

[Bond007]

We need to start buying more Warner BDs!!!

[stockstar1138]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

PS3 is drastically more expensive to make than virtually any of the other players

THey won't freeze anything till they hit $199. Toshiba is right that's the magic number

J6P buys 39 dollar dvd players at wally world, he isn't going to even come close to spending 199 dollars on a player that doesn't play disney, fox, mgm, sony, or lionsgate movies. its not the sweet spot. J6P has kids and disney is a must. joeorc is competley right when he states that Disney is HD DVDs death blow. only a hd player that plays all studios movies will sell mass market at 199. I saw a J6P come very close to buying a ps3 at wal-mart last night. He couldn't decide between a 360 and a ps3, i talked to him (don't work there) he didn't get why ps3 was 150 more. I explained blu-ray to him, he got it, but had no plans on buying an hdtv soon and had a previous xbox titles but no ps2 titles. i really couldn't reccomend a ps3 over a 360 without an HDTV, im an honest guy, not like those F$%$ over at MS, Tosh, and Paramount.

[ps3andlovinit]

Originally Posted by Blu-Light

I will go on record as saying that I believe warner will soon be switching to an exclusive distribution agreement with HD-DUD. Probably will happen in the next 3 to 4 weeks...Sooner rather than later. I hope I am wrong.

I wouldn't be shocked either. Out of all the studios they were always the most likely suspect to me. Doesn't change anything for me personally. Fact is there is so much choice out there already - we are already behind in having the time to watch all the BD's we have bought.

The content is here to serve me - not the other way around.

[scott87]

Originally Posted by atdm71

For what it's worth (likely not much), I'll throw a prediction into the ring. Warner indeed stays format neutral for the remainder of the year. Why? Simple. They are the ones that own 300, and there has been quite a bit of media coverage around the splits between the formats, all to which they publicly and repeatedly attributed their unique success to their strategy of supporting both formats. With their being the only format neutral studio remaining, they not only gain from maintaining their dominance in the high definition media sales category, their growth rate will likely accelerate which will continue to reinforce their brand and collect some better PR and IR in the process. One could speculate their 'delay' of dual format discs influenced by a renewed intent to commit to a single format, but it could also be the logistics of manufacturing and general project managing its execution and delivery.

As for Warner going BD exclusive, you never know what's happening behind the scenes. They've seen better volume and market promise from Blu-ray in their own sales to date. Hard to ignore that trajectory, and it's hard to deny its influence on loyalties over time. If they were that biased toward HD DVD, they never would have gone neutral in the first place, so as unprobable as a BD exclusive arrangement might be, it wouldn't surprise me now given the surprising precedent setting events of late. They could certainly come up with better reasons than Paramount given their publicly stated sales experience with Blu-ray.

But my bets are on nothing changing on the studio front for the balance of the year.

excellent points made here and i agree with you on this

[ps3andlovinit]

Originally Posted by stockstar1138

J6P buys 39 dollar dvd players at wally world, he isn't going to even come close to spending 199 dollars on a player that doesn't play disney, fox, mgm, sony, or lionsgate movies. its not the sweet spot. J6P has kids and disney is a must. joeorc is competley right when he states that Disney is HD DVDs death blow. only a hd player that plays all studios movies will sell mass market at 199. I saw a J6P come very close to buying a ps3 at wal-mart last night. He couldn't decide between a 360 and a ps3, i talked to him (don't work there) he didn't get why ps3 was 150 more. I explained blu-ray to him, he got it, but had no plans on buying an hdtv soon and had a previous xbox titles but no ps2 titles. i really couldn't reccomend a ps3 over a 360 without an HDTV, im an honest guy, not like those F$%$ over at MS, Tosh, and Paramount.

Hopefully you informed him of the failure rate and the controller chargers costing extra and on-line costing etc

[WickyWoo]

J6P buys 39 dollar dvd players at wally world, he isn't going to even come close to spending 199 dollars on a player that doesn't play disney, fox, mgm, sony, or lionsgate movies

You're missing what I'm saying

$200 IS historically the magic number for people to start buying an electronic item in large numbers.

Do I think that Toshiba's firesale will really help them at that price? Probably not much.

[Teazle]

Originally Posted by Blu-Light

I will go on record as saying that I believe warner will soon be switching to an exclusive distribution agreement with HD-DUD. Probably will happen in the next 3 to 4 weeks...Sooner rather than later. I hope I am wrong.

I'm not the first person to have said this, but IMHO the Paramount situation shows that Warner's content must be secured by the BDA through some kind of contractual arrangement. Even if this doesn't mean exclusivity, just some guarantee of similar releases. Otherwise their support is simply too fragile to be counted on for the purposes of winning a format war. At the moment it's open for MS simply to ask what's Warner's price ... $200M for 18 months? $225? Content is too valuable to be left unsecured in this way. This at any rate is the HD-DVD view -- otherwise why would they have garnered exclusive support of Universal and now Paramount?

[stockstar1138]

Originally Posted by ps3andlovinit

Hopefully you informed him of the failure rate and the controller chargers costing extra and on-line costing etc

I gave him the rundown on everything, i talked about the new heat sinks and to make sure it was a newer model, it was. he was j6p in the flesh, ps3 was out of his budget, the 360 wasn't, imo from a brief sterotype of him, he probably made the right choice. he's not going to go out and get a bluetooth set and chat online, he isn't going to buy 25 dollar movies, he doesn't have an hdtv, he isn't probably even going to subscribe to Live, but his kids wanted to play some newer games and they wern't offered on the xbox. Trust me id never steer anybody away from ps3 if i didn't feel strongly compelled that it just wasn't the system for them.

[stockstar1138]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

You're missing what I'm saying

$200 IS historically the magic number for people to start buying an electronic item in large numbers.

Do I think that Toshiba's firesale will really help them at that price? Probably not much.

yes, but stuff like printers, cell phones, scanners, etc. are all complete things, hd dvd isn't. tell you what ill sell you an iphone with a cracked screen that isn't touch senstive and has a busted wifi chip in it for 199, nobody is going to bite at that. and thats essentially what hd dvd is.

[stockstar1138]

Originally Posted by ps3andlovinit

I wouldn't be shocked either. Out of all the studios they were always the most likely suspect to me. Doesn't change anything for me personally. Fact is there is so much choice out there already - we are already behind in having the time to watch all the BD's we have bought.

The content is here to serve me - not the other way around.

if they were going neutral we would hear stuff like 2001, shining, clockwork getting delayed, or something else. if paramount is worth 150 million to HD DVD, then Warner is easily worth another 500 million, and they aren't going to get that type of money from HD DVD right now. and don't tell me that warner hasn't been told by the BDA that they will counter any attempt to be bought out. The BDA is going to drop a bombshell soon (end of the week) I think. and its going to bring HD DVD to its knees over how much it has spend via, Universal, Paramount, and cheapo players. I don't know any inside info, but I think Fox coming back is just the beginning. They are either going to announce a studio shift or a much more competive price for hardware. The utlimate death blow to MS (the bastards who paid for all of this) would be to say 399 PS3, it would break MS with the 360 and it would break HD DVD. The PS3 is the key to this, it always has been. It is one of the best business plans I have ever seen.