HD-DVD owner's opinion of Blu-ray...

[ADWyatt]

As an historian and Objectivist, I'm amazed to see a tug-of-war between BD and HD-DVD supporters in their opinions regarding software sales figures, with both camps doing a superb job of skewing numbers to support their point-of-view.

Although I've been an ardent HD-DVD supporter for a long time, agreeing with my fellow advocates that HD would have been the unquestionably-preferred format if all studios had released titles for both technologies from the beginning, would-have-could-have means nothing in the light of present-day reality. The fact of the matter is that more heavyweight titles are being released for BD than HD in the near and foreseeable future, and among them are must-haves that I suspect will cause a growing number of HD videophiles to add a BD player to their Home Theater outfit. All other things being equal, percentages mean nothing in this format war. What matters is how many preferred titles are available, and how many are soon to come. And in this regard, BD is obviously now predominant, while holding strong movie aces that it hasn't even begun to talk about.

Even so, I don't believe HD owners would begin to consider BD if the technology hadn't arrived. Considering the player glitches of the first hardware release (and to be objective, I had to buy three HD-DVD players before I found one that was glitch-free, even after a seemingly-endless array of software updates), and the poor quality of the first BD movies (And yes, to again be objective, HD has had its share of pound pooches, with movies like 'Excalibur' and 'Spartacus' leading the way.), combined with the fact that there were far fewer titles available for BD initially, I'm somewhat surprised that the format survived beyond the embryonic stage. HD-DVD actually had to rescue BD from drowning, and it did so magnificently. By refusing to release enough top-quality movies when they were the only game in town, by Universal's insane policy of releasing expensive 'flipper' movies, by not releasing an X-Box add-on on a timely basis, by making an expensive $1,000 1080p unit, by refusing to compete directly with BD at the recent CES show, and by releasing nothing more than a trickle of movies in the foreseeable future, they proved to be BD's biggest supporter.

And now, despite its slow start, BD quality at its best is now on a par with HD, and when the second-generation BD players arrive very shortly, they could perhaps provide slightly better video quality for similarly-priced units. Add to this the fact that BD is now beginning to use superior codec to MPEG 2, along with 50GIG discs, and BD will be soon be a chef that provides meals just as dazzling as HD, if it doesn't already.

Financially, as well, with studios exclusive to BD appearing to be solidly united behind the format, while an increasing number of PS3 owners will be buying HDTVs, it no longer appears that buying into BD will be any kind of risk, however slight that risk might have been. I say that because it's well known that Sony has had some serious financial losses in the recent past.

As for HD-DVD, I believe that it will be around for several more years at least, as they do have some big titles that won't be available on BD. Of course, I'd hate to see the dead and dying on the battlefield when BD releases the 'Star Wars' epics, and Disney swings into action with their heavyweight fare, but I don't believe that will happen for some time yet. Assuming that HD ultimately dies (and a high-quality hybrid player may show how silly this war is, with the result that both formats may yet merge), I wonder how many people here will give HD its due. Honestly, how good would BD be right now if not for HD? How much would it really have improved, and just how fast would the improvements come? To answer this question objectively, I would ask some of you to put your 'fanboy' attitudes in your back pocket, and put both feet squarely on the ground. Companies are run by people, with all of their inherent flaws, not by machines.

In the meantime, I'm patiently waiting for the arrival of the second-gen BD players, one of which I will buy, to be properly initiated with 'Casino Royale.' Yes, I will exercise patience as I wait, another term for 'Expertly-Disguised Frustration.'

[MFS3Kiryu]

That's a great post and yes, I agree. The competition has helped force Blu-Ray to get to higher levels of PQ and AQ faster then it would have on it's own. Without HD-DVD we might still be getting releases like The Fifth Element. Eventually things might have picked up, but when those crappy first generation discs appeared on the scene and nearly flopped, the risk of losing an entire market is what prompted the BDA to get some quality content out fast. And they have.

But now, in the later stages, with Universal fighting a war it can't win alone, the consumer is getting hurt. Not only the consumer, but the HD disc format as well. Without a unified format there won't be huge special sets like there are on DVD. The big guns won't come out because the use base is split. Only companies willing to take the rest will drop their franchises into the battle. Disney seems to be testing the water with the Pirates movies, if they do good business we might see the Disney vault open, and with that the players will fly off the shelves.

Also the longer dual formats exist the higher the risk that neither will replace DVD or become anything other then a niche market. Especially with 3terabyte HDV discs and resolutions beyond 1080p looming in the horizon.

[Deane Johnson]

Nicely written post AD. It's good to have discussion that has some depth and explanation.

I am curious about your thinking in this one statement. I am wondering what factors led you to this conclusion. Is it player price alone, or were there other factors.

agreeing with my fellow advocates that HD would have been the unquestionably-preferred format if all studios had released titles for both technologies from the beginning,

[dialog_gvf]

Great post.

I agree that with 7/8 studio support HD DVD would have been much stronger, and perhaps dominant. But, the studios made their decisions, and many people chose to support BD on THAT basis. The PS/3 was undoubtedly the main reason the studio's made the choices they did.

Sony had a reduction in its profits of about 6% due to losses in the game division ($426 million profit in Q3-2005 to a $526 million loss in Q3-2006). It has been very profitable overall for several years.

Gary

[BTBuck1]

Originally Posted by dialog_gvf

Great post.

I agree that with 7/8 studio support HD DVD would have been much stronger, and perhaps dominant. But, the studios made their decisions, and many people chose to support BD on THAT basis. The PS/3 was undoubtedly the main reason the studio's made the choices they did.

thank god, as im glad that we only have one studio crippling our content due to space limitations (WB), rather than several.

[ADWyatt]

Deane--

There were two factors, which have often talked about in other forums, that led me to conclude that HD-DVD would initially have been the format of choice for consumers if both technologies had been released during the same time frame, and with the same studio support, in 2006. Those factors are cost and quality.

Toshiba's intro unit price of $500 appears to have been unrealistic in my opinion, except as a ploy to lure in middle-class, and lower-middle-class, consumers, who comprise the large majority of customers. I don't know if this is true, but I've heard from many sources that Toshiba took a loss on the hardware end in the expectation of making the money back in software, especially if the company could undermine BD out of the gate.

If true, the HD format has shot itself in the foot by making an expensive 1080p unit (albeit primarily for those Home Theater enthusiasts who simply have to have the best), and allowing Universal to price-gouge the consumer with their idiotic 'flipper' disc technology. If HD had produced $700 1080p players and movies no more expensive than $24.95 store retail ($19.95 online), they might have been more influential in the marketplace even now.

Regarding the other determining factor, HD did and does produce superb-quality videos when supporting studios so determine it. Conversely, BD's initial offerings were generally somewhat less than the best a person might have hoped for. I'm assuming this was the result of rushing BD to the pubic a little more quickly than developers should have, in their effort to cut into HD's exclusivity. If my thinking is correct, and HD would have been able to initially release a sufficient number of top titles from any studio it wished, my feeling is that BD may not have been given adequate time by the public to improve its standards. Of course, when new technology is introduced no one actually knows what the buying public will decide on, but we do know that the critics were initially harsh on the BD format. However, in BD's favor, of two things I am absolutely certain. Had BD developers been given one more year to refine the technology (a year that HD wasn't about to grant them), even with shared studio rights, the Sony name, along with the PS3 console, would have given the BD format the upper hand. And if BD had retained exclusive studio rights, HD would have had no chance to succeed in the marketplace.

For now, we can at least be thankful that competition between the formats is forcing developers and studios to give us higher quality than we might otherwise have expected. In that regard, it may not be the worst thing in the world that we currently have competing formats.

[Deane Johnson]

AD, I can't disagree with much of what you say.

At this point, it's going to pretty much boil down to studio support and BD has the advantage by a long way. With Universal possibly undergoing regime change during 2007, it's certainly possible they might go format neutral during the year. Certainly there is no evidence of that yet, but one can speculate.

Universal going format neutral would be a pretty good sized nail in HDs coffin.

EDIT: By the way, I hope you're on here often as you have new thoughts in this changing landscape. It's interesting to read an analytical viewpoint rather than those many of us have that are rather emotionally and hope based.

[phloyd]

Originally Posted by ADWyatt

Regarding the other determining factor, HD did and does produce superb-quality videos when supporting studios so determine it. Conversely, BD's initial offerings were generally somewhat less than the best a person might have hoped for.

You could equally say that HD DVD was to blame for the initial offerings for BD to be the way it was. If there was no HD DVD to compete with there would be no time pressure and the whole BD launch would have been delayed to wait for PS3 and better yields on BD50.

Due to the pressure to release in a timely fashion, BD studios rushed titles out with what they had available - which is clearly inferior to current resources including capacity, masters and encoding ability.

This is not just my opinion - I have seen it noted by BDA insiders (though I forget exactly who right now).

Also of note, there are a number of sub par HD DVD releases that seem to be conveniently forgotten when the quality issue arises.

So you can look at it either way - HD DVD pushed BD on time frame and quality - one was a good thing and the other was not.

[Wendell R. Breland]

If there was no Blu-ray, then we would have a highly compressed red laser disc. For DVD, Sony/Philips did the right thing and gave in to Toshiba's more advanced data storage system. When it came time for Toshiba to give in to the advanced data system of the BDA, they refused and we have this damn mess of a format battle.

[Ascended_Saiyan]

Originally Posted by Wendell R. Breland

If there was no Blu-ray, then we would have a highly compressed red laser disc. For DVD, Sony/Philips did the right thing and gave in to Toshiba's more advanced data storage system. When it came time for Toshiba to give in to the advanced data system of the BDA, they refused and we have this damn mess of a format battle.

That is so very true. I couldn't agree more.

[Damon Payne]

I'm an objectivist too. FWIW, here is my analysis as to why I initially thought BluRay would win.

http://www.damonpayne.com/default.as...2-d5d65ba11f43

[JTK]

Originally Posted by Wendell R. Breland

If there was no Blu-ray, then we would have a highly compressed red laser disc. For DVD, Sony/Philips did the right thing and gave in to Toshiba's more advanced data storage system. When it came time for Toshiba to give in to the advanced data system of the BDA, they refused and we have this damn mess of a format battle.

That's it, in a nutshell. That's why Toshiba and Microsoft deserve most, if not all of the blame for this continuing charade.

[Nismobeach]

Welcome to Blu friend.

[powerSURG]

we've got a saying in the Air Force. Cross into the Blue.

[NrKissed]

Very nice post. You have prompted me to stop lurking just to give you props.

I also enjoyed Daemon's blog post regarding the choice to go Blu. I went through a similar process before deciding a PS3 would be my choice.

[Polyh3dron]

Without HD-DVD lighting a fire under BD's butt, BDs would still suck. I don't think you'll find anyone disagreeing with you on that.

[pretender2j]

Originally Posted by Polyh3dron

Without HD-DVD lighting a fire under BD's butt, BDs would still suck. I don't think you'll find anyone disagreeing with you on that.

As phloyd said if HD-DVD hadn't been there in the first place this wouldn't have been a problem.

JB

[Wendell R. Breland]

Originally Posted by Polyh3dron

Without HD-DVD lighting a fire under BD's butt, BDs would still suck. I don't think you'll find anyone disagreeing with you on that.

I will certainly disagree. Ever hear of LaserVision (12") video disc, DVD and D-Theater. All of these formats had standouts in terms of software quality (both picture & sound). Just because studios release on a common format does not mean they are not fierce competitors. It was always one upmanship among the studios to come up with the best disc or tape title.

[AmericanCliche]

Competition is what develops any business. If there was no competition, there wouldn’t be any need for improvement or development.

That said, it was really great to see some one explain in a rational and fact based statement why Blu-ray is the format of the future.