Ask questions to The Digital Bits team (Bill Hunt, Jeff Kleist et.al.)

[TheRealBob]

Originally Posted by Bill Hunt

I don't believe returns are factored into these numbers.

Hopefully at least the "open item" sales don't count then, or that would be completely ridiculous.

(Reminds me of a book that's supposedly one of the all-time bestsellers. This book is associated with a certain group/religion that is pretty big, but seemingly not big enough to sustain that kind of number. Eventually former members of this group came forward to say that one of the jobs of the group's members was to purchase the book, keep it in mind condition, then return it back to their group's warehouse where it would be shipped out to bookstores again and resold. Since the group got a portion of the sales price from the bookstores and since they saved the cost of printing another book, they found this to be a cost-effective way of getting bragging rights to having an all-time bestselling book.)

[Bill Hunt]

Originally Posted by ACD

There is a nasty thread directed at you Bill on HDD. Basically says you are going to extremely angry about Warner's Invasion not being delayed 3 weeks on HD DVD.

Why would I care that Invasion isn't delayed three weeks by some retailers? It's not like they're going to sell all that many copies anyway. It's also not going to change the fact that Warner's done with HD-DVD come May/June.

EDITED: I actually went and read the thread in question. Good grief. It's pretty amusing actually. Not much else needs to be said, I think, except that I feel like quoting Braveheart:

"William Wallace is seven feet tall!"

"Yes, I've heard. Kills men by the hundreds. And if HE were here, he'd consume the English with fireballs from his eyes, and bolts of lightning from his arse..."

[Bill Hunt]

Originally Posted by IanNM

Bill,
First of all thanks for all the great work over the last 10 years at the Bits, I've been enjoying it for a long long time.

I'm probably beating a dead horse, but could you clarify a bit for me on what you'll be posting in the future from NPD? Are the percentages still okay (ie bluray had 80% this week, hddvd 20%) or is that out as well?
Thanks,
Ian

Nope. we're posting no numbers. We'll comment on specific numbers if they're posted elsewhere, but at this point we'll be talking general trends only.

[ClaytonMG]

Someone posted that link to the HighDefDigest site where people are saying you'll be super angry over The Invasion and there's some hatefilled responses in there. And I know that you've said that you've recieved quite a few bad e-mails. My question is, what do you do when you recieve them? Do you just ignore them or do you respond? Are there other members of the Bits that also get them? Are there any consequences for what they do? It seems odd that people would be THAT obsessed with a format to just start sending hate mail instead of trying to convince you that they have the better format. I am also curious, do you know if people at WB are also recieving horrid e-mails? I know on HD-DVD.com people were joking about sending death threats to people at WB.

[Bill Hunt]

Originally Posted by jubaiweaponx

bill, love your work over at "THE BITS" and its a pleasure to have you here ,I recently read in germany hddvd owners are being offered 150 euros for their players ,blu seems to have been widely accepted around the world (dominates japanese markets) why has adoption in the US. been slowed was blu more heavily marketed outside the states ? And if we could only get that trade in offer here for the poor hddvd`ers
thanks

Likely because this was the main market where the format war was fought.

[Bill Hunt]

Originally Posted by Grubert

Bill,

Can you persuade them at least to let you publish the weekly, YTD and since inception relative ratios like Nielsen VideoScan allows Home Media Magazine to publish? That would be an acceptable compromise.

I don't really think that's possible. I'm trying to get CEA to post such numbers, but even getting standard DVD numbers out of them has been difficult these last few months.

[Bill Hunt]

Originally Posted by ClaytonMG

Someone posted that link to the HighDefDigest site where people are saying you'll be super angry over The Invasion and there's some hatefilled responses in there. And I know that you've said that you've recieved quite a few bad e-mails. My question is, what do you do when you recieve them? Do you just ignore them or do you respond? Are there other members of the Bits that also get them? Are there any consequences for what they do? It seems odd that people would be THAT obsessed with a format to just start sending hate mail instead of trying to convince you that they have the better format. I am also curious, do you know if people at WB are also recieving horrid e-mails? I know on HD-DVD.com people were joking about sending death threats to people at WB.

Actually, we don't get that many. Maybe one every couple of days, and most aren't that nasty. Most people don't care anymore, so it's really just the diehards that respond like that.

I don't think other Bits staffers get them. I actually respond politely to some of them, and sometimes get embarassed letters back. A lot of times people fire off these e-mails kneejerk, and then are embarassed and apologetic when you turn out not to be the antichrist they've made you out to be in their heads. The most nasty ones we just circular file - we don't get many of those anymore. It's not worth responding, because those people just get their kicks taking up your time. Some people just want to debate you endelessly, no matter what you say, so it's not worth it. And yes, studio people do get hate mail. It just seems like people online feel comfortable saying things they would never consider in real life. I wonder if most of these guys aren't fairly young kids. Personal behaviour online is a very hard thing to figure.

[JohnAlden]

From the looks of things blu-ray has already won in Germany. There most be one german who hates Uwe Boll films

[DaViD Boulet]

Hey Bill,

I've got a question for ya,

Ron over at HTF has stated something ot the effect of "Bill has his sources that represent one side of the format war, and we have ours which represent the other". That's paraphrasing, but his comments suggested that you get inside scoop for blu and HTF gets it for red.

Can you comment? I'm curious if you have any leaks from the HD DVD camp, or if you're sources are pro-blu only. Also, do you know anything about HTF's leads? They certainly have the mods and Ron convinced that FOX was about to go blu and that Warner's shift to blu was an 11th-hour decision (obviously much different than what Penton and others have confirmed here, weeks before WB's announcement). Let me emphasize that this isn't intended as a sideways jab at HTF or the legitimacy of anyone's sources: just wondering from what camp these various groups might be hearing.

[MerrickG]

Bill,

The HD-DVD camp has already started a FUD-fest that Toshiba will be making a HUGE announcement at the Super Bowl.

Along the lines of: Disney, Fox, or Lionsgate coming aboard. Warner reversing their decision. Announcing TL51 titles and rolling out big time catalog titles BLAH BLAH BLAH.
They ignore the fact that it makes NO SENSE that they would be talking about studios or TL51 in front of the football J6P crowd.

Of couse you and I along with everyone else on this board know that is not going to happen, but lets just hear you say it for the record!

[reiella]

Originally Posted by merrick97

Bill,

The HD-DVD camp has already started a FUD-fest that Toshiba will be making a HUGE announcement at the Super Bowl.

Along the lines of: Disney, Fox, or Lionsgate coming aboard. Warner reversing their decision. Announcing TL51 titles and rolling out big time catalog titles BLAH BLAH BLAH.
They ignore the fact that it makes NO SENSE that they would be talking about studios or TL51 in front of the football J6P crowd.

Of couse you and I along with everyone else on this board know that is not going to happen, but lets just hear you say it for the record!

I'm banking on the use of a line from a Time Warner property from Grand Master Shake to showcase Warner's renewed commitment to HD-DVD.

"We got your money already, so play. Use this damn thing as a coaster, I don't care, I got your money <expletive>."

[blindcat87]

On that topic, I've been wanting to suggest to somebody Blu who posts on any of the forums where this old canard is being dredged up again and again that if WB and associated studios were going to go red until the last minute, why given the length of time involved in the production pipeline was one of New Line's first releases of 2008 optimized for Blu-Ray? Would have been quite a waste of time and resources if they were going to drop the format.

I am also interested in your thoughts on that factor of the whole conspiracy theory Bill. I just thought that this was an interesting point when Max pointed it out in his thread the other day.

Chris

Originally Posted by DaViD Boulet

Hey Bill,

I've got a question for ya,

Ron over at HTF has stated something ot the effect of "Bill has his sources that represent one side of the format war, and we have ours which represent the other". That's paraphrasing, but his comments suggested that you get inside scoop for blu and HTF gets it for red.

Can you comment? I'm curious if you have any leaks from the HD DVD camp, or if you're sources are pro-blu only. Also, do you know anything about HTF's leads? They certainly have the mods and Ron convinced that FOX was about to go blu and that Warner's shift to blu was an 11th-hour decision (obviously much different than what Penton and others have confirmed here, weeks before WB's announcement).

[Bill Hunt]

Originally Posted by DaViD Boulet

Hey Bill,

I've got a question for ya,

Ron over at HTF has stated something ot the effect of "Bill has his sources that represent one side of the format war, and we have ours which represent the other". That's paraphrasing, but his comments suggested that you get inside scoop for blu and HTF gets it for red.

Can you comment? I'm curious if you have any leaks from the HD DVD camp, or if you're sources are pro-blu only. Also, do you know anything about HTF's leads? They certainly have the mods and Ron convinced that FOX was about to go blu and that Warner's shift to blu was an 11th-hour decision (obviously much different than what Penton and others have confirmed here, weeks before WB's announcement).

I love Ron and everyone at HTF. Just talked with him the other day.

The only comment I'll make is that we have many, many sources all over the place, in both camps and at every level of this thing. We also hear from many people who aren't in either camp, but are privy to such goings-on. So it's in absolutely no way accurate to say that we only hear one side of this thing. We get a pretty good picture of both sides and the non-partisan folks as well - a very complete picture, I believe - and we base our opinion in no small measure upon that. We've been doing this far too long not to recognize when someone is trying to blow smoke up our ass for their own purposes.

Fox was NEVER about to go red, and Warner's decision was far from an 11th hour. You may recall that they were actually hinting they were going to be picking a side after the holidays at Blu-ray fest in October. Many, many people reported before it happened that Warner was leaning Blu, including Business Week. Let's just say that the HD-DVD camp would like everyone to think this was a big surprise, and that they'd almost won the format war, and that they were betrayed. But come on. If they really were surprised, then they deserved to lose. They knew this could happen and they took their best shot at keeping Warner and rolled the dice and they came up empty. It was no surprise and it was never as close a thing as they're now spinning it and as they'd like enthusiasts to believe. Seriously, does anyone think that Fox - who delayed their Blu-ray titles for over 6 months just to get BD+ protection - was about to go HD-DVD, which has even less protection? Not a snowball's chance in hades.

I mean, come on. All you have to do is apply a little common sense to this thing to sniff out the BS. There's long been a degree of salesmanship going on with both camps, but it's not hard to ferret out the big picture if you apply yourself. You just have to want to SEE the big picture for what it actually is, and not just believe the hype because you prefer it. One of the reasons we finally decided to back Blu-ray was that starting mid last year, the HD-DVD sales pitch was just getting way too far-fetched to be believed by anyone with experience in dealing with the home video industry. Maybe it was just easier for us at The Bits to see because we actually deal with and interact with so many different levels of this industry - consumers, studios, creative talent, VPs and CEOs, technical support people, marketing folks, retailers, manufactuers, industry market researches, veteran industry media, etc. So many people, including even many enthusiasts, don't have that broad a perspective to draw upon when forming their opinions. It's all too easy just to believe the hype, and I think many people do.

[Bill Hunt]

Originally Posted by merrick97

Bill,

The HD-DVD camp has already started a FUD-fest that Toshiba will be making a HUGE announcement at the Super Bowl.

Along the lines of: Disney, Fox, or Lionsgate coming aboard. Warner reversing their decision. Announcing TL51 titles and rolling out big time catalog titles BLAH BLAH BLAH.
They ignore the fact that it makes NO SENSE that they would be talking about studios or TL51 in front of the football J6P crowd.

Of couse you and I along with everyone else on this board know that is not going to happen, but lets just hear you say it for the record!

This reminds me of those who keep saying "The end of the world is upon us!" and then the morning after their predicted Doomsday, everyone wakes up and goes about their business as usual.

[Bill Hunt]

Originally Posted by Bill Hunt

It's possible yes. I've noticed this too and I'm looking into it now.

On the Paramount titles thing, we believe that retailers are just shifting their existing supplies of titles around to stores that sell higher volumes. This doesn't signify anything on Paramount's part yet, just as the Amazon listings don't necessarily mean anything.

[Jack Torrance]

Originally Posted by Maxpower1987

Anyone who is reporting otherwise is either bitter or a fool.

Or probably both

[NoQuestion]

Originally Posted by Bill Hunt

We're expecting to hear at least some big title news for the year ahead from Warner next week. So watch The Bits and Blu-ray.com early next week.

Well it looks like ill be refreshing bluray.com the The Bits constantly each day next week at work waiting to hear about these big titles .

Thanks for answering my earlier question Bill, i am looking forward to seeing what else FOX/MGM announces to go along with the rest for the big marketing push.

[Caligula]

Mr.Hunt,

What do you think about studios especially warner offering hd dvd fanboys disc replacement for blu ray discs? I think this wouldnt be fair for blu ray customers. if they are going to do this, i thought they should offer us SDVD customers replacement for blu-ray discs? would this be fair to request? I strongly disagree with replacing because they knew format war would be risk losing money if they invested on wrong/dead format. Your thoughts will be apperciated! Thank you for your time Mr.Hunt

Caligula

[Bill Hunt]

Originally Posted by Caligula

Mr.Hunt,

What do you think about studios especially warner offering hd dvd fanboys disc replacement for blu ray discs? I think this wouldnt be fair for blu ray customers. if they are going to do this, i thought they should offer us SDVD customers replacement for blu-ray discs? would this be fair to request? I strongly disagree with replacing because they knew format war would be risk losing money if they invested on wrong/dead format. Your thoughts will be apperciated! Thank you for your time Mr.Hunt

Caligula

Honestly, I don't really have an opinion as to what would be fair or unfair. I'm sure everyone has their own personal feelings on the issue, but to me this isn't really about personal feelings. In principle, I'm in favor of almost anything that ends this format war sooner rather than later, and allows us all to move on and put all the bitterness and spite behind us. The format war should never have happened, and the sooner the enthusiast community can heal and move on, the better.

[MerrickG]

Bill,

I vaguely recall you or someone else mention that Fox demoed I, Robot at a conference last November, which I remember is where Dan Silverberg made his famous comment that started EVERYTHING.

Is I, Robot going to please us in terms of picture quality??