Who has been here since the format war, and are you surprised by how heated it got?

[steve1971]

I was here and it indeed got heated at times. Fun times! Cant wait until the next format war to begin which will be Blu ray vs 4K Blu ray!!!! God I hope not.

[AnamorphicWidescreen]

Originally Posted by steve1971

Cant wait until the next format war to begin which will be Blu ray vs 4K Blu ray!!!! God I hope not.

Well, I guess you're joking - since 4K Blu's already play fine on Blu players....unless I'm misunderstanding something here...

[sonicyogurt]

Originally Posted by AnamorphicWidescreen

Well, I guess you're joking - since 4K Blu's already play fine on Blu players

There are no 4K Blu-ray discs to be played at the moment. "Mastered in 4K" discs aren't 4K.

[dobyblue]

Yes, I have been here since the format war (mid-2006 I think) and it did get very heated...I was in a lot of those heated battles myself.

I was very happy 7 years ago to stop maintaining this particular bit of data collection:

HDD 279HD/303BD, HTS 251HD/270BD, HTF 104HD/107BD, UD 150HD/133BD, Talk 306HD/322BD
10.31.07

HD DVD	 PQ 	 SQ 	 TOTAL 		Blu-ray	 PQ 	 SQ 	 TOTAL 
HighDef	 3.88 	 3.61 	 3.74 		HighDef	 3.94 	 3.81 	 3.87 
HTSpot	 3.96 	 3.88 	 3.92 		HTSpot	 4.09 	 4.28 	 4.18 
DVDTalk	 3.63 	 3.50 	 3.56 		DVDTalk	 3.69 	 3.74 	 3.71 
HTForum	 3.89 	 3.68 	 3.78 		HTForum	 4.25 	 4.04 	 4.14 
UpDisc	 3.98 	 3.80 	 3.89 		UpDisc	 4.03 	 4.12 	 4.07 
Totals	 3.84 	 3.67 	 3.76 		Totals	 3.94	 3.96 	 3.95 

[Dylan34]

Originally Posted by slimdude

Yes, and they actually look like toys. The blu-ray players are so light, you can lift it with one finger. The first generation blu-ray players, were bigger, sturdier and well build.

I enjoyed the build quality of the players for the first few years. All the players now are little, light, and made out of cheap materials. OPPO and a couple of others still release quality builds. Hopefully when 4K players are released, they go back to making quality players.

[steve1971]

Originally Posted by AnamorphicWidescreen

Well, I guess you're joking - since 4K Blu's already play fine on Blu players....unless I'm misunderstanding something here...

There arent any 4K Blu rays yet unless your talking about the Mastered In 4K Blu ray disc's which arent true 4K. So no I aint joking.

[AnamorphicWidescreen]

Originally Posted by steve1971

There arent any 4K Blu rays yet unless your talking about the Mastered In 4K Blu ray disc's which arent true 4K. So no I aint joking.

OK - Thanks for the clarification. I know I have Godzilla '98 Mastered in 4K Blu (which I chose buying over the slightly less expensive regular Blu of Godzilla '98).

So, it sounds to me as if at some point down the road we will be seeing 4K Blu's that will only be able to play in 4K Blu players? If so, unlikely (but not impossible) that I will get a 4K Blu player; if so, I will definitely still keep my regular (non-4K) Blu player....The PQ & color on most Blu's is already better than anything I could have hoped for even 10 years ago....

And, there's always streaming....

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by AnamorphicWidescreen

So, it sounds to me as if at some point down the road we will be seeing 4K Blu's that will only be able to play in 4K Blu players?

yup, end of this year if the time table is maintained. Mastered in 4k means that the film was mastered in 4k and then down converted during compression to 1080p for the BD and it is a normal 1080p BD. UHD BD (or 4k BD) is a BD where the content is 2160p and it matches the resolution of newer 2160p TVs (also sometimes called 4k or UHD).

[dobyblue]

Remember the huge sighs of relief and cheers when these two graphics got released by Home Media Magazine?

Market Share



Top 10 titles:

[ack_bak]

Originally Posted by Dylan34

I enjoyed the build quality of the players for the first few years. All the players now are little, light, and made out of cheap materials. OPPO and a couple of others still release quality builds. Hopefully when 4K players are released, they go back to making quality players.

The first BD players may have been built like tanks but they were slow as molasses and really pricey. I don't really feel like I need a big heavy player, the light ones have lasted for me with little issues.

[ack_bak]

Originally Posted by dobyblue

Remember the huge sighs of relief and cheers when these two graphics got released by Home Media Magazine?

Market Share



Top 10 titles:

Those were the days!

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by ack_bak

The first BD players may have been built like tanks but they were slow as molasses and really pricey. I don't really feel like I need a big heavy player, the light ones have lasted for me with little issues.

Yup, I don't miss the old Sony BDP-S1 and BDP-S300. The latter in particular was glacially slow and in the very next product generation the players had been shrunk down and sped up considerably. I've lost count of all the players I've had, but ironically enough it's the Oppo 95, another tank-like machine, that's given me the most problems recently.

[AgentOrange]

Originally Posted by slimdude

Yes, and they actually look like toys. The blu-ray players are so light, you can lift it with one finger. The first generation blu-ray players, were bigger, sturdier and well build.

But they were also slow.

My newer 2014 Sony does feel like cheap plastic compared to my 2007-2008 Panasonic, and I hate the "stealth fighter" look Sony went with for their entire line. Yet it performs and loads discs soooooo much faster I can live with tradeoffs.

[dvdmike]

I have a BDP-360 boxed up as a back up player, keep thinking I should break it out and play.

[spectre08]

my Toshiba HD-A3 HD-DVD player is still going strong. Slower than mud, but built like a rock.

[bruceames]

Never was a big deal to me that the early players were slower to load a disc. I mean come on, we're talking maybe 30-45 seconds of extra wait time for a two hour movie. I could see the complaining if it were a computer where every mouse click means more waiting. But a two hour movie is going to play two hours in any player.

Furthermore, the early Blu-ray discs weren't nearly as loaded with Java and trailers (HD DVD had neither) so a case could be made that the average wait time from close tray to movie start is actually longer today than it was 8 years ago.

[Coenskubrick]

Mmm... I missed the whole thing, and didn't have any blu rays at all until about a year ago. I was afraid to upgrade because... I don't know, they were a little more expensive? Can hardly remember. Anyway during the war it seemed stupid to me because as little as I knew, what was obvious to me was that blu ray was future proof and HD DVD was not, and I couldn't understand why people would go for HD DVD when the only reason was the titles and obviously they would eventually all go to the winner, so it might as well be the better format.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by bruceames.

Never was a big deal to me that the early players were slower to load a disc. I mean come on, we're talking maybe 30-45 seconds of extra wait time for a two hour movie. I could see the complaining if it were a computer where every mouse click means more waiting. But a two hour movie is going to play two hours in any player.

agree I always find that funny

Furthermore, the early Blu-ray discs weren't nearly as loaded with Java and trailers (HD DVD had neither) so a case could be made that the average wait time from close tray to movie start is actually longer today than it was 8 years ago.

depends, some disks today let you skip the trailers while back in 2006 that did not happen so it is not that easy of a comparison. But you are missing the point, what would happen If you were to play todays disk on that 2006 player or that 2006 disk on todays player? that is how you compare "slowness" same content on different players.

[tronotized22]

Originally Posted by Blu-Dog

I've been here from the beginning of the Format Wars, and the worst memories were watching Toshiba pay flat-out bribes to studios to get them to go HD-DVD. It was absolutely pitiful to see; I knew the studios were just playing along to get the cash, and so did everyone else. Sony already owned a studio. Toshiba couldn't buy anyone in installments.


Some of the best memories are also the worst. As studios dropped out of HD-DVD, or half-heartedly "renewed their commitment" to both formats, or offered crazy support for dual format players (vaporware of a particularly pungent kind), the HD-DVD faithful did the same thing I saw three years later with 3-D:

• Insult the companies that didn't go their way as greedy
• Insult the companies that didn't go their way as stupid
• Insult the user base that didn't make the same choice they did as both greedy and stupid.
• Predict that one way or another, HD-DVD was "here to stay"
• Set up an "in or out" clubhouse for HD-DVD, and if you didn't belong, any member could shout "HD-DVD is here to stay!" and order others out of the clubhouse, as a troll
• Start the "show me your papers" tradition, asking how many HD-DVD's did you pick up this week/this month (not "if you" but "how many")
• Equated "support" with "vote with your money"

Yet the format died, for many reasons, primarily that is simply offered less storage. It was so obvious.


4K really has to have plenty of storage to make it, and it needn't be expensive, either. The Format War, along with the 3-D Fizzle, are cautionary tales about trying to base a complete change on the support of unrealistic fanatics to support technology. It has to be simple, obvious, and not require a complete reboot of all technology in the home.


I am not sure if this will occur...

Funnily enough, I was reading the thread about DVDs being attached to Blu-Rays as a "cancerous tumor" and I see this exact same thinking as you have stated for the format wars. Why do people think like this? I have been pondering this question for a few days now, as reading the doomsday rhetoric from some of these threads when talking about digital HD movies.

[Derb]

Been here before & after BD took over the market.

2 things immediately come to mind..

Toshiba didn't release a good player until the XA2, yet disc playback on all players was hit or miss & firmware updates didn't seem to improve long term reliability. My fav was having 3 copies of the same disc & each one would work "Randomly"

The real nail in HD-DVD's downfall & when I stopped buying them altogether is when WHV announced they would only support BD on so & so date. At the time, stats shown 40% of everything you watch on Home Video was in some way connected to WHV. Basically that announcement meant had HD DVD stuck it out anyway, their catalog would almost shrink 50% per month.

--

I have nothing against VC-1 & wasn't too thrilled when BD shifted almost entirely to AVC. Btw, is there a remastered "Training Day" out with the corrected aspect ratio on BD yet? One of the more comparable titles back then that people reviewed as "better" on HD DVD.

Price of players.. Yeah Toshiba was cheaper, but their discs were not thanks to the $5 hike for Combo discs. I remember the $44.99 MSPR price tags.

As for heated forum battles of which is better & why in a BD forum... Can't say I took part. Why would you here?