One Month... exactly. (The holiday season's effect on Blu-ray)

[AV_Integrated]

Thanksgiving falls on November 23rd this year. That puts Black Friday on the 24th of November and gives everyone one month to the 24th of December for the majority of their holiday shopping. This also all happens to coincide with the release of BD players announced by Sony, Panasonic, and Pioneer... and a little gaming system called PS3.

Is it only me, or does it seem like that may really be the first inidcation of how well Blu-ray is fairing in this format war? They have done so poorly so far with MPEG2 & BD25 & Samsung - but it seems that this holiday season may show more than a little shift in how the format war will play out.

Moreso, if Blu-ray comes up short at the end of the holiday season and PS3 fails to impress, where does that leave Blu-ray and how detrimental will it be to them? Do you see studios and CE support shifting, or at least joining the HD-DVD camp should PS3 come out flat and sales of players not be strong? Most of all - what if movies, by years end, still look as bad as they do today? I'm not willing to call it over for Blu-ray then, but it seems like they aren't going to have much of a chance to truly win unless they are strong this holiday season. At the very least, HD-DVD may be guaranteed to coexist for a long time.

[ProvenFlipper]

Originally Posted by AV_Integrated

Moreso, if Blu-ray comes up short at the end of the holiday season and PS3 fails to impress, where does that leave Blu-ray and how detrimental will it be to them? Do you see studios and CE support shifting, or at least joining the HD-DVD camp should PS3 come out flat and sales of players not be strong? Most of all - what if movies, by years end, still look as bad as they do today? I'm not willing to call it over for Blu-ray then, but it seems like they aren't going to have much of a chance to truly win unless they are strong this holiday season. At the very least, HD-DVD may be guaranteed to coexist for a long time.

There are going to be many people who take home some sort of BD player, and are going to be completely satistifed with what they get. Like I've said before, many people simply can't tell the difference in different formats. There are customers who stand inside Best Buy and marvel at the quality of the in-store feed. Now most of us here all know the 'HD' feed at retailers is crap, but people who aren't as educated, who don't know what to look for think it looks great.

Now BD, despite its 'crappy' discs, looks far superior to the 'HD' contained on in-store loops and most of whats on cable. So how do you think these said customers are going to react when they used to seeing something they think is great and then they are exposed to BD, or HD-DVD even?

[vick vega]

I think they will probably drop a load in their pants

[PurpleAardvark]

Hummmmm.... Codec's again. Here is the reality to it, BLU RAY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. IT IS THE STUDIO WHO PICKS THE FORMAT. Give it up alot of people are sick of reading it. Truth be told I am so unimppressed with HD because of the player's being pieces of junk IMO. Samsung did a great job with the player, even though it was the first one to come out. I have people who own HD players come over and watch my blu ray. They think there is a night and day difference between the two and I am only using 1080i. IMO that right there says more to me than any of the crap (sorry for the lack of better word) about codec's or the prasing about HD. I have heard more problems about HD players than Blu ray players. Matter of fact the count is 23 defective HD out of 48, to 2 defective Blu ray 23. Simple math will prove which will go farther. If you go into bestbuy, Circit City, and American TV guess which one they recommend Blu Ray. I think that the PS3 is giong to even push things further ahead for blu ray too. Do you know how many people are looking foward to it? Do you know how many people hate Microsoft. I think that has an influence too. I will always have a mac computer and people say that mac's are no where as good as a pc/windows base computer. Wrong again guess what is better for photo editing, movie editing, website design, ect... Mac. Guess who supports Blu Ray, Mac. I believe that blu ray will win this format war by a land slide. Look at the PSP they put out DVD for that little thing and look how fast they sell. When PS3 hits the market what do you think is going to happen with blu ray DVD's. Sony is one of the biggest names in home tv's, DVD's, ect... It is a name every one knows and has heard of. Toshiba is not, average joe who doesn't know anything is going to go with a name he/she knows not something that is a risk. IMO I feel that people have over looked these kind of things and just have nit picked at stuff they have no idea about. So after reading this you can come to 3 conclusions, Blu Ray players are far better do to the fact they are more likely to work, Blu Ray has bigger names and support, and people are sick of reading about codec's! If you are really that unhappy with the codec's ***** to the studio's and editers.

[vick vega]

you forgot they will have more space once they do dual layer.

[AV_Integrated]

Originally Posted by PurpleAardvark

Hummmmm.... Codec's again. Here is the reality to it, BLU RAY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. IT IS THE STUDIO WHO PICKS THE FORMAT. Give it up alot of people are sick of reading it.

You are almost correct... Except, the studios have to use authoring software which gets the video from the original master format compressed into a Blu-ray compatible format. The ONLY software in existence to this point is produced by (guess it)... yep, Sony. And they only offer ONE codec.

Care to guess what that is?

Yep, MPEG2.

So, while it is fine and dandy to say that studios can use MPEG2, AVC, or VC-1 per BD specifications, the reality is that they can only use what is made available to them, or they must develop the software from scratch so that they can author their discs. I am not sure who is developing the newer software, but I have heard that upcoming WB and Disney movies will shift from MPEG2 to AVC or VC-1. I think that is the biggest step in the jump for BD to equal HD-DVD in video quality.

Now, if they could get BD50 figured out.

[BTBuck1]

Originally Posted by AV_Integrated

the studios have to use authoring software which gets the video from the original master format compressed into a Blu-ray compatible format. The ONLY software in existence to this point is produced by (guess it)... yep, Sony. And they only offer ONE codec.

Care to guess what that is?

Yep, MPEG2.

.

I thought I read recently that the BR authoring software was updated to include VC-1 because initially it did not have it.

[PurpleAardvark]

I think you missed the point. No one cares about the Codec's except for a few people and the rest of us are sick of reading about it. Read the post about being a little sick of things. Honestly the past few blu ray dvd's I bought, stealth, Into The Blue, and Silent Hill blew any thing that HD has offered for sound and pic. quailty. Does it matter that it was mpeg2. Nope I don't care and niether do a lot of people. It isn't the codec it is the product that matters. By the way call sony or samsung they will tell you about the formats for codec's they have made avaible.
However I do agree with above about the space being a plus too. 50 gig disc are going to rock. So why do you think VHS won its war at the time? Space and room for improvement. Nothing is perfect when it first comes out. If us as consumers keep on buying blu ray products, Blu Ray will have more money to invest in resurch and development. Which means over time things will keep getting better and better and cheaper as well. HD is like buying a new computer, you are going to get use from it for while and will be the new hot thing for a while but it will be out dated in a year. There is very little room to expand HD because of the space on the disc. I see the writing on the wall deos anyone else?

[AV_Integrated]

Sick of reading it doesn't mean that the reviews continue to not be favorable for Blu-ray. There are definitely improvements that are happenning, but they have a ways to go. I (personally) look forward to it, but am very questionable of statements like this:

"blew any thing that HD has offered for sound and pic. quailty"

I'm not denying it, but I definitely question that as being pretty heavy handed talk as HD-DVD tends to look as good or better than broadcast HD almost always.

Rumor is that HD-DVD may be able to get 45GB discs to market and it may be (not definitely) possible for all current players to work with 45GB discs. There is something there for sure.

Don't get me wrong - I feel that Blu-ray is poised with CE and studio support to win the war, but I am not hyped up on it being far better. I just need HD video discs with good audio. I don't care who delivers them to me... I am interested in how people think things will actually play out this holiday season and if they think Blu-ray will have more of its act together with new codecs and more products.

I'm thinking they will, but I wonder how many PS3s will really be available. 4 million by years end seems like such a pipe-dream.

[PurpleAardvark]

I view a good pic quailty as when you look at a person on the movie and see indvidual hairs and pors. I have not seen an HD movie do that yet but Blu ray I have. I am only viewing at 1080i. I can't wait to see what blu ray does on the 1080p tv, which is something HD can't do along with high Quaility sound (PCM uncom., 6.1, ect...) right off the start line HD is flawed and doomed by it's own player's. Don't get me wrong I will buy the xbox 360 add on but that is because it is only going to be around $200. The only reason I will do that is because of the titles that are out. If the same titles were on blu ray I won't bother. This is also all just a preview for Blu Ray the offical launch date isn't for a little while yet. I also see improvements in Blu Ray and I really havn't see any HD movies that are above and beyond the rest. This means what no new resurch or advances, why, because the disc they have right now can't handle any more.

[mousetrap]

I called Sony and they said they will Ship there Blue Ray player on 25 Oct 2006

Originally Posted by AV_Integrated

Thanksgiving falls on November 23rd this
year. That puts Black Friday on the 24th of November and gives everyone one month to the 24th of December for the majority of their holiday shopping. This also all happens to coincide with the release of BD players announced by Sony, Panasonic, and Pioneer... and a little gaming system called PS3.

Is it only me, or does it seem like that may really be the first inidcation of how well Blu-ray is fairing in this format war? They have done so poorly so far with MPEG2 & BD25 & Samsung - but it seems that this holiday season may show more than a little shift in how the format war will play out.

Moreso, if Blu-ray comes up short at the end of the holiday season and PS3 fails to impress, where does that leave Blu-ray and how detrimental will it be to them? Do you see studios and CE support shifting, or at least joining the HD-DVD camp should PS3 come out flat and sales of players not be strong? Most of all - what if movies, by years end, still look as bad as they do today? I'm not willing to call it over for Blu-ray then, but it seems like they aren't going to have much of a chance to truly win unless they are strong this holiday season. At the very least, HD-DVD may be guaranteed to coexist for a long time.

[vick vega]

Does that mean amazon will ship it on the 25 too?

[JTK]

Originally Posted by vick vega

Does that mean amazon will ship it on the 25 too?

Who knows?

We still see Amazon having slots for both BD and HD-DVD titles that have been out for weeks still saying: "Studio hasn't released yet."

[thunderhawk]

Originally Posted by vick vega

I think they will probably drop a load in their pants

Probably.

Mmm... I wonder when they'll get BD100 out of the labo...

[phloyd]

Originally Posted by AV_Integrated

You are almost correct... Except, the studios have to use authoring software which gets the video from the original master format compressed into a Blu-ray compatible format. The ONLY software in existence to this point is produced by (guess it)... yep, Sony. And they only offer ONE codec.

Care to guess what that is?

Yep, MPEG2.

If this is true I would be interested to know how Disney has managed to author AVC titles and Warner has managed to author VC-1 titles.

On another note though, it appears that Paramount is authoring excellent MPEG2 titles so really the codec should not be tied to image quality since it has been demonstrated that good results can be achieved with all three of the codecs.

[hmurchison]

Originally Posted by PurpleAardvark

I think you missed the point. No one cares about the Codec's except for a few people and the rest of us are sick of reading about it. Read the post about being a little sick of things. Honestly the past few blu ray dvd's I bought, stealth, Into The Blue, and Silent Hill blew any thing that HD has offered for sound and pic. quailty. Does it matter that it was mpeg2. Nope I don't care and niether do a lot of people. It isn't the codec it is the product that matters. By the way call sony or samsung they will tell you about the formats for codec's they have made avaible.
However I do agree with above about the space being a plus too. 50 gig disc are going to rock. So why do you think VHS won its war at the time? Space and room for improvement. Nothing is perfect when it first comes out. If us as consumers keep on buying blu ray products, Blu Ray will have more money to invest in resurch and development. Which means over time things will keep getting better and better and cheaper as well. HD is like buying a new computer, you are going to get use from it for while and will be the new hot thing for a while but it will be out dated in a year. There is very little room to expand HD because of the space on the disc. I see the writing on the wall deos anyone else?

Nice bit of Science Fiction. I'll save you the pain of tearing this post apart simply because I don't have the time or inclination at this moment.
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The PS3 is going to sell like hotcakes. I'm really eager to see how it performs against dedicated BD players. Although both formats are still too new to really grab the hearts and minds of consumers. They need to see cheaper HDTV options and playback options for movies.

[AV_Integrated]

Originally Posted by phloyd

If this is true I would be interested to know how Disney has managed to author AVC titles and Warner has managed to author VC-1 titles.

They didn't a month ago...

You see my original post was made a month ago and I had said at the end that it looked like studios were either working on their own authoring software or working with someone else to get that authoring software done. There are TONS of authoring software applications out there, so it isn't necessarily difficult to get VC-1 or AVC integrated with those authoring solutions and tweaked to work properly with Blu-ray. It just was 'in the works' a month ago and didn't exist 2 or 3 months ago when the very first discs were being authored. Things have changed VERY quickly in the last month, which is good, and means that studios are listening and responding QUICKLY to consumer complaints and issues.

That's a good thing! It quickly outdates posts that have relevent info when they are brought back up from a month+ ago, but it doesn't change what the status was at that time.

Likewise someone could have posted two weeks ago that the cheap PS3 does NOT have HDMI. But, now someone would ask why someone could post such lousy information. Things change, and facts tend to only be accurate at the time of the post.

[phloyd]

Originally Posted by AV_Integrated

They didn't a month ago...

Sorry - for some reason I thought this was a new thread.

Ah well.