With the recent hd-dvd sales, BDA group is under pressure to match the hd-dvd standalone price at 149.00msrp, or (129 street price).
Because now, the war is converting the existing standard SD marketbase, and curent hd-dvd standalones They will all expect affordability and complete 2.0 profile functionality. Is that unreasonable to ask?

Guess what folks, It happened, they announced it.

I’m afraid the PS3 is having a similar effect on Blu-Ray sales as the PS2 did with DVD (albeit on a smaller scale), it was only a matter of time. Warner cannot ignore the fact that 1m PS3 were sold with built in Blu-Ray players. True the PS3 is first and foremost a games machine, but it does make an excellent Blu-Ray player too.

My prediction is that within the next few months Paramount will also switch sides.

Despite knowing this, I am absolutely loving my HD Harry Potter right now.

If you want to enjoy ALL of your favorite movies in HD, pony up and get both formats fully knowing you’ll have to buy them all again in three years (and then again 5 years after that and again 5 years after that and again 5 years after that).

ps: my gamertag is GC328

cheers

well if HD fails you get a paperweight. if blu-ray fails i still have a games console which still plays cd/dvd, can run linux(or any os of your choice), browse the net, stream audio and video from my home network. oh and play ps1/ps2/ps3 games. i think thats still a long way from paperweight.

p.s. you can update the firmware by disk or the free upgrade service at certain electronics stores.

I’m not concerned with how many manufacturers make it, I’m more concerned with being able to afford a good quality “standalone” player. There’s no doubt the Toshiba A2/A3 is a fine product for what is was made for… simply viewing movies. Just as the PS3 is a fine “combo” product for viewing movies and playing games. It just depends on what you want to use it for. I wouldn’t want to force someone unto HD-DVD, if their intent and preference is the PS3. Just as I hope people don’t force me to buy a PS3, if my only use is to watch movies. Again, I think this whole “blue vs red” has gotten way out of hand. People are being forced to choose sides, when all they want to do is choose movies. So I can understand why people on both sides are feeling uneasy, they don’t want to see support of their format disappear.
We should tell these studios, just make movies for both formats!

As someone else pointed out, if these wars continue, people will just get fed up and go underground to put HD movies on big hard drives.

Guess I’ll stay with standard CD’s and DVD’s

Hard drives as a portable medium for data transfer has an infinitely greater storage capacity. Furthermore, Solid state and other technologies will soon be inexpensive. Aside from data transfer, what are the uses of these optical discs? oh yes, they are sold with video content on them. So the only real use for them is for the studios to sell their videos. I have an idea, I have this thing called a network; on this network I can download video from external sources and internal (home lan). Why do I need to buy an expensive HD player and HD discs for again?

Well I’d rather chance on a $99.00 HD-DVD player than a $399.00 PS3 if one of them eventually becomes a paperweight . You never know which will end up obsolete, so you get the cheapest for lower risk. And as far as Blu-ray, only the PS3 and a small (1 or 2?) existing standalone players can be upgradeable to bd profile 2.0. Remember, Ethernet connectivity was not a required standard for blu-ray early on, so many first gen blue-ray standalones will be forced to buy again (in order to take advantage of bd 2.0 firmware features)

Someone mentioned this important point on another site (which I can’t remember.) But anyways:

“PS3 will cannibalize the sale of blue-ray stand-alones if it is always leading the way”

The statement above is interesting and in a way it makes sense. This makes it hard for other blu-ray manufacturers to compete with Sony at the 299-399 price point. Because why buy a standalone blue-ray for 299-399 when you can buy a Sony PS3 for that price range.

I would rather just have the market wide open, studios can make movies for either format, and let the consumers pick what they need, rather than someone deciding for us. peace!

But if I must choose I will go with HD DVD because I hate Sony as much as I hate Apple

This is the very reason why the format war continues. If all the Blu-ray players out there were dedicated players the war would long be over. But they are not, and it isn’t. Reason being, you can’t create a mainstream video format based on a video game console. Already, ~95% of blu-ray players are PS3. As Sony continues to sell more PS3’s this percentage only rises and Blu-ray quickly becomes PS3 DVD. Just because a teenager and all his teenage friends wouldn’t mind buying a video game system to watch movies on, there is no sucessful precedent for this and that is recognized by the industry…hence the format war.

Also, your economy of scale comment doesn’t really make sense either. Because it is reliant on the PS3 it is still largely a proprietary format. Sony knows this and knows that it is dangerous. Do you remember mini disks and “stand alone” mini disk players? Failure and thats why they court so many third party Blu-ray manufacturers to offset this. Is it working? Well since ~95% of Blu-ray players are PS3, the answer is no. So, you are not really achieving an economy of scale there the same way producing UMD movies for the PSP wasn’t economies of scale.

blu-ray has updates built in to standard so all comments on the standard changing so people will have to pay for new blu-ray players are just null/void/wrong.

Do people think that we will be paying less if one format wins over the over. The cost of a blu-ray or HD-dvd are less than 5cent a disk in mass production (1million+ copys). So dose anyone believe that the mpaa will pass on savings to the customer. And blu-ray disks are used for PC backups, ps3 games, movies. HD-dvd is just movies so blu-ray allows better for economy’s of scale.

p.s. Hard-disks will win in the end but a physical token e.g dvd etc is preferable

: )

Both format HD-DVD and Blue ray might just dissapear anyway for an open format in the futur.

Sorry MPAA!