BluRay > HDDVD

[gothicaleigh]

HD DVD has fallen. Long live the BluRay!

Warner backs Blu-ray exclusively

Originally Posted by Video Business

Citing consumer confusion, studio will stop marketing HD DVD in May
By Susanne Ault -- Video Business, 1/4/2008
JAN. 4 | UPDATE:

Warner Bros. Entertainment this year will begin releasing high-definition titles exclusively in Blu-ray Disc, dealing a severe blow to the HD DVD format.

The studio hopes its decision will help end the format war, and boost the chances of high-definition quickly becoming a vital business. Retailers have long complained that consumers are too confused by two formats to adopt either Blu-ray or HD DVD.

“Not only did neigher format really take off as expected in the fourth quarter, but standard-def was softer than expected given the release slate,” said Warner Home Video president Ron Sanders told VB in explaining the studio’s decision. “We’re seeing research now that shows that consumers are starting to delay purchases because of the format war, not just on high-def, but on standard-def purchases as well. That’s alarming.”

“It’s hard for us to speculate about the impact this will have on the format war,” Sanders said. “All we can do really is make the best decision for our business.”

With Warner now in the BD camp, only Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Paramount Home Entertaiment/DreamWorks will produce and market titles in the HD DVD format.

Warner will be joining other BD-exclusive suppliers Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Walt Disney Home Entertainment, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment and Lionsgate. Time Warner divisions New Line Home Entertainment and HBO Video are also included in the move to Blu-ray.

Warner’s shift to Blu-ray becomes effective later this year. All new releases are expected to street in BD and HD DVD through May 2008. However, during those upcoming months, there will be a short lag between the Blu-ray/standard DVD release and the HD DVD release.

“Warner Bros.’ move to exclusivity release in the Blu-ray Disc format is a strategic decision focused on the long term and the most direct way to give consumers what they want,” said Warner chair and CEO Barry Meyer. “The window of opportunity for high-definition DVD could be missed if format confusion continues to linger. We believe that exclusively distributing in Blu-ray will further the potential for mass market success and ultimately benefit retailers, producers and, most importantly, consumers.”

Through last year, Warner had been touting its dual format strategy as a way to maximize high-definition revenue.

But Warner management decided switching to Blu-ray exclusivity was necessary to match increasing consumer demand toward the format over HD DVD. BD does enjoy a far larger hardware installation base, due mostly to the millions of BD-equipped PlayStation 3 consoles sold. At last count, following the hot Black Friday shopping weekend, 750,000 HD DVD set-tops and Xbox 360 HD DVD drives had sold in the U.S. since the format’s launch last year. Including PS3s and set-tops, 2.7 million BD players have sold since launch through that same frame.

"One of the things you see in the NPD data for this fourth quarter was that even with a $100 premium, BD set-tops outsold HD set-tops in December," said Sanders. "Even with Toshiba having the lower-cost player in the marekt, software sales remained 2-to-1 in favor of Blu-ray. Our titles were running roughly 60/40 Blu-ray and that didn't change in the fourth quarter even with the price advantage HD had on the hardware side."

"You also can't underestimate the impact of PS3 as a playback device," Sanders said. "The attachment rate may not be very high, and in fact it isn't, but in the aggregate that still adds up to a lot of software sales."

Other Warner executives also emphasized the company's desire to respond to what it sees as greater consumer demand for Blu-ray than for HD DVD.

“A two-format landscape has led to consumer confusion and indifference toward high-definition, which has kept the technology from reaching mass adoption and becoming the important revenue stream that it can be for the industry,” said Kevin Tsujihara, president of Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group. “Consumers have clearly chosen Blu-ray, and we believe that recognizing this preference is the right step in making this great home entertainment experience accessible to the widest possible audience. Warner Bros. has worked very closely with the Toshiba Corp. in promoting high-definition media, and we have enormous respect for their efforts. We look forward to working with them in the future.”

Jeff Bewkes, president and CEO at Warner Bros. parent Time Warner, added, “Warner Bros. has produced in both high-definition formats in an effort to provide consumer choice, foster mainstream adoption and drive down hardware prices. Today’s decision by Warner Bros. to distribute in a single format comes at the right time and is the best decision both for consumers and Time Warner.”

One retailer opined that the HD DVD camp has been severely wounded by losing market leader Warner’s support. But he was hesitant to declare the format war over.

“It’s not going to end the format war because Paramount is still HD DVD exclusive and Universal is still exclusive,” said Newbury Comics buyer Ian Leshin. “But this is a huge blow to HD DVD. Warner releases so many titles. There is going to be a limited choice for HD DVD titles, and its going to make it that much more difficult to sell [HD DVD hardware]”


Leshin said he understands Warner’s sole embrace of Blu-ray, as Newbury has been consistently selling twice as many BD titles as HD DVD

http://www.videobusiness.com/article....html?nid=2705

[gothicaleigh]

On the computer and electronics end of things:



BluRay to be supported at MacWorld
(and a very interesting graph)

Originally Posted by Mac Rumors

Warner Brothers announced today that they would be moving their titles from HD-DVD to the Blu-Ray format. Many have suggested that this marks the end of the next generation DVD battle, though two major studios continue to have exclusive HD-DVD distribution deals in place.

Warner Brother's defection, however, places the majority of movie releases on Blu-Ray:



2007 Marketshare graph modified by trevelyn

Even before this new marketshare advantage, however, the New York Times reports that Blu-ray titles had outsold HD-DVD offerings as much as 2 to 1, and had even been chosen for exclusive distribution by Blockbuster.

Apple has been a member of the Blu-ray consortium's board of directors since 2005, but has not publicly announced their Blu-ray plans. Some expect Apple to officially launch Blu-ray support at Macworld San Francisco.

http://www.macrumors.com/2008/01/04/...es-to-blu-ray/



Engadget sums it up:

HD DVD group cancels CES press conference in wake of Warner announcement: daaamn
http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/04/h...f-warner-anno/

[Cadillacboy]

Yep,I already talked about this .Only drawback is that you need a BlueRay compatible device to play your blueray disks

[ewill3rd]

It will have to drop in price, whichever way it goes, before I am going to play.

As far as I know the only difference is media storage space.
The images are still 1080.
Calling it HD-DVD is a scam if you ask me, nobody realizes that the HD is actuall related to high density, not high defenition.
Maybe someone needs to properly educate me, along with the rest of the world.

Why should I pay more money for a movie with the same resolution on a more empty disc?
Oh and pay more for a player to play it?

[lawfive]

Color me confused, ewill. The operative difference for movie watchers between existing DVD and these two new formats is definition. Max def for DVD is 480p; the two new formats can handle 720p/1080i, as well as true high definition: 1080p.

Native high def resolution is the only feature I care about, and they both have it. Yay, whichever.

[nikon]

great....now I gotta go buy a blu-ray player too...ugh, sucks because personally I prefer the quality of HD-DVD...blu-ray can be too grainy.

[Jesda]

There's too many 9GB DVDs out there for me to bother switching formats. When HD/BR players are $35 at Wal Mart, I'll upgrade.

[ewill3rd]

I see, well I guess that means I was lied to before and not this time. LOL
At least I misunderstood.
At any rate, current DVD resolution is still plenty good for me.
It already bugs me when I can see little things that I couldn't see on VHS.

I suppose I'll break down and spend some money in the future, but as I said... prices will have dropped considerably before I hop in.

[Sinister Angel]

I've never quite got the difference between 1080i and 1080p

[nikon]

^^ 1080i is analog (interlace) 1080p is digital (progressive) you basically need really good eyes to notice the difference.

[lawfive]

Originally Posted by Sinister Angel

I've never quite got the difference between 1080i and 1080p

I don't know what you know, so excuse me if I sound like I'm talking down. I'm no real expert, but I do know some stuff.

Start out with the native resolution of your monitor or TV. The maximum resolution you can display from any source is limited by the native resolution of your monitor. Let's assume you have a newer widescreen. It may be a big (say, 42 inches or bigger) plasma or LCD or DLP that is 1,920 pixels wide by 1,080 pixels high; if so, these days the manufacturer would call it a '1080p' monitor because its native resolution is capable of displaying all the pixels from a 1080p source. Or it may be smaller (or just as big, but cheaper) and have fewer pixels (e.g. 1,280 x 720, 1,366 x 768, 1,024 x 768). Monitors with these native resolutions are lumped into the '720p' category, because that's max they can handle.

In the good old days of CRT, the screen was divided up into horizontal lines of virtual dot targets that a really fast electron beam would hit like a tommy gun, spraying left to right, then skipping down two lines and spraying left to right again, then skipping down two lines and spraying left to right again, etc. until every other line on the screen from top to bottom was illuminated. Then the beam would jump back up to the top of the screen and start shooting again left to right, left to right, hitting all the lines that it skipped the first time. When every virtual dot target that needed to be hit HAD been hit on the entire screen (e.g. two passes of the electron beam from the top of the screen to the bottom of the screen), the screen displayed one complete still image in a film or video sequence. (That's not 100% accurate when talking about film, but that's a different discussion.) This process of displaying video by hitting every other line of pixels is called 'interlacing.' Good old 480i NTSC analog broadcasts received on an analog CRT monitor is how us old farts watched our Bugs Bunny cartoons when we were kids.

Skip ahead to today. Let's assume that you have a non-CRT monitor, meaning a plasma or LCD panel, a DLP set (or some other type of rear projection set), or a DLP projector. These are all digital display technologies. Unlike the analog CRT, they cannot display interlaced video signals. In fact two things about digital displays are all you really need to remember (at least in this area of discussion):

1. They can ONLY display images in the monitor's native resolution
2. The can ONLY display progressive video signals

#1 means that if you've got a 1366 x 768 pixel monitor, and you're watching an incoming 1080p signal from your BlueRay DVD (e.g. 1920 x 1080 pixels to display), then your monitor doesn't have enough pixels in its native resolution to display it and the signal has to be 'scaled' (in this case, downconverted) to match your monitor's native resolution. Similarly, if you're watching a non-HD digital cable channel on your 1920 x 1080 monitor, the signal has to be upconverted to display on your monitor.

#2 means that if you're watching an interlaced video signal (say, the 1080i signal from NBC Sunday Night Football HD), it first has to be "deinterlaced" before it can be displayed on your digital monitor. Although 1080i uses just as many pixels as 1080p, it paints every other 'line' of pixels instead of painting them 'progressively,' which is what your progressive digital monitor needs to display.

Let's say that you have a 50" Panasonic plasma like mine, with a native 1,920 x 1,080 resolution, which is "true HD" 1080p resolution. The very best case is if you're feeding it with a 1080p signal, meaning at the monitor's native resolution and progressively scanned, so zero conversion is required. Unfortunately, ALMOST every signal out there from broadcast, satellite, cable, DVDs, VCRs, etc. is lower resolution and requires scaling and possibly deinterlacing before it hits your screen.

It's possible that your cable box, your video switching audio receiver, or something else is doing some or all of the scaling and deinterlacing for you; it's also possible that your monitor is doing some or all if the conversion. I like to know that my monitor is capable of doing it all, so I won't buy one until I'm sure that it scales and deinterlaces without serious artifacts that I can see. (There's a lot of other stuff to look for but once again that's a different discussion.)

[lawfive]

Originally Posted by nikon

^^ 1080i is analog (interlace) 1080p is digital (progressive) you basically need really good eyes to notice the difference.

True, Nikon, but not ALWAYS true. If you've ever watched a monitor that doesn't handle deinterlacing well, it's unsettling.

And... Even though most newer 720p/1080i monitors will display a downconverted 1080p image (wasn't always so), they'll do so on a lower res screen. I've seen people argue themselves out of spending the money extra money for a 1080p monitor because there aren't many 1080p sources out there and it'll be some time before you see 1080p broadcasts or cable (which is true). But then those same people get home and bitch about the pixelation on their lower res monitors.

[Sinister Angel]

Alright, makes sense now. So theoretically a 1080i display with a 1080i source would be the same as a 1080p display with a 1080p source?

[lawfive]

Theoretically. Except that there is no such thing as a 1080i display. All digital monitors display only progressive images. So a 1080i image would be downconverted to (typically) 720p.

[dkozloski]

Inumerable times 480I and 1080P displays of good quality have been set up side by side and the average bear is unable to tell the difference from a normal viewing distance. This has been a hard sell from the word go and has contributed to the long delays in adopting new standards. On top of that the movie industry is terrified that they're going to lose control of media distribution just like happened with CDs and music. I have had a 480P plasma TV for years and it meets all my needs. Until somebody shows me a huge improvement in the content of the material being shown on network TV, I'll keep what I've got. The whole HD-DVD and HDTV deal is much ado about very little and they're having a hard time getting this albatross off the ground.