Para quem achava que a morte do HD-DVD estava pra lá da sua missa de sétimo dia, a Toshiba encarnou o espírito do consumidor sensato: bom preço e qualidade garantida. No Amazon um player Toshiba HD-A30 custa menos de 200 dólares, enquanto que o concorrente – ou hegemônico Blu-ray da Sony – beira os 330 dólares ianques. Recentemente a Toshiba anunciou um abandono estratégico da “causa HD-DVD” , mas as vendas talvez prolonguem a guerrinha!

http://www.meiobit.com/hddvd-morreu-mesmo

Okay – unless you have been on another planet, you have probably heard (even though you may not care) – that Blu Ray has won the high definition battle. Hooray some people say…hold the phone – others are saying.

Personally I think everyone loses in this war. Let’s forget about the fact that: 1) consumers were screaming bloody murder about having to choose a format, 2) that consumers are slowly (and I do mean slowly) adopting high definition in their homes, and 3) we can even forget the fact that prices are very high for high definition players and the movies. If we forget all of those things – there is one thing that matters – Sony gets to now dictate whatever price they want to get you to adopt the new format of choice.

Now, of course, I can’t blame them for this. After all if you go back in time, DVD players were outrageously high for several years before people could afford them. Fast forward to the present and Blu Ray & HD DVD prices were cut drastically after only one year!! GO FIGURE!! You can bet your bottom dollar that manufactures were not making much money on their hardware or software. So now, you better believe that the Blu Ray folks are going to raise prices little by little in an effort to recoup what they loss when they had to battle HD DVD. That’s why I think we all will lose in this format war that ended last month. I forsee that there will not be an affordable Blu Ray player coming out anytime this year (I mean like sub $200 affordable). That sucks…I love high definition and when a movie or tv show or documentary is filmed, edited and transferred in glorious 1080i or 1080p – the video is too die for….but I will be damn if I will pay $400 for a Blu Ray player and $40 for a Blu Ray movie…ain’t going to happen. And what most people forget is that most movies are not shot in true high def – but rather film that is transferred to high def (unless maybe they are shooting in 4K with the Red One but I digress).

So would I buy a Blu Ray player right now? NOPE. Do we even offer high definition as an option for our customers to buy? NOPE. Will I buy one in the future? Yeah maybe a year or 2 from now when they figure out what profile spec they want to use, 1080p TV prices drop a little more and Blu Ray players drop prices some more – then yeah – definitely will do it. Will we offer it to customers and begin filming in High Def? A year from now – yeah we will be forced too…

But for now, what will I do instead? I did what most people think is crazy. I bought a HD-DVD player, bought a bunch of HD DVD movies at ridiculously low prices to finish out my collection and can now watch movies in glorious 1080p at a price to die for. Sure after May, there will be no more new HD DVD movies – but my player will upconvert all my standard DVDs to near HD quality, I have some great movies on HD (there are over 450 in the western market alone & 800+ globally) and I can enjoy high def now without destroying my pocketbook for the next year or two. When I am done, I expect to have maybe 30 HD DVD titles (maybe more) and a player that would normally have cost me $1100 but instead only cost me around $500. Now to bad a deal!!!

It is just a shame that the only gay movie right now out on High Def (that I know) is Brokeback Mountain!!

Thomas

A Toshiba admitiu finalmente a derrota para a Sony na guerra dos formatos de Midia. O Blu-ray será o formato padrão usado para a proxima geração de filmes, jogos, enfim entretenimento e produtos multimedia. Com grandes varejistas como Wal Mart a decidirem nao comercializar seus produtos e a apostar somente no formato Blu-ray , a Toshiba teve de enterrar o formato e resolver partir para outras posições.

Quem vai ter de engolir muitos sapos também é a Microsoft, que apoiava o HD DVD e agora vai ter de incorporar Blu-ray no futuro XBox .

First came the battle between VHS and Betamax for the home video market. Betamax tapes had superior image quality, but were more costly than VHS; the Betamax format is now extinct. Next came the much quieter battle between Sony and Philips’ MMCD format and the SD format backed by a host of companies, including Toshiba, Matsushita (Panasonic) and Time-Warner. The first of these “format wars” ended with a clear victor after years of costly struggle; the second ended in a compromise which gave birth to the DVD format as we know it today.

We are now in the midst of another format war, this time over the future of in-home high-definition media. On one side is HD-DVD, a format created by Toshiba and NEC; on the other side is Blu-Ray, created by Sony, Matsushita, and Philips. Each format has significant backing, and the first consumer units are scheduled to be released within months. It is no longer a question of which format is “better.” The debate now is about which format will catch on faster, and therefore win.

HD-DVD

The HD-DVD format, developed and proposed by Toshiba and NEC, was introduced to the DVD Forum in November of 2003 and approved as the next-generation DVD format. The DVD Forum was founded by the companies involved in the original DVD format war to make sure that compromises could be reached regarding the future of the format. Since Blu-Ray was never submitted for consideration, it could not be approved or rejected by the DVD Forum.

HD-DVD discs, at the time of this writing, promise a single-layer capacity of 15 gigabytes, or over three times that of single-layer DVDs. They accomplish this by using a blue-violet laser with a shorter wavelength than the red laser used in current DVD drives. This means that discs can have information more tightly packed on the disc, enabling far greater storage capacity on the same size disc. Dual-layer discs are capable of holding 30GB, and Toshiba has announced a prototype three-layer disc with a capacity of 45GB. These discs are capable of holding between two and five hours of high-definition video with audio track.

The primary advantage of this format is a low manufacturing cost. Since HD-DVD media is so technically similar to standard DVD media (it uses the same layer thicknesses as DVD, made of similar materials), the discs can be produced with only a slight modification to existing manufacturing lines. This appealed to many companies, and led to an early rush of support from several large studios. Current supporters of HD-DVD include Toshiba, NEC, Sanyo, and Microsoft, in addition to New Line Cinema, Paramount, Universal, Time-Warner, and the official approval of the DVD Forum.

Blu-Ray

Blu-Ray Disc, or BD, was developed by Sony, Matsushita, and Philips, with the first stages of development commencing back in 1995. Rather than propose the format to the DVD Forum, Sony appealed to major electronics companies, and many signed on in support of the format, creating the Blu-Ray Disc Association (BDA). Critics occasionally cite the fact that Blu-Ray did not go through official approval channels; however, at the time of this writing, at least seven of the DVD Forum’s original ten founders now support Blu-Ray.

The potential capacity of Blu-Ray discs is, in a word, staggering. A single-layer disc can hold between 23 and 27 gigabytes of data, enough for four hours of high-definition video; a dual-layer disc can hold between 46 and 54GB, easily enough for eight full hours of high-definition programming*. Furthermore, since the layers on a Blu-Ray disc are so thin, there is potential for multi-layer discs with up to eight layers holding upwards of 200GB. TDK has announced a working prototype of a four-layer 100GB disc, but commercial availability of these high-capacity discs is several months away, at the least.

Blu-Ray’s two main advantages are capacity and expandability, the potential for which has not yet been matched by HD-DVD. To add some perspective, most entry-level computer hard drives do not hold 200GB. 200GB is the equivalent of forty-five single-layer DVDs, or twenty-three double-layer DVDs. There is enough capacity to store over twenty full-length standard definition DVD movies on one disc, complete with special features and full digital audio.

Blu-Ray discs also have an advantage in durability, thanks to a special hard-coating developed by TDK. While CD and DVD media (and, presumably, HD-DVD) can be scratched by wiping with a tissue, Blu-Ray discs can reportedly withstand attack from a screwdriver.

This technology comes with a significant price. Manufacturing Blu-Ray discs requires significant costs in updating DVD fabrication equipment, and would be a sharp manufacturer cost increase over HD-DVD. This initially led to slower adoption of support for the format, though later developments in the technology have recently enabled it to gain wider support from major electronic and PC manufacturers.

Current support for Blu-Ray includes PC makers Apple, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and Sony, and electronics giants Hitachi, LG, Mitsubishi Electric, Matsushita/Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, TDK, and Thomson. Add to this the support by movie studios such as Columbia TriStar, Sony Pictures and MGM (all three owned by Sony), 20th Century Fox, Lions Gate Entertainment, and Disney, as well as video game makers Electronic Arts and Vivendi Universal Games, and the bastion of support for Blu-Ray looks formidable indeed.

The Format War

The situation as it stands today is complicated. On one hand we have the HD-DVD format, which holds less data but is, at the time of this writing, cheaper to produce**. On the other hand is Blu-Ray, with the potential for exponentially more capacity and durability, but with a significant manufacturer cost increase. Both players will offer features to ease the transition to HD, such as backwards-compatibility with standard CD and DVD media. While there were talks earlier this year to see if a possible compromise could be reached that ended in combining the two formats, these discussions collapsed with very little in terms of results. With equal studio support for each format, this war becomes a race to see which format gains wide adoption first.

HD-DVD had planned to gain an early advantage by widely releasing its products in 4th quarter of 2005, thereby saturating the market with HD-DVD drives and discs before Blu-Ray was released. At CES 2005, the makers of HD-DVD promised 85 titles released before the end of the year, while Blu-Ray has been planning a release in early-to-mid 2006. However, recent announcements have revealed that hardware and software shipments of HD-DVD material are smaller than expected. Paramount, which promised a release of 20 titles this year, is not releasing any until 2006. NBC Universal is now releasing 12 titles instead of 16, and Time Warner says that its plans are not definite yet, as it is waiting to see whether the two formats can compromise (source: “HD-DVD Rollout, Set for Holidays, Gets Scaled Back,” The Wall Street Journal, August 2005). The result of this delay is that both formats’ major releases will occur sometime in 2006.

Blu-Ray is expected to gain a major sales boost through Sony’s Playstation 3 game console, for several reasons. The console will feature a Blu-Ray drive, and will be the first video game console to hit the market featuring a next-generation drive. While first-generation HD-DVD drives are estimated to cost nearly $1000, and first-generation Blu-Ray drives have already been released in Japan for nearly $2000, the Playstation 3 is rumored to feature a price tag between $300 and $600, making it more affordable to the average consumer. At least initially, Blu-Ray drives may be more accessible due, in large part, to the Playstation 3.

Also, consider this. When Sony’s Playstation 2 was released, a majority of Playstation 1 owners rushed out immediately to attempt to buy the new console. While there was a supply shortage in the US, the stock that made it to the States sold almost immediately. Sony deliberately kept the price of the new console very low so that it would be more accessible to more people. The result is that 100 million people worldwide own Playstation 1 consoles, and 90 million people worldwide own Playstation 2s. If this strategy is repeated once more with the Playstation 3, and if Sony can keep up with demand, Blu-Ray could gain an enormous amount of market share in a very short time.

With the support of major computer manufacturers, consumers could start to see PCs with Blu-Ray drives as early as the end of 2005, according to Hewlett-Packard. In PC applications, the larger capacity of Blu-Ray is alluring simply from a data storage standpoint.

Conclusion

No one knows what the outcome of this format war will be – it all depends on which format consumers can get more cheaply, more quickly, with more movies available for it. Blu-Ray is technologically superior, true; however, the VHS and Betamax war shows that the technologically superior product does not always win. Sales of DVD drives and media only really took off after DVD player prices dropped below $300, and with HD-DVD’s lower manufacturing costs, this could prove to be a large benefit. However, Sony claims that within a few months of launch, Blu-Ray media will be priced within 10% of current DVD prices. With the first products set to hit the market by Christmas of this year, 2006 is going to be an interesting year for High Definition.

* The amount of high definition content that can be stored on a disc is entirely dependent upon the codec used to encode said content. Using standard MPEG-2 DVD compression, a single-layer Blu-Ray disc could hold two hours of HD programming, but with MPEG-4 or VC-1 compression this roughly doubles.

Source: projectorcentral.com

Supernatural66’s Take on this announcement and my pet HD-Peeves:

Warner announced today they will not be releasing new titles on HD-DVD format after May, 2008 and from that point on all new releases will be in the Blu-Ray high definition DVD format.  It will take some time to  sell down the existing HD titles so there will be plenty of titles for consumers for some time.

How will this affect Universal and Paramount who have been steadfast promoters of the HD-DVD format? We will have to wait and see.I have both a Toshiba HD-DVD player and a Sony Blu-Ray. My wish lists of new releases that I will be buying include a lot of Universal titles so I will not be abandoning my HD system any time soon. Personally I think we will see some super players coming out that can handle multiple formats. It is just a matter of software and getting a stable electronics platform for reading the disks. So far I have not been impressed with the FOX releases- have had several Blu-Rays that just would not play out of the box and encoding is an ongoing problem with Blu-Ray. Disney has done a great job with the format and Warner seems to have their act together on both formats.

Personally I am still waiting for FOX to announce they are releasing The X-Files on Blu-Ray in a special edition with tons and tons of interviews with the cast and crew. Why isn’t this ready this year in time to coincide with the release of the upcoming X-Files movie?

A distinct lack of TV shows on HD format is a bigger concern to me than which format wins the idiotic HD format war.  Super releases of desirable titles will do more for sales of this technology than anything. So far Warner has released Smallville seasons 5&6 in high definition with season 5 in HD and season 6 in both HD and Blu-Ray. I have the HD versions and they are great- picture is gorgeous and the transfer is stunning. Heroes Season 1 released by Universal and Battlestar Galactica Season 1 are awesome- tons of bonus features and mind blowing HD picture. I am happy to spend my money on the disks- release them already! Why are programs which are broadcast in HD not being released directly to HD/BR disk at the same time that they release regular sets?

Where is there a site to request title releases in HD format? Hint to Amazon.com- include an option for I would buy this in HD or BR if available somewhere on your sales page for every DVD not available in High Definition!

Final note for this week- DirecTV has been delivering on its promise of more HD programming than anyone on the time frame that they promised. With more and more people signing up everyday and enjoying the high-def experience, the demand for HD recordings will just continue to go up. It is silly to continue to play this waiting game- it is time for the studios to go for it and release more titles NOW not later when they feel things will be more certain.

Until next time!

Kate aka Supernatura66

Here is the official press release from Warner:
 Source

Warner Bros. Entertainment to Release its High-Definition DVD Titles Exclusively in the Blu-Ray Disc Format Beginning Later This Year
January 04, 2008

Contact Info:
Jim Noonan
Warner Bros. Home Ent. Group
(818) 977-5489

Susan Fleishman
Warner Bros. Entertainment
(818) 954-1919

Scott Rowe
Warner Bros. Entertainment
(818) 954-5806