Hello,

I was looking online and found this article that states in
fact that HD DVD will loose the war by 2008, because Blue
Ray has so many movie companies backing its format espesially
now with the add of Time Warner.

The article is here, please tell me what you think?

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,141869/article.html#

Wow, if it says so in an article, it must be true.

Remember it's only one point of view, take everything with a little bit of a grain of salt. It's big business and it can change over night.

Even though it seems almost impossible you are correct. Furthermore even if Blu-Ray beats out HD-DVD it still has several major obstacles to overcome:

1. Getting specs finalized and making sure that their costly players still support the new revisions and the constantly changing DRM that Sony and their affiliates love playing with (memories of Arccos follies anyone?)

2. Getting the vast majority of the population to buy HDTVs. Only about 35% of the households out there even have high-def sets. Otherwise Blu-Ray will be nothing more than a niche market.

3. Bringing costs on their players down into the price of mass acceptance (ie $100-$200 range)

4. Convincing the majority of the population that there are significant enough gains to replace their DVD collections with the much more costly Blu-Ray players.

5. If the aforementioned issues are not overcome in a timely manner Blu-Ray could easily find itself in the same position as HD-DVD by the time the next big thing comes along. Thing is that Sony has a track record of letting their greed hinder their formats progress and they are already showing signs of repeating this.

Consider this as food for thought. The Samsung BDP 1400 and Sony S300 (both of the oldest V1.0 spec which doesn't support certain special features) were both as low as $270 during the holiday season and came with 5 free movies via the BDA offer that has run since last summer. The Samsung BDP 1400 now runs $350 and the Sony S300 runs $376. They also came with 5 free movies. After the Warner announcement was made they went back up in price and co-incidentally after 7 months and several extensions of the 5 free offer, the BDA did not renew it for the first time at the end of January so you no longer get free movies with the purchase of each player like you used to. If they were so intent on lowering costs as many in the Blu-Ray camp like to claim then why on earth does it seem that Blu-Ray deals are getting worse with each passing day. Thus far the only real deal that the BDA seems to have going for them ATM is giving away the old V1.0 Blu-Ray players with the sale of marked up HDTVs and then counting them towards their sales figures.


http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-BD-P14...2810339&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Sony-BDP-S300-...2810477&sr=1-2

I guess parts of the industry, stores, and especially store groups and large online stores were only waiting for a signal what format will win.

When Warner said at the begin of this year they will only support BD in the future this was the initial signal for all others to skip supporting HD DVD, reducing the HD DVD movie product line and all this stuff.

When you see articles in the internet or newspapers/magazines you'll find everywhere articles like "HD DVD will die". "BD is the format of the future" or sililar stuff. Most of the consumers are believing in this articles and will not buy HD DVD stuff. Therefore the HD DVD market will shrink continuous.

For the consumer it is the best to have only one HD media format for movies. If it is good that BD survives, I don't know. At the moment I'm still waiting to se if BD really wins. I'm not as stupid and buy BD oder HD DVD equipement and movies to see I bet on the wron horse and have to buy my stuff twice. I have to work hard for my money therefore I can wait till end of 2008...

Competition only helps drop the price. I think the examples I listed above help prove that.

The price for DVDs and DVD players is not that high. If a new technology became a commodity the price drops automatically.

DVD, HD DVD BD or the complete PC stuff is not as high sophisticated that the price will be on a high level for years. I nthe beginning of the DVD the price was also high or higher, but today you get even new movies for 9.99€ in a sale.

A DVD or a BD/HD DVD is a 100% consumer product, and the prices of consumer products are always dropping. As long as there is no absolute monopoly the price will go down if a technology became commodity...

I do not see a real need for two HD movie formats. The movies won't be cheaper if it is available at BD and HD DVD. And it is also the same with you player. You need a "super duper" HD Multi Player or two players.

But maybe we all need a "HD DVD /BD /BD+ /DVD ROM /DVD-R /DVD+R /DVD-R DL/DVD+R DL /DVD-RAM /DVD-RW / DVD+RW /CD-I /CD+G /CD-R /CD-RW /CD Text/ CD Audio" combo all in one player...?