Will Hybrid Players End the Format War? 279
flyhalf writes "A new report says that hybrid players will force an early end to the HD DVD/Blu-ray format wars. Some of the projections seem optimistic: $200 hybrid players by 2009 and several manufacturers cranking them out. But reality will likely be different: 'standalone units of any format aren't selling terribly well. Recent research determined that 695,000 consumers owned either a Blu-ray or HD DVD player, but most of those are tied to a console — 400,000 of the 425,000 Blu-ray players sold by the end of 2007 were PlayStation 3s and 150,000 of the 270,000 HD DVD players were Xbox 360 add-ons.' Most importantly, consumers aren't early adopters: 'DVD players needed over a decade to supersede the VCR in the living rooms of the United States and there is little reason to believe that HD DVD and Blu-ray player adoption will outpace that of the DVD.'"
Sony = Duh? (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, Sony has 400k+ blue-ray players available in the US in the form of PS3's at this point, all right; but first, not all of those have been sold...
And second, Sony totally blew it when they built the PS3 Blue-Ray capabilities; it can't play 720p, only 480p or 1080p, which means that a very large proportion of in-place US HDTV sets couldn't use anything but 480p, which is pretty much the same as a progressive scan standard DVD in terms of resolution. Oddly, the PS3 will do 720p for games. Just not for DVDs.
The reason that 720p is important is because for the LCD market, 1080p sets were rare until very recently. 720p was the top 'P' resolution available (it's actually the "middle" resolution in standard HDTV, 1080, 720, 480) though there are some uncommon ones and some variants, like 24 FPS stuff for 1:1 movie compatibility, and some TVs could scale 1080i down to 720p, or even display 1080i, just not 1080p.
Third, Sony's balking at allowing prawn into the format (like they did for betamax), which is (IMHO) likely to deal them another severe blow. It seems like they have developed an unmatchable expertise at shooting themselves in the foot.
stale numbers (Score:2, Informative)
That's at least one million Blu-Ray players in the USA. I have a PS3 and I watch Blu-Ray more than I play games thanks to NetFlix's Blu-Ray inventory.
Re:Sony = Duh? (Score:5, Informative)
Still waiting on a PS3 firmware update that lets users set separate preferences (in a rational way) for Blu-Ray playback and game play. I bought my Sharp Aquos LCD TV before the Aquos line started getting 1080p support; my TV is 720p native, though it does a good job with 1080i material. (The actual LCD panel supports 768 scanlines, so no matter whether I'm watching 720p or 1080i source material, there's some kind of scaling going on behind the scenes.)
Disk sale comparison here: (Score:5, Informative)
From the looks of things it is extremely close, Blu Ray is coming on strong recently.
Re:cart before the horse (Score:3, Informative)
Now if I can just get a boxed set of all 6 star wars movies. I won't then feel guilty about tossing episode one onto the rifle range.
Re:You = Duh? (Score:3, Informative)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070113/ap_on_hi_te/v
refer to other posts about the 720p thing
and now to the third..
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070112-860
if every statement you brought up is wrong, how is the post informative? more like uninformed...
Updated numbers. (Score:3, Informative)
Now looking at those numbers it starts to look a little more bleak for HD-DVD as compared to Blu-Ray.
This could explain the large number of Blu-Ray movies out this year vs HD-DVD. It looks like there are around 2X as many movies coming out for Blu-Ray as HD-DVD. That also isn't very good for HD-DVD.
The price appears to be about the same now with a PS3 going for $500 and a HD-DVD player going for around $500, so the price advantage that HD-DVD had is gone.
Recent data on Amazon show that Blu-Ray movie purchases has now exceeded HD-DVD as of Nov of last year and it appears that total sales will be greater for Blu-Ray than HD-DVD in less than a month (if it isn't already), adds to the near death nail for HD-DVD.
Then you look at the content providers that are behind Blu-Ray and you start to see HD-DVD being killed off later this year.
Did anyone notice the HD-DVD presentation vs the Blu-Ray presentation at CES this year? Yet another bad sign for HD-DVD.
I will say that the pr0n industry picking HD-DVD will help it, but it appears that most pr0n is downloaded now, and the loyalty of that business isn't exactly as strong as say Disney.
So I guess Microsoft better get use to having Java run on even more stuff out there.
Re:Most people unaffected .... (Score:3, Informative)
Royal Canadian Air Farce [tv.com]
Hockey Night In Canada [www.cbc.ca]
Planet Earth [www.cbc.ca]
Update: Vivid exec says Sony gives no assistence. (Score:3, Informative)
However, last week (January 16) Hirsch said they will now back both formats [dailytech.com]. Their first title is scheduled to be released in both Blu Ray and HD DVD on March 28. Also note that Hirsch says they encountered hurdles while producing for Blu Ray:
However, not all of what Heise printed is invalid. Hirsch did note that Vivid has encountered hurdles while producing adult entertainment for Blu-ray more so than HD DVD.
Sony is not giving any assistance in the authoring or replication of adult content on Blu-ray, said Hirsch. Sony is somehow trying to keep away such material from the format, which I think is a mistake.
Without Sonys help, Vivid had to find authoring and replication facilities on its own. Hirsch added that Sony puts restrictions on all Blu-ray manufacturing facilities that produce Disney titles disallowing them from making adult content. By comparison, the manufacturing process for Vivids HD DVD adult titles is much easier as it is able to make use of existing facilities.