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wal mart to sell hd movies only in blu-ray format...


timay

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080215/tc_nm/walmart_dvd_dc

HD-DVD...we barely knew thee...

this lands a huge blow to the bow of microsoft and the xbox 360, kinda shitty.

MS never had a care about HD-DVD, they did not want HD-DVD to win. They wanted a war where no one won, and that got just that for a while until Sony paid off Warner Bothers

MS wants and always wanted the next generation of HD media to be downloaded through Xbox Live. Even Net Flix is going to start "renting" movies over Xbox Live soon

HD-DVD is a more friendly format by far, I have been making HD discs of TV shows for over a year now that are HD-DVD compatible. Grab the HD signal and with very little work have a working HD-DVD disc in minutes

They both to the same codec, both hold about the same sapce (51gb VS 50gb), & HD-DVD discs are cheaper to produce but Toshiba could not keep up with Sony's money. Sony bought Disney, Fox, & WB all Toshiba could buy was Paramount.

If MS wanted HD-DVD to win they would have included a HD-DVD player built into the 360, Toshiba was even willing to cover the cost.

Blu-ray has a few fundamental problems, early (and when I say early that includes 95% of the players sold for Xmax last year) stand alone players will not play new discs with the special features. BUT 95% of all Blu-Ray players are PS3s. Still that has not stopped a ton of class action law suits from being filed since early January when the new formated movies came out.

Now what I do with TV shows can be done on a standalone BluRay player, just not on a PS3. Sony will not allow a HD media to be booted unless it is on a Blu-Ray disc. All HD-DVD players allowed normal DVDs to contain HD material. A normal DVD is the perfect size for one 45 minutes episode of TV. I'm not going to spend a grand on a Blu-Ray player, and that is what a good one costs that can be upgraded when Sony finalized the Blu-Ray format. Why release a format when you have not finalized the specifications on it?

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I would like to think Toshiba wasn't really in it to win it anyway, they are still making a tremendous fortune on the DVD format so I figure they'd drag out the format war as long as they could have...

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But they would have make more off the HD format in the long run because people would rebuy their DVDs in HD

HD-DVD is made by the same group that made DVD, Sony created Blu-Ray so they would not have to split the royalties with others. They were not happy with a piece of the pie this time they wanted the whole d@mn thing

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But they would have make more off the HD format in the long run because people would rebuy their DVDs in HD

HD-DVD is made by the same group that made DVD, Sony created Blu-Ray so they would not have to split the royalties with others. They were not happy with a piece of the pie this time they wanted the whole d@mn thing

You forgot about the other members who are a part of the Blu-ray Disc Association. In this case, Apple, Dell, HP, Hitachi, LG, Samsung, Sharp, Sun Microsystems, TDK, etc. refused to split royalties as well?

If I did my research right, after Sony went off and tried to develop a new storage format using blue diodes, Toshiba refused to pay royalties for using the blue laser diodes used for BD-ROM discs.

In the end, NEC and the DVD Forum developed their own optical media format, known in the beginning as the Advanced Optical Disc...which is now known as HD-DVD.

What good is a format when you don't have the support of any major studio behind it anymore? It won't sell.

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What good is a format when you don't have the support of any major studio behind it anymore? It won't sell.

If Sony had let it played out without buying companies they would have lost

just like with:

Hi-FD's - 150mb High Floppy Disks

MiniDisc's

Memory Sticks

Betamax

Hi-MD's

UMD Movie Video's

SACD

Sony & Pioneer created Blu-Ray, since that time 16 other companies have joined and formed the Blu-ray Disc Association' Board of Directors, and a total of 65 companies are considered contributors

Sony & Pioneer get the lion share of the royalties each time any Blu-Ray disc is sold of any type Data or Movie.

Just because you are a member of the Blu-ray Disc Association it does not mean you get any royalties, most companies PAY the Blu-ray Disc Association to be a member

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If Sony had let it played out without buying companies they would have lost

Not to beat a dead horse but the first day Sony, Matsushita (Panasonic), Pioneer, Philips, Hitachi, Sharp, and Samsung all got together should have been the last day of this stupid war.

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What Kraw stated is very true. The HD-DVD format was the better, more consumer-friendly format from the start. I have had the 360 add-on for over a year and bought a Toshiba A2 last November for $95 on pricematch at CC. That is a great player and the upconverison is fantastic through HDMI. I have bought quite a few HD-DVD movies from Amazon for an average cost of $10 on sale and with my 10% discount, when they were Buy One Get One Free.

The A2 is very easy to use and has very nice features. With all the recent news of Blue Ray winning, and with MLB 08 coming out, I took the leap on a PS3. It is on sale at Target for $399 but you get a $40 store credit too. Good deal.

So far, I am impressed with this 40 gig PS3. It runs very cool and quiet. The gamepad is very light and I like the analog sticks better than the 360s, which is back at MS support for the 3rd time in 15 months.

I really wish that HD-DVD had won. It was much better thought out from the beginning, but Sony had to win one sooner or later. If it had not been for the PS3, they would not have sold hardly any. Funny thing is most people who have bought a PS3 could have cared less about the Blue Ray at the time. Alot of those didnt even have HDTV sets. It was a great Trojan Horse strategy, but it was Sony's money that made the difference.

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What Kraw stated is very true. The HD-DVD format was the better, more consumer-friendly format from the start. I have had the 360 add-on for over a year and bought a Toshiba A2 last November for $95 on pricematch at CC. That is a great player and the upconverison is fantastic through HDMI. I have bought quite a few HD-DVD movies from Amazon for an average cost of $10 on sale and with my 10% discount, when they were Buy One Get One Free.

The A2 is very easy to use and has very nice features. With all the recent news of Blue Ray winning, and with MLB 08 coming out, I took the leap on a PS3. It is on sale at Target for $399 but you get a $40 store credit too. Good deal.

So far, I am impressed with this 40 gig PS3. It runs very cool and quiet. The gamepad is very light and I like the analog sticks better than the 360s, which is back at MS support for the 3rd time in 15 months.

I really wish that HD-DVD had won. It was much better thought out from the beginning, but Sony had to win one sooner or later. If it had not been for the PS3, they would not have sold hardly any. Funny thing is most people who have bought a PS3 could have cared less about the Blue Ray at the time. Alot of those didnt even have HDTV sets. It was a great Trojan Horse strategy, but it was Sony's money that made the difference.

HD-DVD didn't secure the exclusive support of any of the other, major "name brand" CE manufacturers, and was basically riding on the back of one manufacturer--Toshiba. It also:

-Never had an advantage in studio support.

-Had most of it's major, much-ballyhooed, pre-launch "advantages" over the rival format (launching a year earlier than rival, 1/2 the price, greater name recognition,) either squandered by ineptitude or just plain never materializing in reality.

-Had an absolutely disastrous launch. Delayed multiple times, the format eventually did launch, not a year earlier than Blu-ray as expected, but only by approx two months, with barely any software to speak of at launch, and with just two models to choose from, neither of which was capable of 1080p, with only a paltry total of 10-12,000 units in stores.

-When 1080p players finally did come out, they were priced very similarly to the rival 1080p players offered by Blu-ray, so little impact over the supposed "price advantage" was felt.

-The HD DVD/DVD Combo disc made HD DVD discs more expensive than Blu-ray discs of the same movies, largely negating any consumer-perceived price advantage the format had in media.

-Never had even one week of a head-to-head sales victory over Blu-ray after the PS3 launch.

-Ceded Japan by totally failing to capture the crucial recorder market in Japan due to a dearth of both recording hardware and media compared to the rival format.

WHEREAS with Blu-Ray

-Always had greater manufacturer support from popular, trusted brands.

-Always had greater studio support. Locked up absolutely crucial studios like Disney and Fox and gave them a place at the table. Disney became one of the greatest assets, with not only releases, but with marketing the format.

-Until the ridiculous fire sale pricing by Toshiba over the holidays, kept standalone player prices low enough that, in a feature-to-feature comparison, were priced either the same (see the first 1080p players on both sides) or were almost always always within $150-200 of the competition, not "twice the price" as HD-DVD tried to claim.

-Quickly moved to recognize and correct shortcomings in the quality of some early title releases, patching the hole before HD-DVD could fully exploit it.

-Kept movie prices right in the same price range as the rival format, or even cheaper, despite supposedly being so much more expensive to produce.

-Put Blu-Ray in the PS3, making it more mainstream than HD-DVD could have ever hoped to be, even with the HD DVD add-on for the 360.

-Recognized early-on the importance of recordables in the Japanese market, and quickly captured +90% of the high-def share of that market.

-Had much better marketing than the rival, and kept it up.

-Led in movie sales every single week after the PS3 released.

IMO the "one single event" that doomed HD DVD was the day Toshiba walked out of the "one-format" negotiations with Matsushita, Pioneer, Philips, Thomson, LG, Hitachi, Sharp, Samsung, and Sony, and decided that they could basically go it alone, and beat them all.

Basically, this war never should have started in the first place.

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Toshiba Corp. formally announced Tuesday that it will discontinue its next-generation DVD business, a move that will likely close the books on what had become one of the consumer electronics industry's biggest format battles.

But in a sign of its determination to bounce back quickly by investing heavily in other business areas, the Japanese electronics company at the same time unveiled a plan to spend together with its partner SanDisk Corp. (SNDK) of the U.S. more than 1.7 trillion yen (US$15.7 billion) to build two new NAND-type flash memory plants in Japan.

The Tokyo-based electronics conglomerate said it will cease research and production of HD DVD equipment and will stop selling such products around March 31. Toshiba has so far sold about 1 million units of HD DVD equipment worldwide including players and recorders.

"We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called next generation format war and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop," said Toshiba President and Chief Executive Atsutoshi Nishida. " It was a tough decision. But it would have a big impact on our management if we continued" the HD DVD business.

now when HD-DVD players go on clearance you might want to pick one up because they are still great quality DVD up converters

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Up to this point in time and other than the extra storage capability, Blue Ray is an inferior format, just like VHS was to Beta. They have lagged behind the features of HD-DVD from the start. I feel I am going backwards when going from HD-DVD to Blue Ray. I have both.

HD-DVD was a well thought out technology. Unfortunately, their weaker marketing and negotiation$$$ talents were the reason for the final outcome, because the technology and pricing from the start has ALWAYS been better.

Initially, a stand alone Blue Ray cost $1k and the debut PS3 was $600. Where HD-DVD players have always cost about half the current cost or even less than that through out the same time period.

The Blue Ray DVDs were always $5 more until just the last month. Whether you went to Best Buy or Amazon, you could count on that price difference.

The extras and menu system on HD-DVDs worked really intuitively and gave you more features than a comparative Blue Ray movie usually, including internet connectivity.

The consumer is the real loser here because we had a superior HD format and the lesser of the two has now won out, for all the wrong reasons, just like VHS over Beta.

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