HD wars just got ugly

[Termination]

I have recently switched most Paramount & Warner Home Video over to the Blu side of the force.

After 15 months of seeing which format has the goods over one another has taken some time.

I am more confident in Blu-Ray's ability to playback discs without any glitches. This should be what is on everyone's mind who are behind this HD mess.

When you throw in a BD movie, it plays & navigates almost identical to your DVDs. When you fast forward or search ahead, you can see the image more clearly like DVD. The coating they use to protect BDs is something else too. I have literally put 1 BD to the test trying to fuck up the disc beyond all recognition & failed. This disc looks like went through every world war yet because of the coating used on BDs, it plays back flawless. When I mean flawless, not a single hiccup.

Lately Blu-Ray has been enjoying a comfortable lead in sales over HD DVD. For every 100 HD discs sold, only 34 of them are HD DVD.

Microsoft has given HD DVD a path which will basically let them succeed enough to get past this holiday season because they acquired Paramount Home Video. If you were offered 150+ million bucks, would ya turn down your catalog of films over to 1 format only? Well Paramount did just that & now along with Universal, HD DVD has a brighter future ahead.

What this means for people on the fence about adopting either format has not changed too much.

Studio support still favors Blu-Ray, (not only are they still outselling HD DVD by a margin of 2:1, they have twice as many titles announced for release than HD DVD) still more Ce's releasing BD players. A couple higher end models are due with the Elitle Pioneer & Denon as well. So what?

If consumers are interested in HD & are dead set on waiting this war out, today's news just made their wait longer. So I decided to wait it out too. No longer gonna buy any more HD DVDs nor BDs (even though they are my fav of the 2 formats currently) Today Microsoft made this decision for me. Thanks Microdudes. You saved me a lot of future wasted coin.

[Phoenix]

Very interesting news Term. I've been sort of just waiting till the prices drop or we get a PS3. I was leaning toward the BD though but this sort of makes the decision for me when I take the plunge.

[Quorthon]

Paramount & Dreamworks have just dropped Blu-Ray--they're going exclusive HD-DVD for all their upcoming releases, including summer blockbuster Transformers.

The only exception will possibly be for films directed by Spielberg.

www.gamespot.com/pages/forums/show_msgs.php?topic_id=25865730

[Quorthon]

phoenix said:

Very interesting news Term. I've been sort of just waiting till the prices drop or we get a PS3. I was leaning toward the BD though but this sort of makes the decision for me when I take the plunge.

If you continue waiting, the price of the PS3 will likely drop again in the next six months. Next month, Sony is scrambling out their 4th version of the ailing hardware (last month, Microsoft and Nintendo both, individually, sold four times as much hardware with the X360 and Wii respectively. The DS also managed four times as much hardware sold as the PS3). The new PS3 is $399, with a 40gig harddrive, and ZERO ability to play Playstation 2 games--the new PS3 is NOT backwards compatible anymore. The PS2 Emotion Engine has been removed from the machine.

The PS3 is struggling to stay afloat. I calculated yesterday on GameInformer's site that it may actually be faring worse than the GameCube from the last generation. At this rate, within the next 6 months, there will likely be one or two additional price drops on the PS3 as the X360 and Wii continue to pound the console.

As PS3 sales continue to slow, it's very likely that Blu-Ray sales will as well.