high def DVD players

[MilDoc]

Wal-Mart recently announced that they will be selling BluRay only. Same as Blockbuster, Target, and many other big retailers. If that doesn't kill off HD, I don't know what will.

[Kristofor]

Well, our household was purple (had both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray) and while we have far more Blu-Ray discs than HD-DVD I have to say that I would have prefered to see Sony (evil DRM company) lose.

The game was up as soon as Warner picked a camp. The follow-on decisions from BestBuy, Walmart, Netflix, and such only help speed the process.

For me Netflix is the most painful. Until Paramount and Universal flip there will still be a significant (minority) of movies that I won't be able to see in HD (since I'm not going to buy them).

[andrew.r.w]

I suspect the decision is clear now but I still have to wait for the price to drop.

I have been looking for home theatre (in a box) systems without a disc player because I don't want to commit to a technology at this time. The news this morning said they expect players to fall below $200 by Xmas. Another tech reporter said it would be a few months sooner.

Meanwhile, I'm going to see if I can get the company to buy me a new laptop with a BluRay drive and an HDMI port (do they make those?)

[LCHIEN]

Ladies and Gents, we have a winner.
Toshiba surrendered today and announced it would stop the DVD wars.
They said production of HD-DVD players would cease by the end of March.

Theoretical questions:
1. Will this make Blu-Ray players cheaper (sales volume goes up), more expensive (Sony senses a monopoly) or stay the same (sony pockets the bennies of increased volume production because they have a monopoly)? Currently they start at around $370.
2. What would have happened if, a year ago, Toshiba had dropped their prices to $120 or even $100. I think they would have broken even or lost a little ($50?) on each player but it would have been a throw away situation (what with their promo giveaway of HD-DVDs then) and I would have been in. this was before they lost Warner Bros, Blockbuster, Netflix, and Walmart support. Sony would have had to slash prices to compete and even at the $200 sales point would have been losing probably $100-150 per unit (the blu-ray costs quite a bit more to make) and still not have been as cheap, giving Toshiba both critical mass and sales leadership.

[MilDoc]

I'll wait. I bet Blu-Ray prices drop a lot before year's end.

[Kristofor]

Waiting at this point still makes sense for a lot of people for a few reasons.

For over half the market, if you don't have a HD set then there's no picture improvement obviously. Also, if you don't also have a newer receiver then you won't see the benefit from the new audio formats either.

Hardware prices will still come down as they always do (assuming a constant value dollar), but media prices will likely go up at least in the near term.

For early adopters there have been lots of buy-one-get-one sales and stackable rebate deals. Sony has also been subsidizing the cost of producing Blu-ray discs which use a newer and more expensive process than HD-DVD used. But, that said in time the media prices should also come down (and the more volume the quicker that should happen).

The other factor is that while Blu-ray won, there's more than 1 Blu-Ray spec version and most of the players on the market today are based on one of the older specs. Most of the early adopters will not be able to upgrade to Blu-Ray profile 2.0 without buying a new player (and to be fair many (most?) folks don't care about the 2.0 features). Right now those 2.0 players are at quite a premium, but in another year I would think they would be much more mainstream.

Kristofor.

[rjwaldren]

I'll bet Sony milks it for all it's worth and make the retailers/studios regret their decision.

I was reading an article over the weekend about Toshiba's withdrawl from the market. One article mentioned the various BlueRay revisions. It stated that the next calamity will likely be early BD adopters going to buy the soon to be released BD2.0 discs only to find that their players are BD1.0 or BD1.1 and not firmware upgradeable.

I don't know alot about BD players but I always assumed that their firmware was upgradeable via a LAN connection or CD like my HD player is. But that also assumes that the differences in BD2.0 are firmware only and don't require changes to the hardware.

Kristofor, you posted while I was typing - Do you know if the 2.0 compliant disc are playable on the older players? I mean will the main movie likely play but maybe some newer audio format or "extra feature" won't be usable?

[MilDoc]

Same thing happened with the "old style" DVDs folks. I had to buy a new player after a few years to be able to play some new discs.

That's one of the reasons I'm waiting. And I still don't have a HD video - they have changed too.

I'm still waiting for this whole mess to "quiet down."

[LCHIEN]

I'll bet Sony milks it for all it's worth and make the retailers/studios regret their decision.

I was reading an article over the weekend about Toshiba's withdrawl from the market. One article mentioned the various BlueRay revisions. It stated that the next calamity will likely be early BD adopters going to buy the soon to be released BD2.0 discs only to find that their players are BD1.0 or BD1.1 and not firmware upgradeable.

I don't know alot about BD players but I always assumed that their firmware was upgradeable via a LAN connection or CD like my HD player is. But that also assumes that the differences in BD2.0 are firmware only and don't require changes to the hardware.

Kristofor, you posted while I was typing - Do you know if the 2.0 compliant disc are playable on the older players? I mean will the main movie likely play but maybe some newer audio format or "extra feature" won't be usable?

I imagine the main movies will be playable on the older BR players, but the interactive features and other special features and newfangled stuff may not work. IT may not be too bad, I know we get a lot of DVDs that have interactive feature, alternate view angles and stuff that I don't use much. Not a big loss in my opinion. Most people buy the DVDs for the movies, not the extras.

[JR]

I'll bet Sony milks it for all it's worth and make the retailers/studios regret their decision.

That could happen, but there are significant pressures against it.

The Blu-Ray Disc suite of standards is governed by a consortium called the Blu-Ray Disc Association (BDA). That body has dozens of members, including notable electronics manufacturers, computer manufacturers, content developers, etc. The list is found here http://www.blu-raydisc.com/general_i...009/Index.html

I have some experience working within this type of forum. It is not unusual for one or more companies to have IP embedded in the standards. In that case it is usual for the forum rules and licenses to stipulate that the IP is made available to licensees at a "modest cost". Of course the hangup is determining what "modest cost" means, but by and large these things work themselves out. Sony can expect to receive intense pressure from these manufacturers and content providers, who are used to providing intense pressure to get their way.

The fact that the mfrs. are already bound together in a consortium means they can move as a bloc against Sony to change the specs. It is in Sony's best interest to play ball.

JR

[Kristofor]

I
Kristofor, you posted while I was typing - Do you know if the 2.0 compliant disc are playable on the older players? I mean will the main movie likely play but maybe some newer audio format or "extra feature" won't be usable?

Well, there are some hardware specs for the various profiles which would require more than just a firmware flash to address... 2.0 required a method of connecting to the internet, and 1GB of local storage capability. 1.1 didn't require a network connection and only required 256MB of storage capability. It would be possible to add USB NIC support for players with USB ports but I don't know if that's a likely scenario for most players.

Again whether people care about those features has been much debated... I don't miss that capability on my BDs and never used it much beyond seeing that it did in fact work on the HDDVDs.

Kristofor.