NetEditor

That just means you have to buy something to get the $100 credit. So once you charge the PS3, your card will be credited $100.

NetEditor

http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssC...32340820080104

NEW YORK/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Time Warner's Warner Bros studio plans to announce it will release next generation DVDs on Sony Corp's Blu-ray format exclusively, two sources familiar with the plans said on Friday, dealing a big blow to Toshiba Corp'sHD DVD format.

Warner Bros, Hollywood's biggest seller of DVDs representing about 18 to 20 percent of sales in the United States, had been one of the few studios that backed both formats.

News Corp's 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Co, and Lions Gate Entertainment Corp are among studios backing the Blu-ray format. Viacom Inc's Paramount studios and General Electric Co's NBC Universal, owned by General Electric Co and France's Vivendi, release movies in HD DVD format.

An announcement is expected shortly, the sources said.

(Reporting by Kenneth Li in New York and Bob Tourtellotte in Los Angeles, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)

jiggaman

i was told to wait for the dual players to be perfected. how do you like your LG player SOOPA?

NetEditor

With Warner going Blu-ray, there's no point in buying a dual-format player. Blu-ray has 70% of the market now. HD DVD is dead unless they can pull a rabbit from their hat.

Sarlacc

its official. At the end of may warner is bluray only. This is huge.

Sarlacc

hd DVD is crippled because of the vastness of earners library but its dead yet. Paramount is still hddvd minus speilbergs films.

jiggaman

paramount is the only major one left huh?

Moog-Type-S

^^

Here is the latest breakdown:

Blu-ray include: The Walt Disney Co ., Sony Corp.'s (SNE) Sony Pictures, News Corp.'s Twentieth Century Fox and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

HD DVD include: Viacom, Paramount Pictures, which also owns DreamWorks SKG,
Universal Pictures,

Billiam

Dumb question, is it pretty much a given that any title which has Dolby True HD and/or DTS-HD as the "featured" audio track would also have a DD 5.1 track as the “second banana” choice? I'm just curious how likely it would be for someone like me with an older DD 5.1 receiver to be relegated to the land of PCM stereo.

NetEditor

Yes, the DD, or DTS, track is embedded as well, so if you don't have an HDMI receiver, you'll still get 5.1 via optical or coaxial.

jiggaman

so i guess a DUAL is worth it then...

Moog-Type-S

^^ Who knows....time will tell.

NetEditor

Very doubtful. The way it breaks down, 70 percent of studio content is now exclusive to Blu-ray. In essence, HD DVD has Universal and Paramount/DreamWorks, and that does NOT include any films directed by Spielberg.

Up until now, BD has had about a 65-35 advantage on disc sales. With Warner going Blu-ray exclusive, that'll shift even more. Warner is the still largest movie studio, so their move to Blu is HUGE.

joerockt

But HD DVD has porn.

Advantage: HD DVD

CLpower

bluray has porn too. Sony just won't produce it in THEIR facility, but many other facilities are doing it at a rapid pace


who watched porn on DVD anymore anyways?

joerockt

Yea, the internet is taking over, but DVD's still account for a majority of the sales

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinv...net-porn_N.htm

CLpower

well okay, good thing that Porn is available on both formats....and not just one like some people seem to think


and actually, if you read that article...DVD use to account for 80% of sales (3 years ago), and now it's 40%.....so it's not the majority

joerockt

Yea, thank jeebus you're here to help out with the clarification .

joerockt

Uhhh, yea it is. Look at the 2 charts.

Video sales, rentals $3.6 billion
Internet $2.8 billion
Exotic dance clubs $2.0 billion
Cable/pay-per-view TV $1.8 billion
Novelties $1.7 billion
Magazines $950 million
Mobile $39 million
Total: $12.9 billion

3.6 Billion is the majority.

moeronn

No, it's the largest percentage. That's not the same thing.

CLpower

and it's falling rapidly

joerockt

Ok, let me rephrase. By itself, it accounts for the most sales out of each individual category...better?

moeronn

SupaRookie

Luckily, we have a PS3 too. Someone just need to freaking win. Maybe once, Sony can actually do this.

TSXmeister

Game Over for HD-DVD!!!

fsttyms1

Go Blu!!!

doopstr

Followup---HD DVD group cancels CES press conference in wake of Warner announcement

NetEditor

Warner had been scheduled to be one of the main speakers. People took that as clear evidence that Warner wouldn't drop their HD DVD support.

Yumcha

to Warner joining the Blu-Ray side!


Question: Are Blu-Ray discs region-specific...?

soopa

I don't understand why any mindless consumers are cheering a Blu-ray advance?

Blu-ray is as anti-consumer as they come.

I am and have always been dual-format capable, nonetheless, if I had to decide a winner it would be HD-DVD hands down.

Why would you support Blu-ray? The discs are more expensive, they don't have a combo (HD + SD) format, and the players are more expensive.

What advantages are there? None. There is extremely little difference between the two formats other than price, picture quality is identical as they're both encoding in the same format at the same bitrates. Beyond that, if you look at audio quality and/or special features the best bang for your buck... again... would be HD-DVD... which has produced more discs with lossless audio, cheaper players with support for lossless audio, and is to this day several steps ahead of Blu-ray in support for advanced features such as network capability. On top of all that, HD-DVD thus far has produced far less "coasters" ... discs in which bugs and confusion over a constantly changing standard have made them unplayable or crippled on many of the gen 1 & 2 devices.

HD-DVD is CLEARLY the format in the best interests of the consumer. Why do you think Blu-ray is gaining more corporate support...? $$$$$$ PROFITS $$$$$$


BLINDLY supporting Blu-ray simply because your PS3 plays them is simply short sighted and foolish. At the end of the day it's going to cost you far more to live in a Blu world than it would have to simply go get yourself a $89 HD-DVD player.

NetEditor

Blu-ray supports region coding, but it's optional and up to the releasing studio.

NetEditor

I support ONE format. Whether it was HD DVD or Blu-ray. I also have both players. This dual format stuff, while great for us early adopters, was BS as far as gaining mass adoption is concerned.

As far as technology, Blu-ray does have more disc capacity and higher bit rate. And my experience with both has thus far been rock-solid with my PS3. No glitches, lockups or unplayable discs. With my HD DVD, which I've owned about 1/3 the time, I've already encountered hiccups, mostly on the combo discs. Reading AVS, even avid HD DVD fans hate the combo discs, as they are buggy.

I would've cheered an HD DVD victory, too. I would've cheered either one winning, because having two formats is what's holding the HD format from gaining wide acceptance.

Sarlacc

Honestly, Bluray has more room to grow.

Where I would have been just as happy to have HD-DVD win, BluRay has more future capability with its larger capacity.

Just like DVD, High Definition codecs will improve and picture quality will only get better over time. Having more storage space on the disc can help to provide this.

And, for people who just have to special feature crap, the extra storage also allows for the use of that without compromising the quality of the movie.

As far as combo discs are concerned, I never use the the ones I have. I find them to be about as useful as the older discs that had widescreen on one side and 4:3 on the other. Plus, only Warner made them, no one else.

A lot of big directors are starting to stand behind bluray, because of the same room for growth reasons i mentioned. The biggest one being Speilberg. Its pretty huge when Paramount make sa deal go HD-DVD exclusive with the EXCEPTION of his movies...thats kind of a big deal considering his films are some of the most popular, period.

I was the most anti bluray person on this board, but after going dual format, and i DO NOT own a ps3, myself a winner is a winner and an end is an end.

NetEditor

That's not true. There are plenty of Universal combo discs. I think Paramount/DreamWorks was the only one that didn't use combos.

Sarlacc

My bad, still dont use them.

cM3go

No more Batman: The Dark Knight on HD-DVD?!

soopa

I'm just going to counter a few points...

1. "Blu-ray has more disc capacity" - False
The initial Blu-ray standard allowed for a higher capacity than the initial HD-DVD standard, true. However the HD-DVD standard was recently revised to allow for a 51GB triple layer disc, besting Blu-ray's 50GB capacity by 1GB.

Even without that, I can't imagine movie discs ever utilizing the full 50GB. The "maximum capacity numbers are more aimed at the personal storage market. I read recently that most of the discs put out on Bluray & HD-DVD thus far could easily fit on a single double-layer standard DVD.

Even those movies with gobs of special features are already utilizing double discs anyway. Whereas many HD-DVD movies are utilizing network capability to stream special features.

Summary: They have the same maximum capacity, not that it matters...


2. "Blu-ray has a higher bitrate" - Proof?

If true, this would be total news to me. If you're talking about encoding bitrate, to the best of my knowledge most all VC-1 HD-DVD and Blu-ray titles are encoded at identical bitrates. If you're talking about maximum bitrate / read speed than they are identical in all Gen2+ devices.

If there were an advantage to either it would be to HD-DVD whose encodings haven't changed since day 1. Early blu-ray discs were encoded with Mpeg 2 rather than the VC-1 which HD-DVD has always used and Blu-ray is now using.

Even if there were any differences, head to head comparisons of discs available on both formats have proclaimed nearly identical results.


3. "Combo discs are buggy" - Not in my experience.

I've noticed no difference between combo and single sided discs. I don't know of any technical reason why a double sided disc would perform any differently than a single sided disc. Doesn't make much sense. Single sided or double sided, the HD-DVD is isolated no matter the case.

I like combo discs for a few reasons. 1., not every room in my house has an HD player. My fiancee doesn't really care if she's watching HD or OTA... if she wants to watch a movie in the bedroom or wherever else it's nice that she can do that without having to have an HD player in the room. 2., I don't mind lending movies to friends, and vice-versa. Not all of my friends have HD players/tv's. As an example, my neighbor just borrowed Bourne Ultimatum from me. He'll watch the regular DVD side while I watched the HD side.

Speaking of that, if combo discs are supposedly unusually buggy than why would the HD camp put out all of their biggest sellers in the combo format (Bourne, Transformers, etc)?


3. "Big directors support blu-ray because it has more future growth capacity" - Can I see a quote somewhere?

I've already established that the capacity of each disc is IDENTICAL (even though it hardly matters for film content). When has a big director said they're supporting blu-ray because of "future growth".

The Blu-ray camp has a mega buzz machine. All of that extra money they're charging you they're putting back into ANTI-HD-DVD marketing. Again, this is anti-consumer. Rather then marketing to promote awareness and wide-spread adoption, they're putting all of their efforts into defeating HD-DVD, at any cost. Major directors / studios are making their decisions SOLELY based off $$$. I would bet directors & studios alike are lining their pockets choosing sides.


Blu-ray doesn't care about regular people. - Kanye West

( ... while we're makin' shit up...)

Sarlacc

Michael has pubically made it known he prefers bluray.

Speilberg has made it known he wants bluray.

There are many others who swing the same way, but I'm not searching for quotes right now. But those two people arent definite.

Bluray has more capacity. While HD-DVD annouced the ability for 51GB discs didn't bluray annouce their much larger triple layer discs as well? I could be wrong but i remember them doing so.

I know where your arguments are coming from because I made the same ones myself. But as I said A winner is a winner, and since I'm set up for both I don't care.

And as far as network interactivity, I think have a ways to go with that. The one disc I won that has that is Transformer (not a combo, unless there is another version available) and it takes forever to load up when trying to deal with the network, it even hangs at times. I usually just dis connect the network to watch the movie, which is stupid.

Combo disc bugs...never heard of them, I've just found them useless. I'd rather just wait and watch the movie in the my main room then bring into my bedroom and watch the SD version. Why watch SD when I have HD. I understand what youre saying because I've thought and made the points myself, and while that works for you, that mindset doesnt work for everyone.

And in the end who really cares? With companies like netflix trying to pioneer on demand HD rentals, and Itunes getting ready to announce movie rentals, I still stand by original statement made long ago that both these format are only intermediary formats.

So why bitch and moan? Do you have some kind of residual payments coming from hd-dvd? I didnt think so.

PimpCL23

damn... it seems we think alike! (great minds think alike!... or.. very troubled ones)

btw... where did u see a $89 HD player? i want one!

fsttyms1

Blu-ray has a higher data transfer rate for video and audio (54Mbps vs 36.55Mbps).