All these releases overseas, with nothing stateside makes me think they're holding off. Only thing I can think of is they're waiting for a Q407 bombshell during the Christmas rush.


While that's great and all, I'm getting tired of waiting.



I refuse to spend over 30$ a movie importing them.

I refuse to spend over 30$ a movie importing them.

unless it's a foreign title of course.

I sure friggin hope so

anxiously awaiting an official release date from anchor bay on halloween or dawn of the dead.

I've for the most part made pease witht he idea that there won't be many releases for the rest of the year that I really want.
I guess I'm in the minority for being very lukewarm about Spiderman - but as a huge Raimi fan I say MEH to that whole franchise.
I'm sure I'll buy it - who am I kidding.

You know, I am a big Blu-Ray supporter, but I have to say, I think they're dropping the ball on the amount of potential they have with this product.

Personally, I believe that, if the Blu-Ray camp doesn't slaughter HD-DVD by the end of this year, this generation of HD-discs will be forgotten. Blu-ray has been holding out for, what seems like forever, on major releases. FOX "temporarily" pulling out support. It seems like everywhere we turn, we're waiting. I think that many Blu-Ray supporters are getting tired of waiting. I don't think we understand why we can't just get rid of HD-DVD all together. The potential is certainly there.

Anyway, I think it's make or break time for both formats and I honestly believe that, if Blu-Ray fails there's no chance HD-DVD can survive.

I'm not tired of waiting. A number of good catalog titles have recently made it to retailers. I just have to laugh when people think Sony and company have dropped the ball on Blu-ray. This format is barely a year old. The studios have released well over 300 titles in roughly a year. Sony has learned a good lesson with The Fifth Element debacle and are simply taking the time to do right by the format. Their recent offerings surely indicate this fact. By year's end there will be a barrage of titles coming from all the major studios as well as Starz Home Entertainment and most wallets are not gonna be able to bear the assault. I can hardly keep up with the currently available content.

Universal rushes content to HD DVD with mixed results and everyone cries foul. I would rather wait and have fewer titles with exceptional quality. There are so many recent theatrical hits likely to hit Blu-ray by year's end that I am not sure what the HD DVD camp can do to counter what is likely to be an impressive showing.

The draught of titles this summer is pretty much in keeping with the studios past behavior with both VHS and DVD. They don't like home video to compete with the big theatrical releases.

Start saving now cause your complaints will fall on deaf ears in just a couple of months.

You know, I am a big Blu-Ray supporter, but I have to say, I think they're dropping the ball on the amount of potential they have with this product.

Personally, I believe that, if the Blu-Ray camp doesn't slaughter HD-DVD by the end of this year, this generation of HD-discs will be forgotten. Blu-ray has been holding out for, what seems like forever, on major releases. FOX "temporarily" pulling out support. It seems like everywhere we turn, we're waiting. I think that many Blu-Ray supporters are getting tired of waiting. I don't think we understand why we can't just get rid of HD-DVD all together. The potential is certainly there.

Anyway, I think it's make or break time for both formats and I honestly believe that, if Blu-Ray fails there's no chance HD-DVD can survive.


I agree with most of what you said. BD will have to make it big in Q4 since the HD DVD people have make clear they intend to do that same thing. I suspect both will sell very well and nothing will change (save for dual format players slowly ending the format issues).

BD will not "fail", and if it does, HD DVD does not go under either because of that. Of course, that also does not mean HD DVD is the new king by default. Neither format has performed well and blaming the other is covering up for the fact that the consumer interest is minimal. Heck with millions of PS3s the BD side cannot sell even a decent number of movie discs. People would rather buy the $9.99 SD Batman Begins as opposed to the $24.99 HD version, if you follow my drift.

Each side only has 1/2 the strategy right: HD DVD with cheap players and BD with lots of studios. Where they all have it wrong is the $20 minimum disc price (online) and $25 retail. The Usual Suspects cost me $27 online and would have been $35 at a store. Even hardcore users think before they buy (in most cases), the mass market consumer simply won't buy since the value is no there in their mind.

You know, I am a big Blu-Ray supporter, but I have to say, I think they're dropping the ball on the amount of potential they have with this product.

Personally, I believe that, if the Blu-Ray camp doesn't slaughter HD-DVD by the end of this year, this generation of HD-discs will be forgotten. Blu-ray has been holding out for, what seems like forever, on major releases. FOX "temporarily" pulling out support. It seems like everywhere we turn, we're waiting. I think that many Blu-Ray supporters are getting tired of waiting. I don't think we understand why we can't just get rid of HD-DVD all together. The potential is certainly there.

Anyway, I think it's make or break time for both formats and I honestly believe that, if Blu-Ray fails there's no chance HD-DVD can survive.

I agree with you. Most of us blu-only people are tired of waiting. But i do believe we will in fact see a slew of great, box office smash, releases this Q4 ! Did you see the spiderman box set ?

We can look at it from another perspective. hddvd is, currently, going all out with cheap players and a massive amount of releases. bluray is been crippled by fox, to a certain extent disney, and sony is not releasing their big movies till Q4. Yet, bluray is still 2:1 over hddvd. What will happen when sony, disney and fox begin releasing their A titles ???

I agree with you. Most of us blu-only people are tired of waiting. But i do believe we will in fact see a slew of great, box office smash, releases this Q4 ! Did you see the spiderman box set ?

We can look at it from another perspective. hddvd is, currently, going all out with cheap players and a massive amount of releases. bluray is been crippled by fox, to a certain extent disney, and sony is not releasing their big movies till Q4. Yet, bluray is still 2:1 over hddvd. What will happen when sony, disney and fox begin releasing their A titles ???


If POTC or Casino Royale are any inidcator, not much. Neither title moved a lot of hardware and the existing base bought up the movies. Exclusives like Spiderman 3, POTC 3, Fantastic Four 2 are flashy titles and will no doubt sell some hardware, however, short of a huge number (say 25+) big exclusives, not much is gonna happen. As the Matrix on hd dvd and POTC on bd proved, older movies that have already sold in huge numbers on sd are great to talk about in terms of "what you got that they don't", but they do not move players.

I have to say that I'm still skeptical. Is there some kind of official word from Sony that they will be bringing out a slew of BD releases in Q4? Do we have announced titles? And there has never been an official word from FOX stating that they were waiting on BD+ to start releasing BDs again. In fact, we still don't have any release announcements from them. Also, WB hasn't announced release dates for the movies that are already out on HD-DVD.

Sure, Q4 may be great. But "may" is a huge key word there. The Blu-Ray camp is not doing a very good job of maximizing the potential. And all I'm saying is that, with so many Blu-Ray supporters putting so much weight into Q4, I wonder if Blu-Ray could handle a poor Q4 showing. I truly believe that it's make it or break it time for Blu-Ray. Not Sony, but Blu-Ray. It's time to play ball or go home.

Good grief...

Furthermore, to me this is Blu-Ray's last chance to blow HD-DVD away and I think a lot of Blu-Ray-only supporters feel this way. They've been claiming it for some time now and HD-DVD is still alive.

What really concerns me is that everything seems to get rolled out in phases. BD 1.0, BD+, BD 1.1, BD-Live. Why couldn't the BD association have been working on all of this concurrrently instead of in phases? It makes it that much more difficult to hardware manufactures. That's the number one reason, I believe, that the PS3 is the top Blu-Ray player sold and why people are holding off on BD set-top players. The Blu-Ray Association needs to tell us that BD 1.1 with BD+ and BD-live will be finalized on a certain date and then stick to that date. Holding us in limbo is keeping HD-DVD alive.

Of course, all of the above could be used as an argument for HD-DVD since they have HDi, mandatory internet connections. But I still say the Blu-ray advantages, potential and current industry support still far outweigh HD-DVD.

If POTC or Casino Royale are any inidcator, not much. Neither title moved a lot of hardware and the existing base bought up the movies. Exclusives like Spiderman 3, POTC 3, Fantastic Four 2 are flashy titles and will no doubt sell some hardware, however, short of a huge number (say 25+) big exclusives, not much is gonna happen. As the Matrix on hd dvd and POTC on bd proved, older movies that have already sold in huge numbers on sd are great to talk about in terms of "what you got that they don't", but they do not move players.
Ya, I wanna say - I did a little experiment last night. I have a PS3 and HD A2. I put the same movie in both players - one in hi def and the other one in SD. Both players are connected via HDMI cables to my receiver, and then via single HDMI cable to my 1080p 52 inch LCD. So I played the same scene first SD and then hi-def and asked my girlfriend if she could tell me which one was which. We watched that scene several times on each player, and finally she said SD about the hi-def version, and hi-def about the standard version.
Of course, this was not in any way any scientifical or anything, but it just shows why it doesn't make sense to pay 100-300% premium for a hi-def version when some people can't even tell the difference. So for me - I will not buy titles in hi def if I already have them in SD.

All of the summer blockbusters will be released on one of the two formats by year's end (Transformers, POTC 3, Spiderman Trilogy, Die Hard, etc) and there will *probably* be a few huge catalog titles too (Kill Bill, Matrix on BD, Blade Runner, etc) although we don't know about the catalog titles for sure.

The combination of lower player prices (Sony BDP-S300 at $399, perhaps) and those releases will mean a solid Q4 for Blu-Ray.

The fall is going to be expensive! :eek:

Yes it is.

I don't know how much money you all make, but I'm having enough trouble keeping up with the BD releases as it is. I prefer the steady stream of quality discs that we're getting from BD studios, as opposed to the huge burst of junk that's coming out of Universal....

for what it's worth
gandalf :o

P.S. Of course, a great sale once in a while like the one from Fry's can't hurt. :)

Well as long as there aren't any more release dates announced - and then cancelled/postponed - I won't bitch.
Much.

I don't like getting jerked around, personally.

...I'm having enough trouble keeping up with the BD releases as it is. I prefer the steady stream of quality discs that we're getting from BD studios, as opposed to the huge burst of junk that's coming out of Universal....

...exactly! Hopefully, Universal is just committing a money grab and will take their time when they finally get around to releasing these titles on Blu-ray. They know the HD DVD supporters are hungry for content and I think they are just churning out titles. It is a smart move actually. They'll probably have to remaster these titles for Blu-ray and then they will be able to re-sell many of the same people in just a year or two.

I'm confident there will be more than enough Blu-rays to spend my money on this fall.

And I plan on enjoying every minute of it. :D