Just wondering whether anyone has thought whether these new formats can go way of the Do Do Bird?

may be no, no where to go.

HD DVD is here to stay. It carries the DVD moniker which is familiar, trusted and is a logical extension of DVD. Consumers in growing numbers are now taking their old TV sets and are taking their viewing experience one step further with HDTV. In light of this, consumers will be taking their DVD viewing one step further as well with HD DVD. Not only is it sensible, it is an easy transition due to backward compatibility and combo titles. As prices drop these buyers will be scooping up HD DVD players and titles in droves.

Sure....nobody outside this A/V forum world has paid any attention to either and we're almost 2 years into this with no sign they will EVER adopt hi-def DVD.

Yeah I can see both dying off....

Sure....nobody outside this A/V forum world has paid any attention to either and we're almost 2 years into this with no sign they will EVER adopt hi-def DVD.

Yeah I can see both dying off....


While I live overseas, I know of only one other person who's actually purchased either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray.

Just doesn't appear to be gaining much traction.

Laserdisc lasted for 20 years and had about 20,000 titles released. That sounds great to me!

Laserdisc lasted for 20 years and had about 20,000 titles released. That sounds great to me!

Granted, but I only of ONE person that actually owned a player. Not what i would call widespread adoption!

Granted, but I only of ONE person that actually owned a player. Not what i would call widespread adoption!

It definitely didn't have widespread adoption. But (as an owner myself), that really didn't matter all that much. We got great titles and lots of really special stuff for 20 years. That's fantastic.


It's definitely possible that high def media follows the same pattern. Standard def for the masses, high def as a slightly-more-expensive niche format.

I'm thinking that it won't happen that way. But it definitely could.

It definitely didn't have widespread adoption. But (as an owner myself), that really didn't matter all that much. We got great titles and lots of really special stuff for 20 years. That's fantastic.


It's definitely possible that high def media follows the same pattern. Standard def for the masses, high def as a slightly-more-expensive niche format.

I'm thinking that it won't happen that way. But it definitely could.

I'll be buying these puppies for a long time to come. That is, as long as they exist.

Greetings

I had 5 or 6 Laserdisc players over the 20 years and upwards of 800 discs ...

We would be so lucky ... (minus all the problems that LD's had)

Regards

Laserdisc lasted for 20 years and had about 20,000 titles released. That sounds great to me!

As I understand LS was pretty damn big in Japan.

Adoption will get bigger as analog signals are cut off. Look, due to the fact there are 2 formats and less than 30% of homes have hdtv's I do not think it will take off like dvd did. DVD improved upon 20 year old technology as it's main competition was VHS. Laserdisc tech being slightly newer. It improved performance of every tv out there. The anamorphic capability made it an excellent bridge product for digital displays. High def discs will catch on but it will take longer. The competing dvd technology was only 9 years old when the format launched. HDDVD has shown enough of a functionality difference from dvd to make the upgrade worth while. Still waiting on BD 1.1

like it or not, High Def resolution is here to stay and the masses are going to be soaking in it from 2009 (or is it 2011?) on.
High def is not going away- it is just going to take a while to before it is percieved as the new standard and not just a tech fetishist novelty.

This isn't a problem with HD DVD because it is flexible. it can be interchanged with sd DVD pretty much on the fly- so that it doesn't have to 'die' just take a nap here and there.
Blu-ray is in a much more brittle position for several reasons.

I would suggest that HD DVD, because of its
1) production costs
2) flexability
3) complete and fully formed feature sets

has the better shot at becoming the next standard and that would leave Blu-ray as a 'niche', but then in all honesty, the only plain advantage to Bd- the only thing it really offers as a point of distinction is its ability to play on the PS3. Capacity and bit rates matter little if the total experience to a layman or a basic enthusiast is percieved to be the same.
And the PS3 is the 'also ran' for this generation of game consoles- so for these reasons, I think the long term outlook for Bd is pretty bleak.
Sony at least will still be putting out movies on the platform, but you simply won't see the breadth and scope of catalog releases on it, the way you will on HD DVD.

just my opinion, of course. Suprises could still happen. Up until last week I questioned whether HD DVD really was in this to win or just to spoil.
I get the feeling now they are going to put up a good fight, and I think they have some powerful and fundemental capabilities that Bd lacks that trump transitory CE and studio alliances.

Laserdisc lasted for 20 years and had about 20,000 titles released. That sounds great to me!

Exactly. We'd be LUCKY if one of these turned out to be like LD.

Right now both HD DVD and Blu-ray are the new LaserDisc. News Flash: We are a nitche market for the time being.

Right now both HD DVD and Blu-ray are the new LaserDisc. News Flash: We are a nitche market for the time being.


yes- for the moment. But interest (in HDMs) is only going to go up- not down, because more HD (and larger) displays are making their way into the mainstream. v1001 was right that the main reason LD is no longer around is because of its size. In many ways it was more economical than VHS (it could be 'stamped' for one), but it's size and weight made (on the distribution end) shipping, and retail display a problem.
And for the masses, it's sheer size would make it in-convienent.
DVD was able to catch on because it could be integrated in a variety of ways and was compact.

One (possibly both, but I kind of doubt that) will supplant DVD at some point. DVD has already peaked. It's in a slow decline now- and there is incentive for CE manufacturers to move away from low margin basic dvd players to higher margin HD compatible ones.

As I understand LS was pretty damn big in Japan.

*EVERYTHING* technology-wise is pretty damn big in Japan!

except XBOX... :)

My opinion about the future of HDM is just the same as Paulidan.

I would like to add that the fact we're still dealing with 2 HD formats wouldn't have made a tremendous difference in sales and acceptance.

Standard DVD will remain the first choice for many years to come if all companies will keep putting their content out on this format, which is more than likely, even if HD media is gonna do really well in the coming years, which I do expect.

I think in 5 years time, HD media could have a marketshare of about 40 or 50 %.

Players are already pretty cheap now (the HD DVD ones) so those Blue Ray manufactures better start matching those prices.
If the difference in hardware pricing is too big (more than $50 price difference) more people will choose HD DVD, many more companies will go neutral and then Blue Ray discs will become a niche format very soon.

This whole HDM reminds me of the story of Quadrophonic. It started out with four companies producing four different Quadrophonic systems using four different audio codecs and none were compatible with the other.
It confused people so much the product was eventually dumped.
Dolby Pro Logic II was eventually developed using stereo as a source.
Perhaps there's an arguement that DVD audio and SACD never took off because of Pro Logic II.
At 1% of market share so far, perhaps this HDM technology will catch on or it will all burn in order for it to rise again at a later time.
The other problem is cabling, none of it is standardized. I spent time last weekend explaining to my sister in law that she's better served watching HD programming on her HDTV with a cable better than the composite input that the cable installer installed.
When I mentioned to her about getting a HD-DVD player that upconverts, the door slammed shut half way through my sentence.
There's too much confusion for the average person to understand this.

Greetings

I had 5 or 6 Laserdisc players over the 20 years and upwards of 800 discs ...

We would be so lucky ... (minus all the problems that LD's had)

Regards

Sony DADC! ARGH!!!!

Laserdisc lasted for 20 years and had about 20,000 titles released. That sounds great to me!

And I was there for 15 of those years, and saw about 2,000 of those titles :) And laserdisc (just like HD today) made for a very exciting decade and a half. :)

And I was there for 15 of those years, and saw about 2,000 of those titles :) And laserdisc (just like HD today) made for a very exciting decade and a half. :)

What's more they still play and sound fine! (Especially the DTS laserdiscs). Unless the transfers were really bad, I haven't even traded up my LD titles for any DVD titles. It is only the advent of HD that is making me consider possibly selling my HLD-X9 player.

^

I too still take my LDs out for a spin every now and again. There's some Criterion titles in particular that will never see the light of day, on DVD or HD DVD. And there are still some actual movies that I have on LD that have yet to be released on DVD.

Again, I'd prefer that HD DVD gets adopted wide (and I suspect that's what will happen... slowly). But if we're left with a niche product that sticks around for a couple of decades cranking out 1000 titles per year, I can live with that. That will give us high def versions of most of the "show off" titles... and I can just watch standard def for the obscure/arthouse stuff (upconverted via my Toshiba).

LD niche would not be the end of the world.

In the years LD players were manufactured around 500,000 were sold according some of the CEA numbers I saw,but alot of those sold were to repeat buyers like me. I still own Pioneer's LD660 and CLD-704 and a Panasonic LX1000. Part of LD problem was in the early 80s it was in a format war with RCA's CED format and back then some people were confused by the formats. The samething happened with SACD and DVD-AUDIO and if the current war continues much longer it will happen to Blu-ray and HD DVD. The current greed of Hollywood won't allow for long term support of both ormats the way it did during the Beta VHS war.

Part of LD problem was in the early 80s it was in a format war with RCA's CED format and back then some people were confused by the formats.

That's definitely part of the issue. There are still people who get confused between the two formats.

And then there was the dreaded "it can't record" aspect. People stuck with VHS because that could both record and play back.

And, by the time people were getting used to higher-end formats with little/no recording (CDs in the early 1990s), LD started to look too big, bulky, and expensive. Most people were holding out for "movies on a CD".


LD had an uphill battle for pretty much its entire lifespan. That it managed to stick around for 20 years is a testament to the level of quality it provided (and the love of the format by companies like Criterion, various high-profile movie directors, etc.)

I love Laser Disc. In fact, I use it as my guide to buying DVD's. If a crapy version of a film came out on DVD that I knew had a better release on LD, I would simply wait. With the exception of Dead Poets Society, which was released in an extended cut on LD exclusively(and it made the movie that much better), most speciel eddition LD's eventually came out on DVD, after a crapy release of the same film on DVD. For example, Platoon, T2, Ransom.

Or some were released in Full Screen versions on DVD that had been released Wide Screen on LD. Happy Gilmore, George Of The Jungle(still not WS on DVD and neither is the Grumpy Old Men series). The best is Ferris Beauler. The LD has the aspect ratio it was shot in, 1.85:1. The DVD has the theatrical presentation, 2.35:1, which cuts off a section of the top and bottom of the screen.

Ferris Bueller was framed for 2.35:1 though, I do believe. But I remember having that laser disc and being happy we just got it in widescreen, period. I had hundreds of laserdiscs, it was dope at the time.

Ferris Bueller was framed for 2.35:1 though, I do believe. But I remember having that laser disc and being happy we just got it in widescreen, period. I had hundreds of laserdiscs, it was dope at the time.
If you watch the two side by side you'll see. The LD has more image on screen than the DVD. One way to tell without even comparing is the end credits. The image on the side gets taller and shorter with each cut on the LD. On the DVD it stays the same. Suggesting that the DVD is the theatrical presentation and the LD is the actual print before reformating for the theater.

I'll be buying these puppies for a long time to come. That is, as long as they exist.
:o

I'd like to point out that for sure Blu-ray will go the way of the Do Do though. Or just be a small niche PS3 market :D

If for no other reason that it has the Sony curse lineage of semi-proprietary formats.

That honestly (as a neutral cat and all) concerns me most about BR.

Does it matter, as long as that niche is satisfactorily catered to?:D