"I'm surprise you didn't Boycott Fox!" - Anyone here doing it? - Page 4

I thought those HD DVD titles were transparent to the master?

Why would you expect Blu Ray to offer increased quality over something that is already transparent to the master?

The master is the weakest link in this chain, not the medium on which it is displayed on, as VC-1 and H.264 are part of Blu Ray's spec, like we all SHOULD already know.

There is nothing stopping a studio from releasing content bit for bit equal on Blu Ray as on HD DVD...

If you're looking at the spec side of things, VC1 = VC1, 54 MB/s > 36 MB/s. I'll allow you to draw your own conclusions from that.

Piracy and support of piracy simply because you don't like the fact that a few studios are not supporting HD DVD. Think you might be taking this format war a bit to seriously?



No, that was just a rumor and it was recently disproved in the Industry Insiders thread.



Just to point out the obvious but Fox was right that CSS was not a strong enough copy protection system. No big surprise than that they were worried about AACS as well. Heck, I would point out that there are people in this post talking about pirating Fox DVDs.



Universal may be doing the same thing but I don't see anyone talking about pirating their movies.



I think that is a bit drastic but at least that is legal.

Excuse me for not sympathizing with Fox for their concerns. The movie studios & the music industry have been ripping off consumers for decades with their price gouging tactics (CD's for $18.99, $40 for DVD's, etc.). I'm not anti-capitalistic mind you, but I have a real problem empathizing with multi-billion $ corporations that look the proverbial "gift-horse in the mouth" - throw their nose up at a cash cow format like DVD because of their paranoia over the tiny % that might seek to pirate copyrighted material. I've collected over 550 LD's, 1,700 DVD's and have already amassed 60 HD-DVD's - I've opened my wallet many, many times for these studios, very often on the same rehashed titles.

Why can other studios like Warner Brothers freely release their films on these new formats without such fears? If Fox followed their lead with competitive pricing and less paranoia, piracy of their titles would go down. I gave the clear example of Warner releasing "The Matrix" on DVD in 1999 at a $24.98 MSRP which quickly became the top-selling DVD of all time. It shipped 1.5 million copies in a 2-week span - unheard of figures at that time - while Fox CEO Bill Mechanic ridiculed the move. And Mechanic feared the DVD industry would cannibalize the tape rental industry, so he backed DIVX and shunned DVD until the bitter end. Warner actually had inspirations of DVD's selling under $10 at supermarkets and gas stations - funny how a company run by forward-thinking visionaries can operate.


Well, since BD has 3 major exclusives at the moment, I don't think you'll find too much bashing of Universal for taking the opposite stance. Ideally, all studios should be supporting BOTH formats. But since the playing field is hardly equal at this point, I'm glad that Universal is exclusive. After all, the consumers are choosing HD-DVD by a ratio of about 7:1, so political nonsense between the studios should not be allowed to be the deciding factor. Imagine the disparity in sales if HD-DVD had 100% studio support and BD needed to be successful based solely on price & performance! The game would have been called months ago!


Not drastic at all. Believe me, I was buying DVD's at a ridiculous rate and had collected a great # of titles that were hardly 4-star films. I'd been keeping most sealed for the past year in anticipation of HD. Now they're all fair game.

i already have a very good high def disk player (a1). i woud rather spend the $600 to buy more disks. if fox releases their movies on hddvd i will have no problem giving a good part of that money to them. i think they are stupid to prefer that i give the money to samsung (which ain't gonna happen anyway) or universal.

Because the BD camp keeps saying that BD WILL LOOK BETTER than HD-DVD... which is untrue. BD is no better than HD-DVD, just a lot more expensive.

Technically, it can.

A 54 MB/s transfer rate is higher than a 36 MB/s transfer rate.

Why is BD "no better than HD DVD"?

Is Playstation 3 "a lot more expensive" than an HD-A1 or HD-A2 for that matter?

Guys,

This isn't about BD's capabilities vs. HD DVD's capabilities, but rather why Fox sucks.

forget about "technically", what is the reality? I'm sick and tired of the "promises" and "potential" of BD.

Also comparing PS3 to HD-A1? What a joke. One is a gaming machine and the other is a standalone unit. Oh yeah, that's right, the PS3 is "potentially" a great BD player right?

Like I keep saying, BD is a promised format. Promise this, promise that, delivers nothing. 'Nuff said.

Sorry to get back on track on "why Fox sucks"

the answer is because Fox is only backing "The Promised Format" instead of staying in reality with a format that so far outsells BD more than 700%. The logic is beyond me (and many other members too).

I thought companies are into making money.

The "reality" of it is that Playstation 3 is about to put 2 million Blu Ray players in people's homes by the end of 2006.

That and BD+ are the only 2 things FOX sees, period.

ahhh, yes... the PROMISE of the POTENTIAL of 2 million additional movie buyers.

sounds like Bluray to me!

You're kidding yourself if you don't think Playstation 3 will sell out 2 million units by the end of 2006.

2 million Playstation 3s in people's homes = 2 million Blu Ray players in people's homes.

Microsoft's Peter Moore has gone on record stating 90% of XBOX 360's early adopters had HDTVs. You should give the same benefit of the doubt to Playstation 3. I'm sure those people will be interested in High Def movies, since they already have a High Def movie player in their new Playstation 3.

End of story.

hmmm, typical BD fanboy, absolutely great in creating twists. At least wait until I'm not around if you want to twist my post.

Did I ever mentioned that PS3 won't sell 2 million units? I said, and I quote "the PROMISE of the POTENTIAL of 2 million additional (movie) buyers." NEVER I said "the promise of the potential of 2 million sales".

You think ALL 2 million PS3 owner will suddenly buy Fox BD at $40 (MSRP)? I don't think so.

last but not least, the story doesn't end until it ends. Do you work for Fox? because you sound like Fox exec who said that there is no format war.

I don't think any Blu Ray title is worthy of selling 2 million discs. I don't think any HD DVD title out right now is worthy of that, either.

I'm not twisting anything, I'm just telling you facts.

2 million Playstation 3s in people's homes = 2 million Blu Ray Disc players in people's homes

Peter Moore said that 90% of all XBOX 360 early adopters had HDTVs. It's only fair to give Sony the benefit of the doubt and assume the same. 90% of early XBOX 360 owners had HDTVs, and that console didn't even have a next gen optical drive in it.

It's easy to see where FOX would get the idea to bet big with Playstation 3. Even Sony's competitor is indirectly telling FOX that the Playstation 3 has a huge, and most importantly REAL potential to appeal to a massive HDTV owning community.

I don't expect you to and I am just pointing out that fear of piracy does make a bit of sense after CSS got broken so quickly.



Because different studios have different concerns when it comes to video formats? For instance do you know that Time Warner was one of the main proponents for ICT being included in AACS while Fox was one of the main opponents against it?



True.



So if that changes would you think that Universal should release on Blu-ray?



Agreed, the PS3 will probably be better, can decode Dolby TrueHD at up to 7.1 channels, and has an HDMI 1.3 output. It would be more logical to compare the PS3 to the HD-XA2.

here's that keyword again.

Playstation 3 was supposed to not be able to read dual layer discs
DL 50GB Blu Ray discs were never supposed to materialize
Blu Ray Discs were not going to use anything besides MPEG 2
Yields on DL Blu Ray discs were supposed to be <30%
Blu Ray has worse image quality than HD DVD
Blu Ray is twice as expensive as HD DVD

Yes, I've heard all of the misinformation and FUD surrounding Blu Ray's potential, David Susilo. I think we all have.

again with the twisting of my posts. tsk tsk tsk.

Yeah, the last Fox DVD I bought was X2 which I bought sealed at a flea market for $8 a year ago. I hear X-Men 3 has a terrible transfer, so I'll skip, though I really don't care for the series...except Part 2.

If any Sony or Fox DVD does come out that I want, the flea market is it. Buying probably stolen copies of Fox and Sony DVDs is perfectly fine in my book.

"
promise this,
promise that,
delivers none. "

Ummmm...

Blu Ray Disc titles encoded with next gen video codecs have been on sale for a while now.
Uncompressed audio tracks have been included in films for a while now.
50 GB Blu Ray Discs are materializing this Tuesday.
On November 17th, the cheapest Blu Ray player is $499.

I think they're about to deliver in spades.

Shouldn't you be blaming studios for not releasing any content that uses Blu Ray's bandwidth advantage over HD DVD, not the format itself?

Fox is missing out the HD market, apparently because of BD+. The irony is that there is a good chance that HD will win the format war, then Fox will have missed a lot of revenue for no good reason. HD will not suddenly support BD+. Sony has more than movie sale money involved, but Fox?

In any case, they really believe they will lose more to HD piracy than they will gain from sales? Even if it can be hacked, study shows pirates wouldn't have bought it anyway. Lousy business sense.

It will be a few more weeks before we will know how the PS3 does as a Blu-ray player.

So your saying that there are 90 million HD tv's just waiting for the PS3. Sony claims they have sold over 100 million PS2's and your saying 90% have HD sets. You live in a fantasy world my friend. One that has been sold to you by Sony.

This is the biggest load of crap I have ever heard, "dude".

I think you may be a bit confused about what he said. The idea is that most people who buy the PS3 at first will have an HDTV. Not exactly unexpected and that is what happened with the initial Xbox 360 buyers. Also it will take years for the PS3 to sell 100 million units and during those years more people will be buying HDTVs. The only game console company that doesn't believe that HDTVs will become common over the next few years is Nintendo.

if fox were to takeover walmart i guess walmart would close 90% of their stores and post armed guards at the remaining 10% to prevent shoplifting. then they can, claim the products are better, raise all the prices and call the stores blu-mart.

Never heard that one, although I think Bill Hunt's observations caused a bit of concern.



Actually, 50 GB discs were SUPPOSED to materialize in the summer - until they were delayed again and again and again. In reality, they should have been the standard for the format, since it makes claims of "beyond high definition" and "more capacity than HD-DVD" yet hasn't delivered on either! A half-dozen titles on dual-layered discs by the end of the year is hardly a reason for excitement.


Never heard that one either. Although Sony's decision to release ANY discs encoded in MPEG2 was stupid from the start, and the majority of the BD releases on the market have obviously suffered from their decisions.


I haven't seen any actual yield rates on BD or BD50, so any numbers in this area are speculative at best. I have heard that Sony has been subsidizing disc manufacturing, however.


So far, according to all review sites, that seems accurate.


Again, a $500 A1 and a $1000 Samsung on the market. Yeah, can't argue with that one.

Bob Black, I think you're a funny guy.

If any review site has said Blu Ray picture quality is worse than HD DVD, they are confused.

Why?

Because Blu Ray is an optical format that doesn't have a picture quality.

It is a medium that stores information, it doesn't have a picture quality. The data that is stored on that medium might, though. But as far as I know, they both can store the same data, so that's pretty much irrelevant, right? It should be.

As far as "quality" of the medium itself is concerned, 50 GB > 30 GB, and 54 MB/s > 36 MB/s.

Both media formats are capable of decoding the same codecs.

Please, stop confusing the sub par quality of releases by a couple of studios with the media format itself.

You should be blaming Sony Pictures and Lion's Gate, not Blu Ray Disc.

Surfer Dude, do you think any of the arguments you're making are new? There are two forums here for you. They're called Blu-ray Hardware and Blu-ray Software.

FOX acts like HD DVD and its fans do not exist. Perhaps a thread about FOX should have been put in the Blu Ray Hardware or Software section as well?

I'm honestly just not interested in seeing so much FUD and misinformation being thrown around, that's all.

Again, your arguments are not new. In the end, the proof is in the pudding. HD DVD releases have had consistently higher quality than BD releases, and they're selling better. These are facts not up for debate. You can argue till your face is blue (pun intended) that BD is the better format, but in the end, BD has to prove it to us. You can't do it for them.