What will it take for a studio to finally do something major?

One possibilty is that the sales gap widens between BD and HD-DVD to 3:1 or even 4:1. Universal decides to go format neutral and people stop buying HD-DVD players and disks. The war is over.

It wouldn't have to be a studio. Could also be a retailer. A major sales shift in either direction (as mentioned above, 4:1 disc sales) could very well push an already biased retailer to drop whichever product is underperforming.

Cost of entry need to go down for mass adoption .
Prices will go down , to a leval people will buy at (a year?)
Bet both formats will be around years , why worry ?
I bought knowing that one might eventually go extinct , big deal ..
One fine day there will be no hd of either .
In the meantime I'll enjoy what comes available on my chosen format ...

i believe this has already happened in australia. one of the largest retailers there is blu ray exclusive. of course here the opposite just happened as circuit city decided to add and promote hd dvd recently...

I am not going to disagree with anything you said but what does it have to do with the subject of the thread.

It will take one side admitting defeat and ending this stupid war. It is a stupid pointless conflict that NOBODY wants and it does need to end and it will end. Studios, customers, and retail stores arent going to deal with this 2 format crap forever as it isnt going to work. Its hard enough telling people to upgrade to a new format when there are 2 formats they can choose from.

You would like that to happen wouldn't ya? Sorry pal. Not going to happen. The real loosers are the bi-format guys.

I don't understand why people get so emotional over this, seriously, the most I stand to lose over this is about £1000, it really isn't a big deal, not anything I would have sleepless nights over. HD DVD is even better as it is so much cheaper with just a $499 entry price, you guys don't stand to lose very much in the grand scheme.

Agreed. What's the big deal? We're early adopters, we should be used to being on the bleeding edge (and sometimes being wrong).

I'm only in for about $400 worth of discs thus far. My PS3 I don't count since it'll be a great gaming machine no matter what happens on the HD front, so my risk is low. HD DVD owners probably aren't in it for much either... the Toshiba units upscale well, and the 360 add-on is $200, so also minimal investment there.

If your investment in high definition concerns you enough to get emotional over it, you've probably spent more than you can reasonably afford on it, and that's no one's fault but your own.

For studios to do something major , I think mass adoption would be key ...
Players need to get within the reach of the mass consumer . Not a niche specialty market ...IMO
You can have a majority of titles from studios , but the average consumer may not adopt anyway till the cost gets within their reach ..

I hope hd takes off , but someone has to budge . Titles available and at a cost that people will bite at .
By studios doing something major , I'm thinking of them going neautral ....

Bob
Looking forward to an exciting year either format !!

I'm tired of this price argument, if you simply shop selectively you can already get Hi-def dics for less money than DVD was charging when it first came out. DVDs consistently cost close to 30 bucks at first and even after that new ones almost always cost 20-25 dollars until the last year since Hi-def was launched and prices have come down.

Anyone remember why Warner and Paramount decided to throw support behind Blu-ray? Weren't they originally thought to be HD-DVD exclusive.

Paramount has been throwing some weird signs out lately. They've openly talked about supporting Blu-ray more in Europe and also recently one of their guys was talking about Blu-ray advantages.

The main advantage (Besides the sales lead and momentum) would be that if they supported BD exclusively and stepped up production it would further help to establish one format which is what everyone really wants anyways.

To me there are several paths that can lead to a Blu-ray victory.

1) The Blu-ray player base becomes so large that Studios can't ignore it.
2) A major retailer chooses the Blu-ray format exclusively.
3) Anyone of the the 3 remaining major studios that support HD-DVD go Blu-ray exclusive. In the case of Universal, if they simply start offering Blu-ray movies.

I'm a blu supporter at heart but I haven't got my PS3 yet (I'm also a Playstation supporter at heart).

Still, objectively speaking, I just don't see a single path that can lead to an HD-DVD victory. I see 1 path that could lead them to survival and some form of co-existence, though I believe that to be unlikely.

The biggest aces for HD-DVD are negated.
1) The high attach rate is negated by being so far behind in players available.
2) Universals huge library is already available on DVD and not likely to appeal to being replaced by J6P, on that note Universal has been a weak studio in recent studio releases IMO.
3) Lower player prices not only have not happened yet, it looks as though Blu-ray will be coming down at the same time. Also NPD indicates that despite lower prices HD-DVD stand alones don't sell better. Meaning, as long as people see limited content for HD-DVD it doesn't matter how much lower the price goes it won't help as much as they would like it to.

You can't possibly know what is going to happen. The scenario I suggested seems much more likely than Sony, Fox and Disney going neutral.

Maybe they could be built on sales, but many just don't understand them. For instance, sales in the long run and not just the short run. It would be completely rational for a studio to believe that sales will be better in the long run with one format winning than with a stalemate and 2 formats. Just because going neutral would help short term sales it doesn't mean that decision wouldn't hurt sales overall.

I think the end of the year will be interesting and we could definitely see some changes at next CES. For instance, if one format leads in sales runrate by 2:1 to 3:1 at the end of the year, there would likely be a lot of pressure on studios on the lower side of that to go neutral at the least. I could see Paramount following a decision by another studio by going exclusive themselves. Can't say which side they would go exclusive to as it depends on which side can show themselves to be the likely winner by enough to cause something major like that. Should be an interesting rest of the year.

--Darin

What's slowing adoption isn't cost of titles or even really cost of players. Its the format war and the relatively low number of people who have HDTVs. Neither format can be mass market until HD itself is.

Hopefully the format war is resolved soon. Mass market HD is almost here.

What gives you that idea ?

Time. That is the simple answer. Unless there is a settlement between the two formats they will both exist and the studios will ultimately service both. It's anybody's guess how long it will take, but I would bet no sooner than 2008 before the exclusives consider servicing both.

It is certainly in the studios best interests to pare this down to one format. However, that was known from the get-go and they still couldn't get it done. Nearly a year has gone by and they both continue to travel down separate paths accumulating sizable (relative to each other) installed bases. The efforts on both sides seem to only be getting more aggressive with many free discs offered with hardware and regular sale pricing deals.

The best case scenario is that the totalHD discs become economical and reliable to produce and this war will no longer matter.

You a Blu-ray supporter? Nooooooooooooooo

You're about as objective as Fox news. Anytime someone says "I can't see...." that person is admitting they have a myopic view of the situation. There are very few truly objective patrons on the AVS BD/HD DVD.

I remember the DVD launch. The Sony player was $1000, the DVDs around $25-$30. I bought the Sony in mid 97. I still don't own either HD format. I have an HDTV and ample disposable income as do most of my friends, only one of which has HD-DVD via the XBox addon.

"Objective" and "Fox News" don't belong together in the same sentence. Neither does "Andy Parsons" or "Amir" with the word "impartial" though.

Truer words... those guys are paid to be impartial. Hell I won't lie..I think HD DVD has about a %33 chance of survival. I do like rooting for the underdogs so there goes my impartiality. Frankly the desire to run competing xxx format out of business is kind of ironic. Monopolies never end up benefitting the consumer.

Microsoft still charges up to $500 for an OS.
Clear Channel still plays garbage on the radio
And Telephone service is still overpriced despite Ma Bell being broken up decades ago.

Let these f***ers fight it out and give me good pricing. By the time I go neutral my actual cash outlay will likely be under $500. Hell I'm taking advantage of the 7 free discs from Toshiba/VE soon and when I grab a BD player it'll be a steal probably 249 in late 2008 if need be.

I'm all about my loot. So hell don't let the signature fool you...I'm loving that Blu-ray is around and if I can keep this battle balanced in "my" favor which is two companies competing to the point of diminished margins I'm a happy camper. I'm no fool..whatever I buy will continue to play regardless of what happens to the format.

As was mentioned by an earlier poster mass adoption of HDTVs in the US will accelerate the process. Mass HDTV adoption will probably be required if one format is going to get a large enough advantage to really declare victory.

If the history of DVD, or more accurately DVD vs. DIVX, is any indication Universal, Fox and Disney will be the last to jump ship. For arguments sake look at how long Disney waited before publishing DVDs, there were almost 5 million DVD players in the US market before Disney started publishing DVDs. So about the time HD-DVD has 5 Million users in the US Disney will probably start publishing on HD-DVD. I would imagine that the same would need to be true about BluRay before Universal looks at making BluRay Discs.

If it is true that HD-DVD is cheaper to start producing than BluRay I would think that it would be an easier financial decision to start making HD-DVDs than it would be to start making BluRay disks. This would seem to be even truer if the studio was already using VC-1 for their BluRay products. If the costs for the two formats are the same and Sony isn't subsidizing certain studios as has been rumored it should be just as easy for a company to start making BluRay disks.

Studios will only leave money on the table for so long, but I don't think we'll see any studio make a shift until there are well over 4 million installed users for one of the formats.

keep you fingers crossed.

one question with one is easier to achieve?

1. sell 2mil players to sell <>700k movies

or

2. sell 0.2mil players to sell <700K movies

answer please

When it gets to a point where a title can sell 1 million copies in one format, studios will switch.

Yes, in Australia JB Hifi recently made a massive press release in conjunction with the official Blu-ray launch stating thye aree a blu-ray exclusive retailer.

Here is a pic I took in my local JB store here in Canberra, Capital City of Australia showing just how "exclusive" JB is.

You know, if you had an argument against the points that would be one thing. But you don't know me at all. And comparing me to fox news is low, after all I don't even like republicans.

My view is not prejudiced in the fact that I simply gave reasons as to why I cannot see an HD-DVD victory, I did say I saw a way to stalemate. If you could point out any way in which you see and HD-DVD victory, then please do.

Only in a perfect world can you expect 100% compliance. This is a new battle with new rules. Who is to say the victor will take all?