Blockbuster Blu-ray announcement: Master Thread - Page 69

The truth has been spoken.

I wanted to reply to the post below from another thread which was recently closed as redundant. It's plausible to suppose that the Blockbuster PR will influence a lot of people to believe that it's not wise to invest in and HDDVD player and discs. But I would argue that this PR effect is only going to last so long and reach so many people. This was not that huge a story (except for folk like us with an interest already established). Unless it's followed up by other signficant events which keep reinforcing the message, it's eventual effect will be nill, I think, as long as Toshiba comes back swinging with lower prices and slick promotions - you gotta love that ad with the guy from the Sopranos! - most people will forget it and the price of the machines will make the biggest difference in the decision of people who would seriously like to upgrade their DVD quality to match the potential of their new HDTV. I still think as long as neither format has begun to break open a mass market and PR events (I'm including the sort of price cuts and ads we got from Toshiba recently in this package of "PR events" - events which make the media look attractive to consumers) keep swinging as they plausibly should back and forth between the two media, the first machine to a consistent price of $199 wins.

Quote:
Originally Posted by shendley
Obviously Blockbuster could have a big impact. But the bottom line for me is that neither system has reached a mass market and until one of them does just about anything is possible. Also, intuitively, I think all the BB decision will do is put Blu Ray to the top of the list in BB customers' heads if they think about taking the plunge into hi def DVD. When they go to Best Buy or Amazon and compare the prices, the decision stops being a no brainer in favor of Blu Ray as long as Toshiba can keep a $200 price differential between their machines and the Blu Ray machines and, especially, if Toshiba can find a way to get Best Buy, Circuit City, etc. to market their machines at the magic price of $199.99. I'll go out on a limb: the first machine to that price wins!

Disagree - as the market continues to show Blu-ray being the winner the person browsing will also hear about how much more chance Blu-ray has of sticking around. Put that HD DVD player at $10 if you want, but when a salesperson tells uninformed shopper that HD DVD could be dead by this time next year that person will balk and drop the extra $50 for the Blu-ray player, providing the Blu-ray player isn't already cheaper by that time.

The Chines consumer electronics show is from July 6th to July 9th and I don't see the HD DVD Promotions GRoup or Toshiba trhere. I do see the BDA and Sony (CHINA) there.

With a cheaper Japanese unit on the way AND likely a cheap Chinese Blu-ray player on the way which players will be cheaper is anyone's guess.

Toshiba can only bleed so much.

Drugs, music, and cars, that is what all my income used to go to. See no reason for it to be different today.

That is until my kids have their own income, no way they will be taking drugs

It has been posted that Columbia House will offer both Blu-ray and HD DVD beginning this fall. Although that isn't big, it is certainly a positive for HD DVD and news worthy when it happens. I understand members can log into Columbia House and see the news now.

Chris

I thought you said Columbia Pictures.

Any outlet like Columbia House providing both is a non-issue. The jump to exclusive is what will make a difference.

HD DVD needs more exclusive titles, distributors, studios, everything, to survive.

Blu already has the lion's share of those exclusives, and any universals makes their side stronger, since going blu will not deprive like going HD DVD will.

Was the HD DVD Promotional Group's June 11th press release exclaiming, "Consumers Drive Record Sales of HD DVD Players to Capture 60% of HD Set-Top Market" a preemptive strike against Blockbuster?

It's like the Promo Group knew this was coming and needed to soften the blow. So they issued the press release beforehand so they'd have something to point to when the sh*t hit the fan.

Here is the press release.

Here is Microsoft's response to Blockbuster's announcement.
Isn't that the standard answer? It seems that the HD DVD camp has quoted the "statistics" from their press release in all interviews and requests for comments to the Blockbuster story...60/40 standalone...4-1 attach rate...And then there's that weird mandatory internet connectivity comment from Warren Leiberfarb (sp?).

This one how one financial analyst sees it:

HD Downloading is getting stronger and stronger every week on the Xbox360. I expect it to be 10 years away from having 'every movie at your fingertips', but the progress that they are making is remarkable.

What is most interesting to me (from this thread), is the notion that BR discs are more scratch forgiving. That is a big plus. If BR does win out, that is a plus for me.

What I am confused about is the 'other' industry, and it selecting HD-DVD. I thought that was supposed to mean that HD-DVD would win out. But, now with the Blockbuster news (who I did not know was going to decide the war), has totally blown the other "deciding" factor out of the water. Very confusing.

And, it used to be that HD-DVD had the better compression software algorithms. But, now I see that BR is using the same, so that is a wash. If BR can come up with the same interactivity, which was another HD-DVD advantage, that will be good. And, lastly, the whole DRM issue. As long as I can buy a disc and legally watch it on my computer, portable device, and television - I will be very happy. But, that might be asking too much.

It is still very much wait and see. At least I have XBLM.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=25509

I could not post a link on my 5th reply. But, this is a good article about XBLM and how it is doing.

SO true, Rob!

My fiancee's cousin and her friends are college age and they almost NEVER buy CDs. Just download. I have been to parties where someone has their ipod jacked into a stereo (often one of those ridiculously overpriced and underperforming "dock" thingies) and the sound is SO utterly horrible. Like nails on a chalkboard, yet everybody there thinks it's just swell.
When I record my own music (Cd coming out this summer, btw..!) and I have to make a 192kps mp3 from my master to upload to my MySpace page, the sound quality difference is HUGE.

Yet, everybody loads up their mp3 players with the most songs possible at the lowest bitrate. They also use those crap earbuds.
Many wouldn't know how a record is supposed to sound or even what good sound quality really is if it mugged them in a dark alley.

I think a lot of people will be surprised when it happens sooner.

google's been buying up a lot of dark fiber (all of it??)
There is FIOS, but that's slow.

Compare broadband penetration in US with almost anywhere else.
We're behind. It's because telcos,cablecos like their ridiculous profits right now, as-is. Why spend billions on rolling-out something new?

They will be forced when the dark fiber starts to light up.

Somebody help me out please. FIOS will be coming to my neighborhood in the next few months and I've been very happy at the thought of telling my cable company to jump in the lake. What is "dark fiber" and is there another name for it? Here I thought Verizon was going to be giving me "state of the art" subscription television.

"FIOS: Reality vs. Marketing" could become a 2,000 post thread...

someone correct me if I am wrong (I have no doubt that will happen)

I think dark fiber is just fiber that is not currently being used, installed but currently unutilized fiber facilities.

The quality of the encoding matches the quality of the content?

I was listening to a "Yes" album the other day, a classic live album.
And it's still so good and yet I hear nothing today that's even close to what they did in the early 70's regarding the content. I burned it from my original cd which was a re-master of the original recording, BTW.

My point is that people will always want quality encoding/recording and they will always prefer quality content. The fact that kids tolerate poorly encoded material just means that they are, well, kids. Their tastes for quality will mature in all things. Right?

Back ot original thread.... Netflix, et.al. are all trying to get the copyright holders to get a frigging clue. Old ways die hard. Physical distribution adds enormous costs to the final price. But who's going to pocket the profit eh?
That's the battle. But we as consumers don't care. We want convenience and fair prices and fair use policies that are civilized and practical.

Correct

From Wiki:

In fiber-optic communications, dark fiber or unlit fiber (or fibre) is the name given to individual fibers that have yet to be used within cables that have been already laid. They are hence not yet connected to any device, and are only there for future usage.

The term was originally used when talking about the potential network capacity of telecommunication infrastructure, but now also refers to increasingly common practice of leasing fiber optic cables from a network service provider.

At work we lease dark fiber as our connection between the two buildings, not that that really matters, but there you have it

Yep, the cable's been put in the ground, on the poles, on the ocean floor but it's not been "lit". An interesting read....Neil Stephenson (author:Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, et.al.) wrote a Wired article about the crazy days 10 years ago or so, when companies were putting cable in all over the globe. Great article.

Oh in case no one knew, google.com bought YouTube AND as I said they are buying and have bought much of the dark fiber.

(also earlier I said FIOS is slow, I meant slow rolling-out)

Frosted Mini-Wheats *** now with 20% more Dark Fiber***

Here is a website where you can look up the top grossing movies for each year.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/...yr=2007&p=.htm

Just change the year in the link or follow their links to get to different years. Feel free to go find years where the studios supporting Blu-ray exclusively wouldn't have had big titles and what they would have available non-exclusively. That is how it works when you have the big majority of the studios.

As far as shooting wads, if you look at those lists you can see that for 2005 and 2006, out of the top 5 movies at the US box office for Universal, they have already released 9 out of 10 of those. Inside Man is the only one they have left. And for the previous 2 years before that they have already released the majority. One more will be gone with Meet the Fockers in August. Looks to me like for those 20 titles for the last 4 years they will have 3 left after MtF.

Of course Universal has good older titles. But we've seen the job they've done on some older stuff and how older stuff tends to sell. They could dig deeper and maybe they will, but I don't see any one of the 6 most major studios shooting their wad early as much as Universal.

Blockbuster is probably keeping in mind how the exclusive Blu-ray studios have done as far as producing big selling (and renting) movies and that they can get the neutral stuff with this decision too.

--Darin

Let's not forget the impact of the BB announcement on the HD DVD exclusive studio executives. Can you imagine ignoring a large segment of the population just because you want to be exclusive to a certain format? It's not the format, but the content you are selling them, and why tie one of your hands behind your back?

Like it or not, the best HD DVD exclusive titles will sell at least double by going neutral - guaranteed.

Correction: At least double.

Carry on

Thanks

Ken G. of Universal said this about HD DVD and how it impacts Universal:

1. Represents .01% of rental revenue

2. Represents 0% of profit

This will be the same for any of the studios. HD Disc is just too small a market to even consider any switching of status (exclusive to neutral or neutral to exclusive) until the market matures.

When you see numbers like this, that put the format war and HD Disc in prospective - you begin to understand that we have a looooooong way to go before executives look at HD Disc as anything more than a potential for the future.

Go to your neighbor lake - now spit in it - there - you just added HD Disc.

Hell, and he is promoting it!

Great job Mr. PR Man, be glad you don't work for me.

Please note I edited my post to reflect what Ken said about the impact of the BB on Umiversal

Yes - he probably didn't have the PR guys that Sony had to explain how losing $2 billion, so far, is good for the company

The reality is that until HDTV's became ubiquitous HD content was no better than DVD.

Remember the first "progressive-scan" dvd players? It's funny to laugh about how that supposedly made a huge difference on 27" crts at fifteen ft. viewing distance.

BUT, there is a lot of money to be made on the consumer who just bought their 50" lcd at Costco or Best Buy.

The dvd doesnt' have the same pop as hd programming. All those DVD's and superbit dvd's will go the way of the shelves filled with stacks of VHS tapes.

HD discs will 'force' many of those consumers to throw out perfectly good dvd's and replace them with HD that really now will make their new TV investment shine.

Mark my words, Universal knows full well that if Blu wins they will make alot of money again on consumers that buy what they already had in an inferior medium.

Do you have a link?

They keep quoting the same stats because they are the only positive stats they have and they hope that people won't realize just how meaningless those stats are.

Yes, but from this spit, there will be a ripple that will travel a thousand miles, and in that journey, the ripple will touch the lives of millions of potential renters.