Has the Warner Desicion stopped you from buying a New player? - Page 8  

Thanks for the links - I think...

Still pathetic that Warner has done this, only for the almighty dollar. Warner should use part of the reported $500m to buy vaseline for all us HD DVD-only owners that they just screwed...

i had a feeling last summer something like this was going to happen and alas it has. That's why i went neutral and was able to secure both format's players for less than $600 total. So I too will probably just buy/rent BD titles from here on out, but my HD-A2 will keep it's spot in the entertainment center for a while. Ironically, after 8 months of flawless performance, the A2 started choking on discs (SD and HD) a few days ago! It must have felt the pain

I'm an HD-DVD supporter. I bought my A2 last year and love it. However.......as a "supporter" Blu-ray is making it very difficult.

I'm reading a lot of posts here saying that you should continue to support HD-DVD and show the studios that we as consumers have a voice so-to-speak. But how can you do that effectively when just about every store is in support of BR? Or, at least the stores we all frequent.

Target = Way more Blu-ray support there. They hardly have any HD-DVDs
Walmart = I don't shop there
Best Buy = Decent amount of HD-DVD's but still more Blu-Ray
Circuit City = Same as BB

Renting? We have one main store that is renting HD disks and they are Blu-Ray. Blockbuster announced they would be renting Blu-Ray as well.

So how can we support a format that is slowly dying out?

Try online - Amazon comes to mind. Even BB online, I think they carry more than in store.

I know you can find any title you want online. Not the point I was trying to make.

If guys like us that are "in the know" have a hard time supporting the format we love.....what is the new consumer going to choose? Pretty safe to say it won't be HD-DVDs.

Dont know what special sauce Mr Bay's films have but when Paramount was releasing on both formats using different codecs for each format there was never any appreciable difference between the two. So I'd have to say Mr Bay doesnt know what he's talking about.

Actully how many Bay films are on br? Pearl Harbour comes to mind, how many others?

I see your point. Visibility is one area HD DVD has always been behind and unfortunately isn't something that can be changed from our end.

I plan on picking up an A35 as soon as I can, and maybe even an A3 for the Bedroom. As long as HD DVD is supported by Universal, and Paramount, I will support HD DVD.

j

Ever notice how Bay uses the terms "I" and "me" a lot?

Self-important a-hole.

Pearl Harbor
The Rock

Possible Disney (Buena Vista) Blu-ray releases:

Armageddon
Bad Boys
Bad Boys II
The Island

LOL..I don't even want to get into how much I can't stand Michael Bay. Holy crap he's got to be the absolute worst director/producer ever. From his liberal use of smoke, slow-mo, sweeping pans, funky filters, and the ever present warehouse in every single film......guy drives me nuts.

I just bought an HD-A35 but decided to sell it and pick up a $100 HDA2.

I just bought an HD DVD player on Dec 27th. Honestly, I think I would have possibly held off on the decision if I would have heard about this sooner. Now, I doubt that I can even return it since I already removed the UPC code to send off for the 5 free movies.
I wont worry about it too much. I have a PS3 to play BluRay movies. In all actuality though, I find that I have enjoyed the HD DVD movies much more. They seem to have more special features and I just like the overall feel of them better.

I actually purchased the Toshiba HDD3 because I dont really like to play movies on my consoles. I avoid it when possible. So I bought the HD DVD player, A) to have both formats and B) to begin purchasing more movies on HD DVD as opposed to BluRay. This would allow me to stop having to play movies on my PS3 to get high def.

The fact is that I went through several PS2 consoles and never even played movies on them. Also, I have two or three friends that have all had at least two PS2 systems. I guess, I sort of feel like playing movies on the PS3 is like shortening the life span of the machine. Ive already had to return it for a new one once. That happened back in Jan of 07, only two months after it came out. Meanwhile, I had an Xbox on launch day and it ran fine until the launch of the 360, which has subsequently run flawlessly as well. To me, the PS systems are not trustworthy. I do not want to have it take a crap on me any time soon....

I will still purchase HD DVD movies. I wont upgrade my player anytime soon as I just purchased one less then two weeks ago. But I will definitely keep getting the movies. At the very least it is a good upconverting DVD player, which I didnt have until now.

HD-DVD was on a slow death for a long time. Now this just seals the fate. No way I would buy an HD-DVD now.

Like many of the earliest adopters I started with an A1 and now have an XA2.
I have 50+ HD DVDs and was seriously disipointed by Sony's early BD release.
However, with Walmart stepping back from pushing HD DVD and with this latest decision by WB, HD is now in SERIOUS jepardy.

I can honestly say I will not likely buy any more HDDVDs and just be happy I have an excellent upscaler in the XA2 for my DVDs and existing HD DVDs. However, I am still not interested in spending the money necessary in going BD.
Of course, if they get LOTR EE series, that will force my decision.

Chris.

So 2 movies released on br. Unless he worked on their HD DVD equivalent I dont see how he can claim they would be better on br. Do directors directly work on the encodes of their films? However The Island is an interesting one seeing as it is already available on HD DVD as an import. It will be interesting to see how the two encodes compare once it is available on br.

The "Only if mine explodes..." choice is close to my opinion. I'll get a dirt cheap HD-DVD player to put in the attic for later. That's what I should have done with Beta.

Say, does Blu-Ray have 2160p mode? If not, they'll likely be cheap relatively soon too...

So what are Toshiba and Microsofts options at this point? What can they do? What card can they play?

Mac says that they will be shipping PC's with blu-ray in the near future. We all know the popularity of the Mac products these days.

So......it seems to me the only thing they can do is put out a universal player and hope that the remaining supporting studios will continue to release on HD-DVD format or at least both. That seems to be the only thing they can do at his point...it's not like Disney, Warner Bros, Fox, etc will all of a sudden say "Oh you know what...we will do both".

Universal player from Toshiba to allow people to play their existing and possible future HD-DVD's until they phase them out. Then you still have a good upcoverting player along with blu-ray capability and you can spin your old "cooler" HD-DVD's as well. Sounds like that is the only thing they can try?

Newsflash!

HD-DVD just died today.

Get used to it people. Move on....

you should take your own advice...

If Woody Harrelson can rent Demi Moore for 1 million(Indecent Proposal), what made you think that businesses can not do it to consumers?

Need to go look for a spare.

I think part of the reason is BLURAY is a bit more of pain for folk to rip and copy.. BD+ and the shear volum of much the content.

The studio's like anything they mays copying harder..

cheaper to make is less important - as they will try to have the highest margins as log as possible on the sold media..

I have 3 players. One from each generation. The last one I bought I am keeping factory sealed until I need it.

Anyone that has a large hd dvd collection might think about getting a spare just in case. They are cheap enough to just tuck away in a dry environment for the future.

Man, this is strange...I literally told this guy around 15 Minutes ago that I would buy his A-3 and 8 Movies for a pretty good price.

Then I came here to make sure it upconverts SD DVD`s and get some feedback on it, and then I see this news

Lol, the reason I didnt buy until now was beacuse of the potential to end up like Beta/VHS, and well, I guess that time has come.

This was cheaper than buying a new Projector, and I was hoping to re-new my enjoyment with the current projector(900u) and see just how good the picture is/was, but it doesnt seem to make sense now....does it?

Trevor,

Thanks for compiling this information. It gives a good look on the inside of how this all went down.

Like many consumers, I sat on the sidelines waiting for this stupid war to be over. A few months ago I got tired of waiting and based on the higher storage capacity, better studio support, selection of available films and my general belief that it would be the final winner, I picked up a Blu-ray player. Just when I thought I had it all figured out, the Paramount defection announcement really floored me! So, even though I still believed in Blu-ray long term I decided to get into HD-DVD to start enjoying those few HD-DVD exclusive titles I cared about. I got the A3 for $160 and I only bought about 10 discs so my investment was very small. My experience was that the video quality was about the same with both formats (give or take some problems with both).

Now this announcement from Warner Bros... like many others, I had been hearing rumblings for weeks that this would happen so I can't say I am surprised. I guess I am more relieved than anything that the end looks like it is finally in sight.

At first I was just going to keep my A3 but the more I started thinking about it, I just couldn't justify that decision. So, I have decided to sell or return everything related to HD-DVD and just bail. Yes, I will be missing out on a couple of really great films until they are available on BD but I just don't care anymore. Having to deal with two players and two formats is just not worth it anymore when you consider the writing is on the wall so clearly now.

This whole confusion has been caused by greed on all sides (including Sony and Toshiba). Someone had to win and someone had to be the loser. The second I went neutral, I knew I would be on both sides (winning and losing) in the end.

Mike

I'm still on the fence about everything. On one hand, I'm glad about the format wars. They have probably helped alot to bring prices down quickly (Cheaper players and free movie deals). Imagine if this was only a blue ray world and Sony was running the show...

Also, why not wait to see what the HD DVD group does. If they went for broke, it could make things slightly interesting. If I was them, I would flood the market with not only cheap players, but cheap burners and blank media. Get Microsoft involved like they should have last year with putting HD DVD in all Xbox's. A few other things. But those I would do. Cause, if they don't do something big soon, it's all but over.

I just bought an A3 and have been enjoying it. I really would like HDDVD to win just because Sony values short-term profit over all else, and their rootkit debacle a while back really pissed me off. I have a PSP I'm pretty happy with (albeit it'd still be better without the retarded UMD disc format), but aside from that I really try to avoid Sony products, and hence went HD-DVD. Now, I also don't have much love for Microsoft, so that wasn't so easy either

That said, I am really sad to hear about Warner's and do think the best bet now for Tosh is to 'go for broke'. Win back some studios (convince MS to kick in some crazy incentives somehow), and sell players at a loss. If there were lots of $99 players available (basically, A3 quality), and a (I hate to say it) pirate-friendly SATA-interfaced writer, I think we'd see a lot of momentum. Don't forget that Apple really isn't a big fan of Sony, even though they've been buying components from them since the original mac (but less and less over time, I think maybe almost nothing at this point). Sony hates Apple for the iPod's success, and Jobs seems to have reciprocating feelings in general. The fly in the ointment there is really that Jobs likes DRM or at least slowing down pirates, due to Pixar and Disney relationships

To me one of the most interesting facets of this will be if the porn industry actually plays a role here. I know Sony doesn't want porn on BR, and so those content producers have been exlusively HD DVD. Now, I don't know why exactly most people would /want/ porn in HD, it's bad enough I have to see every wrinkle on David Letterman's face on CBS, but if that takes off, HDDVD would seem to have a fighting chance, as adult content has driven so many technical innovations and helped end format wars before. (I am actually not much for porn DVD in general personally, although I don't think there's anything wrong with it, and I think it's a fascinating if overall vaguely negative industry.)

Ultimately, Microsoft (and likely the porn guys too) probably believe the future is in downloads and doesn't care hugely about the optical disk formats, at least not enough to throw hundreds of millions of $ at it, unless they thought they'd recoup it in licensing their scripting engine. I doubt that's the case (if we're ever to see lots of $99 players anyhow), and at this point they have mostly given up on trying to fight Java, so that's not looking as doable

Overall, I'll be really sad if I have to start giving Sony my money via disc licensing or for a player. I'd much rather support the somewhat-less-evil Toshiba and Microsoft (shudder), and their simpler, more open disc approach. (And I can't wait until 2 years from now when "disc rot" strikes all these BD discs with their super thin coating... I really expect it to happen out in the "real world" of imperfect conditions.)

Ah well. I probably won't be buying as many HD DVD discs as I had hoped to at this point (partly because Warners owns a bunch of my favorite films), but I will continue to support it because I think long term, it's better for consumers as a format, which is why VHS won, in my opinion.

I honestly don't think that would have an impact. For the most part, BD and even HDDVD drives in PCs won't affect movie sales (IMO). These are used for data just like most folks use their DVD drives as data drives as well.