And now for the Marketing..

And one thing I just remembered.


The "Price is the End-all and Be-all" argument is a good one but it needs to be qualified.


As in


"The mass-market will be won by the format that provides the cheapest players, assuming that format can offer the content that people want to watch."



Not


"The mass-market will be won by the format that provides the cheapest players"

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Well it's clear that Toshiba decided to start at the bottom of the retail food chain with Walmart being a "first source" outlet for their product. Problem is, all of the product is being snapped up by early adopters as evidenced by the "Walmart sightings" thread in the HD-DVD section. How they are going to make money and entice other name brand companies into a "straight to bottom" of profit margins product line is beyond me. Maybe they hope to build enough format inertia and other companies will build dual format players so they can cash in on royalties that way, who knows.


But it's going to take a flood of HD-DVD product to overcome the flood of BD product set to hit in the next few months. It was pretty easy to fire the first shot in the "War", now the question is, can they go toe to toe with Sony, Panasonic, Pioneer ~ the whole BD army, when they fire back with a artillery barrage?


b2b

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At $1000.00US PLUS price tag, their initial release of movies will be on SL 25GB BD that requires a very high bit rate MPEG2, which leaves very small room for audio tracks and extras. And if BD's MPEG2 video quality doesn't stand-up to HD-DVD's MPEG4 the consumers WILL NOT BUY IT. And you will see these companies signing up with Toshiba as did LG. So don't have your hopes up just yet or it will by a very disappointing for BD camp.


Time will tell.


...Angelo

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Well actually all the HD-DVD titles so far have been encoded with VC-1. And the $1000.00 price leaves lots of room for discounting. For most of the well monied AV types $500.00 for the Toshiba player is pocket change and whatever BD is will be almost be irrelevant to them. Warner hasn't announced if they plan on using VC-1 for BD like they did for HD-DVD. If they don't, that would be an ideal situation to compare the same content, BD using MPEG2 vs HD-DVD using VC-1.


b2b

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The thing I don't understand about this argument is that it fails to address the fact that the PS3 will be coming out at Walmarts as well. It should be much cheaper than what anyone else in the BD camp is prepared to match, and oh yeah, it will also be a game console and media hub besides just a BD player.


To put it differently, why would the HD-A1 keep companies from building HD DVD players, when the PS3 isn't preventing companies from building Blu-ray players? It would seem that the PS3 would have an even greater chilling effect.


I admit that your reasoning makes a good deal of sense. Yet, companies are still making BD players in spite of the upcoming PS3, which your argument wouldn't predict and is evidence that your argument may be flawed.


I think the lack of variety in HD DVD players must be due to some other source than the low pricing of the HD-A1. Perhaps they're waiting to make a high-end player, or don't want to commit yet. Honestly, I don't have a real good guess why.

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I don't expect the PS3 to be the "end all, do all" BD player for everyones needs. Just HD across HDMI with audio pass through and SPDIF passing standard DD and DTS. Nothing fancy. I also expect the PS3 HD playback to be as cranky and slow as the HD-A1 is booting up. At best it is going to be a "freebie" feature that provides a large number of places for BD discs to find a home and generate media sales to keep Hollywood happy.


PS3 has backend margins in games and movies for Sony that Toshiba doesn't have with HD-DVD. Toshiba has to live on margins from their own player sales and royalties from other companies selling HD-DVD players too. No other people making players, no margins.


b2b

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I am also waiting to see what Warner will use. In the last Widescreen Magazine, the head of warner home division said that they have options and they plan on taking advantage of those options in terms of encoding.

I can't wait to check the differences in quality.

I will be that BR will look amazing. Even as good as the HD-DVD players.

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I'm assuming you've never tried to use recordable DVD media on a number of different DVD players over the years! Some play on one player, while others seem to play on virtually none. By contrast none of those DVD players have an issue with Dual layer DVD Rom. Compatibility for Dual layer BD ROM is written into the BD Rom spec, so these devices can't carry the Blu-ray badge without supporting it. By a strange coincidence I believe Alex posted a CED excerpt just today which mentioned this very point.

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According to what Alex posted today
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So yea, it's "hair's on fire" over in BD land. Just like it was in HD-DVD land two weeks ago.


b2b

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Considering this posting by Rio, Toshiba is going to have to do more than a "parachute drop" if they plan on winning the War..
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