[Ste-lar7]

In my days with Laser Disc, many of the titles available were released by Pioneer themselves or other small distributors not affiliated with the studios. In the record industry today there are many small companies that produce small runs of recent and older classics who secure rights to do so from the record companies. According to something I read once about LD, the studios see it as extra profit in a market they have no interest in.


The question is if this could be done by Toshiba, or any other parties in the future for HD DVD? At its peak, LD only had 2M players out there (after 10 years+) and yet it was a money maker for them. With 1M+ HD players in the wild, what would stop a small company (or Tosh) from capitalizing on this and keeping HD going indefintely. After all, since we know HD hardware will always be there (thanks to CH DVD) and could easily be modded for the other world markets, wouldn't this make sense?


Just a thought

 

[Figgie]

HP (Hewlett-Packard not Harry Potter!) is already doing this for Sony in the DVD camp. I don't think HDM was part of the agreement though.

 

[Newbie]

The differences between the examples you give and this are the following:


1) With the record classics, it's a product that's too small for the big guys to bother with so it's an easy profit.


2) With Laserdisc it was a product that was markedly superior to the mass-market items. Once DVD came out, LD died.


I think most owners of HD players will buy BD players when it's over, and have will have little interest in buying new HD discs. If I'm wrong though, I don't see anything preventing it. I wouldn't count on Sony doing it though.

 

[Ste-lar7]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Newbie /forum/post/12968326


The differences between the examples you give and this are the following:


1) With the record classics, it's a product that's too small for the big guys to bother with so it's an easy profit.


2) With Laserdisc it was a product that was markedly superior to the mass-market items. Once DVD came out, LD died.


I think most owners of HD players will buy BD players when it's over, and have will have little interest in buying new HD discs. If I'm wrong though, I don't see anything preventing it. I wouldn't count on Sony doing it though.

I don't disagree, just wondering about the possibilities.


Now that I think about it though, my reasoning is flawed in that in both scenarios, the small distributor's prices were higher which never competed with the studios/record companies bread and butter format. So, it probably wouldn't work.

 

[SirDrexl]

This already happens with companies like Criterion and Anchor Bay (now Starz). However, I don't think a BD-exclusive studio would license their titles for release on HD DVD. It's not so much that they don't want to bother with 2 formats; they just don't want 2 formats to exist at all.