$100 HD DVD players. Walmart Firday.

Because the Hi-def audio takes up a huge amount of capacity, it seems.

Define "nice".

Well, HD DVD players, for one.





I'm totally bummed that Blu-Ray is doing well. Logically thinking things through, I thought HD DVD would stomp it. Apparently not.

Betamax was better than VHS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:HighDefSales.svg

Interesting graphic...Blu Ray is up lifetime it seems.

Meh! I don't get a hard-on for either format.

Yeah, because Sony shoved it in the PS3, then sold the systems at a huge loss (yet still at an absurd price), well below the price of standalone players, in order to encourage adoption.

Interestingly, while Blu-Ray players are selling better, more HD-DVD discs are sold per-player than with Blu-Ray. Maybe because they can actually afford to buy more discs after purchasing the player? Who knows!

More likely that PS3's count as players and there are plenty of folks who own PS3's that didn't buy it FOR blu-ray, so they don't buy a lot of movies.

All legal purchases?

How long of a period did you buy those over? That's quite a lump of cash.

First sub-$1 -R discs and sub-$100 burner (SATA or ATAPI) is going to win, unless they hit at the same time in which case it'll be like that other DVD format war, +R vs. -R.

I've had my Toshiba HD DVD player for almost a year. Seems to be doing fine. I've done one firmware update which will keep it up to date with the latest and greatest features.

Ah, that's fun.

I love those goofballs from my old job that asked me about which one they should buy.

"Should I get + or - ?"

"How old is your dvd burner?"

"about a year"

"Then it doesn't matter, you can burn them both"

"But which one is better?"

"They are the same, neither is better"

"Then why are they different?"

"Because two different companies used different burning methods, now all the burners support both methods"

"So what's the difference?"

"There's no real difference to the user anymore"

"So why are there two kinds?"

"Because neither of the companies 'won' and both methods are usable by all modern burners"

"So which one should I get?"

"It really doesn't matter, just buy whatever is cheaper or whichever brand you trust"

ENTER: INFINITE LOOP

Porn will eventually go with Blu-Ray if it wins out. You can already buy Blu-Ray burners:
http://eshop.macsales.com/Search/Se...ogle81707blu&gclid=CI2msZucxY8CFSBeagodlD-R6w

I went to a Best Buy here, and the guy showed me one. I was a bit skeptical, but he assured me that yes, this thing in front of me really does burn Blu-Ray discs.

From what i have seen disks done in the blu-ray burners will not run on first gen BR players.

I bought my in-laws one of these $98 players on Friday. I figured that it would be far better than anything they have ever had before, and they'd never know the difference between 1080i and 1080p. At $98, what is there to lose?

Quite. I've spent more on dinner, so it's worth a play with at least.

What stopped me getting one? I realized there was bugger all in the catalogue I wanted to watch!

Yeah, that is the drawback of HD-DVD at this point. Sure, they have The Matrix Trilogy, Batman Begins, Children of Men, and Transformers, but beyond that....meh.

They have a growing library of dvd's. From what I understand they tend to get theirs before blueray because it takes longer to produce a blu ray disc and Sony doesn't have as many facilities that can produce them. I recall hearing somewhere that they Sony has 8 facilities that can produce blu ray discs while hd has something like 38.

Right now on hd dvd I have the Matrix trilogy, Superman 1, 2, and Returns, Excalibur, Transformers, The Mummy, The Mummy Returns, Pitch Black and Chronicals of Riddick.

Another reason why early adopters are spreading their cheeks.

From what I understand some of the upcoming generations of blu ray will be similar to hd dvd in that it will have the ability to be connected to the internet to receive firmware updates.

Unfortunately that is not the case right now.

Every single one.

I had 10 DVD movies in March '97; this was before I even had the player...I was that enthusiastic about the format! (I think those first DVDs were Batman, Species, Rocky, Raging Bull, The Exorcist, Blade Runner, The Mask, Unforgiven, and...I forget which other 2.)

Most of these disks were bought in 1997-2002 and 2005-now (2002-2005 were leaner times). At one point, I was getting almost 40 disks a month from DVDExpress.com (which has since, unfortunately, gone under). Since DVDExpress's demise, I switched to DVDEmpire, though I don't buy many disks online now.

Now I'm buying mainly Blu-Rays, but I do go back through the older DVDs and pick up ones that I passed on the first time around (many of those I passed on at $15 or $20 I'm quite willing to buy for $6).

In picture quality, yes...although only marginally.

VHS had longer recording time and consumers preferred this. So, technically, VHS was better...it was better suited to what the market wanted.

And, knowing Sony, I'm sure they'll use that in new and exciting ways to fuck customers over!

I still think that what saved VHS and killed beta was that VHS allowed for pornos to be made on them while betamax didn't.

Who knows... but I'll say this. When I purchased my Toshiba HD DVD system I spent $200 for it at Costco. The cheapest blu ray system that I've seen is about $800. I haven't looked in a while. I cannot see any justification for spending that much money on that type of system when a) I can't update the damn thing b) the movies are more expensive.

When I purchased my Toshiba, I ran a standard network from the back of it to one of my routers and will check for firmware updates every month or so. In the time I've owned it, they have had two.

There are cheaper Blu-Ray players on the market. Sony's newest player is $500 and Panasonic announced a $400 player recently.

The $99 HD-DVD players are being sold below cost. Toshiba can do that because NO OTHER COMPANY makes a standalone HD-DVD player. And so long as Toshiba dumps them at $99 each, no one will. How many units do you think Panasonic or Pioneer or Samsung are going to turn out if they've got to be under $100 to sell this early in the game?

It's telling that Blu-Ray players cost $200-300 more than a comparable HD-DVD player (whether its standalone or a PS3) and that HD-DVD had a six month headstart in the market and Blu-Ray is still outselling them 2:1 or more.

Both formats are good, but HD-DVD has lost the war. Toshiba's keeping this thing alive because it's all they've got; they're going to have to go embrace Sony's format if HD-DVD goes under. So far, they've paid off Paramount and Dreamworks (and probably Universal, too) to be exclusive and they've dumped their players at far below cost and they're STILL not able to overcome Blu-Ray's lead. What has Toshiba got left to do?

I haven't seen any numbers on sales. Last I heard HD DVD was a little bit ahead of blu ray. Than again, the last time I looked was about six months ago.

Looking over the history of VHS vs. Beta, I don't think porn was the deciding factor. According to Wiki, VHS was outselling Beta 75%/25% by 1981, well before porn had much impact on the video market. (Test: name a pornographic movie shot on video made before 1981.)

My impression is that widespread ownership of VCRs created the video porn industry, not the other way around.

DVDEmpire (www.dvdempire.com) tracks the sale of both on their website. For the past few months, Blu-Ray has outsold HD-DVD there about 60/40. For the year, the tally is 61.71 vs. 38.29, in favor of Blu-Ray.

TheDigitalBits (www.thedigitalbits.com) reports the Videoscan numbers which are pretty similar (about 65/35).

HighDefDigest (www.highdefdigest.com) has a sales tracker from Amazon.com which shows Blu-Ray outselling HD-DVD across the board. You have to go back a very long way to see HD-DVD outselling Blu-Ray. (Here are the customizable graphs)

Thanks for the info. Some interesting data.