HDTV and Home Theater Podcast #252 - Blu-ray Backlash

[The HT Guys]

We had planned some very different content for today's show, but something very strange happened this week. There seems to be a huge backlash against Blu-ray for some reason. It caught us somewhat by surprise, but the trend is too strong to ignore, so we just have to talk about it. If the war really is over, and by most accounts it is, why aren't people rejoicing in the peaceful times ahead? Why can't we put the differences behind us and move on to soak in all our movies in HD on one kind of disc, and maybe enjoy a little wide scale adoption at the same time?

[url=http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/podcast/2008/02/hdtv_and_home_theater_podcast_252_-_blu-ray_backlash.php]Read the complete Show Notes[/url]

[terrypaullin]

The reason for the backlash is that a million people have been screwed.....and they are just now finding out HOW screwed!

[lars]

My guess is any backlash is due to people feeling like they little say in the decision, that the format war (though I prefer to call it 'option') was decided by the studios. Hi-def dvd players will be seen as a luxury till manufacturers can get the players down to $150-200 and the movies to $15-20. That has slowed acceptance way more than competing formats and will continue to do so. I watch TV everyday. I only watch movies a couple of times a week. Hard to justify $400/$30 for that level of activity, even if it does look great.

[jerfilm]

This subject has been bludgeoned to death here and in other forums and no amount of further discussion - futile except to blow off steam - is going to bring back our favorite HD DVD media. But I would like to offer a slightly different take on the "war" as it developed and one of the reasons our army of a million lost.

In retrospect, the war wasn't about two equally good systems of viewing movies in HD. Becuz they were both good and each had it's strong points. No, this was a war between movie buffs and game players! How very clever of Sony to add movie playback capabilities to it's PS3 game system. You gotta believe that early adopters in gaming far outnumber early adopters for switching movie systems. So, a helluva bunch of lucky folks got an HD movie player thrown in with their new HD game system.

So what? So, do these folks want to see themselves in a position to have to go out and buy another player for their HD movies when they've already gotten one - as an almost free bonus? Naw. If you read the forum posts by the the most avid of the bluray advocates, almost to a person they were PS3 owners. If you have any doubt that Sony basically bought these supporters in this manner, look at the price of bluray players throughout the "war". Did they ever give anybody a deal on a movie player like Toshiba did? No, they basically bought and bribed their way to victory.

Nor do I have much time for Toshiba, or Warner Brothers or any of the others who jumped ship. Funny how they all hung in there long enough to sell hundreds of thousands of HD DVD players AND movies to us during the past Christmas season. There's no doubt in my mind that WB, for example, had made the decision to get out before the holidays. No? Then why would they make the decision they made after selling hundreds of thousands of units in November and December. C'mon - we got conned- BIG TIME.

No, I keep my HD DVD player cuz it's great for upconverting DVDs. I'll buy up the few films out there that I want, at bargain prices. New stuff I can watch on HDNET movies, HBO HD, etc. etc. If we really like a film, we'll buy the DVD at half the price of a bluray disc. No, I agree with many others - there really isn't THAT great a difference between upconverted and HD. I know we could debate that one forever too - matter of personal taste.

And maybe if I read here that someday I don't have to download some more firmware for the stupid player becuz Sony Pictures or Disney or some other studio decides to go for yet another ridiculous anti theft system, MAYBE if the price is decent, maybe then I'll go for bluray.

But I have a feeling that by that time, there'll be something even newer on the horizon to tempt us early suckers into trying......and you bluray folks will be stuck with yet another obsolete system.

[SammySamad]

I couldn't have said it any better.

[jordanm]

I agree with nearly everything posted here, there should be a backlash "release" because the studios decided this for us consumers. But the war is far from over and I have my own personal reasons for backlash, as well.

I have been with DVD since it started, and armed myself with two daisy-chained DVD carousels providing a 601 disk storage capability for years. It is now hooked up to a 1080p upscaling AVR stoked with about 450 DVDs all listed in DVD Profiler, and it looks grand upscaled. I NEVER have to touch a disk or its packaging (most of which we have tossed after sleeving the slip covers in a binder). Why would I want to get rid of this in favor of a single player? That seems stupid to me. Has anyone released a high-def carousel, yet? Of course not, the players are priced so high, a carousel would be off the charts.

More stupid would be to buy-in to a class action pending over defective Blu Ray players, anyway. Those who bought or buy Blu Ray 1.0 or 1.1 cannot upgrade to 2.0 (unless using a PS3), so more missing features and/or the inability to play some BR disks, and that is what I see I would buy today in Blu Ray, while Toshiba's A35 has all of HD DVD's bells and whistles. It is because of its upgrade-ability the PS3 is being argued as the BR player to buy over at AVS forum. All other Blu Ray players here, fail miserably.

I have said I would not buy Blu Ray until ver. 2.0 or 2.1 arrives. Yet, sticking with my DVD collection, I may just wait until Vudu 2, or the next box is released with full internet capability. That way I can skip Blu Ray altogether. Its 1080p/24fps is matched by the Vudu now. I just will wait for Vudu 2 so I can have a larger HD, and internet.

Speaking of internet, how many BR players have that ethernet jack anyway? Why not all? There are just too many issues over Blu Ray for me to buy in, while other than now dead, HD DVD overcame most of the technical issues. Yet, it is the war between DVD and Blu Ray that looms larger than the HD DVD/Blu Ray war ever did-there was no victor here. All we consumers won was the loss of the best deal going in high def players, and most came with free HD movies, too.

[allchemie]

People have been left in the lurch numerous times on new formats. This goes back to 8-track tapes, Sony Beta Max, Quadraphonic Format in the late 60's and early 70's, Sony Mini disc, Toshiba HD, Pioneer Laser discs, etc. Not to forget connection changes that make many devices incompatible.

To argue that bundling a Sony Blu Ray player with the PS3 as unfair is ridiculous. Toshiba would have been ecstatic if Microsoft had done the same with HD, but their own bean counters were too worried about the player being overpriced for the market. Bad move.

Both Toshiba and Sony heavily subsidized their players to gain market traction. The both lost a lot of money on each player sold, as they were looking at the broader picture of market share.

Even though Sony was very late to the party with a fully functional player, they had the advantage of the PS3 plus the extreme advantage of being a studio and knowing wehat most of the studios wanted---an extra layer of disc protection against theft of property.

Of course, the studios have always been stupid on this aspect as Toshiba HD was hacked early on and even Sony Blu Ray has been hacked lately. The people that sell discs illegally are mostly in Asia and the rest of the third world. And they are mostly concerned with getting a cheap disc, not one that shows every pore of the actors face and the uber audio codecs.

I have both a Sony PS3 and a Toshiba AX2. I'm not going to waste my time getting angry over what happened as I always knew there was a strong likliehood something like this would occur. I can either use both players or sell the AX2 and my HD discs. I won't be upset over either path.

I will use the PS3 until Blu Ray 2.0 comes out with a full audio codec line and solid upconverting chipsets, from ABT 1018's and 2010's, to Reons or REALTA's, Gennums, or Marvell QVideo (which looks particularly great on both SD and HD).

If you like your Toshiba's upconverting and have a substantial amount of HD discs there is no reason not to keep it even though it is at a dead end. Eventually there will be cheaper Blu Ray units at 2.0, buit it will take a while for the great chipsets to move down market.

Some people will undountedly opt for online downloads, although the devices and prices aren't cheap either, and most don't sell the movie. And when they do their prices are no better than a disc with better codecs. It will take a number of years for most people to find downloads a high quality audio and video experience identical to the discs. If that doesn't bother you then you might pursue that route.

It is weird, gamers will spend a fortune on a great video card, but want a player that is cheaper than the card.

Neither Toshiba or Sony had it in their business model to continue subsidizing players once they reached a critical mass of acceptance. Sony had a big advantage in that a lot of other OEM's were producing their players and that competition would eventually yield big competition at various price levels. Basicallly Toshiba was swimming alone.

Greg

[jerfilm]

<<<To argue that bundling a Sony Blu Ray player with the PS3 as unfair is ridiculous. >>>

I wouldn't argue a bit with your comments, Greg, except for the above - I reread all of the previous posts and I don't believe anyone argued that it was "UNFAIR".

To the contrary, I said, IT WAS VERY CLEVER of Sony to add that capability. And just to follow up on your comment, I do believe that if Microsoft had added HD DVD capability to their XBOX, we probably wouldn't be here discussing this.

There's still things that just don't compute in this 72 year old fart's brain.......are Warners and Disney SO greedy that a customer base of a million in this country alone aren't enough to sate that greed? How many businesses in this country today would give their left **** to have a base like that?? Oh, that's right, it's too expensive to produce discs in more than one format. But come to think of it, we already are.........hmmmmm.....maybe we'll have to cut out production of standard DVDs and force people to go to the new format.....

More likely you've hit the nail on the head - they love to think they can engineer new copy protection schemes. How naive to think that any software can be produced that can't be hacked by someone, somewhere......

Jerry

[mahoneybill]

Sometimes life is all about choices.

I own both the PS 3 and XBox 360. Decided to buy the PS3 for blu ray, and upconverting as my main DVD player.

Could have gone with the 360 stand alone, but am one of those customers who has had the 3 red rings of death, so felt I'd go with the reliability of the PS3, and yes the guess that Blu Ray would win.

In either case I'm glad that something has shaken out so we can get to more use of the features of this technology....