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Nope, actually, once HD-DVD goes 'down' Blu-Ray won't have ANY reason to have lower costs and the prices will most likely go UP. The only reason prices are going down now is because of the fight between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD.

Do u not know anything about economics? Sure, BD will have less reasons to decrease the prices. But once they realize they're not profitable anymore cuz nobody buys their expensive crap, they will lower the prices. If prices don't come down it is because stupid people are buying the damn things at the prices they set. Besides, the cost of buying a player of a format that is most likely to die, is higher than buying the more expensive blu-ray player

So DVD players still cost $1000? Oh wait... NO THEY DON'T! Blu-ray is supported by many different companies, including LG and Sony. The price will continue to fall - if you'd been paying attention to the price of Blu-ray drives for PCs then you'd have seen that they've been getting consistently cheaper and better featured.

Your statement is yet more FUD from HD-DVD advocates. You clearly have no understanding of how markets or competition work and you certainly have no business spreading your misinformation here. However, it may be true that with HD-DVD out of the picture there won't be the demand to cut prices as heavily as they have been doing - that is a completely different statement, though.

Well said.

I don't know where these people get these unfounded ideas from, but it's just plain silly. A single movie format has not screwed over the market at all. Technology always comes down in price (excluding Apple of course), and will continue to do so as long as there is competition. One format makes it easier for the consumer as you don't have to sit and worry about which movie is coming out on which format. That said, there will always be competition between BD players as there are MORE than one company making the players.

Such a shame that Blu-Ray's gonna win this.
Now we have to wait for final spec 2.0 Blu-Ray players that will actually play all the features that we pay for on the discs... and then wait for them to be as cheap... then wait for 3rd party players which are region hacked.

HD DVD players (1080p24) are �120 with 7 free movies at the moment. It's a finished format, no region bollocks, less drm.. so no BD+ that will be used to stop us ripping our movies to media servers in a few years time. Of the three profile 2.0 players that have been announced.. two are $1500 a pop and the other one, a Panasonic, is $800! Whoooppiieee!

What's the point in being happy the format war is over if the crappier, more expensive, more complicated, heavily restricted format... (that we have to wait 18months to 2 years for decent hardware for!!! ) is the one that we HAVE to buy.

I would like to buy a Blu-Ray player now (NOT the PS3!, I need audio outs and a proper remote..and I already have a 360...) but I actually can't do that. It's still ONLY a 'game console' proprietary Sony format.

So a very sarcastic "yay" from me.

That's great but if the format isn't going to last then what's the point?

Also, there is the PS3 for a 2.0 capable player. It's not going to be the best or most featured Blu-ray player but it's cheap and it does the job (plus more). Downplay it's value all you want but it is a very good solution for a lot of people interested in hi-def.

i realyy hope you do not believe that, technology alwasy comes down in price.. it's how the industry works... the war has just sped up the price cuts, if it even had anythign to do with it at all ..

my thoughts exactly. hd-dvd can still be used for other things but can we just end this dumb format war?!?! i want the prices to drop.....

Exactly, but I don't think HD-DVD will be used for anything else if it fails in the movie market.

I hope they do find a use for HD-DVD but with Blu-ray likely to win out the economies of scale mean that any cost savings now will be wiped out later and make it hard for the format to survive. It would have been better for consumers and the companies involved if they had simply agreed on a joint-format rather than waste money trying to compete. It's just a shame that tens / hundreds of millions of dollars had to be wasted for them to realise this.

boo-hoo. I would take one winner over two fighting an endless war.

Actually, no. Look at dvd.

Whats wrong with DVD prices? Now you are just splurging nonsense

I think what he is referring to is how DVD has a monopoly, yet its prices still fall.

Edit: I'm not really sure a format, itself, can have a "monopoly." Because more than one studio is supporting Blu-Ray, there is no monopoly as each studio will lower the price of their movies to compete with the movies of other studios. Am I wrong?

Last edited by Starchild on 19 Jan 2008 - 21:23

Starchild you are right. And most people seems to forget that once hd-dvd is dead, samsung, LG, panasonic, pioneer... will have to compete to sell THEIR player to the consumer, especially against sony. It's not like they're sharing all the money is it? They are competing too.

Besides, if any format wants to overtake DVD, prices can't be higher than those of DVD right now. Since there are like 30% of households with hdtvs in the US, they can't be taking over DVD soon, can they?

That is what I am referring to.

I guess your referring that to the HD-DVD player prices, and not the actual prices of the discs b/c the discs are really the same price, some blu-ray movies I've seen cheaper than HD-DVD by $5, and some HD-DVD titles are cheaper than blu-ray.

Who is this "they" to which you are referring? Are Hitachi, LG, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, and Thomson now a single company? Or are you suggesting that none of these companies will lower their prices but may instead raise them? I'm sorry but you've completely lost the plot and clearly have no comprehension of the situation.

really dont matter to much either way, cause prices are still WAY to high for a fricking movie on both formats.... what is it like 30 dollars ish for most movies? ... thats TO EXPENSIVE... they need to keep movie prices (no matter what format) NO MORE than 20 dollars TOPS.... although 15 to me sounds much more reasonable especially considering the average movie aint even worth 15 dollars if you ask me.... cause hell, i see some of the cheap movies (the ones u can sometimes get for less than 10 dollars) worth more than new releases which are 15+ dollars on dvd.

you do relaise it is not just one company making bluray devices...there is still competition between the various manufacturers

LOL. What's the talk of monopolies above about!?

Lots of (different) companies make DVD discs. Many different companies make Blu-ray readers and burners and discs. For example, Verbatim manufacture BD-R discs. Verbatim != Sony. What the hell.

Prices will go down once there's only ONE format left, because then the manufacturers (yes, the MANY manufacturers... those competing with each other) can start pushing up their production with more confidence in what the market wants.

Except for the fact that dvd MOVIES came on one standard : DVD-ROM. Not + or -

The format war is putting people off buying hi-def players and movies because of the uncertainly surrounding their future. If HD-DVD fails and Blu-ray becomes the accepted standards by the major studios then the customers waiting on the sidelines will start to buy into hi-def, increasing the speed of adoption - it's pretty simple really. Sure there was always going to be a transitional period, like there was from VHS to DVD, but the format war was slowing it down even further. Warner obviously decided that would hurt profits in the long run and decided to back the leading format exclusively, while the other studios seem to be coming to a similar conclusion.

There is no point having two different formats for hi-def. Why would I want a collection where half of my discs are in red boxes while the other half are in blue? It's like having to buy cutlery but the knives and forks are different designs. The +/- war for DVD recordable discs was equally pointless and only hampered the early adopters with burners that only supported one format (of which I was one of them) - that's the exact reason we should avoid having Blu-ray and HD-DVD coexist.

Basically we had two greedy alliances that both wanted their format to win so that they could get more money. It wasn't anything to do with benefiting the consumer and this whole fiasco has demonstrated that.

combo players are expensive at the moment, and noone wants to buy 2 players, a single format means people will actually go oiut and buy one rather than wait to see what format wins.. it can only be good for HD in general if one format dies.. why do you think HD has taken so ling to get anywhere..

dvd - and + had two different purposes right from the start, they did not really compete with each other adn for it to be completely even studios woudl need to produce disks for both formats, increasing their costs...

The numbers don't mean anything to your current collection but they don't bode well for the future. If Blu-ray gains exclusive control to all major studios and dual-format player don't become the standard then when your player breaks (or you want to buy another) you may find it harder to do so. Anyone interested in making a wise investment when it comes to hi-def should be paying close attention.

I know if I'd invested in the losing format I wouldn't want to be expanding my collection much. However, I haven't invested because the situation has simply been to volatile - even with Blu-ray's lead the future is still uncertain. I played it safe but obviously you were willing to play the game of chance.

yeah i agree im playing it safe for now... i aint going to adopt either format til theres a clear winner and as of today it appears blu-ray is going to win pretty comfortably... but even then, i aint going to adopt it since the players are WAY TO EXPENSIVE and even movie prices are pretty steep! ... and it's like someone said above 2010 is probably the EARLIEST it's going to be before we see 'reasonable' prices on hi-def players.... although i would be willing to guess it will be 2011+ before it gets cheap for "most people" (under 100 dollars for a player) to shell out for it.... plus right now even though we have a HDTV in the main room, it's 1080i and it's image quality is rather crappy overall as it's a projection tv instead of a plasma or LCD tv.... so i gotta get a decent LCD HDTV (which probably wont be anytime soon (aka atleast 1-2+ years)) and then ill worry about high def players like blu-ray or hd-dvd etc.

cause overall im happy with current dvd standards pretty much... even though i have seen a blu-ray high def movies on a freind of mines 50+inch samsung LCD (looks fricking great by the way) and the movies where top notch in 1080p.... but i have seen some x264 720p high def movies on my PC monitor and overall im pretty happy with those considering a good chunk of em fit onto a 4.7GB dvd+r disc ... this way you dont gotta worry about format war. to bad they dont make .mkv home players that can output atleast 720p res

Check out the PS3 running megabox. Only thing missing is hdmi support but they are working on it. Plays mkvs and can use component.

thanks for the info ... but i dont suppose they have home players that are cheaper do they? ... but anyways, how is the quality of 720p .mkv files on the PS3 ... is quality real close to a original blu-ray disc?

i agree whocares which format wins as long as it happens soon, the only reason i havent bought a HD player is because of the war, i aint spedning a few hundr3ed dollars ona player that will be useless ina few years..but at least it appears the war is nearing the end...

whichi is why sony was willing to risk so much with the PS3 by sticking bluray in, they had a market right fro the start of gamers who woudl have bought it anyway and didnt care about watching movies on it, who will of course go bluray casuse well they already havea player, thus increasing the market with very little effort..

I guess history does repeat itself. The PS2 helped launch DVD, and now, it looks like the PS3 is helping to launch Blu-Ray.