[official] Blu-ray Rumors and Speculations

[conan_2000]

Which is why Blu Ray are winning the war.

Nothing is going to change till HD-DVD get their marketing right.

The USA can't win a war for a whole format.

HD-DVD is non existant in the UK.

So yes, if they had the marketing Blu Ray has, and a built in player in a popular console such as the 360, they'd no doubt be winning right now - But they don't.

I have to agree with this, I am in New Zealand and I have never seen an HD-DVD player and have only seen 1 shop which sells HD-DVD disks. I understand that it is similar in Australia from speaking to people over there. Friends in the UK have similar stories, but probably not quite as extreme as here. If Toshiba pretty much ignore every market except the US, which they seem to have done then they will fail, all of these sales figures so far are from the US - has anyone seen any recent statistics from other markets? I would hazard a guess that blu-ray will be well ahead in most other places.

Also can anyone explain to me what the different Blu-ray profiles are?

[Coldgunner]

But let's not get into that, that's a completely different thing. What we are seeing right now is something else with studios and retailers. It would be same if Microsoft for example, now went and secured (financially reimbursed in hundreds of millions of dollars in replication costs etc) Ubisoft, EA, Activision and 2K Games to publish all of their games EXCLUSIVELY on Xbox 360. Not only that, but they actually go and use their influence at retailers as well and make deals where they cut the PS3 availability at many retail locations. On top of that, they go and make a deal with Blockbuster where you can't even RENT PS3 games at their stores.

Let me ask you, would you still think that it's business as usual? Because that's EXACTLY how it is now with HD DVD and Blu-Ray.

you are correct that the games market is different, but I think its the closest thing we can compare to with format wars.

It is all about marketing and financial 'influences'. That is business, no matter what tech you are selling, if your marketing people are good they'll still sell. The tech pros and cons of both formats is a debate already taken place on this forum and I don't want to return to.

HD is a sinking ship here in europe, it makes sense to welcome in bd rther than fight it.

[ctebah]

Retailers Make More Room For Blu-ray

According to a new Video Business report, some retail chains have begun adjusting their high-def shelf space to make more room for Blu-ray discs (and less for HD DVD).

The industry trade says that Trans World Entertainment, Newbury Comics, Video Buyers Group members and Hastings Entertainment are among the retailers beginning to emphasize Blu-ray in the wake of Warner's announcement that it would abandon its support of the HD DVD format as of this coming June.

Trans World, which operates over 800 stores under several brand names (including FYE, Suncoast, Coconouts and Wherehouse), says that though it will continue to order key new releases on HD DVD, it will begin dedicating more shelf space to Blu-ray, both for new releases and catalog titles.

"As retailers, we need to simplify things for the consumers as much as we can with merchandising one format," said Trans World VP Mark Higgins. "We don?t want to be biased, but it is clearly the direction that high-def production looks to be going."

Other retailers (including Best Buy, Amazon.com, DVDEmpire.com) said they had no current plans to adjust their merchandise mix."Obviously, Warner?s announcement has made us a little more cautious about how many HD DVDs we bring in," DVDEmpire's Shannon Nutt told Video Business. "But that?s not going to stop us from stocking strong on what we feel will be solid HD DVD releases, like the upcoming Bee Movie. Although it looks like the writing may be on the wall, DVDEmpire will continue to push both formats equally until our customers show there is no longer any demand for one format or the other."

Source: HighDefDigest

[Boz]

Retailers Make More Room For Blu-ray

Source: HighDefDigest

And obviously you are posting this in HD DVD why? To incite flame? This is obviously Blu-Ray chest pounding article that is pointing out that retailers might be more careful how many discs they order. PR at it's dirtiest. I have not noticed ONE SINGLE change at my local Best Buy or Fry's Electronics stores. So this article is nothing but pure FUD and PR.

[Colin-uk Veteran]

previous 2 posts moved here from HD DVD rumours thread

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Most of you guys visit the GH, so you will of read this, but for those only following movies

https://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=615045

PS3 rumoured to be dropping to $299 this month.

[Coldgunner]

that should translate roughly to ?200-?250 for us in the UK, definitely the better option over ?170 low-end hd-dvd players.

[Lewism]

Are those just a mistake ?

Trading Places

Coming to America

Anchorman

Those movies are from Paramount

[Tech Star]

New evidence that Paramount is going Blu?

In what could just as easily be an honest mistake but is causing lots of discussion among Blu-ray fans -- Amazon.co.uk has three Paramount titles available for pre-order. All three titles have a expected ship date of March 10th and all those hopeful for a single format to get behind, want to believe this is another slip by our friends at Amazon that would confirm the rumor that Paramount is using its exit clause to go Blu. We're sure if we asked Paramount it'd be denied 'til the cows come home, but even though these titles were previously available on Blu-ray, we'd still put our money on this being just like the third generation HD DVD player situation.

[Via FormatWarCentral]

Read - Trading Spaces

Read - Coming to America

Read - Anchorman

[conan_2000]

And obviously you are posting this in HD DVD why? To incite flame? This is obviously Blu-Ray chest pounding article that is pointing out that retailers might be more careful how many discs they order. PR at it's dirtiest. I have not noticed ONE SINGLE change at my local Best Buy or Fry's Electronics stores. So this article is nothing but pure FUD and PR.

Actually it says some retailers have ARE BEGINNING to emphasise Blu-Ray on their shelves, and these retailers do not include Best Buy (Not sure if any of the firms in the article run Fry's). So just because you have not seen anything in these two stores does not mean there is anything wrong with the news post.

[DrCheese]

*Mispost, mods please delete*

[draklin]

You obviously can't see the difference between the two. Buying a specific game for a specific console is something the same to you as buying off the whole studios and actually preventing consumers from getting the product in retail? That's not business as usual man.

Exclusive deals happen all the time. After all, EA bought an exclusive deal with the NFL so that only EA can use them so that they wouldn't have to worry about competition for Madden. How is that different?

Anyways, it is a black/white issue. Did Toshiba give something to Paramount so that they would be HD DVD exclusive? Yes or no? The answer is yes, so that makes them and Sony the same. Complain about Sony's practice, but Toshiba did it too. They are just as guilty as Sony, but they only did it less. The only problem is that Toshiba should have done it more to ensure their win. For us it is just a matter of personal opinion as to which format we like better, but for Toshiba and Sony, it is a ton of money and they should have done more to ensure their win. ANY company that is in a battle for market dominance that only relies on consumer choice will almost always lose that battle. That is how business works.

[TruckWEB]

Well, to hell with this format war! I'm going neutral, tomorow night, I'm getting a PS3 + Remote + HDMI

So, I'm going to have the best of both world, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray and at the same time, 2 game console. Nice deal.

And with Paramount showing signs of going Blu (with the Amazon.uk leak), I'm going to be ready. Add to the fact that more news/rumors point to the fact that the PS3 will be able to do Profile 2.0, I think it's going to be a good investment. They where showing some BD-Live! stuff from a PS3 at CES, so... 1+1 tells me that PS3 will do P2.0

[+StevoFC MVC]

I'd wait a little bit to see if there will actually be a price drop on the PS3.

[TruckWEB]

I'd wait a little bit to see if there will actually be a price drop on the PS3.

I don't need to. With FutureShop here, if the price do get lower in the next 30 days, I can go back to the store and ask for some money back. They garantied the best price for 30 days.

[Sanjay]

Here's some figures for the HD-DVD supporters to ponder.

NPD group hardware sales figures for HD players. *These figures DO NOT include PS3 sales*

December '07

Blu-ray = 115,132 (60.19%)

HD-DVD = 76,148 (39.81%)

Which means, that inspite of HD-DVDs far lower prices, they were still clearly outsold by Blu-Ray stand-alone players during the Holiday season sales and this was even before Warner went Blu-Ray exclusive.

Week ending January 05, '08

Blu-Ray = 15,257 (51.17%)

HD-DVD = 14,558 (48.83%)

Post Warner announcement:

Week ending January 12, '08

Blu-Ray = 21,770 (92.53%)

HD-DVD = 1,758 ( 7.47%)

Can you imagine what these figures would look like if PS3 sales were included. Add these figures to the software sales figures and anyone ought to be able to clearly see that this format war is OVER.

[Ayepecks]

^^

Pretty much. Those are big numbers given the prices.

[conan_2000]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080118/tc_af...ZVJxHqjCygjtBAF

Here are some sales statistics from Japan "Blu-Ray, the format created by Sony Corp., accounted for a crushing 90 percent of next-generation DVD recorder sales in the three-month period, the study said."

That figure does not include PS3 sales, which I believe is doing very well in Japan.

[soniqstylz]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080118/tc_af...ZVJxHqjCygjtBAF

Here are some sales statistics from Japan "Blu-Ray, the format created by Sony Corp., accounted for a crushing 90 percent of next-generation DVD recorder sales in the three-month period, the study said."

That figure does not include PS3 sales, which I believe is doing very well in Japan.

That's mostly because the PS3 is not a Blu-ray recorder.

Random question: on the front page the other day, there was a news story that said something about Universal supporting Blu-ray. I've heard nothing of this. Just a ****-up?

https://www.neowin.net/news/main/08/01/29/b...sc--the-new-vhs

"There was no doubt in my mind when I heard that Universal studios lined up with Warner Bros in its support for Blu-ray."

[kak]

Its a quote from an opinion article. Further down he has a link to Universal still supporting HD-DVD.

[soniqstylz]

I know it's an opinion piece, and I would expect Uni to go neutral long before they go Blu (if/when that ever happens), but he makes it sound like they've already announced something.

[Semental]

What do you think the chances are of Blu-Ray also becoming the next high-definition music media format? This would be nice since the audio capabilities of Blu-Ray are vastly superior to CD and the players are quickly appearing in homes across the U.S. [unlike SA-CD and DVD-Audio players]. I just don't know if the loading times are going to decrease enough to be worth using Blu-Ray for high-definition audio.

I would love to see a collection of albums like this make it to Blu-Ray:

Edited February 17, 2008 by Semental

[MGS4-SS]

Not much of a future in the music department will all the mp3 players in the market.

[TruckWEB]

What do you think the chances are of Blu-Ray also becoming the next high-definition music media format? This would be nice since the audio capabilities of Blu-Ray are vastly superior to CD and the players are quickly appearing in homes accross the US [unlike SA-CD and DVD-Audio players].

I may be wrong, but both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray never had a "audio" part in their standard. Unlike DVD with DVD-Audio, this time, nothing seems to be moving that way for the next HD format.

Other than the fact that you could put more albums on a Blu-Ray disc, if you use the highest possible audio quality offered by the medium, you'd have what... 2-3 albums per Blu-Ray disc, at most?

SA-CD or DVD-Audio already offer very good sound quality and 5.1 presentation. Even then, you don't find many of those in store... Seems like plain old CD (or even worst, MP3) is good enough for 99% of the world...

[Semental]

I may be wrong, but both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray never had a "audio" part in their standard. Unlike DVD with DVD-Audio, this time, nothing seems to be moving that way for the next HD format.

Other than the fact that you could put more albums on a Blu-Ray disc, if you use the highest possible audio quality offered by the medium, you'd have what... 2-3 albums per Blu-Ray disc, at most?

SA-CD or DVD-Audio already offer very good sound quality and 5.1 presentation. Even then, you don't find many of those in store... Seems like plain old CD (or even worst, MP3) is good enough for 99% of the world...

I am not sure, but i think that Blu-Ray players have 5 channel PCM playback ability as a requirement.

As far a size is concerned, a normal CD album requires (at max.) 700 MB of space. Multiply that by 2.5 for the size of a 5 channel album (5 channels [surround]/ 2 channels [stereo] =2.5) and get a size of 1750 MB (1.71 GB) per 5 channel album. The size of a single layer Blu-Ray disc is 25 GB, right? 25 GB/1.71 GB = c. 14 albums that can fit on one Blu-Ray disc. This is supposing that the albums put on one disc would be in 16 bit, 44.1 Khz sound, but until recently have any albums been recorded in a quality higher than that? I am not saying that you could fit many albums recorded nowadays on Blu-Ray, but for releases of older material (considering we have a huge wealth of music that dates back to the beginning of the last century), i think that Blu-Ray could provide a good medium. As for new albums, the customary manner in which material is released is normally one album at a time, right? So Blu-Ray could easily satisfy their needs.

I just think that it would be really good for the consumer to consolidate the audio and video media so that we would not have to have more than one expensive player to handle each format.

When thinking of MP3/WMA/AAC, i cannot speak for everyone else, but their purpose for me is solely for portable use. I obviously cannot lug five speakers around with me when running or while driving to work (though a Blu-Ray player in my car would satify that problem).

Edited February 17, 2008 by Semental