Or not…
CES: No New HD DVD Announcements from Universal
In a rather surprising move, primary HD DVD backer Universal Studios Home Entertainment confirmed today that they will be making no major title announcements at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, despite the formidable presence of all major studios supporting rival format Blu-ray.
Universal, the sole major Hollywood studio to be supporting HD DVD exclusively, was expected to bringing out its big guns for 2007 at CES — or at least make enough new announcements to dazzle the early adopters who have been passionately backing the format thus far.
But when we contacted Universal to find out if anything further is to come from the studio out of CES, they confirmed they will not be unveiling any new street dates or detailed title info at all for the duration of the show. The studio stressed that they continue to support HD DVD and are planning to announce new titles “throughout 2007.”
Wow! What a solid, clear, ringing endorsement!
The rumors flying are that Universal is going neutral sometime in 2007. HD-DVD is dead. I was an early supported, but Blu-ray has already come down in price, new units are available from Amazon as cheap as $500 or so, and the titles available on Blu-ray are head and shoulders above in the coming year.
HD-DVD was a nice sideline, but Blu-ray is future.
My guess, once its clear that Blu-Ray is dominating, Sony will release a much cheaper PS3 without a Blu-Ray drive.
$40 is way too much for a movie and improvements are marginal. Sure, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD Marketing promises BIG gains as most Marketing can put a spin on anything. For now, I have no intention to move to either format and will stay with a standard DVD with upconversion.
Besides, I don’t think either have a future and will fall off the face of the earth with SACD, Mini-disc, Laser Disc and the like. By the time the dust settles and analog is no longer with us, we will probably have high speed networks to support on-demand delivery.
My $0.02
I may sound like Dvorak here, but:
what’s all this HD stuff about? Just so the studios can continue making films with lousy plots but great optics?
One of the greatest thrillers ever to come out of the USA looks equally well on stupid old VCR tape: Spielberg’s “The Duell”.
But effects are cheaper than good storywriters and as long as everyone settles for eye-candy, they can shove new devices and new copy protection down our collective throat.
pj
#3
$40, $30, $20… it’s still too much, no matter format. A non-scientific comparison:
Movies
Price: ~ $15-$40
Entertainment time: ~ 1 1/2 – 3 hours
Entertainment value: ~ $5 – $26 per hour
CD
Price: $10-$40
Entertainment time: ~ 2 – 10 hours
Entertainment value: ~ $1 – $20 per hour
Games
Price: $30-$70
Entertainment time: ~ 2 – 120 hours
Entertainment value: ~ $0.25 – $35
Values a grabbed out of my nose… reality might differ… 😉
Sorry MPAA and RIAA… your products are not worth the price your asking.
– – – – –
As for HD DVD vs Blu-Ray… I truly hope Blu-Ray won’t win. Who will? Your guess is as good as mine. But hey… DVD is good enough for my TV. 🙂
I’m going half way on this one: I see this as the first sign of HD-DVD’s downfall, but not proof that BluRay is the future. Per movie price is too high for next generation DVDs to enter the mainstream (I’m still holding out, and I have a 1080p LCD).
In terms of the market as a whole, #2’s comment is interesting. There are piles of PS3s in stores these days… the market for them has dried up. A cheaper version may jumpstart sales.
VHS vs BetaMax
We do not learn from our mistakes.
Is it just me but having Sony being a major sponsor of Blu-Ray scares me !
Sony never lets go of the price until it is too late.
Rootkit anyone ?
YeahRight, I bet you did know that Sony helped develop the HDMI interface?
On the other comments, just because someone doesn’t announce new titles is not a smoking gun for anything. Since when is it absolutely necessary?
For me, the lesser of two evils is HD-DVD due to Blu-Ray have more DRM. That being said people are already saying HD-DVD is doomed and how Blu-Ray prices have dropped…. part of your assessment of the situation ignores the possibility that HD-DVD will respond in kind with lower prices on players and movies. The cost to produce a HD-DVD disc is marginally more expensive than that of a DVD. Blu-Ray last time I checked has no such advantage. If this comes down to a price war, I think things will tip heavily in favor of the HD-DVD camp.
Also if the combo player comes to fruition, I would guess that a combo player would tilt in HD-DVD’s favor as well. Why? Because IMO that for titles that are released on both formats, I would guess that most people who don’t own $10,000 TVs and can’t tell the difference in picture quality between HD-DVD & Blu-Ray will probably most likely go with the HD-DVD (when a price war ensues). I would guess the only titles that the Blu-Ray format will do well on is those that are exclusively released on Blu-Ray.
HOWEVER, having the combo player can have another effect too since those movie studios who are exclusive to a particular format will remain so since there’s no incentive to support the other format.
The other thing that I get a chuckle out of is that the pro-Blu-Ray camp keeps using PS3 sales and using that as an estimate for an “established” Blu-Ray camp. That’s a big load of spin doctoring if I ever saw one. Keep it real. From what I’ve seen, most people buying a PS3 are not buying it for the Blu-Ray and would rather that the Blu-Ray drive isn’t even integrated with the game machine.
As for which format, I am supporting. That would be neither for me. I enjoy watching DVDs on my Sony Trinitron. For those who don’t own a HDTV yet., ever wonder why standard def TVs aren’t usually shown on a HDTV set demo? That’s because SD broadcasts look absolutely terrible and unless you want to maintain the 4:3 aspect ratio, look warped as well. My Sony Trinitron will looks better than any HDTV trying to do SD…. by the way, how much HD programming do you really watch with an HDTV? Probably not much as you do SD.
I totally agree with Jägermeister.
Corrections to my comments:
YeahRight, I bet you didn’t know that Sony helped develop the HDMI interface?
On the other comments, just because someone doesn’t announce new titles at CES is not a smoking gun for anything. Since when is it absolutely necessary?.
.
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For those who don’t own a HDTV yet., ever wonder why standard def TV broadcasts aren’t usually shown on a HDTV set demo? That’s because SD broadcasts look absolutely terrible and unless you want to maintain the 4:3 aspect ratio, it will look warped as well. My Sony Trinitron looks better than any HDTV trying to do SD….
Sorry… not enough caffeine pumping through my veins. 🙂
Guyver is right – all other things being equal, any price war is going to go HDDVD’s way. The discs are so cheap to make, at any price point it’s making more money for the studio that’s using it. And then there is the BluRay “experience”. First, the players are sloooow when accessing different parts of the film on the disc. Second, the image quality is actually better ton HDDVD – for whatever reason, BluRay isn’t as sharp, especially in darker scenes. Lastly, despite the claims of the troll – excuse me, “poster” – at the top here, HDDVD is completely dominating on the store shelves right now. Despite so many more studios backing BluRay, there’s actually more movies out on HDDVD right now. I guess that’s the textbook definition of “fair weather friends”, eh SONY? Partners, indeed!
Of course, that does raise a question about why Universal isn’t giving “a solid, clear, ringing endorsement!” For something that they not only had a big hand in backing, but is actually winning the pissing match passing for a ‘format war’ right now. May I don my tinfoil hat for a minute? Thanx.
I think SONY is wheeling & dealing in the backroom. They have had such a horrible run of botched products lately, especially with that billion dollar BluRay insertion vehicle called PS3, it’s scary. And they’ve invested everything – and I do mean EVERYTHING – regarding the future of the company on winning-and-winning-big this format war, that I would bet dollars to donuts that many a ‘you save my ass, I’ll be your bitch’ type agreements are being hammered out by them with anyone who will risk listening (informally, of course … otherwise there would be legal issues).
The idiots running the company have essentially bet the future of SONY on a piece of flat plastic. And they are losing that bet as we speak. Don’t think for a minute they aren’t desperate enough to pay any price to keep from going down in flames.
Tinfoil off 😉
Is Blu-Ray beating HD-DVD? Maybe… I guess… Sure?
My question is… Is Blu-Ray winning something?
Has it donned on anybody’s minds that maybe the lack of announcement of new releases from Universal has less to do with Universal’s supposed defection from HD-DVD than it may have to do with the recent DRM cracking of HD-DVD? I think Universal is just seeing what futher ramifications there are and how it will be fixed.
Also, one other thing that seems rather noteworthy is how Blu-Ray braggs about its superior disc capacity but when a new movie comes out on Blu-Ray, it has less bonus features and materials than the DVD version. To be fair, I think this is more of a production cost and will be a non-issue once Blu-Ray production becomes cheaper.
Tinfoil, I think that the reason for the differences in picture quality between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD is due to inital releases of Blu-Ray movies were in MPEG-2 rather than the other codec that Sony wants used on their Blu-Ray format.
Ultimately, the picture qualities are going to be close whether or not the other codec is used for Blu-Ray. What I think matters for the Toshiba camp is all they have to do is come close and at a fraction of the cost of Blu-Ray. Will this be game over for Blu-Ray? Not necessariliy… it will take some time for the loyal allies of Sony to possibly consider releasing in the HD-DVD format.
What I want to know is what the sales numbers are for titles released on both formats. Is there some gag order? Strangely no one seems to be doing this, but it would seem to be rather significant to see which way the sales number are tipping when the playing field is reduced down to apples to apples sales comparisons.
Sorry. Slight correction:
What I want to know is what the sales numbers are for titles SIMULTANEOUSLY released on both formats.
Well it looks like if the porn industry has a say, it will be HD-DVD:
http://www.tgdaily.com/2007/01/11/ces2007_hddvd_blu_ray/
12 – Good question
14 – I’d agree that, informally, Blu-ray looks to be winning – post Christmas shopping I saw a pile more BR than HDDVD movies on the store shelves
2 – They won’t release a PS3 without BR – they’d have to simultaneously re-release every single game title on DVD – won’t happen – as someone else said, people don’t buy a PS3 for the BR drive – they buy it for the PS3 games – which happen to come on BR discs
I have heard Disney and the adult film industry have both recently sided with Blu-Ray. If this is true then Blu-Ray will win, it’s only a matter of time. The adult film industry is what initially drove sales of VHS, and Disney was probably a close second.
#17, see #15
Sony is not allowing BluRay manufacturers to press XXX porn in the format, so they are moving to HD-DVD.
All signs point to Sony is paying Disney and Fox to support the BR format, and another article posted at this blog seems to indicate major retailers like Best Buy are being paid incentives to sell BluRay as well.
Smart consumers are staying out. Even the PS3, which was supposed to be the big booster to BR is selling way below expectations right now.
All signs point to HD-DVD as the format with a future.
Ah, I missed #15, and I guess I was misinformed about the adult film industry choosing Blu-Ray. It’s good to know… I work in a video store and we’re always being asked which we think is going to win.