Film rental firm Blockbuster is to rent high-definition DVDs in the Blu-ray format only at 1,450 of its US stores.
The move is viewed as a blow for the rival Toshiba-backed HD DVD format – which has been battling against the Blu-ray format, supported by Sony.
Blockbuster said that consumers have chosen Blu-ray over HD DVD in the 250 stores where both were available.
Even though I’m an early adopter in a number of geek areas – this ain’t one of them. So, keep on deciding.
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hopefully they work out this pesky rot problem
oh la la.
Eidcard, guys like us gets called dirty old men when we use photos like that. That reminds me of a Sanford and Son episode. When called a dirty old man Fred said he was going to be a dirty old man until he was a dead old man. 😉
#3 – You are dirty old men: We didn’t need any more proof.
Nevertheless, I don’t see this as a blow to HD-DVD. There just hasn’t been enough adoption.
After all, if a dirty old man hasn’t moved to it, the mainstream without question hasn’t.
#4 One of the deciding reasons people choose one format over another is movie availability. If Blockbuster is only going to make Blu-Ray available then that is what people will buy.
#1
That’s not a problem, that’s a feature that encourages users to replace both their BD players and their “old” BDs for newer hipper and more “secure” versions.
5. Maybe, but other rental businesses specifically Neflix may take the opportunity to erode more of Blockbuster’s marketshare by offering alternative formats.
For the most part, it seems fairly premature to be declaring a winner already. I wonder how many gamers who took advantage of the coupon offer for a Blu-Ray movie will continue to buy more movies for their PS3 and thus pumping up this idea that Blu-Ray is killing the competition.
Both sides are spinning things whenever they reach a mini-milestone and leave out little details here and there.
Sony says they were the first to sell 1 million Blu-Ray discs and forgot to mention that HD-DVD is only about 2,000 discs behind.
Toshiba says they have sold more standalone players than Sony Blu-Ray players… did they include players from Pioneer , Panasonic, and Samsung as well?
noooO!…. dont let sony win! i hate their proprietary ways..
stupid public..!
-s
So 250 Blockbuster stores get to decide what all the other stores in the US carry?
I guess that is the American way… like when Iowa and New Hampshire get a say in who the rest of us get to vote for. 🙂
Fuck Blockbuster!
Glad i have NETFLIX, they allow me to make the decision.
(if i had a HD format disc player)
people still rent movies!!! I quick renting movies years ago after years of being told I am going to have to pay a late fee or fee for not rewinding. it’s the last days of the video store.
#5 – If Blockbuster had that kind of influence on the market they would have made their own format.
While not making their own format, Wal-mart is making their own player at a cut-rate price point. However, this was just a rumour the last time I checked. Guess what, it ain’t Blu-ray.
At one time I was absolutely convinced Blu-Ray would win this thing. And then it came to actually buying one for home movies. Suddenly the significantly cheaper HD-DVD for the same quality was looking pretty good. Add to that the brilliant HD-DVD move that included a standard definition version of the movie to the same DVD (for all your existing SD gadgets) and HD-DVD was looking mighty good.
The Blockbuster thing could be a blow, however.
That said, wait for a holographic HD DVD coming soon to a machine near you.
You heard it first from a guy who has a great Zenith Betamax machine still sitting on the shelf.
RBG
I have decided to sit this one out. I have always been a fairly early adopter, getting a DVD player in December of 1997.
I have a 42″ HDTV and a progressive scan DVD player. I simply think the picture and sound quality from current DVD is good enough.
I don’t like the unprecedented controls that have been placed into the format by the studios, I don’t think the additional picture quality justifies the purchase of an entirely new format, and I think neither format will last long enough before something better comes along leaving yet another format in the dust.
Netflix.
I don’t even know why we are talking about Bluray and HD DVDs. 120 GB external hard drives are going for $40. Instead of a DVD player, think of an Apple TV type device with multiple video outputs and an external USB 2.0 port.. The cost would be anywhere from $200 to $300.
You go to Blockbuster.com, pick out the movies you want, and have them downloaded to an external USB 2.0 hard drive that you pick up later in the day. Instead of having to return the movies, you only allow the movies to be watched for 7 days.
Sure, it would cost blockbuster some cash to develop a system to do this, but I think this is better than having to store movies in multiple formats. I think it would be easier to protect content on a hard drive than a DVD. Better yet, if consumers already have a PC hooked up to a TV, they don’t have to buy any new players or equipment.
Given how cheap hard drives are, the DVD should be dead in five years. The answer to who is going to win the HD DVD/Blu ray war should be nobody. The winner should be the hard drive.
Hmm … I smell corporate pay off …
After all, BluRay had to do something, what with the fact that PS3 is selling like shit in a heat wave right now, and HD-DVD players very publicly just went down in price … again. Lets also not forget that Walmart recently put their not-inconsiderable weight behind HDDVD, so that had to be an incentive to counter the balance. Lastly, and despite what Blockbuster’s internal ‘numbers’ are saying, I still see waaay more HD-DVD titles available in the shelves of BestBuy & Circuit City – for all it’s vaunted industry support, BluRay just doesn’t seem to be keeping up with HD-DVD, AFAICT. Buying some publicity had to seem like a good idea to somebody in SONY HQ.
But lets think a minute about what company we’re talking about here. I mean, Ballbuster? Are you kidding me? Who the heck really cares anymore what they do. Netflix was already serving them their lunch, and as downloads become more pervasive they’ll be more irrelevant by the day. If any physical media format takes over from DVD, my bet is on flash memory. By the time DVD is ready to give up it’s stranglehold, prices for silicon should be low enough to make flash the best ‘next gen’ option (and certainly a much better performing one), if one is even needed.
In the meantime, when it comes down to it, HD-DVD is cheaper (players and discs) for the foreseeable future, will probably always have at least as good a selection of movies, and has exactly the same image quality as BR without all the region/DRM hassles. Every review I’ve read say even the HDDVD players are better than the BluRay players – particularly, faster access time of discs & no lags in playback.
So, given all that, and the fact that ‘the Buster’ is just a big yawn, if anything this announcement may be the Kiss of Death for BluRay.
Blockbuster … jeez, somebody wake me when the 1980s are over. 😉
Netflix has not quite killed Blockbuster, but given Blockbuster’s anti-consumer policies, they will most likely kill themselves off.
I rent through Netflix, and I noticed on a movie the other day that Disney is going Blu-Ray….now that could be hurtful for HD DVD, unless Disney is planning on offering both formats.
Netflix also offers downloads of anything it has in stock. I haven’t tried that yet, but I know a couple people who have and they love it. I’m not sure, but I think the cost is like 1.25 a movie.
Netflix just makes more sense for me, since I love all the older stuff, especially the horror and sci-fi from the 30’s and the 40’s…..stuff you could never get at Blockbuster.
Blockbuster lost me 7 years ago when I was 17….I rented a movie at 4 p.m. one day, took it back at 11 a.m. the next morning and they charged me a late fee because it was a 1 day rental….thats when I found out their day wasn’t 24 hours, but 12:01 a.m.
#18 – I actually don’t know why the topic matters: None of the technology is mature enough to matter.
I downloaded Idiocracy from Amazon and watched it on my laptop the other night. Watching a movie on a high-res screen near me is almost identical in apparent size to watching a movie on my 65″ HDTV across the room.
21,
Storage tech is so far along that in 5 years this won’t even be an issue.
I’m sitting on the fence to wait for a winner of this HD format war and have been keeping up with it ever since the new was first reported. We have seen and read all of the pros and cons about both format’s disc and players and pretty much have an idea which we would choose if we had to decide right now. Most of you would choose HD DVD because it is cheaper and looks the same as Blu-ray. If that was the case, than HD DVD should have been if not declared the early winner, but winning across the board. That is not the case. Blu-ray is more expensive than HD DVD but their disc capacity is larger but they are not using it to it’s full capacity as promised when this all first started. However, Blu-ray is still in the game and this bit of news does not seem a big blow to lots of people, but it is at least a nail in the HD DVD format’s coffin. Those of you who like NetFlix better than Blockbuster and is happy that they are still carrying both formats, let’s see how happy you will continue to be when they stop getting HD DVD titles that the HD DVD camp indicated last week that they will be slowing in making those along with changing the reported of number of HD DVD players that would be sold from 1.8 million to almost 1 million EVEN after they dropped the price of their Toshiba players. Apparently customers are not buying up the cheap stuff for fear that they would loose and have to buy the other’s winning format items.
Media Distributors to Demo Holographic Storage Solutions June 21
http://www.studiodaily.com/main/news/feed.rss/8198.html