Originally posted by: zombie84
See, I don't agree with this. Companies won't conceed defeat until the latest possible time because even though they have effectively lost the war, if they downsize and concentrate just on software they can probably sell disks for quite a while because by 2008 there will still be a decent base of HD-DVD player owners that want their investment to pay off and will still buy the small trickle of releases. Take a look at Beta--like HD-DVD it came out before VHS and initially held 100% of the format war. As soon as VHS came out VHS became more popular, and after a year or two of landslide victories had claimed roughly 75% of the market, much like Blu-Ray has done. As the mid-80's approached, the Beta market was only five or six percent. Beta was pretty much dead by 1984 but the plug was not pulled until the end of the decade really. But it would be stupid not to recommend to people by the early to mid-80's to go with VHS because it was the clear victor, and consumers were becoming more aware of it; Beta was unpopular. And thats the way its going now. Consumers are aware of whats going on--I mean they are the ones responsible for the landslide Blu-Ray sales! And while this is on early-adopters, the dissappearance of HD-DVD from stores pretty much would seal the deal to anyone looking into the matter--when you see Blu-Ray everywhere, and HD-DVD only in a few stores with this little tiny pathetic section its not like thats going to make you question your decision. Word on the street is basically "so this Blu-Ray is the new thing now, huh?"
Looking at the stats, there's really no way that HD-DVD can bounce back. One theory states that the format war was actually instigated by Microsoft for the very reason of creating confusion. It's not that they want Blu-Ray to die or HD-DVD to win, they are more interested in crippling the market so that people will resist HD disk content and move directly to digital downloads. A lot of industry insiders believed that the whole format war was a sort of investment scheme engineered by Microsoft in order to strengthen their own target marketplace. Their statements and flagrantly illogical business practices certainly suggest so.
Originally posted by: lordjedi
Meh. The only thing technically better about Blu-Ray is that it can hold more. Other than that, they both use the same video/audio encoding and everything else. And since it looks like (at least some) the players are backward compatible with existing DVD titles, I guess it doesn't much matter which format "wins". Still, there's a reason why neither format has really "taken off" the way they should and that's because of the competing formats. My gut tells me that until HD-DVD makes an announcement that they've really lost, your average consumer will continue to hold off. I personally have been telling people to hold off and wait for the format war to end. I can't, in good conscience, tell someone "oh just go get one of these" on the off chance that whatever one they decide to buy ends up being nothing more than an expensive paperweight.
The sooner an official announcement comes, the better.
Originally posted by: Tiptup
I hope that's true. Neither format truly excites me, but if I'm going to be stuck with one, Blu-ray is technically better and I'd rather have that dominate. It may come with more copy-protection crap, but that will still be bypassed quickly (I'm sure) and homemade content will be nicer on Blu-ray.
I hope that's true. Neither format truly excites me, but if I'm going to be stuck with one, Blu-ray is technically better and I'd rather have that dominate. It may come with more copy-protection crap, but that will still be bypassed quickly (I'm sure) and homemade content will be nicer on Blu-ray.
Meh. The only thing technically better about Blu-Ray is that it can hold more. Other than that, they both use the same video/audio encoding and everything else. And since it looks like (at least some) the players are backward compatible with existing DVD titles, I guess it doesn't much matter which format "wins". Still, there's a reason why neither format has really "taken off" the way they should and that's because of the competing formats. My gut tells me that until HD-DVD makes an announcement that they've really lost, your average consumer will continue to hold off. I personally have been telling people to hold off and wait for the format war to end. I can't, in good conscience, tell someone "oh just go get one of these" on the off chance that whatever one they decide to buy ends up being nothing more than an expensive paperweight.
The sooner an official announcement comes, the better.
See, I don't agree with this. Companies won't conceed defeat until the latest possible time because even though they have effectively lost the war, if they downsize and concentrate just on software they can probably sell disks for quite a while because by 2008 there will still be a decent base of HD-DVD player owners that want their investment to pay off and will still buy the small trickle of releases. Take a look at Beta--like HD-DVD it came out before VHS and initially held 100% of the format war. As soon as VHS came out VHS became more popular, and after a year or two of landslide victories had claimed roughly 75% of the market, much like Blu-Ray has done. As the mid-80's approached, the Beta market was only five or six percent. Beta was pretty much dead by 1984 but the plug was not pulled until the end of the decade really. But it would be stupid not to recommend to people by the early to mid-80's to go with VHS because it was the clear victor, and consumers were becoming more aware of it; Beta was unpopular. And thats the way its going now. Consumers are aware of whats going on--I mean they are the ones responsible for the landslide Blu-Ray sales! And while this is on early-adopters, the dissappearance of HD-DVD from stores pretty much would seal the deal to anyone looking into the matter--when you see Blu-Ray everywhere, and HD-DVD only in a few stores with this little tiny pathetic section its not like thats going to make you question your decision. Word on the street is basically "so this Blu-Ray is the new thing now, huh?"
Looking at the stats, there's really no way that HD-DVD can bounce back. One theory states that the format war was actually instigated by Microsoft for the very reason of creating confusion. It's not that they want Blu-Ray to die or HD-DVD to win, they are more interested in crippling the market so that people will resist HD disk content and move directly to digital downloads. A lot of industry insiders believed that the whole format war was a sort of investment scheme engineered by Microsoft in order to strengthen their own target marketplace. Their statements and flagrantly illogical business practices certainly suggest so.
The problem is that there are several high profile movies coming to both (all 3?) formats. 300 just came out on DVD, HD-DVD, and Blu-Ray. As CO said, The Matrix Trilogy just came out on HD-DVD and is coming to Blu-Ray in another month or so. And Blade Runner is also coming to all three formats.
Those three movies aside, there are several reasons why Beta didn't catch on. First and foremost, Beta was a proprietary Sony format. Nobody but Sony made the tapes or the players. VHS was fully open. Anyone could make the tapes and anyone could make the players and all they had to do was pay a license fee. This essentially caused a flood of players/recorders and tape manufacturers to hit the market. The second reason is that Betamax tapes were too short (initially). VHS tapes were longer and by the time Betamax extended the length, VHS had already taken hold. The only thing Betamax had on VHS was quality. Betamax videos had far better quality than VHS tapes.
With all that known nobody wants to touch either hi-def format until there's a clear winner. If you choose the wrong side, you end up owning a useless piece of equipment. Everyone's comparing this to the VHS and Betamax format war because it's the best comparison there is.
The deal with Divx and DVD was only slightly similar. Since Divx players were just "enhanced" DVD players, there was really no fear of getting a DVD that wouldn't work in your player (though I understand that a few titles didn't quite work). What killed Divx though is that it was essentially a pay-per-view system and even if you made a disc "Gold", it was only "Gold" on your player. You couldn't take it to a friends house and expect it to work. Other than that, DVD and Divx were mostly compatible (same size, same laser, same everything else as far as I know), they really just had a different implementation.
I seriously doubt MS had anything to do with this format war. No, this is a case of Sony and Toshiba not wanting to work together to make a unified standard (though they did try at one point). MS picked HD-DVD for the simple reason that it was cheaper to manufacturer in the beginning. All the existing production lines just had to be modified slightly in order to go HD-DVD. Blu-Ray was completely new, so it required completely new production lines.
Blu-Ray will probably win out for one simple reason: PS3. Sony basically horded all the blue laser diodes for the release of the PS3 and then hit the market with the cheapest (at a huge loss) Blu-Ray player available. Funny thing is, they're struggling now in the console market. It seems XBox 360 and Wii have come out in front while Sony is in third place. They may have the best selling Blu-Ray player, but apparently people aren't buying the games, they're just playing Blu-Ray movies on them.
To answer see you auntie's question, typically the DVD player does the upconverting, though I understand there are TVs that do it too.