lordjedi

sean wookie said:

lordjedi said:

Did you find that on The Onion sean?  It sounds exactly like something they'd have.

 

Yes it is one of my favorite "news" sites.

Like the Daily Show being a "news" show?

Jay said:

There's no such "news" coming out of CES about Blu-ray needing a decisive win this year. Big difference between news coming out of CES and opinion pieces in non-tech savvy publications like WSJ and CNN Money.

You're right.  It wasn't a "news" article.  It was an opinion piece.  But it wasn't written by the WSJ or CNN Money.  It was written by TGDaily.  They are pretty tech savvy.

http://www.tgdaily.com/html_tmp/content-view-40832-135.html

I've been hearing about media downloads for years. Even with iTunes' great success, it's still a fraction of a fraction of the total music market. Viable HD on demand as a replacement for physical media is years away. Years.

Really?  You've been hearing about it for years now?  I heard nothing about video downloads before last year (2008, maybe 2007).  Music downloads were a new thing back in 1999 with Napster and then Kazaa.  Apple made it acceptable in 2001 with the launch of the iPod.  They've since added HD video downloads to their catalog.  More and more people are getting movies and TV shows that way along with purchasing DVDs from Amazon.

Viable HD on demand is not years away.  HP is now selling a home media server.  Simply plug it in and you're ready to watch HD media direct from a hard drive.  The only thing stopping real, easy to use media servers is the DVD-CCA.  The last time someone tried to market it, the DVD-CCA came down on them.  They were accused of "circumventing CSS".  The device did no such thing though.  It just automated the process of storing an entire catalog of DVD titles onto a hard drive.  mp3 players had to fight the same battle when they first hit the market.  Now that DVDs are being sold with "digital copies", it's only a matter of time before people completely forego the disc entirely.

Have you seen the selection cable companies offer via HD on demand? It sucks, and thanks to low bitrate MPEG-2 and what are frequently older HD masters, it's artifact-ridden and a total blockfest during any type of fast motion, not to mention that stations like HBO and Starz crop 2.35:1 films to 16:9 to fill the screens of morons who prefer that shit. HD on demand is nowhere near being a Blu-ray killer.

Yes, it does suck...right now.  Just like Hulu's selection was horrible when it launched.  But the selections keep on increasing.  As more and more studios sign up, entire catalogs can be added instantly.  Universal has signed back onto iTunes, so a lot of popular TV shows are once again there.

The average consumer doesn't care about the technical details you've mentioned.  As we've talked about in the past, most people still hate seeing the "black bar" which is probably why HBO and Starz crop the releases.  So yeah, the average consumer (the morons as you like to call them) likes it that way.  That's all that really matters though.  If the average consumer can buy an HD video directly from their TV and have it delivered in minutes to be instantly ready for viewing (Verizon FiOS can do this, today), then it'll be the end of optical media.  Why would you want something that can be scratched or destroyed by your kids when you can just have it in a listing on your TV?

The format is doing fine. It may not achieve the penetration of DVD well into its life due to the eventual arrival of viable HD on demand (Vudu perhaps?), but I don't think that's a valid measure of its success or failure, especially in today's market where HD on demand is a complete joke.

Just like VOD was a complete joke when it first launched many years ago.  But now it actually has some worthwhile content available and movies often end up there at about the same time that they end up on retail shelves.

adywan said:

Well i got my first DVD player in 1999 and that cost me £250.  was the only person that i knew that had one and its wasn't until late 2001 when i got married that one other person had one.

When the Apex was released here, everyone I know went out and bought one.  That was the only player many people I know had for a few years.  It played all discs fine.  The only discs it wouldn't play were DL burned discs and DVD+R.  I'd bet it would still play any disc I've bought if I plugged it in.

Now onto the present day and i have a Blu-Ray player in the form of a PS3. But after 2.5 years of Bluray most of the people i know has a blu-ray player.

I know 4 people that have Blu-ray players, all in the form of PS3.  Only one of them uses it to play games.  No one else is ready to drop $400 on a Blu-ray player and most of them have HDTVs.

Many of the first DVD players were unable to play both DL DVD's when they arrived or and DVD-R discs,plus some of the newer discs were unplayable or caused major problems.  So what is the difference with having some Blu-ray players only having the 1.1 or 1.0 profile? Well for one even if  blu-ray player doesn't have the 2.0 standard you are still able to view the disc. A lot of the blu-ray players can be upgraded to the 2.0 standard by a simple firmware upgrade.

I've seen one or two players that can be upgraded to profile 2.0.  The rest are stuck at 1.1.  New firmware seems to only make them a bit faster.  And I've heard plenty of complains on both Amazon reviews and the bits about players being unable to play Blu-ray discs until the firmware was updated.  I don't recall hearing nearly as many complaints in the early days of DVD.

Argos, here in the UK, have a Blu-ray player for £97 which works out to about $145. I know someone who works in management in Argos and they had just over 60 of the players at both local sores here. they ALL sold out in the run up to Xmas and were unavailable to order because the warehouse stocks ran dry due to demand. I can remember this happening when the cheaper DVD players began appearing and then DVD caught on.

Of course it sold out at that price.  That's well below $200, which is the sweat spot that everyone's claiming Blu-ray needs to get down to.

HD on demand via the internet will fail here in the UK due to sever bandwidth limitations set by the ISP's. People are now being offered the choice of buying extra bandwidth because the limits are so bad that even online channels like BBCiPLayer takes up too much of your bandwidth to be viable. So imagine trying to stream or download HD movies.

That might be the case in the UK, but it's definitely not the case in the US or Japan.  Japan has even faster connections, with no limits, than we do here in the US.

adywan said:

itunes has only succeeded because an ipod or the iphone is the in thing to have and with today's society the way it is your seen as a joke and a loser if you don't own one amongst the younger generation.

Oh please.  iTunes succeeded because Apple made it extremely easy to buy single tracks for very little.  Sales of single tracks for all of 2008 were huge.  Album sales were way down.  Single tracks are now going completely DRM free and will have variable pricing.

It's not seen as a joke if you don't have one (at least not here in the US).  The iPod is the easiest mp3 player to use (as much as I don't like Apple, even I will admit this).  The iTunes store makes it even easier to use.  Just select the songs you want and they're instantly downloaded to your computer.  No more going to the store and combing through all the albums to find the one you're looking for.  They even made backing up all your music easy by including a "Burn to disc" feature.

HDTV's are now owned by everyone i know. Hell, even my parents have one and they're in their 70's. It really makes me laugh when i hear people say that blu-ray won't take off because an upscalling DVD player can make a standard DVD look comparable to a 1080p HD movie. They either need to get a better TV because there's is crap or go to specsavers to get their eye tested. Maybe on a 720p tv the results would be closer because of both the upscaling of the DVD but also that either the player or the TV has to downscale the 1080p source to 720p, so not a very good test.

I never said an upscaled DVD looked comparable to a 1080p HD movie.  What I said was that it looked comparable to a 720p movie, which is all most people care about when they see it.  An upscaling DVD player is an instant "upgrade" for anyone in the market for a new player that doesn't want to have to replace their entire collection.

The gadget show, here in the UK, did a test between what is considered the best upscaling DVD player and a Blu-ray player. They got 2 identical 1080p TV's and played the DVD & Blu-Ray of Iron man side by side. Their conclusions were that there was a huge step up in clarity and detail and everything looked so much better on the HD version.

Again, this is obvious.  Sit someone down with two TVs side by side and they'll tell you the same thing.  Now take them away from the side by side comparison and they won't be able to tell the difference.  With DVD to VHS, this wasn't even necessary.

I wonder how much sales of Blu-Ray players would escalate if a certian Saga got a blu-ray release?

They would be huge.

zombie84 said:

It won't be brought down for a while once its in there.

Of course it will.  Once something is easier, more convenient, and of comparable quality, it'll start its fall.  That's the way it was for music.  There's no reason to believe it will be any different for video.

Did you find that on The Onion sean?  It sounds exactly like something they'd have.

Where did this guy get his stats?  All sales data that I've seen during all of 2008 put DVD sales as slowing due to Blu-ray being on the market.  No one wants to buy a movie on DVD and then later have to rebuy it on Blu-ray because the players got cheap enough.  Even though sales are still huge, they have been lower than previous years.

Also, I don't know where he's getting his info about no DVD players being on the market near $129 during its first two years.  I bought my second player, an Apex, in 2000 for $150.  That player was released in January 2000.  That's pretty darn close to $129 and the 2.5 year mark (right where we're at with Blu-ray).  And that player was region selectable, so I wasn't locked into R1.  DVD was released in the US in March 1997 (test market).  Of course, I didn't have to worry about "upgrading" that Apex DVD player either.  The $129 Blu-ray players he references are most likely either profile 1.0 or 1.1 players.  They won't be able to play profile 2.0 content.  And there wasn't a single profile 2.0 player available on Black Friday for under $150.

That article is nothing more than a pro Blu-ray gush piece.  The news coming out of CES is that if Blu-ray doesn't take off this year, HD downloads are going to end up killing it or at least making it a niche market.  He tries to address that in his article, but he obviously doesn't know what he's talking about.  Verizon is pushing HD content through FiOS...today.  Time Warner has HD on demand...today.  LG just released an HDTV that can stream HD video from Netflix (just plug an ethernet cable right into the TV).  The only companies that are having problems pushing HD content are satellite (DirecTV and Dish).  They don't have the capacity yet to deliver all the channels that are currently available in HD, but they are improving.

I really hope Blu-ray does take off, but I don't see it happening.

C3PX said:

Some people just want to beat games for the sake of beating them I suppose, and collected as many achievements on the way as possible no doubt. Same thing for Bioshock, everyone talks about what a short game it is and how it can easily be finished over the course of a single weekend, and so far I have spent hours on it and am not all that far in the game, there is just too much to take in to rush through it like that.

The same thing happened with Half-Life 2: Ep 1 and Ep 2 (1 to a lesser extent).  People are simply rushing through so they can say they beat it in less time then the developers said it would take.  HL2: Ep1 was suppose to be a 4-6 hour game.  Some people managed to beat it in 2 hours, no doubt by simply running through.  It took me 5, mostly because I got stuck at the very end, otherwise it would've been 4.

I like to enjoy a game first.  Once I finish it, then I'll go back and do a speed run.

Jay said:

I think my head just caved in.

The things you think you know dwarf your actual understanding on this point.

I will concede that a standalone player will cost more than a ROM drive.  However, if I can put together a "standalone" player for $357 (I just priced it out), I would expect manufacturers to be able to make and sell one for about half that.  I can't find one anywhere for half that price.

I can build a DVR for $500 (probably $400 now).  Or I can buy a Tivo for $200.  Tivo can build (and sale) the same thing I can for less than half the cost and make a profit.  The manufacturers of Blu-ray players can do the same thing.  The only reason they haven't come down in price is because they don't have the "cheap" Chinese players to compete with.  Hopefully that'll change this year.

zombie84 said:

People can buy an HDTV for very little (as you say below), hook it up to their HD cable or satellite, and enjoy a stunning picture right away.  And if they have an upscaling DVD player, their old DVDs will now look even better than they did before.

Then thats exactly the same as how people can buy a Blu Ray player for extremely little and just hook it up as well. How is this relevant as far as the asserted failing of Blu Ray is concerned?

The difference is that when someone's in a store, they can see a Blu-ray player and an upscaling DVD player side by side.  To them, they probably don't see a difference.  So why spend almost twice as much when you can't see the difference?  Not only would they need to buy the more expensive player, but they'd also need to replace their whole collection in order to take advantage of the "better looking" player.

DVD players didn't come down because the format war ended or because recordable players emerged; I don't think most people even knew about the format war, and no one uses recordable DVD anyway.

I knew several people at the time, that were not technical at all, that knew about Divx.  One of them even bought a player because he felt it was the better buy, despite all the drawbacks.

Well, despite your own personal experience, i thought it was common knowledge that like 90% of people out there had no idea it was going on. Most people didn't even know of DVD itself until around 1999. I guarantee you if you go up to someone and say "DivX format" they'll think your talking about the computer codec, if they even know what you are talking about at all. Especially outside of the US, DivX is about as well known by your average person as the RCA video disks.

Seeing as how DIVX was started in 98 and died in 99, that's not surprising:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Video_Express

Anyone that walked into a Circuit City at the time would know there was a format war going on.  When Circuit City announced they were killing it, I told my whole family that it was now time to get DVD.  I picked up a player probably two weeks after that and then started buying movies.

 

As for Blu-Ray--here's the thing. I don't think anyone ever expected it to replace DVD, so why are people disappointed that its sales are not as good as DVDs?

I don't know where you got this idea.  Every article I've ever read since Blu-ray's inception has made the case that Blu-ray is so much better that it was going to replace DVD.

Well, true there are a lot of uninformed morons out there, and whenever any format comes out theres all sorts of people that just swoop in and proclaim it the next big thing. But no one who ever properly understood the reality of the business expected it to replace DVD in the same way that DVD replaced VHS (ie a seemingly-rapid pace and instant adoption). Most people didnt even realise that DVD started off relatively slowly compared to its later reputation. Blu Ray could never replace DVD in the same way DVD replaced VHS because it requires HD sets, so before that happens you have to ask yourself "when are HD monitors going to replace SD ones?" This process has to occur first. But those people are probably correct in that, IN THE LONG TERM, Blu Ray will be the next DVD in that it will be the next home video standard. But it wont happen until HD supplants SD, and that is still a few years off. The common sentiment I've always found, at least from anyone with an opinion worth listening to, is that BR will inherit the mantle of DVD in the sense that it will be the next-level video standard but not in the sense that DVD will become (literally) obsolete right away.

I don't expect DVD to become obsolete right away.  I do think that people are switching from HD to SD, for the wrong reasons.  Remember that the US switches to digital only broadcasting on February 17th.  How many people equate HD with digital broadcasting?  A lot.  So a lot of people have gone out and bought new HD sets (especially this year).  Even though those same people only need a digital converter box, they've still gone out and bought HD sets.  In short, a lot more people now own HD sets than did last year.  Maybe HD hasn't replace SD sets just yet, but I'm betting it's very close.

DVD was a success that had never been seen in home video, and probably won't be ever again, at least in our lifetimes.

Never going to need more than 1 MB of RAM either, huh?

While it is possible, IMO it is very unlikely that the success of DVD will be seen again. It was a completlely unlikely coalescing of elements that enabled it to grow with the speed and infiltrate the market in the manner in which it did, and they are entirely accidental. VHS didnt happen like this, neither did Laserdisc, CED, Blu Ray, HD-DVD, VHS-D or any other format. The reason is because the sheer number of coincidenes and circumstances that would allow them to supplant the reigning format with DVDs speed are so unlikely that just based on probabibility it is unlikely to be seen again in the next few decades (as far as traditional, hard-copy, retail-based media goes).

Coincedences and circumstances?  Oh give me a break.  VHS had slow growth in the beginning because of a format war.  Laserdisc was, afaik, essentially just a giant CD so you could fit video on it.  DVD had to compete with DIVX, but not for very long.  VHS-D was a joke (ooh, you can buy this digital VHS tape that you can only play, after DVD has been on the market for how long?).  HD-DVD had at least a partial chance since it was created by the DVD Forum.  The only real reason it died is because WB went Blu-ray only, which caused everyone else to jump ship.

DVD also had so many more advantages over VHS and Laserdisc that it was a no brainer (at least to me and everyone else I know).  Smaller size, easier to store, doesn't wear out like a VHS tape, no tracking, quick scene skip, so on and so forth.  DVD was like a breath of fresh air to anyone that heard about it.  "You mean I don't have to rewind it?  You mean I can skip right to my favorite scene?  The box is smaller?  I don't have to worry about broken tapes?"  All of those things led to fast adoption.

DVD you could just hook up to your TV and be blown away by the quality, but Blu-Ray requires you to have a completely different television set, and jump between Blu-Ray and DVD isn't nearly as dramatic so there's not as much drive for "you gotta see THIS!!".

I don't know where people get this.  A Blu-ray with 1080p is over double the resolution of a 480p DVD.  DVD was double that of VHS (usually around 240 lines).  Sure, it's best viewed on a screen larger than 32", but I was never really blown away by the quality of a DVD on my 27" TV.  What blew me away was the ability to freeze frame without the frame jumping, select scenes at random, and high speed skip through the movie.  Add in the commentary and other extra features and I was hooked.

VHS also had lots of noise and tape distortion and things of that nature as well--DVD was the first time people got a really clear, sharp picture, and THAT was really what hadn't been seen before. Now that people are accustomed to that, the increase in resolution doesn't seem as dramatic as that jump from low-quality magnetic tape. But it also had to do with the plethora of supplemental features like digital surround sound and commentary tracks and animated menus that added to the wow factor, as you pointed out. Now that thats all common, BR really just comes down to resolution in terms of its appeal, which isn't as dramatic.

I can only partially agree with this.  When shown side by side, Blu-ray is obviously superior.  Unless you're seeing a DVD on an upscaling player, then Blu-ray wins hands down.  And again I think it really comes down to the cost of the player.

I'd say Blu Ray will be the standard home video format by about 2016, if it can hang in there for the next two years or so.

2016?  By that time, I expect HD streaming to become common place.  Verizon already streams the DVR over the FiOS link.  If they can do that today, there's nothing stopping them from streaming an HD video directly to a media center that is either leased or owned.

People will still want disk-based media. Streaming will replace the rental market one day, probably, but people still want to have a hard-copy with a nice package that they can put on their shelves, appreciate, bring with them places. Especially because of DVD, the home video market is a market of collectors, and I'm talking about much of the average consumer fanbase, not just the real collectors that pick up the deluxe limited pressings and such. Look at the music industry, not only are CDs still alive and selling more than they were during some years in the 90s but vinyl records have made a huge comeback. People have always been hard-copy collectors because its satisfying to have that physical library on a shelf--whether it is books, vinyl records, CDs, VHS tapes or DVDs. Streaming, in the near future at least--who knows how consumer trends will be in a decade and a half for now--is just a sort of lazy, "lets see whats on" type of rental/television thing, not a replacement for the buyers market.

Vinyl records have made a comeback yes, but looking at sales data, people aren't buying CDs or Vinyl nearly as much as they're buying mp3s.  iTunes sales are skyrocketing.  The average Joe has an iPod with his entire collection stored on it.  No one seems to care for physical media anymore.  They just want to hear the music.  I see the same thing happening with movies.  Once you can buy a movie for about half what the DVD costs, who cares if there's no box?  If it's got all the same features, there's no need for a box or packaging.  Stick it on a portable USB drive and you can take your entire movie collection with you whereever you want to go instead of picking just a few to travel with.

Sure, that's not the norm right now, but as more and more people own iPods, it's going to become more and more the norm.

Jay said:

BD computer drives are completely different from standalone decks because your PC is there to do the rest of the work. Your PC provides the software decoder application (and all the licensing fees that entails), the hardware to run it on (CPU, RAM, video card with DVI or HDMI), a power supply, and a fancy GUI.

These are all things that must be built into a standalone deck, and that's not including other hardware like the IR receiver for the remote, the remote itself, etc. We're not talking about a DVD player here either because the processing power required for smooth 1080p playback/fast forward/rewind is much higher than 480p.

And since a standalone drive doesn't have to do all the other things that a PC does, all of that is built into a few chips.  A standalone drive needs a chip to decode the video and display it.  A standalone drive is far less complex than a PC because it only needs to do one thing: play Blu-ray discs.  Everything from the disc menu to the movie is all handled by the disc and then interpreted by the machine.

It might surprise you to know that the $150 Apex I mentioned was nothing more than a DVD-ROM drive connected to an IDE port with an mpeg2 decoder chip on a board.  That's all.  I would expect a Blu-ray player to be similar but with an mpeg2, AVC, and VC-1 decoder chips.  Hook it up via SATA and be done.  Of course, it ends up costing more due to all the "copy protection" bullshit that they have to load into the players.  That cheap Apex let me change the region code any time I wanted.  I'm betting you can't find a single "hackable" Blu-ray player on the market yet, mostly because they won't let the Chinese build any.

Have improved engineering and parts consolidation led to lower manufacturing costs? Yes. Have costs gotten low enough to provide a decent profit margin when selling a deck at $200? I highly doubt it.

Of course not, because they won't license the tech to the Chinese where the players can be made for cheap.  Instead, they're choosing to keep the tech in markets that have higher costs.  That is my gripe.

You may not have been trying to assert that standalone decks should be cheap because BD drives are cheap, but you were trying to tie discounts on BD drives into discounts on standalones; one has nothing to do with the other. You might as well compare holiday discounts on toasters and microwaves because they both heat up food.

All I was trying to show was the similarity between discounts of ROM drives to that of standalone drives.  I was trying to show that both got discounted heavily leading up to Black Friday and the whole thanksgiving weekend and then went right back up in price.  I fully expected the ROM drive to go back up since it was a one day deal.  I honestly didn't expect standalone players to go back up as much as they did.

zombie84 said:

Blu-Ray is a niche format that will eventually become a standard format, because HDTV is a niche format that will eventually become a standard format.

I know far more people that have HDTVs than have Blu-ray players.  I'd say that HDTV is not a niche format.  People can buy an HDTV for very little (as you say below), hook it up to their HD cable or satellite, and enjoy a stunning picture right away.  And if they have an upscaling DVD player, their old DVDs will now look even better than they did before.

DVD players didn't come down because the format war ended or because recordable players emerged; I don't think most people even knew about the format war, and no one uses recordable DVD anyway.

I knew several people at the time, that were not technical at all, that knew about Divx.  One of them even bought a player because he felt it was the better buy, despite all the drawbacks.

I also saw plenty of people at places like Fry's that were buying recordable media, but they could only buy one type (no dual format burners at the time).  These people were probably not that technical, they just wanted to be able to backup large amounts of data.  But I'd agree that DVD player prices didn't come down due to dual format burners.  Player prices came down due to exactly what you said.

Remember that DVD came about just before Tivo hit the market.  DVD came out in 1997, Tivo hit in 1999.  Once Tivo came out, VCRs were rendered practically pointless.  Why buy something that only records 6 hours of video, has to be set for the right time, and has to have the tape changed when you can buy something that allows you to tell it what program to record and never needs anything changed?  The DVR is a godsend to anyone who ever had trouble with a VCR not recording their show or just plain setting it up right.

So in short, with the advent of DVD and the DVR, DVD didn't even need to be recordable at the time.

But thats not necessarily going to happen again. I think people just take the incredible success and disgustingly cheap prices of DVD for granted. In 1995 I was paying $20 for VHS tapes, and now people pay almost the same for a lot of Blu-Ray titles, yet they still complain; our family bought a top-quality VCR in 1987 that cost us almost $300, and you can buy Blu-Ray players for much less today. I don't really know what people are expecting. I think its actually cheapened the home video industry a bit that you can go to the store and get a $50 DVD player and own a recent Hollywood blockbuster on DVD for $6, its sort of made home video a bit disposable but I guess thats just the way its gone.

Actually, I have no complaints about the price of Blu-ray discs.  The discs have fallen to within a few dollars of DVDs.  I'd even be willing to pay $10 more for the hi-def disc if I had to.

Yes, the home theater arena has become affordable for a lot more people.  You almost sound like you think people shouldn't be able to have home theaters without spending thousands of dollars.  I think it's fantastic that you can get an HDTV with a 5.1 receiver and speakers for about $2000.

As for Blu-Ray--here's the thing. I don't think anyone ever expected it to replace DVD, so why are people disappointed that its sales are not as good as DVDs?

I don't know where you got this idea.  Every article I've ever read since Blu-ray's inception has made the case that Blu-ray is so much better that it was going to replace DVD.

DVD was a success that had never been seen in home video, and probably won't be ever again, at least in our lifetimes.

Never going to need more than 1 MB of RAM either, huh?

DVD you could just hook up to your TV and be blown away by the quality, but Blu-Ray requires you to have a completely different television set, and jump between Blu-Ray and DVD isn't nearly as dramatic so there's not as much drive for "you gotta see THIS!!".

I don't know where people get this.  A Blu-ray with 1080p is over double the resolution of a 480p DVD.  DVD was double that of VHS (usually around 240 lines).  Sure, it's best viewed on a screen larger than 32", but I was never really blown away by the quality of a DVD on my 27" TV.  What blew me away was the ability to freeze frame without the frame jumping, select scenes at random, and high speed skip through the movie.  Add in the commentary and other extra features and I was hooked.

I'd say Blu Ray will be the standard home video format by about 2016, if it can hang in there for the next two years or so.

2016?  By that time, I expect HD streaming to become common place.  Verizon already streams the DVR over the FiOS link.  If they can do that today, there's nothing stopping them from streaming an HD video directly to a media center that is either leased or owned.

Jay: I really don't care how much different you think a hardware vs software player is.  Beyond the necessary chips to decode the Blu-ray content, the differences aren't major.  DVD players have hardware mpeg2 decoders.  PC DVD drives don't because the software does the decoding.  It's pretty much the same thing with Blu-ray.

I also wasn't trying to point out that PC Blu-ray players were cheap, so standalones should be cheap too.  I was merely pointing out that NewEgg had a one day sale and the prices are back to where they were (it wasn't a Black Friday sale either).

Jay:

Don't get me wrong.  I want to see Blu-ray succeed.  I want to see it take off as the next format.  I do not want to see it become a niche.  If it becomes a niche, then player prices will stay high.  If it takes off though, player prices will come way down (they should be down already, but whatever).  I would love nothing more than to buy a Blu-ray player right now, if the price was lower (under $200).  When that happens, I'll be the first in line to buy one.

Jay said:

Uh, wrong.  I don't expect anything to be cheap.  I expected player prices to be high when there was a format war.  That ended in January or February.  Player prices dipped slightly after that and then went right back up.  Prices showed no signs of dropping until Black Friday.  Retailers have been offering steep discounts on everything else except Blu-ray players.  Games, clothes, movies, etc, etc.  Everything has had steep discounts except those damn players.  Even Sony didn't drop the price of the PS3 going into Black Friday.  The XBox got a price cut though and saw an 8% increase.  Nintendo didn't need to since they've been selling like mad anyway.

When there's no competing format, I want it cheaper sooner, yes.  When dual format DVD burners appeared, burner (and media) prices started to drop significantly.  Burners went from $300 (dual format) to under $100 within a year.

You expected player prices to decrease with no format competition? Seriously? It's precisely because of the format war that you can even find $250 Blu-ray decks. Without HD-DVD, $400 to $500 would be the current price--and much better for the consumer electronics companies trying to turn a profit.

During the DVD/Divx war, prices were pretty steady.  Once Divx died and there was a single format for everyone to adopt, prices declined...dramatically.  My first player was a $300 Toshiba which had all kinds of outputs and built in decoders (none of which I needed, but I didn't know that at the time).  About a year later I got an Apex for about $150.  Several years after that, I got a Cyberhome for $50.  Both the Apex and the Cyberhome were considered "cheap chinese players".  But they still worked.

When there are dual formats competing, people don't buy for fear of having a dead format.  When it's only one format, people don't have that fear.  Look at the price of DVD burners during their format war.  Prices stayed around $300 for a long time because no one wanted to end up with a dead format.  Once dual format burners hit the market, nobody cared what type of media they bought anymore and prices started to fall.

You do understand that the companies making these players need to turn a profit in order to stay in business, right?

I understand that Sony seems to be the only company losing money and the best player right now.  I have heard nothing about any other company losing money on Blu-ray players and I highly doubt they're being sold near cost.

And you also understand that a barebones BD drive for a computer is a totally different animal from a self-contained, standalone deck with more materials, hardware decoders, software programming, more parts, more engineering and QA, and higher manufacturing and shipping costs, right?

The difference is minimal.  The drive still has to be able to read a BD.  Beyond that, the computer drive uses software for the decoding while the standalone uses hardware.  It's the difference between a chip and a piece of software.  Both have a board for the drive to plug into.  Other than shipping costs, the differences are minimal.

What I've read recently is that the reason some discs are really slow is because of BD-Java.  This doesn't surprise me at all.  The Cell processor in the PS3 is very fast, so it can load those discs with no problem.  Standalone players don't have such a fast processor, so they take considerably longer (surprise, Java is slow).  Looks like Sun pulled a fast one on the entertainment industry with Java.  Yeah, you can get more interactivity, but it's slow as hell.  This is probably also leading to slower adoption since no one wants to wait several minutes for a disc to load so they can watch the movie.  When faster players hit the market, perhaps adoption will pick up.

Finally, you understand that the US dollar is weak at the moment, right?

Every currency is doing bad right now, not just the dollar.

Of course you do, because these things are obvious to any reasonable individual who understands that there are costs to doing profitable business in a down economy. Unless, of course, Wal-Mart has conditioned you to think you deserve much more for much less.

There you go with the Walmart attitude again.  Prices were high before the economy slowed down, I've already gone over that.  Prices touched record lows on Black Friday and then went right back up (unlike everything else).

Maybe the reason you didn't see steep discounts on all those Blu-ray players is because they're already selling close to cost.

And maybe it's also because people still don't see the need for Blu-ray.  I see a lot of HDTVs being sold, but not a lot of Blu-ray players.

We also didn't have to worry about getting DVD players that couldn't play certain "future" content due to different profiles.  Every DVD player released with the logo had to be able to play all the features in the spec.  Even the players that did have problems were updated to work via firmware or by mailing the player in.  A Blu-ray profile 1.0 or 1.1 player won't be able to play 2.0 profile content.  The only thing I'm aware of that was added to the DVD spec later was mp2 audio since most of the cheap software used that and then those discs couldn't be played on earlier players.

This argument is getting stale. Everyone acknowledges that buying a Profile 1.1 deck means you might not be able to watch some stupid PIP window during playback.

And the average consumer hears "Some features one new discs might not work with this player."  Then they look at the cost of a profile 2.0 player and say "Forget it."  When the price comes down (if it does), then they'll buy it.

By the way, those DVD players you mention? Buggy as hell and more expensive at this point in their life cycle than Blu-ray decks. DVD hardware buyers back then had to tolerate high prices and sometimes shitty performance. The main difference is that firmware updates didn't come every other month and the shitty player you bought in January was still the same shitty player in December.

What DVD players?  I never had a DVD player that didn't play a store bought disc just fine (other than T2 Ultimate Edition, for which I received a free replacement player).  From my Toshiba (bought just after Divx died) to my Cyberhome (finally crapped out after 2 years of use, only ever had a problem with Underworld: Evolution because of something Sony did to it) I've never had a problem with any DVD player I've bought.  I've never had a problem with a PC DVD drive either.

And it sold 13.5 million DVDs.  Still looks like a niche compared to the DVD market.

Please read this topic at AVS. It's the most even-handed debate I've seen regarding Blu-ray's relative success or failure. Of particular interest is the discussion centering around the absurdity of judging Blu-ray's success against DVD, which is the most successful and most quickly adopted consumer electronics product of all time. Interesting point to note: the adoption of color TV and its speed in overtaking black and white would be considered a failure today if held to the same standard.

The Digital Bits also had an article last Christmas.  In it, they spoke with retailers about Blu-ray adoption.  The retailers all told them that any new format pretty much has 3 holiday seasons to be adopted or it dies or becomes a niche.  They asked them this because they (the bits) were starting to get worried that Blu-ray was going to become a niche during the last holiday season.  When the format war ended in February, they breathed a cautious sigh of relief.  But it looks to me like Blu-ray may still end up a niche format.  With upscaling players looking nearly as good as Blu-ray and costing far less, what reason do most people have to spend even more money on a Blu-ray player?  None.

Maybe Blu-ray will pick up speed, but I'm not holding my breath.  And when I compare it to LD, I'm only comparing it as a niche format (selling 1 million copies compared to 13.5 million, in my mind, makes it a niche).  It may be a much more advanced format, but if the average consumer isn't buying them, then it's not going to catch on.

These debates with you are endless. You expect more for less, have no appreciation for the economics and costs of doing business involved in marketing this type of product, and you make invalid comparisons to other formats and hardware products that have no bearing on the relative success or failure of Blu-ray as a format.

Yes, I do expect more for less.  I expect to get a new video card for the same or lower price as my previous one and that it'll perform better (shock, it always does).  I expect a new car for about the same price as my last one, but with better features (never failed here either).  Same goes for everything.  The cost of the new item might be the same as the cost of the old item when it was new, but we get more for the same money.  So we do get more for less.  With Blu-ray, I'm not seeing that happen.

The original high cost of Blu-ray was said to be because they had to retool all their production facilities for the new format.  That was 3 years ago.  I would've expected the cost to make a Blu-ray player to have come down sharply by now.  Just like everything else, once you know how to make them and how to do it efficiently, prices generally drop.  Again, I'm not seeing that happen.  Players are the same price today that they were 3 years ago.  Only used players have dropped in price (shocked).  The PS3 is the only one that costs more, and it still seems to be the best one.

Also, it's a fact that the CEO of Sony Electronics stated we wouldn't see $200 players this year (2008).  Why not?  Maybe in 2009 and with a global downturn, that may have to happen if they want people to buy them.  It's also a fact that the BDA won't license the tech to the Chinese for fear of "piracy" and "cheap chinese players".  Why not?  Cheap chinese players got DVD adopted rather quickly.  The expensive non cheap ones are better, but most people don't want those.

I know two people that have Blu-ray players.  One of them has a PS3, the other has a PS3 and had a standalone.  The person bought the standalone during a Black Friday sale and it has since crapped out on him (he returned it for a refund since they wouldn't exchange it).  Everyone else has upscaling DVD players since they look just as good at a fraction of the cost.

Jay said:

lordjedi said:

Then you're not paying attention.  Blu-ray units moved pretty well when the price was under $200.  Now that most places have the players back above $200, sales have slowed again.

It's called "the holidays." It's a time when things often sell very well at a reduced price and then slow down afterward. Add the economy into the mix and it's not exactly the best environment to be pushing a new media format.

And yet Amazon reported record sales.  Only normal retail has reported sales being down.  Black Friday actually had high sales, but they were lower than expected, so everyone has reported that sales were down.

I understand that you take part in the mass expectation--actually, mass entitlement may be a better description of the national condition--that the products you buy should be cheap right out of the gate. You've been whining for as long as I can remember about Blu-ray being too expensive. Nevermind that Blu-ray hardware is cheaper sooner in its lifecycle than DVD was while offering superior A/V quality and interactivity. You want it cheap, and you want it now. Wal-Mart and McDonald's.

Uh, wrong.  I don't expect anything to be cheap.  I expected player prices to be high when there was a format war.  That ended in January or February.  Player prices dipped slightly after that and then went right back up.  Prices showed no signs of dropping until Black Friday.  Retailers have been offering steep discounts on everything else except Blu-ray players.  Games, clothes, movies, etc, etc.  Everything has had steep discounts except those damn players.  Even Sony didn't drop the price of the PS3 going into Black Friday.  The XBox got a price cut though and saw an 8% increase.  Nintendo didn't need to since they've been selling like mad anyway.

When there's no competing format, I want it cheaper sooner, yes.  When dual format DVD burners appeared, burner (and media) prices started to drop significantly.  Burners went from $300 (dual format) to under $100 within a year.

We also didn't have to worry about getting DVD players that couldn't play certain "future" content due to different profiles.  Every DVD player released with the logo had to be able to play all the features in the spec.  Even the players that did have problems were updated to work via firmware or by mailing the player in.  A Blu-ray profile 1.0 or 1.1 player won't be able to play 2.0 profile content.  The only thing I'm aware of that was added to the DVD spec later was mp2 audio since most of the cheap software used that and then those discs couldn't be played on earlier players.

The Blu-ray version of The Dark Knight sold 600,000 copies on its first day and 1 million after its first week. No laserdisc ever came close to that, not even after 16 years on the market. Not ever.

And it sold 13.5 million DVDs.  Still looks like a niche compared to the DVD market.

Ziz said:

lordjedi said:

Remember that laserdisc didn't die either.  But it didn't supplant VHS.  It just became a videophile niche format.  Even after DVD came out, plenty of places still carried laserdisc.

 

Part of that was that LD was only a "play" format.  VHS was "play" and "record".  The average public wants convenience first, quality second, so LD stayed on the fringes.

LDs were also huge in comparison to VHS tapes.   They took up more space and had to be handled much more carefully.

DVD didn't start to replace VHS until DVD recorders became cheaper.  Likewise, when BD players come down and BD recorders go desktop, then DVD will start to be phased out.

You got something to back that up besides anecdotal evidence?  Otherwise, I'm calling bullshit.  I started building my DVD collection the moment Divx died, burner or not.  I had a pretty sizable collection before burners became affordable, as did a lot of people I know.

BD recorders also should have come down by now.  They haven't.  NewEgg had a one day special on ROM drives for $80, but it was only one day.  DVD will start to be phased out when BD players can 1) load discs quickly and 2) players are under $200 brand new and people don't have to worry about firmware updates.  The number of players I've read reviews for on Amazon that required updates just to load a disc in under 3 minutes is staggering.  The PS3 is the fastest and most expensive player on the market.  When it just becomes the most expensive, then maybe Blu-ray adoption will pick up.

Happy New Year everybody!  May 2009 be better than the last (though I think 2008 was pretty good).

Ziz said:

lordjedi said:

Or that guy who did Pans Labrinthe and the 2 Hellboy movies.  I can't think of his name at the moment.

Benicio Del Toro.

 

Guillermo Del Toro.  Benicio is an actor.  His only directing credit is from 1995.

 

D'oh!  Sorry about that.  At least I got the Del Toro part right :)

skyjedi2005 said:

Firefly was a dumb move, but hey at least we got serenity out of that.

We got Serenity because Fox doesn't own the rights to that name.  Otherwise, we wouldn't have gotten shit.  They still won't sale the rights to Universal, even though they'll probably never make use of the property again.

Whedon even said when FireFly was cancelled that Fox essentially didn't even want a Sci-Fi show.  They green lit it, then they showed the episodes out of order, practically guaranteeing it would be cancelled.

I'm sure WB will fold in order to get the movie out there.  The only other way, that I can think of, is if they can prove that Fox knew about it and said nothing.  They can claim stupidity unless there's an email or letter somewhere stating they knew about it but are going to let them film to completion, then jump on it.

Jay said:

At this point, Blu-ray hardware manufacturers have moved so many units that Blu-ray's future as a format looks very bright. I don't see it ending up like laserdisc at all.

Then you're not paying attention.  Blu-ray units moved pretty well when the price was under $200.  Now that most places have the players back above $200, sales have slowed again.  I haven't been able to find a single profile 2.0 player for less than $250.  And with a slowing economy, people just aren't interested in buying something that, to them, doesn't look that much different from their upscaling DVD player.

As much as I would love to see Blu-ray really take off and become more mainstream, it's starting to seem more and more likely to remain a niche format.

Remember that laserdisc didn't die either.  But it didn't supplant VHS.  It just became a videophile niche format.  Even after DVD came out, plenty of places still carried laserdisc.

skyjedi2005 said:

You guys do know that i am a huge fan of JJ abrams right?

You wouldn't know it by the way you post.

The only thing i don't like is Star Trek by him.

I like Lost, and Alias, have not really gotten around to watching fringe yet.

I thought you only liked the first season?  Didn't he leave after that?  I've only watched a few episodes here and there (I don't like it), so if I got that wrong, then ok.

Okay i will admit i hated Cloverfield but he did not direct it unlike some would think.

According to IMDB, he hasn't directed much of anything.  5 eps of Alias, 2 eps of Lost, Star Trek (director/producer), and MI3.  Those are the notable ones anyway.  It looks to me like he has a lot more experience writing and producing than he does directing.  I'm not saying he's a bad choice though.  Why don't you ever seem to have a problem with the writers?  They wrote the story, aren't they at least somewhat to blame on Star Trek?

Even coming out of tv I think people like JJ abrams and Joss Whedon are the George Lucas and Steven Spielberg of this generation.  Too bad for Whedon though looks like dollhouse is a flop before it even airs.

Just checked out Dollhouse on IMDB.  Kind of funny, Dollhouse starring Faith from Buffy and Fred from Angel :P

I don't mean they are even close to what old school Lucas or Spielberg were just the Best i can think of of the young crowd of directors at the moment.  I would have considered Tim Kring in the past as a newcomer to watch but Heroes totally nuked the fridge.

If you've been watching Heroes at all then you'd know that just about everything that took place in the first half of season 3 was a lie.  All of it in order to get Sylar to do what they wanted him to do.  So the only relationship that was left in tact is Claire and her uncle the flaming dude.

Or that guy who did Pans Labrinthe and the 2 Hellboy movies.  I can't think of his name at the moment.

Benicio Del Toro.

Some would say John favreau who directed Ironman, i thought he was a dubious choice when he was announced as the director early on but the movie turned out okay anyways.  I am not a fan of him as an actor really so this guy was an unknown at least to me doing his first comic book movie.

And he says virtually the same thing in the behind the scenes videos on the DVD.  He was freaked out that the movie was going to be a total failure.  The whole time working on it, he wanted to stay as true to the Iron Man comic as possible and he just hoped that people would like it.  The origin story was obviously changed so it would make sense on release (putting it in Vietnam wouldn't have made any sense in 2008).

Really ideally if you were a science fiction author or screenwriter there are a ton of people these days you would want to make your story on screen except for George Lucas or Steven Speilberg, those guys wore out their welcome with Indiana Jones IV.

Again you're lumping Lucas and Spielberg together because of one movie.  One movie that pretty much had to get made when it did if Spielberg and Ford ever wanted to do it.  The screwup that is Indy IV is all Lucas.  If I were a film executive, I would still consider Spielberg, but without Lucas.

skyjedi2005 said:

Could the psychic creature that is not in the movie be ripped off of the film forbidden planet?

By the way how do you do that hidden spoiler that you have to highlight to read?

 

Why are you so worried that things will be "ripped off" one film/book or another?  As long as it's not done in the exact same way, why does it matter?  I don't think a single movie in the past 30 years (maybe even 50) has had an original idea.  Every major blockbuster has taken ideas that came before it, repackaged them, and made them look new and fresh.  Isn't that enough?  From Star Wars to The Matrix, every single movie has borrowed and reborrowed from what came before.

Unless the writers/directors/producers never read or see any other comic or movie, they're going to be influenced by everything that has come before and they're going to include little things here and there that are either blatant ripoffs or nice little homages.  As long as the story is adapted properly, not much else should matter.

sky, it sounds like you're not into multiplayer much.  In which case, you'll probably want to avoid COD4.  Even thought it does have achievements and such for replayability, you seem like someone who only likes a game if it's 1) extremely difficult and 2) takes a month or two to complete.  Most people don't like games that take that long since they've moved on to the next great game in that time.

For the average gamer that doesn't spend 40 hours a week playing, COD4 is excellent.  It's a bit short, but the multiplayer aspect more than makes up for it.

As for me, I just picked up Left 4 Dead (on sale on Steam, 25% off).  I can't wait to play that.  I'll probably also pick up Bioshock since it's only $5 on Steam (regularly $20).  I'm thinking of getting COD WaW, but it's only $5 off, so I'll probably hold off on that.

They can actually look at the User Agent string that the browser is passing and block it that way if they wanted.  So it's quite possible that Comcast does have a badly configured proxy.  If he were being blocked by a software firewall, it probably wouldn't be blocking IETab too.

You can try changing your User Agent in the registry.  That might let you get around Comcast's block.  You might also want to call Comcast and see what the deal is.

Merry Christmas everybody!

Jay said:

Metal Gear Solid 4?  The game that may as well be a movie for the first 20 minutes?  If that's your idea of a quality game then it's no wonder the PS3's market share is so bad.  MGS4 is my idea of a Final Fantasy equivalent.  You spend so much time watching what's happening that you don't really play a game as much as you sit and watch a movie.

I don't recall commenting on the quality of the gameplay. I merely used it as a technical reference to illustrate that games made from the ground up to take advantage of the PS3's power aren't easily ported to the 360.

I also find it odd that you're commenting on a game you most likely haven't played all the way through. Kind of a trend it seems, given your quick loss of interest in Oblivion due to unrealistic rat fighting. Do you turn off movies if the first ten minutes fail to entertain you? Do you toss books aside when the first chapter isn't what you were expecting?

You called it a quality game.  When I'm looking at quality, I look at the visuals as well as the gameplay.  I watched a friend "play" MGS4 for about 20 mins.  He started at the beginning.  Right around the 4th cut scene, in a room full of gamers, we were all shouting "enough already!  let us play!".  The first 20 mins seem to be mostly cut scenes that couldn't be bypassed.  I really have no interest in playing through a game that's probably going to stop every so often and play a cut scene that I can't bypass.  I absolutely can't stand that about games.

EDIT: It's possible that we were able to bypass some of the cut scenes.  I honestly can't recall it that clearly.  My main point is that there were so many in the beginning of the game that it just got stupid.  When he first started to play, he literally moved 5 ft (in game) and another cut scene started.  That was just lame.

When I start a game, I do that to play it, not watch 20 mins of opening video that's trying to explain some kind of background story.  To top it off, even if the game wants to show that much video, at least let me bypass it.  I watched the guy try to bypass it with every key on the controller and nothing worked.  That's why we eventually turned it off and turned a movie on instead.

I don't turn off movies or stop reading books because they are meant to be watched and read.  A game, by its very nature, is meant to be played, not watched.  Maybe that's why Portal was voted Game of the Year by a few gaming magazines, even though there's no multiplayer and you don't shoot anyone.

Have you even played COD?  A headshot does immediately kill your opponent (at least COD4 does).  If that's not how it is on PS3, then that's a shortcoming of that port.  In the PC world, a headshot is an instant kill and has been since games like DOD.  Maybe you weren't playing on Expert though.  Maybe the PS3 doesn't have multiple difficulty levels.  Most of the time the computer AI won't even take a shot at your head since it's a small target.  I can assure you, on the PC, when playing online, headshots are instant kills.  Yes, it's a little frustrating, but unless you're sitting still for long periods of time, you'll be difficult to hit.

I've been playing online a long time and a headshot is in no way a universal one-hit kill, nor is it always a one-hit kill in COD4 with all weapons. All arms get damage multipliers on headshots, but that doesn't ensure instant death, particularly with smaller arms. Perhaps a headshot is always an instant kill with any weapon in Expert mode, but that's not the game's default and not what I was referring to. Yes, the PS3 has different difficulty levels.

From what I've played, it's not that you can't get an instant kill with a pistol, it's just really hard.  If you walk right up behind someone and put a gun to their head (doesn't matter which one), you're going to kill them.  But try doing that during the heat of combat and you'll likely never land a shot.  I've had this happen to me on more than one occasion, so it's certainly possible.

All that's necessary for textures is to release high resolution ones.  The same thing has been done in the PC world for ages.  You simply download the "high-res" textures and boom, games instantly look better.  If the developers have high res textures available, they could easily be downloaded for an instant game "upgrade".

You're assuming Nintendo's next console will be backwards compatible with the Wii. Seeing as the Wii was Nintendo's first console to incorporate backwards compatibility--and mostly because the hardware is so similar to the Gamecube's--I wouldn't count on that. Let's also hope Nintendo can be bothered to make some decent internal storage options available on their next console so this texture upgrade--which will never, ever happen on any Wii game ever--is possible.

Seeing as how not having an internal hard drive hasn't hurt them in the market, it wouldn't really surprise me if they didn't include one on the next system.  Of course, hard drives are so cheap now that they could easily include one at very little cost.

Jay said:

They said the same thing about the PS2 and it dominated the last generation regardless. There were plenty of talented developers who pushed the PS2 to its limits despite its supposed programming difficulty.

I don't recall developers saying that about the PS2.  From what I've heard, the Cell processor is practically limitless in its capabilities, but that also makes it far more difficult to program for.  So much so that the Orange Box for PS3 was delayed many times (from what I've heard).

Developers who don't want to do the work to make beautiful PS3 games have other options. That's why the 360 gets so many games first and the PS3 gets a poorly done port. There are good reasons why Kojima refuses to port MGS4 to the 360; it just can't handle the game as it is and he doesn't want to sacrifice the game's quality to put it on the 360.

Metal Gear Solid 4?  The game that may as well be a movie for the first 20 minutes?  If that's your idea of a quality game then it's no wonder the PS3's market share is so bad.  MGS4 is my idea of a Final Fantasy equivalent.  You spend so much time watching what's happening that you don't really play a game as much as you sit and watch a movie.

It's also possible that Nintendo will come up with a way to make all those titles easily "upgraded" to HD.  HD seems to be the real crux of the argument right now anyway.  The Wii doesn't do HD and for the "hardcore gamers" that's a must have.  Sorry, I just don't buy it.  A visually stunning game is nice to look at for a while, but if it doesn't have good gameplay, it won't last 5 minutes.

Oblivion might be great to look at, but the retarded beginning of beating up giant rats with a sword kind of turned me off.  It really shouldn't take more than one stab to kill a rat.

You keep bringing up good gameplay like the PS3 doesn't have it. It does. Tons of it. More than I've been able to find on the Wii, frankly. All while managing to look good at the same time.

Sorry you didn't like Oblivion, but it seems to me you're stuck on one somewhat silly gameplay aspect in an otherwise outstanding game. And why exactly should a giant rat half the size of a man take only one stab to kill? Let's assume it should. If that's the case, why doesn't a headshot in COD immediately kill your opponent? I'll tell you why...while that may be more realistic, it would only make sense to apply the same rules to the player, and then the game becomes frustratingly hard. Games aren't real life and real life rules and mechanics don't work.

Have you even played COD?  A headshot does immediately kill your opponent (at least COD4 does).  If that's not how it is on PS3, then that's a shortcoming of that port.  In the PC world, a headshot is an instant kill and has been since games like DOD.  Maybe you weren't playing on Expert though.  Maybe the PS3 doesn't have multiple difficulty levels.  Most of the time the computer AI won't even take a shot at your head since it's a small target.  I can assure you, on the PC, when playing online, headshots are instant kills.  Yes, it's a little frustrating, but unless you're sitting still for long periods of time, you'll be difficult to hit.

As far as upgrading existing Wii titles to HD, it may be possible for them to run the games at 1080p, and while that may smooth the edges out a bit, that will do nothing for the texture resolution, which is where all the real detail comes from. They'll look like upscaled games, just like DVDs look like upscaled DVDs and not HD. And would that be much of a selling point? How many people bought the PS3 because it upscales PS1 and PS2 games?

All that's necessary for textures is to release high resolution ones.  The same thing has been done in the PC world for ages.  You simply download the "high-res" textures and boom, games instantly look better.  If the developers have high res textures available, they could easily be downloaded for an instant game "upgrade".

C3PX said:

I think there is some knew trend of hating film makers. What is with you guys. Lucas, Spielberg, Abrams. What other film makers do you guys hate with such passion?

Michael Bay?  Not me personally, though I can't stand what he did to Transformers.  Just throwing that name out there in case anyone wants to add it to the list ;)

JediSage said:

I agree with Jay. Nintendo is in deep when the big picture/long run are considered. They've alienated a shit load of third-party developers for too long...devs that won't necessarily come running back when Nintendo plays catch up with what will undoubtedly be another under-powered console under the auspices of "quality" over power.

When has this changed?  That's a serious question.  Nintendo has always been about quality over power.  Always, always, always.  Even back to the NES and Super NES.  Nintendo may have alienated some people (I'll take your word for it), but Sony has made things just as hard in the opposite direction.  The PS3 is a pain in the ass to program for.  Yes, it's very powerful.  But all that power is useless if you can't easily make a game for it.

It's also possible that Nintendo will come up with a way to make all those titles easily "upgraded" to HD.  HD seems to be the real crux of the argument right now anyway.  The Wii doesn't do HD and for the "hardcore gamers" that's a must have.  Sorry, I just don't buy it.  A visually stunning game is nice to look at for a while, but if it doesn't have good gameplay, it won't last 5 minutes.

Oblivion might be great to look at, but the retarded beginning of beating up giant rats with a sword kind of turned me off.  It really shouldn't take more than one stab to kill a rat.

So when did Nintendo's attitutde of quality over power change?

What's amazing to me is how developers have abandoned PC gaming en mass in the last year or so. EA Sports has announced that it's not porting Madden any more, which really blows. And they blame it all on piracy. It really irks me because the current consoles and the last gen wouldn't have been shit if they didn't bastardize pc features like online play and anything even approaching pc graphics.

You answered your own statement.  It's due to piracy (or so they say).  It's much more difficult and time consuming to pirate console games than it is PC games.  There's still a fairly large market of PC games though.  I wouldn't really consider anything EA does as having a huge impact on PC games though.  EA is pretty much hated throughout the gaming world so as long as there's other publishers besides them, PC games will be fine.

Johnboy3434 said:

I can understand if there was a company-wide decree that only the movies were canon, a la Star Trek (where all published material is non-canon, with only two possible exceptions), but the official company-wide policy is that everything that can reasonably fit is canon.

Since when?  I've always heard, from company officials, that there are 3 levels of canon.  "True" canon is only what's in the movies.  After that is what's in the radio dramas and the novels of the movies.  So if something from the movies contradicts something from the radio dramas or novels of the movies, the movie overrides it.  Beyond that, everything is EU, but EU all goes into non-canon.  The only reason the books were written so far out in the timeline from the movies was to make sure they never intruded on any of the movie canon.

This rule is followed pretty closely and is even followed when costuming for official company functions.  Pretty much any character that has only been seen in books isn't allowed at those functions.  Exceptions have been made when the costume looks really good, but I've never seen one of those fighting Royal Guards anywhere outside of convention floors.

The only books that have been made Canon are Shadows of the Empire and maybe Splinter of the Mind's Eye (that one may have been pulled out of canon since it was written before ESB and ROTJ).  I can't think of any other books that are considered strict canon.

Maybe that all changed after ROTS came out, but back when I was costuming for LFL events, the above was the rule.  I even saw people get booted from events because they were accurate, but someone else that dressed as Vader was taller and they liked it better.

Gaffer Tape said:

But like lj said, if it was just the gimmicks bringing people in, Wii sales would have cooled off over the past two years (not three, lj).

Sorry, I thought I read somewhere that it's been out for 3 years.  I only got one recently even though I've been wanting one for about 6 months.  Even the system I have is borrowed from my brother in law.

As far as the Wiimote being a gimmick, the game really does need to be rethought when making it.  I'll give you two examples.  Hulk and Iron Man (I've played both).  With the Hulk, it's painfully obvious that the developers didn't bother even trying to make the Wiimote work right.  The game is very difficult to play due to the "Tomb Raider"esque camera that sits behind the player.  This makes the "super jump" very difficult since it's so hard to see where you're landing.

Iron Man, on the other hand, is a complete joy to play with the Wiimote (even with the same camera angle).  You simply point it at the screen, use the thumbstick to make him walk, and then move the mote to make him turn.  Flying is even better since you push one button to hover and one to fly, but you still just move the mote around in order to steer.

Is it a bit gimmicky?  Maybe, but I feel like I'm Iron Man when I'm playing it.  If I used a classic controller, I'd feel like I was playing a game and I'd still be moving the controller around like I was flying (that's just the way I play flying games), it just wouldn't be doing anything.

As far as tennis and bowling are concerned, that's exactly what I was referring to before.  Someone who figures out that they can just flick their wrist isn't going to have fun playing with a Wii.  Moving around and swinging your arms is half the fun.  If you're just going to sit there flicking your wrist, then don't even bother.