Blu-ray won!

[bbanderic]

Blu-Ray was shoved down the throats of consumers by big business.

How so? No one was made to buy anything against their will.

rhegedus has been lambasted before for having "an agenda" and this particular post by him smacks of it.

It is clear what bendixG15 is saying. At least to me.

The emergence of Blu-Ray as the winner of the format war (HD-DVD vs Blue-Ray) is clearly due to studio manipulation as opposed to consumer preference.

The facts?

Although there were movie titles that were available for both there were also exclusives available for one or the other but due to studio choice (not consumer choice) the Blu-Ray format had way more exclusive content than HD-DVD did and that was simply due to more studio support for Blu-Ray than HD-DVD.

Had all or at least most titles been equally available for both systems THEN and ONLY THEN could you say that the consumer had a clear choice. That clearly ... CLEARLY ... was not the case.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

I disagree, I think Rhegedus' comment simply states that no one was forced to by one format or the other, whichever one they purchased they did willingly, simple as that. I don't see an agenda at all in his comments. Everyone knew the risks when they chose a side and if they didn't, shame on them. Now all they can do is whine and spout anti-Sony rhetoric rather than just live with the decision they made.

As far as consumer choice and exclusives...You're never going to get equal distribution of both formats, that's business. Both camps had exclusives but Blu-ray had more support, that's the way it goes.

Can someone produce figures showing that consumers didn't prefer BD over HD-DVD? It seems to me that BD outsold HD-DVD 2:1 in 2007 software sales:

http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showthread.php?t=31587

I don't have hardware sales figures comparing the two formats but I haven't seen any figures showing HD-DVD selling more units, standalone > standalone, not including PS3's. The fact that there are over 10 million PS3's sold doesn't hurt, that's 10 million BD players in homes, even though many only use the PS3 for gaming. Personally, I bought a PS3 strictly as a BD player, currently it's the most reliable, futureproof player available.

Putting a built in BD player in the PS3 payed off BIG for Sony and is a huge reason BD came out on top. Sony did a far better job at marketing Blu-ray as well.

[Alan69]

What I truly do not understand are the partisans of each format whining "Mine is best!" "No, mine is best!" It's like listening to groups of supporters arguing over which brand of fork is the best. Except more annoying.

When you figure out that you can't buy a BR fork that will even let you eat a steak because Sony will only license one to you with child safe self retracting on any use tines, get back to us.

Anyone dense enough to think it's ok to have a content owner and restrictor in control of what should be an independent format fully deserves an Obamadent.

[Conquest10]

Blu-Ray was shoved down the throats of consumers by big business.

How so? No one was made to buy anything against their will.

Sony did a far better job at marketing Blu-ray as well.

Technically they didn't force anyone to buy a Blu-Ray player but that doesn't mean they still did not try to force it down our throats. They did a hell of a lot of advertising for Blu-Ray. PS3 ads showcased the fact that they played Blu-Ray movies instead of mentioning the fact that it was a video game console. I'm sure every Sony product also contained Blu-Ray ads in them. I bought some DVD+Rs and included in the package was an ad for Blu-Ray that also boasts about the PS3s Blu-Ray playback capabilities.

HD-DVD did almost little to no advertising. The only ads I saw for HD-DVD were on HD-only channels (you can guess how much of the population gets these channels). Only during the middle of the football season did they start advertising during football games on regular TV.

[rhegedus]

rhegedus has been lambasted before for having "an agenda" and this particular post by him smacks of it.

Oh dry your eyes!

No one was made to buy any HD/BD disks. Everything that is on HD/BD is also available on regular flavour DVD at a cheaper price without having to upgrade.

Repeat: no one was made to upgrade players or buy HD/BD products. Those that did, did so by choice.

As for my "agenda", I had both formats but chose BD as eventual winner last January because of the data available then. Don't get upset because I picked the right horse.

You recently bought a PS3 - who frogmarched you to the checkout?

[wulf109]

Betamax had superior resolution than VHS but VHS won. The vast majority of consumers don't care about picture quality,they care about cost. HD tv will cause a consumer revlolt when it goes into effect next year,again most consumers don't know about the change-over and going to be very pissed next year.
HD DVD is less than 2% of DVD sales,not exactly taking consumers like a storm.

[bbanderic]

Betamax had superior resolution than VHS but VHS won. The vast majority of consumers don't care about picture quality,they care about cost. HD tv will cause a consumer revlolt when it goes into effect next year,again most consumers don't know about the change-over and going to be very pissed next year.
HD DVD is less than 2% of DVD sales,not exactly taking consumers like a storm.

That "changeover" you refer to has nothing to do with HDTV and is not relevant to this thread. The "changeover" will be from an analog broadcast signal to a digital one, not HD.

[edDV]

Betamax had superior resolution than VHS but VHS won. The vast majority of consumers don't care about picture quality,they care about cost. HD tv will cause a consumer revlolt when it goes into effect next year,again most consumers don't know about the change-over and going to be very pissed next year.
HD DVD is less than 2% of DVD sales,not exactly taking consumers like a storm.

Almost none of that is correct. If you want to start a new thread we can hash it out point by point.

[FulciLives]

rhegedus has been lambasted before for having "an agenda" and this particular post by him smacks of it.

Oh dry your eyes!

No one was made to buy any HD/BD disks. Everything that is on HD/BD is also available on regular flavour DVD at a cheaper price without having to upgrade.

Repeat: no one was made to upgrade players or buy HD/BD products. Those that did, did so by choice.

As for my "agenda", I had both formats but chose BD as eventual winner last January because of the data available then. Don't get upset because I picked the right horse.

You recently bought a PS3 - who frogmarched you to the checkout?

As far as I am concerned you do not "play fair" but instead have to twist everything or take the "devil's advocate" stance on topics.

As for my purchase of a Sony PS3: I bought it primarily as a video game console because I do enjoy the occasional video game here or there. In the "recent" past I have had a PSone and a PS2 so it made sense to me to get a PS3 due to backwards compatibility and the fact that it has games I want to play with games "due out" for it that I want to play. I've never had an XboX and while there are a few (very few) exclusive XboX 360 titles I wish I could play the Sony PS3 ... as a game console ... made most sense to me. Again this was based on my past experience with Sony gaming hardware/software plus my awareness of current PS3 game titles and those announced to come out "at some point" in the near future.

The fact that it has Blu-Ray "movie disc" capability built-in was a "bonus" of sorts but one that I would have been happy to ignore had HD-DVD become the "winner" of the format war. After all I did buy it as a game console first and foremost. In a way I am happy that Blu-Ray won because I can enjoy the software ... the movies ... without additional hardware costs whereas had HD-DVD won I would have had to buy a HD-DVD player. I guess my point is that I didn't buy the PS3 simply because of or for the Blu-Ray "movie disc" capability.

To date I've bought all of one Blu-Ray movie release (the 5 disc BLADE RUNNER release). I didn't buy more because I wanted to see what would happen with the HD OPTICAL WAR. Had HD-DVD won then BLADE RUNNER would have been the last of my Blu-Ray movie buys. As it turns out I will now buy more Blu-Ray movies knowing that it is the format that won and should be around for a while if not eventually becomming a new standard although I realize that some think it may end up being the "LaserDisc" of today (I did own a LaserDisc player and many movies and did so proudly at the time nor do I now consider it a "waste of time" as I enjoyed near DVD quality long before DVD came about thanks to the LD format).

My only complaint is that many/most Blu-Ray movies are so damn expensive LOL

You could argue that my purchase of the Sony PS3 put me in the Blu-Ray movie camp. My argument is that I bought it for video games and that I have only NOW adopted it as a movie player since the format won due to corporate manipulation.

In a sense I "won" as well since I now have a Blu-Ray capable device but please understand that I didn't "choose" Blu-Ray for movie playback ... it just kinda happened that way "by default".

I hope all that makes some sense LOL

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[rhegedus]

@Fulci

I take it that "devil's advocate stance" means questioning the mantra about how great HD is and how evil BD is and, by inference Sony, is then yes I'll take a bite at that. Not because I love Sony (couldn't give a toss - I've spent about x5 more on Philips) or BD, but because I didn't believe that HD was superior to BD or that when BD was outselling HD by 2:1 that HD was 'thumping BD' and HD would eventually win.

It doesn't matter any more - one high-def format has won over the other and consumers can either take it or leave it. Hopefully this will draw a line under it all.

Glad you like your PS3 Interestingly, I bought mine for the opposite reasons to you: I'm not a console gamer but was looking for a competent BD player. The fact that it was an excellent media player and futureproof for half the price of standard BD players made it an obvious choice. The fact that I've now managed to watch HD-DVD material on it means that I don't have to watch HD-DVD on my PC any more!

The disks aren't that expensive in comparison to DVD, at least over here (UK). I bought 3:10 to Yuma last month for £16 on BD when the DVD was £13. I couldn't even get a beer in a decent bar for that.

Anway, cheers!