Total HD Format Bites the Dust

[SingSing]

From Yahoo tech : "Remember Total HD, the Blu-ray/HD DVD combo disc format unveiled back in January that was supposed to end the HD format war? Well, now you can forget it (if you remembered at all, given that no Total HD discs were ever released)—the nascent format is apparently dead on arrival.

Ars Technica reports that Warner Brothers (the studio behind Total HD) has decided to put Total HD on ice—permanently—after doubts surfaced about whether consumers and retailers really wanted HD discs with Blu-ray content on one side and HD DVD video on the other."

For more see http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070917-total-hd-disc-format-looks-to-be-a-total-bust.html

[oldandinthe way]

2 times 0 still equals 0

I don't count Playstations or Xboxes

[akrako1]

after doubts surfaced about whether consumers and retailers really wanted HD discs with Blu-ray content on one side and HD DVD video on the other.

WHAT??? This was one of the best ideas to try and counter this bullsh*t format war. What consumers did they poll? Who wouldn't want a disc with both formats? They might as well just kill the dual-format players too... who would want that? A fairly cheap fully featured dual format player would be the ONLY HD player I'd consider buying...

[Nilfennasion]

It died for the same reason HD-DVD is dying: lack of studio support.

Bribing Paramount to go HD-DVD was a very bad move on HD-DVD's part because of all the studios one could choose to rope into your fantasy, Paramount is close to the bottom, if not at the very bottom, of the list. They were the last to come to the table on SD, and when they did come, their flagship titles were released with transfers that can be described as being ordinary at the very best. Setting an upper limit of 80cm for the screen size that your SD-DVDs can look good on sends the cinemaphile market that formats count on for their early survival a very strong message. And it is not the kind of message that you want out there if you want that same essential market to look your way with a new format. It basically reads "we think that near enough or anything is good enough". The message Paramount has been in the habit of getting back ever since they came to the SD-DVD party two years late is "we don't".

TotalHD was always going to be a lose-lose proposition because this is not some kind of parallel market where systems with identical specifications can coexist. One of these formats has to lose. One format's players have to stop appearing in the market. One format has to no longer have players made for it. That means people who buy TotalHD were going to end up with a two-sided disc (bad enough) where one side was going to basically be a useless collection of 1s and 0s that no player was going to be able to decode (worse). Whomever created this format clearly only thought in terms of six months down the track, rather than what was going to be on shelves in 2010.

They did not poll consumers because at the present time, player manufacturers do not give a flying *@!# about consumers in the here-and-now sense. They care about studios. With the vast majority of studios supporting Blu-Ray either exclusively or with a view to exclusivity, the factor that is going to decide this senseless war has already pretty much been decided. The most that HD-DVD can hope for is to keep existing for a while, and that made the TotalHD format a waste of disc space.

Not to mention that studios learned the hard way years back that nobody wants two-sided discs.

[Bullworth]

This really bites, but I can't help but wonder if either camp, or even both, paid off Ron Sanders to shelve the idea.

"We're talking to both sides and it's crazy right now," he told TWICE. "The consumer is still kind of divided, and we still believe that we should offer the content in both formats."

Come on! If they offered a single solution I would most definitely buy an HD player.

Despite their best efforts, there is still a lot of uncertainty on the part of consumers, and right now, Blu-ray and HD DVD are fighting over a very small piece of the hardware pie. Sales of DVDs and DVD players still dwarf those of both next-gen formats combined: the DVD of Happy Feet sold over 4 million copies during the last week of March, which is almost twice as much as the total next-gen disc format sales since their launch over a year ago. It's a vicious cycle for the next-gen formats: sales won't grow significantly because of consumer uncertainty, that uncertainty won't lessen until there's a clear winner, and a clear winner won't emerge until sales of one format are significant enough to bury the other.

from The Battle Between BDR and HD

DVD is simple and compatible with virtually all TVs and DVD players. One format, one solution. There is just too much to consider for getting the most out of HD, and having two formats doesn't help. 1080p or 1080i? Does my TV or HD player support this resolution and will it get downscaled to 720? Will it even show at all? It's so much I don't even know where to start.

Seems the industry learned nothing about th Beta vs VHS war. [/url]

[SmokieStover]

I don't have a dog in this fight and don't see HD anything for me in the near future.

There will be a HD movie disk of some kind that becomes the standard, but for the next several years DVD will be the King, both in numbers sold and profitability.

"Sales of DVDs and DVD players still dwarf those of both next-gen formats combined: the DVD of Happy Feet sold over 4 million copies during the last week of March, which is almost twice as much as the total next-gen disc format sales since their launch over a year ago."

The HD fanatics and the backers of both HD formats seem to convey a sense of urgency for this format war to end. The Beta/VHS war went on for years and was won by VHS based on "Recording". The HDDVD/Blu-Ray war is based on "Playing" ... no "Recording" allowed. I expect this war to end when the Players are commodity priced and it's respective Movie disks become commonly available to RENT.......not BUY.

[Bullworth]

0The Beta/VHS war went on for years and was won by VHS based on "Recording". The HDDVD/Blu-Ray war is based on "Playing" ... no "Recording" allowed.

Good point Smokie. I guess I didn't think about that important difference when comparing the two.

[RabidDog]

I would have bought these discs. Consumers don't really care whether their discs are one-sided or two sided unless it has an impact on reliability. They would care that they are not about to be left with piles of expensive coasters.

[Nilfennasion]

Consumers don't really care whether their discs are one-sided or two sided unless it has an impact on reliability.

I wish I could paste video footage into my replies here, but just picture having Kevin Spacey scream "wrong" into your face. That will give you the general idea.

Consumers do not want dual-sided discs for a number of reasons. One is that they are a throwback to vinyl, which is probably the least of the complaints. The second, most important reason is that without a label side to balance your hand against, dual-sided discs are at least twice as vulnerable to scratches. And they attract fingerprint oil (not to mention palmprint oil) like Anna Paquin attracts me. For those who still don't get it, I am deadly serious when I say that I would pay to watch Anna reading the phone book for three hours. And finally, it is a matter of economics. By having one lot of information on one side and another lot of information on the other, you incur at least twice the cost. Four times the cost if both sides have two layers. Now, for something like the Superman special edition, four times the cost is perfectly acceptable since the film needs a dedicated disc to look its best. But when you are talking two transfers of the exact same content, well, a problem arises. If someone wanted you to pay for two cars when you were only ever going to ever need to use one, would you do business with them?

There is no need to worry about who is going to win this war, because HD-DVD is now in a situation where the most it can hope for is to prolong its life another few years. The studios have mostly had it up to the back teeth with Toshiba, and informed consumers like myself do not blame them. I last bought a Toshiba anything around seven years ago, and after the adverts they started using a little while later, I have not bought a single Toshiba anything. Like Samsung, they have given me a lot of good reasons not to. And among the good reasons why I will not buy Toshiba's HD format is because I have been to every retailer in two distinctly different parts of this state. I have yet to come across a single retailer who has enough faith in HD-DVD to even mention they can get it in. As JB Hi-Fi's general manager put it, retailers do not like to sell thousand-dollar clocks.

[dphirschler]

Consumers don't really care whether their discs are one-sided or two sided unless it has an impact on reliability.

Call me a dumb consumer, but I would rather have artwork on the top side and data on the bottom. I hate all my two-sided discs. They have this microscopic writing on the hub and I can barely read it in a well lit room, much less a slightly darkened home theater.

And I never really thought this Total HD thing would take off either. The players need to support both formats, not the discs. That was just wierd. But I do see something in the other new HD format... what's it called? EVD I think. That one looks promising, especially if they can give us recording capability.


Darryl