Petition to try and save HD DVD

[NICEBUD]

Saw this on my travels.And sorry if put this in the wrong forum.This maybe old news.I dont no.



http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?SAVEHDD.




Got this from http://www.cdfreaks.com

[bendixG15]

petitiononline link comes up blank for me .....

[Baldrick]

Remove the dot from the url, http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?SAVEHDD

But please don't sign it. I want one FORMAT...even if I don't like some of the bluray annoying features, region coding, bd+, etc. .

[bbanderic]

Remove the dot from the url, http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?SAVEHDD

But please don't sign it. I want one FORMAT...even if I don't like some of the bluray annoying features, region coding, bd+, etc. .

I agree, one format. The war's over, these petitions will do nothing the change the fact that Blu-ray has won, the industry has decided, time to accept it and move on.

[MozartMan]

It would be better to sign another petition:

Let HD DVD Die

http://www.petitiononline.com/HDVDeath

[Conquest10]

It would be better to sign another petition:

Let HD DVD Die

http://www.petitiononline.com/HDVDeath

What a surprise.

[MOVIEGEEK]

The format isn't the problem it's the price of the media.
I for one think HD DVD is better but if it dies there's still >400 titles to watch.

[NICEBUD]

Still what do expect from these playstation gamers.HDDVD is not dead yet.You have not won yet fony/sony.So why do persist on on saying blue poo has won it has not.How much are they paying you to say all this cr*p.

[jagabo]

How about a petition to kill off Sony?

[somebodeez]

How about a petition to kill off Sony?

I'd sign that one

[VidGuy]

All these companies are in the game to make money. You vote by buying (or not buying) players and disks.
I'm pretty sure that's about the only vote that will really matter.

[videopoo]

All these companies are in the game to make money. You vote by buying (or not buying) players and disks.
I'm pretty sure that's about the only vote that will really matter.

Normally, I'd agree with you but this war will NOT be decided by the consumers but by corporate handouts and kickbacks in the form of free authoring services/replication & cash payments. So basically the consumer is forced to accept what is given to them. On top of that, companies or people who produce these discs are forced into a hole with expensive tools and EXPENSIVE mandatory copy protection schemes.

Can anyone give anymore examples of this ever happening before in the Market? I can't think of any right off hand.

[videobread]

Samsung has two 3-D HD-TV's on the market. There is a new format coming out with twice the resolution of HD. Panasonic came out with a 150 inch plasma HDTV at the CES. Good luck! The dirty little secret is that there is no viable market for all this super high tech product. Like Blu-ray and HD-DVD, it just costs too much.

Sony won nothing. The vast majority of US consumers are satisfied with DVD and don't have the money to move up to HD. The US consumer is the economic engine of the world economy. The engine is blown. You can make all the super high tech stuff you want in the orient. The US consumer will gladly take it off your hands on credit, but has no intention or ability to pay for it. (Or will pay you back in greatly devalued dollars right off the printing press.)

[louthewiz]

Bluray sucks bigtime , their hardware is full of bugs while my HD-DVD player has no issues whatsoever . I will continue to support hd-dvd until the end.

[Rich86]

I have a HD-DVD player. I like it. I'm not interested in Blu-Ray. I have nothing against Sony or Blu-Ray - I just liked the features of HD-DVD and have more trust in Toshiba focusing on customer desires than I do Sony (from practical experience).
If HD-DVD dies - it won't make Blu-Ray successful. It will only make the overall optical media based high def industry and product an even smaller niche than it is now. It will also save me some money, as I stop purchasing movies in high def. Standard Def dvd played via upconverting onto 1080p TV's works amazingly well and will remain the dominant viewing choice for a long time. Maybe someday I'll consider a Blu-Ray player - but not at today's prices - and certainly not in any hurry at any price (except maybe free . . .).

[lordsmurf]

All these companies are in the game to make money. You vote by buying (or not buying) players and disks.I'm pretty sure that's about the only vote that will really matter.

This is how I'm voting.
Take the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray and stick them somewhere painful. DVDs for me, please!

[Grain]

I hope the format war carries on for at least another year. That will encourage third party hardware to enter the market with dual format players, for example OPPO. I'm not convinced either BD or HD is going to survive long term (ie 5+ years), and I really doubt if either will get as big as SD DVD. That way there will be at least be some decent equipment out there if both die. OPPO is still churning out SACD & DVD-Audio capable players, yet try and buy a new disc on either of those format's, it's possible but not easy.
Now that some of us have bought into both formats, my personal interest is making sure we get some decent hardware to play them on.

[Nilfennasion]

have more trust in Toshiba focusing on customer desires than I do Sony (from practical experience).

Your experience has been a complete polar opposite to that of early adopters of the DVD-Video format, then.

I do not support Blu-ray because I particularly like Sony or Fox. I support Blu-ray because I hate weiners who exhaust themselves pointing out every time one person farts in the wrong direction whilst turning a complete blind eye to another person behaving in exactly the same manner. Toshiba's lies about the widescreen format, their refusal to support any recordable products except theirs, and the firestorm of consumer confusion when they implemented Region Code Enhancement rather than give up the Region Code system as a ghost (likely due to Fox's intervention but so what), it all says one thing. Sony may behave in an anti-consumer fashion, but they are hardly the sole people to do so.

Growing up with abusive parents and teachers who smack you around for something someone says you did when you were on the opposite side of the school's grounds to them leaves you with less than no tolerance for this kind of condemn Sony for what Fox insists on while giving Toshiba a free pass for deliberately misleading the consumer among other things. I am as serious as a six-inch square sore that won't heal when I say that people who have done things like this in person have found out the hard way just how easily I can be set off.

So I did what I always do in such situations. I signed both petitions. Mostly because nobody in the world gives a flying fukk at a rolling donut about online petitions, but there you go. The retailers are the ones who will make the choice in the end. What I would like to see is people who take up the defeat of coding practices as a hobby quit whining about it and work on finding ways to defeat said coding. Is that not what I used to hear repeated on these forums every day? That what man invents, man can circumvent? I never thought I would see the day that this forum would be giving over to pissing and moaning about how a format is aggressively copy-protected.

Seriously, whatever happens in future, why not work on bringing us to the ideal point where fools are put out by protections and those of us who have the sense to do some homework can copy or playback at our leisure? Is that not what this site was supposed to be about?

[NICEBUD]

All HDDVD supporters please use this link and tell Warner what you think of them.





http://www.campaignhd.com/080104_WARNER.html


Blue poo gamers need not apply.

[Conquest10]

[I support Blu-ray because I hate weiners who exhaust themselves pointing out every time one person farts in the wrong direction whilst turning a complete blind eye to another person behaving in exactly the same manner.

Pot, meet kettle

[zoobie]

Normally, I'd agree with you but this war will NOT be decided by the consumers but by corporate handouts and kickbacks in the form of free authoring services/replication & cash payments. So basically the consumer is forced to accept what is given to them.

my thoughts exactly...the corporations and entertainment industry will decide and not the consumer
having the fox watch the henhouse seems to be common in a brain-damaged world

[raffie]

internet petitions, lol

If I start one that says Megan Fox should have dinner and a movie with me, I guess all I need is enough votes in my internet petition? Kewl, kewl, U guys are with me right?

[Xylob the Destroyer]

I'd like to start a petition to stop people from using the expression "try and".
Horrible use of the language...

[igalan]

Posting, moaning, signing petitions, etc. won't do any good. If you like HD-DVD, well consider purchasing movies in that format. If you like Bluray, same thing. If you don't want the risk of being caught with a format no longer supported, stick to DVD. There are many options available, and no one can force the consumers to choose.

I decided to purchase a few movies in Bluray, just because I have a PS3 and a Full HD TV and wanted to see how it looks. I liked it so I got a few more. Sony has made a customer here, and not because their superior technology (which based on what I've read isn't the case, compared with HD-DVD), but because they could push enough Bluray players... If MS was comitted to HD-DVD they should integrate it, not sell it as an optional accesory, that could leverage things a bit. Anyway I don't plan to purchase much HD until there is more evidence that Bluray won't be the next Betamax, I still have tapes around and nothing to play them.

[zoobie]

YOU CANNOT PETITION THE LORD WITH PRAYER!

[ViRaL1]

HD-A3 and PS3 here. I'm covering my bases. I'm not really partial to one or the other.

[cal_tony]

[

This is how I'm voting.
Take the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray and stick them somewhere painful. DVDs for me, please![/quote]

I have found over the last few years that believing the advice of Lordsmurf Is by and large a good thing to do.

However, in this case it is my opinion that since I am a hobbiest when it comes to Video, I go for all 3 formats.
DVD HD-DVD and Bluray. For me it's a hobby and I don't mind wasting my money on all 3 formats.

But what he says about DVD is right.

All of the hi def movies that Iv'e seen are duplicates of DVDs that I've purchased and in some few cases I've noticed the Hidef is much better. But mostly with the Hidefs there are just a few scenes that show up better. And then there are those that were intentionally shot to exhibit graininess. In those cases, it is what it is, and no format will help these movies.

For anyone wanting the format wars to be over, I don't understand their reasoning. HD-DVD players are now so cheap $ 100, and there are so many movies (almost 400 already in this format) I would just as soon things continue as they are.
It may be more trouble for a studio to release a movie in bluray compared to the DVD format but it is my understanding that the production of HD-DVD vs DVD is not all that much trouble. For those studios only wanting to go Bluray, I say they are doing it in spite of the advantages of releasing in HD-DVD as well. If after time, it plays out that one format has advantages over the other then it would seem logical to consolidate, but right now, in many respect, Bluray seems to be the deficient format and it further seems that the only way for the HD-DVD to be loosing this supposed war is by behind the scene movie studio and Sony manipulation.

In that case...F**k um. I'm for letting it just play out and for dragging on as long as possible. As a videophile, I don't see any advantage for me in having an end to this conflict.

With only 1 format, and with Sony being the biggest player in that format, I can't see why anyone would like to see the demise of HD-DVD.

All the players play DVDs so thats a good thing. Finally, I do agree with Lordsmurf in saying that it doesn't seem likely that in the near term and maybe not even even in the long term Bluray will take the place of DVDs. So, if he's right, why even worry about having an end to the format war?

Tony

[orsetto]

There's trouble on both sides.

HD-DVD was crippled at the outset by the industry perception Toshiba was a "spoiler" at the HD disc party, and by its over-reliance on Toshiba itself which is a none-too-loved brand here in the US. They should have diversified and leveraged multiple brand names immediately, even if they had to pay to rebrand themselves. For Toshiba to succeed they needed partners at launch: the Toshiba name has no mind share. All America remembers is Sony and Panasonic.

Sony and Blu-Ray have been a mess since day one. Prematurely released because of Sony's insane notion that lightning would strike twice with the PS3/BluRay gambit. All for nothing, because large numbers of gamers were happy with the PSP and their old PS2s and the cutting edge got snapped up by WII. PS3 is a relative bust (compared to Sony's ludicrous forecasts) and the forced synergy with Blu-Ray has cost Sony dearly. In the meantime BluRay is buggy as all hell, like everything Sony touches these days. Make no mistake: Blu Ray has "won" only because of the PS3 penetration, but its a hollow victory given what it actually cost Sony to make the damn things. Once HD-DVD is officially "buried" in the press, don't expect any $100 Blu-Ray players right away: Sony needs to get that investment back. Desperately. And it won't: the mass market is not interested in a $300-400 player if it can't do something besides play movies. BluRay buy-in will remain largely confined to the PS3 in the near term.

Bear in mind none of these Japanese powerhouses is what they were once upon a time. Even at the introduction of regular DVD a decade ago, their reputation for high quality was largely a memory. We got lucky that time because an incredibly dynamic exec at Warner Bros pulled out all the stops and literally willed DVD into existence against all odds. He was able to keep all the contentious mfrs in line and focused on a unified format. The result was a great success for the studios, Japan Inc., and the home video user. Of course, as is typical of the idiots in charge of every major corporation in the world, the CEO and his board cronies rewarded this visionary exec by canning his ass just as negotiations for a Hi Def upgrade to DVD were underway. Really smart move by Time Warner: thanks, guys.

This left us with an unsupervised gaggle of frantic Japanese conglomerates fighting pettily over who would "own" the next-generation Hi Def Patents, and being the bunch of short-sighted morons THEY are lately, they blew it. Japan has lost it, kids, they've gone from brutally efficient and brilliantly managed to being no different from the delusional short-sighted crack addicts who run American corporations into the ground. Instead of learning from the incredibly well-done launch of DVD, they reverted to the Beta-VHS strategy, with everyone hoping they'd be the next "VHS". And here we have landed, with a resounding thud.

BluRay cannot make inroads if prices remain high and if inane firmware upgrades continue to be required: they will lose the war for the middle class living room. If they haven't already- we are now a nation of misused, misunderstood LCD panels. Most folks buy them two sizes too big for their room, you could beam hi def directly into the damn things and they'd still look like crap. Half the owners are still hooked to non-HD cable and don't care, the half that does care has HD cable/satellite and is finally learning to love Video On Demand due their appetite for HD content. And there's the rub. Blu Ray didn't win. HD-DVD didn't lose. HiDef Video-On-Demand is the format that's walking away with the trophy.

For what little its worth, I was "in the business" for a few years and remain plugged into all the trade press coverage most consumers never see and Wall Street seldom talks about. If you followed the inside story these last couple years, you could predict the ultimate winner will be the studios, as usual. By strategic "neglect" they have succeeded in forcing an overpriced, glitch-ridden packaged media format for HD, thereby encouraging the vast non-technical market to finally embrace the pay on demand concept that studio heads swoon over and the stock market has been praying would take off for nearly twenty years already. This is what the studios really hoped for all along, this is why they sat on their hands so long during this "format war"- they hoped it would just go away. They all got royally screwed by MP3 and the iPod gutting the packaged music arm of their business, so they weren't going to waste time on a doomed new packaged video concept when they could easily jumpstart a permanent "wired rental" mentality instead. Especially once they got America hooked on TiVO-like cable boxes as the HD toy of choice.

So I'm with LS on this one: screw 'em all, the hell with both formats, they're toast within 3-5 years: just go with the herd and compromise with upconverted standard DVD. Its amortized, its embedded, it'll be around a good while longer. Don't hold your breath for a consumer HD replacement aside from VOD, downloads, or whatever you can cook up using a HTPC. At least we can still get a fix for our HD jones by hitting the local IMAX theaters.

[bbanderic]

All these posts about how HD media (Blu-ray) will be a niche format and possibly obsolete in 3-5 years due to video on demand and digital downloads just makes no sense. This notion of digital downloads playing a major factor any time soon is borderline laughable. Hell, many internet providers around the U.S. and elsewhere are putting caps on how much people can download. The world is nowhere near having enough bandwidth to support HD downloads.

However, I do believe HD downloads is the future and will eventually replace physical media, for the most part, but we're probably about 10 years away from that happening. Even when it does happen, you're still going to have a large segment of the population who will want hard copies, physical discs, of their movies.

IMO, Blu-ray will be around as long as DVD, I think they'll co-exist. If/when Blu-ray goes away to DD's, so will DVD.

As far as video on demand, that'll never work unless it's free, part of the standard cable/satellite package. I don't know about you guys but I sure don't like accumulating a $3-$4 fee for every movie I watch to be payed at the beginning of the month.

[orsetto]

In reply to bbanderic, I should clarify I wasn't speaking of web downloads at all- no way is this going to happen any time soon. Too much drama is going on now with service providers, bandwidth issues, etc. Totally agree with you there. I was referring to cable/satellite Hi Def on demand making increased inroads as the pointless HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray nonsense dragged on.

A big wave like the recent cable box revolution floats some boats and sinks others. It has effectively killed the DVD recorder in this country, and it will swallow a pricey niche product like BluRay very soon. Point-and-click scheduling, dozens of on-demand channels, and temporary storage on the box has become part of the culture- everyone from 8 to 80 understands the concept and loves it. Its what average Joe has been dreaming about since the VCR introduced the idea of time shifting. Once LCD and Plasma panels started selling in droves, people turned to HD cable and satellite for content. It was there first, its easy, and it works the same way they were already used to manipulating in standard def. They look at HiDef players and yawn- who needs it? Standard DVDs are at a point where studios either introduce the blockbusters very cheaply or discount them very quickly (they learned from the "CDs cost $20 for 20 years" debacle the music industry strangled on). Check your Sunday circular for what you can buy for under $15 or under $10. At those prices, DVDs finally sell even to non-collectors, and consumers will compromise a bit and watch them using upconverting players. They will NOT jump to paying $25-40 for BluRay DVDs just for a better picture and some more of the half-assed interactivity they already ignore in standard DVDs. And the novelty of buying a disc of the latest Will Smith action flick the minute it comes out so you can show off your home theater to people fast loses its allure when you realize the grocery bagger at Pathmark owns a theater as good or better than yours.

There is a bigger context to home video history than people here generally think. There is a beloved myth that DVD dislodged VHS because of the much-improved picture and convenience and similarity to CD. This is so not true it isn't even funny. There is one, and only one, prime mover that kickstarted DVD: price. It was PRICE, people, not quality. And it was the video store that influenced this, not the consumer. I was there, in the business, going thru the transition. Blockbuster and the independent chains flatly refused to play along and stock DVD in depth until they extracted promises from the studios that DVDs would be more profitable and cost effective than VHS. There was a protracted struggle, DVD nearly stalled on takeoff, and then the studios caved and agreed to an average $27.97 retail list price with cost to stores about $23. This was a HUGE concession: up to that point, studios had charged independent stores a whopping $80-115 *per each VHS tape*, *wholesale*. This was how they guaranteed themselves payment in advance for their share of the lucrative tape rental income. And they did not reprice those tapes too quickly, either. By the time they did drop the price to $20, the movies had aired on HBO or Showtime and whoever wanted them had recorded them already. It was not a great system for us buffs, but it worked VERY well for the studios and most consumers.

Enter the original DVD. When video stores saw they could cut their costs by 70% and bring in triple the inventory to satisfy rental demand, they jumped all over the new format and the fate of VHS was sealed. It died the quickest death ever for such an entrenched technology. Why? Because the consumer WANTS TO RENT, NOT OWN, and the industry caters to that demand. Follow the money. After a time, consumers realized they could own blockbuster action films the day they came out on video for $25, which seemed a steal at the time, and the idea of video libraries finally gained some traction. Much more than VHS ever had, because you got pristine picture and sound for that price instead of the marginally-better-than-cable quality of studio VHS. The added perceived value AT THE MUCH LOWER, IMMEDIATELY AVAILABLE PRICE is what put the format over so quickly. More SD-DVD value is about to be added at retail: the studios have finally agreed to allow "burn on demand" technology in stores. Kiosks are being prepared that will burn you a disc and print out full color packaging while you wait. This is not a fantasy- its coming VERY soon: big players like Wal*Mart are the prime movers getting the studios on board. The added convenience and catalog breadth, if priced to sell, would be even more incentive for consumers to "compromise" on upconverted SD-DVD as their packaged video format. (The studios have been WAY more fearful of Wal*Mart in recent years than they are of Blockbuster: Wal*Mart "owns" Hollywood at present.) It is inconceivable that Blu Ray burn on demand will be offered anytime soon, much less approved by the studios: it took 5 years of arm twisting before they caved to Wal*Mart on SD-DVD.

The transition to Hi Def discs is not nearly as fraught with financial opportunities for retailers and obvious advantages for the consumer. Blu Ray does not create a massive paradigm shift in video store profitability. Strike One. Blu Ray is more expensive for the consumer than standard DVD, not less. Strike Two. Blu Ray just does not appear to consumers as being all *that* much better than regular DVD, the way DVD was light years better than VHS. Strike Three. Game Over. Blu Ray is the new Laser Disc, as cliche as that joke already is: a niche product for fanatics. It will replace DVD en masse only if DVD is yanked from the market by all the studios. That could happen, but by the time it actually went down cable will add more features or better pricing to the box and it will be too late anyway.

The priorities of us tech types are not in sync with the industry or the typical consumer. We are a minority. The mass market wants to see value, ease of use, and perhaps a distinctly clear advantage to moving to a new format. Blu Ray does not provide this for them. Recordable DVD did not, either, I mean what a joke that was. Tell the truth: how long did it take many of us to get thru the instruction manual for our first DVD recorders? How frustrated were we with the results of our first dozen recording attempts? Now imagine the mass market, with even less patience, trying to decipher four different recordable discs + video vs VR + finalizing etc. Uh huh. No dice.

The next format to catch on with the consumer will need to be EASILY recordable in HD, TOTALLY standardized at launch, PORTABLE, and did I mention CHEAP? As many have suggested here, it will likely be a variant of solid state thumb drives. It'll be awhile yet, but if they manage to pull something like that off , it might sell. Assuming cable doesn't introduce Woody Allen's "orgasmatron" attachment.