Figured I would follow up on my original post about trying to pick a winner between HD DVD and BluRay now that the industry is starting to pick sides. Warner Brothers announced that they would only distribute their movies on BluRay. Warner Brothers is the largest distributors of movies there is and this puts the momentum squarely behind the BluRay camp. This means that Sony, Disney, MGM, Fox, and LionsGate all release on only BluRay. These are the heavy hitters when it comes to movies, and
Many believe that when there finally is one format chosen, that this will move consumers away from the sidelines. However, I don’t think this “confusion” on the consumers part is really what is causing the delayed adoption of the next generation DVD format. However, I think this is bogus. I think adoption has been delayed because people are indifferent. While no doubt movies look better, most Americans aren’t going to waste buying a player that cost 5x more than a similar DVD player and disc that carry a 25% premium.
Most people I know think DVDs look just fine on their TVs, even their HDTVs.
So that means the winner is officially … downloaded movies. Seriously, I wonder if anybody really cares about the next generation DVD format. I certainly don’t despite Rick’s urging for me to get a BluRay player and HDTV. While DVDs were a leap ahead from VHS in terms of quality and form factor, I don’t see the same thing here. For god sake, the disc look exactly the same! The next leap is a form factor of nothing. I don’t have to carry it around or get it, it comes to me.
So there you have it. I don’t really care that BluRay seems to have brought the hammer to the HD DVD camp, because in the end, both formats are going to be irrelevant.
“For god sake, the disc look exactly the same!”
So? An M3 looks a lot like a 325i, but it is a different beast entirely! If you really want we can put sparkly, reflective stars and smiley-faces on the Blu-ray discs just so that YOU can tell them apart
Everyone I know who’s actually watched a hi-def movie on a nice TV (read: watched a hi-def movie at my place on my TV
) has come away saying something to the tune of, “Wow, hi-def is awesome.” I myself was skeptical until I watched a hi-def movie on a good 1080p television, at which point my jaw dropped and I had to go grab a mop to wipe up all the drool off the floor.
I think the Netflix method works really well. You keep queuing up movies the same way, but just specify that you have BD and HD-DVD. If what you want is available in one of those formats, you’ll get that instead of DVD. It’s actually kind of nice that nobody else has a hi-def player yet. You see, I don’t like to loan out my movies. So if someone asks me, “Can I borrow your Weeds Season 1?” I can just say “It won’t work on your player.”
We have both Blue Ray and HD. I acknowledge that they both are clearer than the normal DVDs, but still, I don’t think I would be interested in getting either one of them…regular DVDs are cheaper and display just as well to me.
I have my Netflix queue up both Blue Ray and HD movies but, frankly, there aren’t that many movies they offer in those formats.
Jenny, you make my point exactly. If you were to tell me that you greatly prefer the next gen DVD, I would reconsider my position on the subject. I tend to think of you as pretty “mainstream” when it comes to stuff like this. But I don’t see most people really seeing the benefit of these disc when compared to DVD.