"Aaaaand, the Winner is Blu-Ray!" Topic

Toshiba, the largest backer of the HD-DVD format has announced that it will cease production of HD-DVD players and recorders.

link

This came after both Best Buy, Netflix and Wal-Mart announced that they would only be stocking the Sony-backed Blu-Ray high-definition disks.

Sony stumbled off the starting line in this latest format war with numerous technical delays which held back release of its players – and even stalling the PS3's launch.

The Adult Video industry had sided with HD-DVD, because of the extra expense of the Blu-ray equipment as well as Sony reportedly threatening to pull the license of any company mastering porn movies using their format. The backing of the porn industry for VHS is often credited with being the reason for the demise of the BetaMax format.

Similar to the last format war, the HD-DVD camp pointed to their formats improved versatility and stability while the Blu-Ray producers cited the increased capacity of their product.

Wyatt

And the big draw of blu-ray (for the big studios) is the robust DRM package. That really stacked the deck against Toshiba's format.

Oh well.

Well I'll be looking for sales on HD discs. I recently picked up a Toshiba player for $150 USD which came with seven discs – 4 or 5 of which I was genuinely interested in. Plus, it will also work as an up-converter for regular DVDs.

Amazon.com has a sale on now that is pretty good. I bought 4 HD titles for about the same price as regular DVDs. As long as my player works, what does it matter ?

The comment on DRM is interesting. Have to admit, one of the appealling factors for this generation of HD players (and now the last) is no region coding. I'm a big fan of Asian film and it will be a sad day if going forward I can only watch the North American releases. Region Free DVD players are readily available – sounds like it might not be the case with Blu-Ray.

And the consumer gets screwed again by the major players in retail yet again. Sony wins this battle, but not the war. Hopefully Toshiba comes up with an even better format without all of the region specific crap.

Blah.

HD DvD can play my regular DvD's, Blu-Ray cannot.

Why, exactly, am I supposed to get all excited about the "upgrade"?

Alxbates wrote:
"HD DvD can play my regular DvD's, Blu-Ray cannot."

I'm not sure I understand this statement. Blu-Ray players have no problems playing standard DVD's and most even have upscaling capabilities.

"HD DVD is backward compatible but Blu-ray isn't."

I've been confused by this too but I think I've worked out that it means HDDVDs can be played in old DVD players but Blu-Ray DVDs can't.

NOT that Blu-Ray players can't play ordinary DVDs and HDDVD players can.

I think Sony will find this win a somewhat poisened challice. How long will it be before we go to the video store and download movies onto a flash memory card? Or just download the whole thing and not go to the video store at all?

Apparently Toshiba is pushing into this technology in a big way.

Perhaps I misunderstand the tech, or I'm getting the two mixed up. My understanding was that HD-DVD players could play standard DVD's, but Blu-ray DVD players could NOT play standard DVD's.

I've got quite a few DVD's, and I hate to think that I'll not be able to play them in a few years.