HDTV and Home Theater Podcast #252 - Blu-ray Backlash

The reason for the backlash is that a million people have been screwed.....and they are just now finding out HOW screwed!

My guess is any backlash is due to people feeling like they little say in the decision, that the format war (though I prefer to call it 'option') was decided by the studios. Hi-def dvd players will be seen as a luxury till manufacturers can get the players down to $150-200 and the movies to $15-20. That has slowed acceptance way more than competing formats and will continue to do so. I watch TV everyday. I only watch movies a couple of times a week. Hard to justify $400/$30 for that level of activity, even if it does look great.

This subject has been bludgeoned to death here and in other forums and no amount of further discussion - futile except to blow off steam - is going to bring back our favorite HD DVD media. But I would like to offer a slightly different take on the "war" as it developed and one of the reasons our army of a million lost.

In retrospect, the war wasn't about two equally good systems of viewing movies in HD. Becuz they were both good and each had it's strong points. No, this was a war between movie buffs and game players! How very clever of Sony to add movie playback capabilities to it's PS3 game system. You gotta believe that early adopters in gaming far outnumber early adopters for switching movie systems. So, a helluva bunch of lucky folks got an HD movie player thrown in with their new HD game system.

So what? So, do these folks want to see themselves in a position to have to go out and buy another player for their HD movies when they've already gotten one - as an almost free bonus? Naw. If you read the forum posts by the the most avid of the bluray advocates, almost to a person they were PS3 owners. If you have any doubt that Sony basically bought these supporters in this manner, look at the price of bluray players throughout the "war". Did they ever give anybody a deal on a movie player like Toshiba did? No, they basically bought and bribed their way to victory.

Nor do I have much time for Toshiba, or Warner Brothers or any of the others who jumped ship. Funny how they all hung in there long enough to sell hundreds of thousands of HD DVD players AND movies to us during the past Christmas season. There's no doubt in my mind that WB, for example, had made the decision to get out before the holidays. No? Then why would they make the decision they made after selling hundreds of thousands of units in November and December. C'mon - we got conned- BIG TIME.

No, I keep my HD DVD player cuz it's great for upconverting DVDs. I'll buy up the few films out there that I want, at bargain prices. New stuff I can watch on HDNET movies, HBO HD, etc. etc. If we really like a film, we'll buy the DVD at half the price of a bluray disc. No, I agree with many others - there really isn't THAT great a difference between upconverted and HD. I know we could debate that one forever too - matter of personal taste.

And maybe if I read here that someday I don't have to download some more firmware for the stupid player becuz Sony Pictures or Disney or some other studio decides to go for yet another ridiculous anti theft system, MAYBE if the price is decent, maybe then I'll go for bluray.

But I have a feeling that by that time, there'll be something even newer on the horizon to tempt us early suckers into trying......and you bluray folks will be stuck with yet another obsolete system.

I couldn't have said it any better.

I agree with nearly everything posted here, there should be a backlash "release" because the studios decided this for us consumers. But the war is far from over and I have my own personal reasons for backlash, as well.

I have been with DVD since it started, and armed myself with two daisy-chained DVD carousels providing a 601 disk storage capability for years. It is now hooked up to a 1080p upscaling AVR stoked with about 450 DVDs all listed in DVD Profiler, and it looks grand upscaled. I NEVER have to touch a disk or its packaging (most of which we have tossed after sleeving the slip covers in a binder). Why would I want to get rid of this in favor of a single player? That seems stupid to me. Has anyone released a high-def carousel, yet? Of course not, the players are priced so high, a carousel would be off the charts.

More stupid would be to buy-in to a class action pending over defective Blu Ray players, anyway. Those who bought or buy Blu Ray 1.0 or 1.1 cannot upgrade to 2.0 (unless using a PS3), so more missing features and/or the inability to play some BR disks, and that is what I see I would buy today in Blu Ray, while Toshiba's A35 has all of HD DVD's bells and whistles. It is because of its upgrade-ability the PS3 is being argued as the BR player to buy over at AVS forum. All other Blu Ray players here, fail miserably.

I have said I would not buy Blu Ray until ver. 2.0 or 2.1 arrives. Yet, sticking with my DVD collection, I may just wait until Vudu 2, or the next box is released with full internet capability. That way I can skip Blu Ray altogether. Its 1080p/24fps is matched by the Vudu now. I just will wait for Vudu 2 so I can have a larger HD, and internet.

Speaking of internet, how many BR players have that ethernet jack anyway? Why not all? There are just too many issues over Blu Ray for me to buy in, while other than now dead, HD DVD overcame most of the technical issues. Yet, it is the war between DVD and Blu Ray that looms larger than the HD DVD/Blu Ray war ever did-there was no victor here. All we consumers won was the loss of the best deal going in high def players, and most came with free HD movies, too.

Please notice a blu-ray muti-disk player:

http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/sto ... 1644516277

Here is a blu-ray player with ethernet for web and updates:

http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PUSA/ ... -95FD.Kuro


HD-DVD is a better consumer format with the same quality picture and required hi-def audio, ethernet, etc. Consumers also use MP3 because of ignorance of what hight quality music is and convienence. Face it, we are lazy and ignorant as a rule.

People have been left in the lurch numerous times on new formats. This goes back to 8-track tapes, Sony Beta Max, Quadraphonic Format in the late 60's and early 70's, Sony Mini disc, Toshiba HD, Pioneer Laser discs, etc. Not to forget connection changes that make many devices incompatible.

To argue that bundling a Sony Blu Ray player with the PS3 as unfair is ridiculous. Toshiba would have been ecstatic if Microsoft had done the same with HD, but their own bean counters were too worried about the player being overpriced for the market. Bad move.

Both Toshiba and Sony heavily subsidized their players to gain market traction. The both lost a lot of money on each player sold, as they were looking at the broader picture of market share.

Even though Sony was very late to the party with a fully functional player, they had the advantage of the PS3 plus the extreme advantage of being a studio and knowing wehat most of the studios wanted---an extra layer of disc protection against theft of property.

Of course, the studios have always been stupid on this aspect as Toshiba HD was hacked early on and even Sony Blu Ray has been hacked lately. The people that sell discs illegally are mostly in Asia and the rest of the third world. And they are mostly concerned with getting a cheap disc, not one that shows every pore of the actors face and the uber audio codecs.

I have both a Sony PS3 and a Toshiba AX2. I'm not going to waste my time getting angry over what happened as I always knew there was a strong likliehood something like this would occur. I can either use both players or sell the AX2 and my HD discs. I won't be upset over either path.

I will use the PS3 until Blu Ray 2.0 comes out with a full audio codec line and solid upconverting chipsets, from ABT 1018's and 2010's, to Reons or REALTA's, Gennums, or Marvell QVideo (which looks particularly great on both SD and HD).

If you like your Toshiba's upconverting and have a substantial amount of HD discs there is no reason not to keep it even though it is at a dead end. Eventually there will be cheaper Blu Ray units at 2.0, buit it will take a while for the great chipsets to move down market.

Some people will undountedly opt for online downloads, although the devices and prices aren't cheap either, and most don't sell the movie. And when they do their prices are no better than a disc with better codecs. It will take a number of years for most people to find downloads a high quality audio and video experience identical to the discs. If that doesn't bother you then you might pursue that route.

It is weird, gamers will spend a fortune on a great video card, but want a player that is cheaper than the card.

Neither Toshiba or Sony had it in their business model to continue subsidizing players once they reached a critical mass of acceptance. Sony had a big advantage in that a lot of other OEM's were producing their players and that competition would eventually yield big competition at various price levels. Basicallly Toshiba was swimming alone.

Greg

<<<To argue that bundling a Sony Blu Ray player with the PS3 as unfair is ridiculous. >>>

I wouldn't argue a bit with your comments, Greg, except for the above - I reread all of the previous posts and I don't believe anyone argued that it was "UNFAIR".

To the contrary, I said, IT WAS VERY CLEVER of Sony to add that capability. And just to follow up on your comment, I do believe that if Microsoft had added HD DVD capability to their XBOX, we probably wouldn't be here discussing this.

There's still things that just don't compute in this 72 year old fart's brain.......are Warners and Disney SO greedy that a customer base of a million in this country alone aren't enough to sate that greed? How many businesses in this country today would give their left **** to have a base like that?? Oh, that's right, it's too expensive to produce discs in more than one format. But come to think of it, we already are.........hmmmmm.....maybe we'll have to cut out production of standard DVDs and force people to go to the new format.....

More likely you've hit the nail on the head - they love to think they can engineer new copy protection schemes. How naive to think that any software can be produced that can't be hacked by someone, somewhere......

Jerry

Sometimes life is all about choices.

I own both the PS 3 and XBox 360. Decided to buy the PS3 for blu ray, and upconverting as my main DVD player.

Could have gone with the 360 stand alone, but am one of those customers who has had the 3 red rings of death, so felt I'd go with the reliability of the PS3, and yes the guess that Blu Ray would win.

In either case I'm glad that something has shaken out so we can get to more use of the features of this technology....

Having just picked up an A30 for $115 at Circuit City (after the Toshiba announcement), I have absolutely no intention of purchasing a BR player for $400 that can't even measure up to HD-DVD specs. As others have said here, I'll use it as an upconverting player, while taking advantage of the over 400 HD titles out there,

Any future HD movies, I can usually get day-and-date on HD OnDemand. I already have numerous HD films archived on my DVR that are not on BR, from Welles' TOUCH OF EVIL to HARD DAYS NIGHT to DARK CITY to SIN CITY to the pseudo-doc AMERICAN CANNIBAL. This month the Tarantino/Rodrigues GRINDHOUSE films are being presented both in the individual expanded editions, as well as the original Theatrical version with the faux trailers, all in HD! All six STAR WARS films are also available in HD on cable.

With some people being able to utilize HD downloads as well (which may grow in upcoming months), there seems to be very little reason to get an over-priced BR player. Even if prices drop $100 for earlier profile-challenged machines, you're still paying more for something that isn't even up to HD-DVD specs and prices.

The tactics used by Warners and the home video community to eliminate choice leaves a very bad taste in my mouth as well. If HDM eventually does not perform as well as the industry hopes, they should point the finger at themselves for eliminating the best entry point for mass-adoption.

Please notice a blu-ray muti-disk player:

http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/sto ... 1644516277

Here is a blu-ray player with ethernet for web and updates:

http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PUSA/ ... -95FD.Kuro


HD-DVD is a better consumer format with the same quality picture and required hi-def audio, ethernet, etc. Consumers also use MP3 because of ignorance of what hight quality music is and convienence. Face it, we are lazy and ignorant as a rule.

The multi disk is so new it is not available, yet; it becomes so in 2 days. Additionally, it is huge, one measurement is 31+ inches, making it 3 x the size of one of my 301 disk units.

The other player with ethernet for web and updates is in a class by itself (I wouldn't expect less from Pioneer) and is $999 but is still a single-paly unit. Today Tiger Direct sent me an email selling off the Toshiba HD-A3 HD-DVD Player with 7 free HD DVD movies for $89 (and the A3 was only $129 before this). Some comparison!

Any future HD movies, I can usually get day-and-date on HD OnDemand. I already have numerous HD films archived on my DVR that are not on BR, from Welles' TOUCH OF EVIL to HARD DAYS NIGHT to DARK CITY to SIN CITY to the pseudo-doc AMERICAN CANNIBAL. This month the Tarantino/Rodrigues GRINDHOUSE films are being presented both in the individual expanded editions, as well as the original Theatrical version with the faux trailers, all in HD! All six STAR WARS films are also available in HD on cable.

Agreed, I am just waiting until the end of month until my cable carrier (Cox) has HD OnDemand (it is already a month later than initially promised). I have the same bad taste in my mouth and btw, Sony completely bucked the DVD Forum (Council?) to release Blu Ray in the first place, and Warner's tactics??? Sheesh how they did what they did at CES to gain traction-I won't touch that now. Neither Sony nor Warner can be held blameless for the war they created and orchestrated by bucking or breaking from what was the industry "standard".

The war ended to soon and to close to Christmas. The war should not have been over until both formats were complete, compatible in capability and price (not in specs or future, but in actual shipping product).

By ending the war so close to Christmas the companies did not allow people to enjoy their entrance to HD movies. It was far enough away so they could not return them, but not far enough away to really begin to like them. This just leaves a bad taste in their mouth. I suspect that most of the people who got HD-DVD players will not make the jump to Blu-Ray anytime soon.

If instead the war had ended later this year, say right before the next Christmas season. There would have been less backlash. In addition, there would have been a larger group of people used to HD movies.

Blu-Ray won primarily because the movie studios liked the extra security. But, this is not for the consumer. No matter how you put it extra security is a pain for the consumer. From region codes, to upgrading players, to the cost for low end providers, to the ability to create your own disks.

As for Blu-Ray supposedly being a better standard. The studios are having a hard time convincing people the quality of HD is better then upconverted DVDs. Imagine trying to convince them the extra space makes much difference. So far in practice it has not. Even if it did, the difference would be even smaller then between upconverted DVD and HD. The law of dimensioning returns.

BD-Java should be able to produce better content. But, so far it hasn't. So once again the war should not have ended until the public saw movies coming out on Blu-Ray with better content. The problem is HD-DVD came out with better content.

Future Blu-Ray players will be able to perform as well as current HD-DVD players. But, again this is not true yet (except for the PS-3). Although the PS-3 is a good Blu-Ray player, it has a lot of negatives. The biggest being it does not work with standard remote controls. It also is not a standalone player. Many people do not want a game player.

Finally, price. Blu-Ray is still too expensive for most people vs. the benefit. It is not just the cost of the player, but the cost of movies. Until the cost of players and movies come down in price it will never take off.

The only possible positive is that now that Blu-Ray has won and it has to compete against DVD, maybe movies and players will come down in price. However, it may also spell the slow death of HD.

Jerry,

are Warners and Disney SO greedy that a customer base of a million in this country alone aren't enough to sate that greed? How many businesses in this country today would give their left **** to have a base like that??

Whether they are or they aren't too greedy is besides the point. Since standard dvd's are still outselling Hi-Rez discs by a very large margain, the Walmarts, Targets, etc. were complaining that adding two formats to their competitive square footage was wasting them a lot of money. They only wanted to make room for one format. Even Netflix and the other online and mailing disc companies didn't want to stock two hi-rez formats.

As in Lord of the Rings, they all wanted: One Format to rule them all, One Format to find them, One Format to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. My apologies to Tolkien:-)

Greg

HD-DVD's enhanced features were it undoing... Why? because it prevented studios from making a simple re-master of ALL new releases into a basic DVD/HD-DVD combo disk. Instead each HD-DVD required much more work to make the fancy menus and all the "extras".

Toshiba should have spent there promo money saying to studios that they would cover the extra cost of making a combo disk so that EVERY new DVD was also a HD-DVD. (Of course there is a fundamental question if that is what the studio really wanted). I never understood why they produce/stocked both a DVD and a DVD/HD-DVD disk of the same movie...

Remember S-VHS??? One day there were a few S-VHS movies in blockbuster then a month later every new release was S-VHS. It was a no-brainer - single SKU for two customers. Contrast this with D-VHS (which did not play in older players) which went no where. Toshiba should have learned from this example.

HD-DVD's strength was that it was from the same group as DVD so that they could have flooded the market with the DVD HD-DVD combo disks. Imagine how different things would have been if the head lines were "30 million HD-DVD disks purchased vs 2 million BluRay"

Oh well, too late now...

Historically, every time a combo solution was promised the promise failed to materialize in any numbers of significance. The most recent example is DVD Audio and SACD...

SCAD and DVD-Audio combo format would have been the same as making a HD-DVD/BluRay combo disk.

the DVD/HD-DVD would be more like a CD/SCAD combo or a CD/DVD-Audio combo. In all cases it would allow someone to buy media in the "old" format (DVD/CD) that would play on their current players but would also help them to build a library of HD content that would provide them an incentive to buy the player in the future. Ie. "I have bought 20 combo dvds in the last 2 years - maybe its time to get the player too." Instead of "no need to buy the player since all my movies are only DVD"

But to make the point again - this would only have worked if they had released all new DVDs as DVD/HD-DVD combo disks only...

the DVD/HD-DVD would be more like a CD/SCAD combo or a CD/DVD-Audio

Sorry for the misunderstanding and assumption... yes, that was the original plan. I did see a handful of SACD/CD combos at the beginning, it did improve but was rarely part and parcel of any major pop release where it really would have count. The DVD Audio/CD combos didn't show up till towards the end, limited but at least major pop titles, when it no longer counted anymore.

Speaking of the DVD-Audios and Super CDs, I picked the wrong format on that one as well. Watch me the next time around - Missouri picks the next President, Rutledge picks the wrong format......8 track quad, quadrophonic discs, what was that other coded quad format -- Columbia records I think it was???

No, what I was going to say is, I gave up on the CD thing entirely, but I notice that every once in a while, when a Classical CD arrives it is a compatible SACD. Sadly, my CD players are all DVD players and so far, I haven't found one that will decode SACDs.......

Isn't it a shame that they come up with these wonderful, but basically worthless, enhancements??

Jerry

OPPO DV-981HD Upconverting SD DVD Player
http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/reviews/200 ... player.php

Thanks, Richard.

I probably should have added one other purchase to the above list - my old Pioneer 50 inch plasma with ONE component video input, which unfortunately, still looks like new. On second thought, I guess it wasn't a bad format choice - it was what was available at the time. My, how far we've come in such a short time, huh??

Jerry

Oh, someone did steer me to a box that will convert HDMI to Component that works well but I think it's no longer on the market. It was a lot cheaper than buying a new flat screen.......but of course, only one input at a time.......

There are quite a few component to HDMI boxes with a number of inputs, such as from Gefen. And you can always connect the HDMI output to an HDMI repeater box with 4 or so outputs from Radiient--a very solid company.

Greg

Greg (and others),
Remember that when you convert component to HDMI - either direction - you lose HDCP copy protection. That means you lose the upconversion feature. You can still play NTSC discs, but they will be shown in 480p resolution.
Terry Paullin

Jerry, your box may have supported HDCP but that would not be the norm.

The only legal device I know of that will convert an HDMI HDCP source to analog video is the HD Fury.
http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8497

As Terry stated though, that is NOT component YPbPr but RGBHV analog video output. If you have an RGBHV or VGA input on your Pioneer that would work for you.

Like many members here I bought both formats and both are problematic and/or have trouble playing certain discs. Competition kept pressure on the manufacturers, however, and although I bought a Blu-Ray player first and hadn't initially planned to buy HD-DVD, I ended up buying two--one for my mom and one after seeing how great it was for myself.

Both formats need improvement as to their speed and reliability but there's less pressure on Blu-Ray manufacturers to get the many bugs out now. I had just bought the Toshida HD A35 a week before they made the announcement and paid an extra $100 because it was out of stock at my favorite and preferred retailer. I knew there was a likelihood the end was near for HD-DVD, but I liked the machine and the features. The retailer I bought from, B&H Photo in Manhattan, is very reputable and the salesman warned me that HD-DVD was likely to be discontinued in the near future. It didn't matter to me because there were movies I had purchased and/or wanted that weren't available on Blu-Ray.

I gradually came to the conclusion that Blu-Ray overall was the superior format (which led me to buy that format first) but the images coming out of the HD-DVD players were fantastic. Anyone who really appreciates high quality graphics and sound has to appreciate the research & development that went into HD-DVD. It is with some sadness to see that venture fail. They were also the first to market and for those of us who skipped D-VHS, it was the first chance for real high-bandwidth high definition signals. That was pretty exciting. More power to them, better luck next time.

There is plenty of pressure on Bu Ray (even without Toshiba HD) to get all the features working probably. And the competition will come from the many manufacturers of Blu Ray players who both want to get to market first with the best and those that are also competing on price. Your view that there is less competition is likesaying since receivers all do the same thing basically that there is no competition between manufacturers on price, featuresets, and performance. We all know there is plenty of competition at all price points.

Greg

Also, I know the Sherwood Newcastle HSB-600 HDMI link and the HSB-6501 video transoder both convert component to HDMI does the following:

Provides remote (or RS-232) switching for 2 HDMI source units
Converts any component video input into an HDCP-compliant HDMI output.

Hence, you can use 2 source video sources directly into the unit and output HDCP-compliant HDMI. I bet there are others out there too, such as from Gefen.

Greg

But that doesn't help Jerry who needs to convert HDMI to Component since his TV only has one component input and no DVI or HDMI.

I have the same problem with a MITS CRT RPTV and right now I'm using component video from both the DirecTV HR20-700 DVR and the PS3. The only thing I don't get in 1080i is standard DVDs - but since my TV is native 480p that isn't so much of a problem. I watched Michael Clayton in Blu-Ray format Saturday night and while it may have looked slightly better than a standard DVD it wasn't night and day.

I'm sure it's a different story for a digital 1080p or 720p display but until I get a new display I'm happy with 480p DVDs.

Hello,

Yes I am disapointed that Blue Ray won. But I really don't mine keeping the titles i have in HD.
And it plays Great as a Upconverter. I won't consider buying a Blue Ray until they reach around $100.00.
If they never do then I will never have one.

Besides something Even Better will probably come out before then.