44 Responses for "R.I.P. HD DVD"

1. Ted R. February 16th, 2008 at 11:11 am 1

   Blu-ray is more fun to say so I’m pleased with the outcome ;>

2. Grizz February 16th, 2008 at 11:17 am 2

   Though it’s no surprise now, only a year ago I thought for sure HD DVD would win. Just like what happened with VHS tapes versus BetaMax tapes. The porn industry backed VHS and so VHS ended up winning even against superior technology. When the adult film industry backed HD DVD initially… I thought for sure the same thing would happen. But my how piracy and high speed connections have changed the game! :o)

3. Dave Peterson February 16th, 2008 at 11:20 am 3

   I knew there was some reason that $100 players this past Christmas still seemed like a sub-par deal. Though usually a very early adopter, I’ve stayed out of HD discs so far, and am still not rushing forth to buy. I wonder if mainstream (non-videophile) consumers will now embrace Blu-ray, or if most will feel DVD is as good as they need. I hope the HD-DVD owners get years of service out of their machines and the discs they’ve so far bought. I’m there with them in spirit, my laserdisc player under my arm.

4. Davidjtate February 16th, 2008 at 11:32 am 4

   Yeah, I found myself in that same HD-DVD camp. Maybe it’s my hatred of Sony, or maybe I just liked the name better, who can say for sure?

   Now all that remains to be seen is how long it takes Microsoft to release a Blu-ray player add-on for the 360. I’m hoping it won’t be too long! *crosses fingers*

5. warley February 16th, 2008 at 11:32 am 5

   Blu-ray. What a terrible name.

6. Frank February 16th, 2008 at 11:32 am 6

   If Microsoft released a blu-ray player I’d buy it.

7. Uma Geller February 16th, 2008 at 11:33 am 7

   rethorical question…
   Does Microsoft really care about anything but themselves ?

   Should be no surprise.

8. David February 16th, 2008 at 11:44 am 8

   I don’t think either format is going to see the type of success we have seen with previous formats like DVD or CD. Content is too expensive still, and DVD is good enough for most people.

   I think we will see that digital ‘disk free’ delivery is going to be the norm soon, once delivering HD content over the web becomes more feasible and then blu-ray & HD DVD will both be screwed.

9. Veronica February 16th, 2008 at 11:45 am 9

   @davidjtate - I would say that MS is never going to put out a Blu-ray player. They’re hoping that HD downloads from Xbox Marketplace take off — the HD DVD drive was just a footnote.

10. terry chay February 16th, 2008 at 11:49 am 10

    I guess Sony’s strategy worked out pretty well, but perhaps in spite of itself. After all, they probably thought it’d be PS3s selling BDROMs, and not the reverse.

    http://blogs.pcworld.com/gameon/archives/006491.html

11. Andy February 16th, 2008 at 11:54 am 11

    even if the war is over, I am still going to wait on upgrading to the new media till the HD-DVD released movies get put on Blu-Ray and when I get a 60gb PS3 off of ebay.

    Regular DVD’s still look good upconverted so there should be no rush to get into Hi Def yet

12. Wes February 16th, 2008 at 12:08 pm 12

    Personally, though downloaded content will continue to increase due to the falling prices of storage, I don’t think we will see the end of physical media in the short to medium term.
    The two-fold barrier that needs to be overcome is affordable highspeed bandwidth, at an acceptable compression quality now that more and more of us are using high definition displays. All things being equal, the value of getting low compression quality on a physical disc will be ahead of waiting hours to download a full length movie until residential fiber optic bandwidth prices drop down to current DSL-like prices ($14.99 for example).

13. daveJay February 16th, 2008 at 12:10 pm 13

    I would love to see more HD downloads. I too think that they will be the eventual winner. In today’s information age, do we really see ourselves going out to the store to buy optical disks in 10 years? However, I would really miss the special features if the download model persists. I enjoy director’s commentary, making of, etc.

    I’d like to see Apple offer a movie capsule download that contains everything a DVD does, special feature’s and all. Instead of just the raw movie file.

14. googleman81 February 16th, 2008 at 12:49 pm 14

    |> nachos. with cheese. 2011. new data format. lots of stuff to talk about. people running around with their brains in their hands. nuff said.
    sidenote: does anyone still recognize the pc as the superior gaming platform or is everbody just going crazy over consoles?

15. Cyril Hanquez February 16th, 2008 at 1:29 pm 15

    I thought since the beginning that this HD war was stupid, no one from consumers to producers would benefit of it. It has only slow down the adoption of the HD format and completely lose “non geeks” consumers.

    The HD-DVD was not supported enough, especially from the console side : MS made the HD-DVD drive an option, which in my opinion deserved a lot the format compared to Sony with their PS3. The other major actor, Nintendo, decided not to support any HD format (for the moment).

    None of the two formats has real advantage against the other one : i still laugh about their stupid press releases about how much they could store on a single disc ! And what about interactivity ? Most of the early players didn’t support the BD-live, HDMI 1.3 or even have a network plug !

    Now i’m happy that finally one of them won - even if i would have a preference for the HD-DVD, but all of this was only a question of money and contracts, don’t you think ?

16. Shane February 16th, 2008 at 1:34 pm 16

    OK, I’m one of those HD DVD suckers. Anyone want to buy my Toshiba HD-A30 1080p HD DVD Player for $10. I’ll throw in 20 DVD’s for $1 each

    Microsoft can kiss their Xbox goodbye as well. Why do companies go left when others go right? I know it’s because of rivalries but WTF.

17. danny February 16th, 2008 at 1:43 pm 17

    so it would appear that sony won one.
    danny

18. Starman February 16th, 2008 at 2:46 pm 18

    Originally, I was a fence-sitter. Eventually I had to pick a side and Blu-Ray won for me as a home theater buff because it offered the best quality in audio and video, a notch better than HD DVD.

    And, I know this is silly, but there are too many D’s in “HD DVD”. If you look at some cool tech names like “Apple”, “Flickr” and “Twitter”, “Blu-Ray” is a simple two-syllable word vs. HD DVD’s five. I always felt like “HD DVD” was a triple word score because of how long it took to say it.

    Also, the PS3 is an amazing machine. I liked its interface vs. the one on the 360.

    But, I still have my HD DVDs. I’ll still use them until such time as they become available on Blu-Ray.

    It was a good run, and definitely a fun war to watch. I have to say, V, that this war took much less time to pan out than it did back when DVD was first released and we had to wait what felt like a lifetime for studios to even get into that market.

    In the end, we have high-def movies. As a former 35mm film collector, I can’t tell you how happy I am. Nothing will beat film for theatrical presentations, but for home we finally have something respectable. I used to go into thes high-end video stores and they’d show laserdiscs and say “doesn’t it look like film?”. HA! No.

    Now it’s as close as we’re going to get.

19. Punterjoe February 16th, 2008 at 3:21 pm 19

    HD-DVD may be the first to go, but that doesn’t make Blu Ray a winner. I think it will be like SACD & DVD-A. Both were overpriced and had poor title support. Both were an improvement over CD, but in the end, not enough people cared.
    I look at my HD-DVD player as a rather expensive upscaling DVD player. $100 for a player wasn’t the problem, it was $30 per disc. When I can get a title @480p for $20 less, and it’s something I only plan to watch once, why “invest” in an HD-DVD version?
    Maybe if both camps had reached a detente & released a single format - and sold titles at closer-to-dvd prices, the next-gen format might have stood a chance. As it stands now, I’m just waiting for BluRay to die too. And since Sony is behind that, I won’t feel half as bad about it’s demise as I do about HD-DVD. BluRay is the new UMD. Good riddance!
    At least the HD-DVDs will take up less closet space than my old Laserdiscs

20. steelopus February 16th, 2008 at 3:44 pm 20

    Hell, I don’t even have an HDTV yet… dammit.

21. Jason W. February 16th, 2008 at 10:23 pm 21

    Good… maybe we can finally see discs at under $20 now!

22. John February 16th, 2008 at 10:38 pm 22

    I think there is one thing that that is going to keep HD downloads away for awhile and that is the fact that the US has crappy bandwidth compared to the rest of the world. It’s going to be a long time before we can watch a streaming HD file without any buffering. I feel that physical media is here to stay for now so I’m seeing blu already. That BR rep you interviewed concerning BD live was really flaky but your charm made me fall in love with you. hehe!

23. Herve February 17th, 2008 at 2:44 am 23

    I will certainly not purchase a Blu-Ray player as long as there only are hollywoodian superproductions released in this format. It should also better be cheap. DVD is already too expensive for a film I would only watch 2 or 3 times. VOD is better for most people.

    Also, I would welcome an Audio Blu-Ray, as a lossless, perfect-quality replacement for the CD. Nobody would download 40GB of data for 12 songs, so it would be a great added-value to the Wild Web offer, and certainly better than this poor CD whose content can’t easily be transfered to an MP3 player, due to useless DRM.

24. eric f. February 17th, 2008 at 8:53 am 24

    So many comments…so little time.

    a few thoughts:

    1: @David, digital delivery is a long time coming from being the “norm”. sure, most of us have HDTV and networked gaming consoles, etc, but we are the exception. Most average people don’t even have HDTVs yet, and when they upgrade will surely choose an HD DVD player as the next upgrade. It’ll be a long time after that if ever before they have a networked tv. to most people that is way over their heads. they don’t even know it exists. the only way they would get OD content is through their cable box.

    2: As evident in #1 (see above) Even though Blu-ray won, I believe that the generic reference to it will be “HD DVD”. when you walk into Blockbuster, you will ask for the HD version…not Blu-ray. It will be like Xerox or Kleenex.

    3. @ veronica: I must disagree. MS will likely put out the Blu-ray 360 add-on.

    4. I was an early adopter and actually purchased 3 HD DVD titles. Planet Earth, and 2 HD DVD exclusives, Elizabeth and Elizabeth The Golden Age. The only one I regret for long term use is Planet Earth, but until I no longer have my 360, it’s a non-issue. I originally chose HD-DVD as my fave because my Harmony 880 worked better with my 360 than my PS3. Funny reason, right? but now I got the Nyko BluRay and the PS3 worked almost perfectly.

    5. @ Punterjoe… Yeah it does.

25. ksimp February 17th, 2008 at 7:22 pm 25

    @eric.f, Nail on the head. When I hear ‘HD downloads will be the norm soon’, I quickly think of my non-geek friends/family/acquaintances, who don’t own an HDTV, still use dial-up or at best DSL, and are just now learning the differences between analog and digital TV because they’re being forced too. This way of thinking is still the norm. I’ve been a software developer for 10 years, and a large % of my contemporaries don’t have the setup/equipment to accomodate HD downloads. Physical media, at least in the video format, will be viable for a long time.

26. Veronica February 17th, 2008 at 7:35 pm 26

    I don’t agree! I will be shocked if MS makes a blu-ray player, at least for the Xbox. Downloads are coming, and will be the norm, sooner than you think!

27. Charlie February 17th, 2008 at 7:55 pm 27

    I liked HD-DVD, mainly because the price point was a little less than Blu-Ray. Now to be fair with Blu-Ray, it did have more storage than an HD-DVD, but still HD-DVD cost slightly less, not a whole lot, but less than Blu-Ray.

28. Clintus McGintus February 17th, 2008 at 8:41 pm 28

    I was trying to read this on my iPhone this morning while waiting for breakfast but too much going on around me with the kids. Glad you twittered the post

    I too am surprised that they are just going away. I really thought it was going to be like the dvd wars where they would just both exist and everyone would have dual players. But I guess it has a lot to do with the fact that we are watching content on these discs, not just putting things on them. And so when big companies make decisions, things change, people move.

    I agree that everything will soon be downloadable and discs will be a thing of the past. Even backups will be digital. I also agree that I don’t think MS will come out with blu-ray player, not needed for gaming. Downloads FTW!

29. Wes February 18th, 2008 at 7:25 am 29

    Unless MS is able to offer a blu-ray add-on without having to subsidize the cost, I don’t see this as a path MS should go down at this point. I agree with VB. Their strength since the beginning has been online infrastructure, so strategically it would make better sense to spend more capital and marketing into pushing for more downloadable content, and improvements to media center functionality.
    As I mentioned above, I don’t think we’re at the right point where bandwidth, storage space and minimal compression will make downloads more attractive to the average person watching on their large screen HDTV, but in the medium term I agree that we will be there soon enough.

30. googleman81 February 18th, 2008 at 7:43 am 30

    http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/18/xbox-360-blu-ray-player-rumor-returns-right-on-cue/

    

31. Veronica February 18th, 2008 at 8:09 am 31

    it’s a ruuuuumor! whatever, if I’m wrong, I’m wrong, but I’m sticking to my guns!

32. Cyril February 19th, 2008 at 4:20 am 32

    I totally agree with @ksimp about ‘HD downloads will be the norm soon’. The majority of people are far from this : they don’t really know what HD mean, have poor internet connexion (thanks to high prices in some European countries), etc… Above this, even if i’m buying/downloading stuff on the net, i love much more having things in my hands, like beautiful DVD collectors (poor shelves !).

    ## note to self : maybe i should touch more my twitter friends or they will think i don’t love them ? ##

    @Veronica let’s wait few weeks before the official announcement from Toshiba and then Microsoft will clarify this. In my opinion, if MS want to focus on gaming, okay no Blu-ray player is necessary. But if they want to push the XBOX360 as the ultimate Media Center, then they have no choice to go to Blu-Ray : the market is not mature enough, at least in Europe !

33. Kato February 19th, 2008 at 7:55 am 33

    Yea, I’m pretty bummed about this since I chose the wrong side. Now I have an $180 doorstop in my Xbox HD-DVD drive, as well as about a dozen movies in a soon to be obsolete format.

    But then, one of those is Serenity, so maybe it was worth it.

34. eric f. February 19th, 2008 at 7:57 am 34

    Look at it this way. Unless the movie studios start licensing every single movie for same day online release as their DVD release, people are always going to want a DVD or Blu-Ray player. So far, they feel it has been profitable to put a month delay on OD and DL content after the DVD release, so I doubt this will change very soon.

    until then, the 360 needs a Blu-Ray player to be “cutting edge” otherwise they’re simply offering old content.

35. Vance February 19th, 2008 at 9:39 am 35

    As I wrote over on Ryan’s blog (btw, thanks for not using his animated gif!):

    Long live the procrastinator! I have been simply too lazy to try to figure this BR v. HDDVD dispute out and, once again, my sloth has paid off! I am still putting off the “type of Hi-Def” TV decision, and the “iPhone v. rest of the field” decision, so if you policy-influencers would hurry up and get those sorted out, I would appreciate it!

36. Matt February 20th, 2008 at 7:07 am 36

    Wait, didn’t Blu Ray win this war two years ago at CES? They even had a newsletter that proclaimed their victory!

37. Jesse! February 20th, 2008 at 2:59 pm 37

    Rumor or not… it seems HD DVD is dead. I thought for sure it would win out for the following social marketing reasons only:

    * it’s name: HD DVD. People know what HD means. They know what DVD means. They have no idea what a blu-ray and whether or not it wants to sting you.

    * Blu-ray, backed by “we are eternally proprietary” Sony, almost killed it with their PS3’s coming in at about $1 billion US with a stock of about 12. Beta-max, memory sticks? bad names, bad history, never won before so…

    But then I found out that MS was backing HD DVD… and well, that pretty much spelled the end of it for me.

    Either way, I’m going back to analog television piracy as soon as everyone “switches” to digital. Hang on to your wire hangers!

38. davidjtate February 20th, 2008 at 8:46 pm 38

    @Veronica: I admire you for sticking to your guns, and I definitely agree that an all-downloaded, all-digital content distribution model is eventually imminent. But I’m just not sure your Average Joe/Jane is ready to give up owning a piece of plastic with a movie burned on it that he/she can watch whenever he/she wants for a digital download that he/she can only watch for 24 hours.

    We need some better downloaded-content consumer options before they can really take off, I think.

39. The Dude February 21st, 2008 at 12:51 am 39

    LMFAO @ Veronica, or anyone else, legitimately thinking that downloads will be the norm while Blu-Ray is viable. It seems to be a ’sour grapes’ excuse used on behalf of those that unfortunately adopted into a format that was obviously destined to fail with HD-DVD.

    They won’t be, let me count the ways:

    1. Download speeds aren’t high enough to allow for genuine high-def downloads. Outside of select countries with dense urban populations, most of the western market does not have access to fiber optic. If they’re lucky they have access to cable broadband, which is constantly being capped and throttled by telecomm companies. If they can’t stand the bandwidth constraints of torrents, don’t expect them to be onboard with their support for everyone downloading high-def movies.

    2. Storage is not high enough for downloading and storing high definition content, especially when each high definition release is over 25 GBs. You’d need boxes that literally have 50+ TB of storage in order to allow for movie lovers to readily download, and store, their content. Perhaps the studios could forego sotrage if they wanted to completely stream content, though optimal FiOS networks are, maximally, at 30 Mbs, which is well below the threshold for Blu-Ray’s 54 Mbs bitrate, and even so I’m not sure that with FiOS the telecomms would want everyone downloading high-def content continuously as it would burden their network.

    It’s an unrealistic proposition.

    Digital “Downloads” are only going to cut into the rental market such as on demand, pay-per-view, and netflix.

    They are no threat to Blu-Ray while it is a viable format for the next 10+ years.

40. Jesse! February 21st, 2008 at 1:13 pm 40

    whoa, just saw this:

    blu_ray cosmetics

    bring on the lawsuits!

41. Clee-cm February 21st, 2008 at 3:53 pm 41

    I have been one of the fence sitters on this one, I am surprised that Toshiba gave up so soon, but Micro$oft is not going to be affected to much by this development. Toshiba has to swallow the billions of dollars they spent on the production line, I think that if Toshiba had finished development and production on schedule, they would have stood a great chance of kicking Sony’s behind. Remember, HD-DVD was suppose to have a year’s head start on Blu-Ray, but the thing that killed HD-DVD was M$ making the HD-DVD Drive a option on the Xbox 360.

    I am with Veronica on the Blu-Ray drive going into to the Xbox 360 directly, at this point, a rumor is a rumor. I will believe it when I see it. There is going to be some cost involved with switching drive technology, it is not going to be a free ride for Micro$soft if the decide to go Blu-Ray

42. Slushturtle February 23rd, 2008 at 4:22 pm 42

    Yeah, tough to hear this news. While I still think that HD DVD was the better and more polished standard, ultimately there’s not much of a difference between the formats for the consumer. More people bought Blu, which prompted Warner to take sides, and the rest is history.

    I knew it was over when I walked into a Best Buy later last year and saw a tiny little display for HD DVD and THREE gigantic Blu-ray demo stands.

43. Arlo February 25th, 2008 at 3:28 pm 43

    HD-DVD definitely had a better website.

44. C.A.Carr February 27th, 2008 at 3:49 pm 44

    “…though optimal FiOS networks are, maximally, at 30 Mbs”

    I think there’s 50MBPS service available in the NYC area?

    But until American cities over 500,000 people have Tokyo’s data infrastructure (with the availability of 100MBPS connections for a reasonable price), TheDude is probably correct.