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appreciate your comments

Posted by Joe Murphy Jr on January 13, 2008 at 09:33:49:
Beginning June 2008, Blu-ray will have 70% exclusive studio support. Between now and then, that number may increase (though the remaining 30% is likely to be non-exclusive support -- at least for most, if not all, of the remainder of 2008). Surely there will be Blu-ray titles that interest you with that kind of exclusive support.

I'm guessing the answer is "shelf space", but what's wrong with your HD DVD player for your HD DVD movies and/or DVDs should you want to add a Blu-ray player? Unless the player isn't meeting your expectations, why replace it if it works? It's not like the movies won't play or the player won't work after a certain date.

Toshiba is the only "real" manufacturer of HD DVD players and thus success of HD DVD rests on their shoulders alone. For HD DVD to become "the" next optical disc format, Toshiba has to make it work and that implies "by all means necessary.". One of those means is price: their theory is that having the least expensive players is a very high format acceptance priority for consumers. That theory has been proven false, given a certain price-point, of course, and Toshiba's own pie-chart presentations have illustrated this point (quite a faux-pas by the marketing department: "Look guys, as you can clearly see by the numbers and pretty colors, they've gained and we've lost." -- and nobody seemed to catch that revelation).

With the backing of so many CE manufacturers and studio support, Blu-ray was never in that position: they didn't have to sell their players at a loss to keep the format going. That said, the price tag for Blu-ray players is coming down monthly (economies of scale, re-investment, etc) and in a few months there will be players at Wal-mart in the $250 range. I predict a PS3 40GB will be $299 by Black Friday 2008 (the $250 Wal-mart stand-alones will probably be $199 or less on Black Friday). That's not $99 or even $199 MSRP, but it's not selling at a loss for every player you sell either.

I can only comment on Sony's repair support for one product that they fixed (a portable DAT player/recorder and I still have it), so I'm sure that isn't going to qualify them as excellent support. However, the PS3 has more firmware/upgrade support than any CE product on the market. Comparing what it was capable of on Day 1 vs what it can do now, I don't think anyone can give SCEA a grade below an "A" re: firmware/upgrade support. And with SCEA's promise of more to come, the firmware/upgrade support is only going to make the PS3 better.

My advice to anyone who leans toward HD DVD and wants a "cost concious solution": get one of the inexpensive Blu-ray players that will be available from Wal-mart in a few months to play Blu-ray exclusive movies and discontinue purchasing HD DVD movies right now. When the three HD DVD exclusive studios begin releasing movies on BD, that will be the time to support those studios (via their Blu-ray products, of course). In this way, the consumer can directly send them the message to "get with the program" ASAP.