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In Reply to: RE: New BD players coming out posted by Jack G on August 31, 2007 at 08:56:17
for the industry to get behind one format and only one format. Until then, you're just confusing consumers and they won't want to adopt either one.
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
Follow Ups:
I agree a format war is simply going to slow things down. I've picked the side with the greatest studio support and CE support (for now). Too bad Paramount had to muck things up. I also believe Blu-ray's storage capacity and bandwidth advantages are eventually going to weigh in on this war. You won't see POTCesqe picture quality and 24/96 5.1 uncompressed PCM on any HD DVD movie or music video.
A couple of quotes from an article which also discusses Wal-Mart and Venturer players.
“The only time a price can really stimulate demand is if that demand is already there,” said David Workman, director of the Progressive Retailers Organization. “But I’m not sure demand is there. I think the recent Paramount news [about releasing titles in HD DVD exclusively] has polarized software companies even more, so there is further format stalemate. And consumers are still comparing high-def players against the price of [standard-def] players. A $199 player is still an expensive DVD player for people.”
Bjorn Dybdahl, owner of San Antonio store Bjorn’s, added, “Because of the confusion over formats, some people wouldn’t spend $50 on a product that they perceive might not be around for very long.”
You mean the movie where they messed up the framing and chopped peoples heads off? See link below.
> > > Too bad Paramount had to muck things up. < < <
Yea, so much for the studio support superiority.
enjoy,
Jack
.
Especially for such a high profile title. The put alot of time and energy into that movie, yet they didn't bother to watch the final product before releasing it(?).
Jack
Forget my resource for this because of all the forums I've been utilizing for info on the hi def formats. HD DVD did not have a title in the top 20 versus BD in the latest report released. I forget if that was over a month or a week timeframe. It may even be the case of which specific movies have been released and where the interest may lay as some folks though have bought into both formats. If folks are indeed spending though on software, then the sales difference is evidence where.
We all know the sales volumes overall are very very low but...
Last weeks sales for software was 68:32 BD:HD DVD. HD DVD had nothing new for the week. Next week will be more interesting. Do try to remember, that there are about five times as many BD players out there.
As you say, total numbers are low. From inception to the end of July, total numbers were about 2.2M for BD and 1.5M for HD DVD.
A hot DVD will sell several million its forst day.
Jack
One format won't matter if the players are $500.
Yea, Daewoo showed a player, and it was Video 2.0 compliant (internet interactivity)-something Sony can't seem to do, but there was no launch date that I'm aware of, so it may or may not happen.
Jack
There were similar discussions in the early days of SACD. Everyone wanted a cheap player and forgot that all new technologies cost a premium before prices come down. The issue isn't the cost of players but the support for the format. Prices will come down regardless. Look at SACD. Cheap players were easy to find, but now almost no labels are releasing SACDs (except classical titles). I don't want that to happen to Blu-ray just because industry heavyweights want a format war.
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
Never expected it, but there was the SACD logo on my Sony PS/3! And since I'll likely get it hooked up to a fancy new multichannel sound system that can process such audio, and the SFSO is putting out new music in that format, I think I'll give it a go; what the heck!
Because they all fail. Like all disc drives. And I have 400 or so hi-rez discs that I want to be able to listen to at maximum sound quality. If there is no difference, so what?'. IF there is, I got the benefit. I want to make sure I always get the best possible (within my budget).
I expect I'll have to do this next time my (BTW, very first) 777ES craps out. I might even hot-rod to the latest mods (assuming I can still get it modded). I plan on having that player outlast me.
I wish you luck. I have many but most are just low budget but those do work fine. The sound quality of course isn't going to be like my XA777ES but they don't give problems like that player does! :)
Get the latest Marantz. That one is suppose to be beyond one's wildest dreams for sound! :)
Unless there is some SACD digital audio standard supported by the PS3 which allows it to pass 5.1 SACD over coax/optical/HDMI to an appropriately equipped receiver ??????
But I believe there still is the issue for conversion from DSD to PCM.
Let this play out, give both sides a chance to work out their differences and reach a political settlement; this 'surge' is in the public's interest. The worst thing that could happen is for one side or the other to win outright! Hey, before this format war got started I was in the one format camp, and I still feel that we should never have gotten into a format war in the first place, but now that we're there, do you honestly think we should pull out rapidly leaving early adopters with the bill? ;0)
Seriously, right now competition is driving software and hardware prices down and with the prospect of cheaper dual format players on the horizon the whole format war may just die of it's own accord over several years. The only folks hurting from overlapping releases are brick and mortar businesses with limited shelf space; format wars are never dual inventory friendly.
Cheers,
AuPh
And I believe in both cases the alternative was better than the original. Most consumers adopting the formats reaffirmed that belief. Unfortunately, the industry never got behind the formats and that's an important part of the equation.
Competition is driving the prices down but so is the chipmakers' and manufacturers' ability to implement new technologies in consumer electronics. We all know that computers double in power and capacity every 17 months, or at least that's the theory. The electronics industry is not totally dissimilar. So prices come down fast.
Cheap universal players are not necessarily the answer. They weren't the answer for SACD and DVD-A and they won't be the answer for HDTV.
As for the idea that "The only folks hurting from overlapping releases are brick and mortar businesses", that is an assinine statement. Generating confusion in the marketplace hurts the market. If you don't show consumers a clear path to go forward and a clear next-generation technology, the average consumer will never upgrade. Heck, the average consumer doesn't understand HDTV and all its advantages over NTSC. You need to start thinking more about the market. Competing formats and universal players are not going to entice anyone but a niche.
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
Correct me if I'm wrong. Wasn't there alot of studio support for Laser Disc? It seems to me, that many studios supported it, even Criterion. Plus, there was no real competition with it (by the time DVD arrived, LD was already niche), no "format war".
The masses still didn't buy into it-too expensive.
Jack
When DVD came, laser disc was dead.
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
It shows that even without a competitor, a format may not be acceptd by the masses, especially if its overpriced.
It was however, a successfull niche product.
Jack
And the industry knew that was coming and never fully got behind laserdisc.
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
LD had been a niche product since the mid-80's even after the demise of CED (remember the RCA video disc format that employed a saphire stylis?). It never took off because it was too expensive and cumbersome, and the 425 line maximum resolution not a significant 'enough' gain over tape based formats to grab the general public attention.
Yes, laser disc did achieve niche market status after the first format war with CED and initial curiosity wore off. It also pointed the way for a future format (helped in large part to the overwhelming success of that 'other' 5" disc format for music), but DVD was never an issue in LD niche status.
Times have changed and I don't see this as a battle that will end with a niche market. There is only one real direction that this can move and that has pretty much been government mandated: digital, with higher definition WS progressive scan televisions being the norm to replace older sets. What that means is a ready made market to fill with higher definition video products (at the same time minimizing the pain some folks feel toward being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century).
IMO, "niche market" is an inexact term where high definition is concerned. Looking into my virtual crystal ball I predict that a high definition format will achieve wide public acceptance in time, perhaps not as rapidly as the entertainment industry would like, but in an easily collectible disc format since that's a proven winner. Whether it's HD-DVD or Blu-ray remains to be seen, but I suspect that both will gain ground due in part to backwards compatibility and the arrival of multi-format players.
Folks who already have accumulated large DVD collections aren't going to give them up easily, and with many titles standard definition may be good enough. When you factor in backwards compatibility with discounted prices of new hardware (including multi-format players) & software with nice film transfers and bonus features, the liklihood of high definition being accepted by the masses will increase.
The only unpredictable factor I envision is the one that no one can control: the economy.
AuPh
Let's just take the "DVD was never an issue in LD niche status". Patently false. DVD killed Laserdisc's niche. Period. End of story. Collectors clung to laserdiscs for years afterward; but no laserdiscs were in production. You make it sound like vinyl vs CD. It wasn't like that at all.
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
> > > "Let's just take the 'DVD was never an issue in LD niche status'. Patently false." < < <
Baloney. In order for DVD to have been a factor in laser disc's niche status it would've had to have been around and competing against it's larger cousin from 1985 onward. Let me make this perfectly clear: by 1985 LD was a niche product.
By the mid-80's LD was considered a high-end specialty product mostly purchased by film collectors. Single films often retailed at $39.95 or $49.95 (double disc sets); TV episode two-fers for $29.95. Boxed sets and Criterion titles frequently topped $100. That is NOT a mass market product.
FYI, I recall being pitched LD in late 1978 or early 1979 in a Dallas department store, complete with nifty demos that included some salesman using a brillo-pad to scratch the surface of a demonstration disc to promote the 12" disc's ability to withstand abuse and continue to play perfectly. Even then I cringed.
The promotion of LD went on for several years, but VHS won wider public approval because of it's recordability in addition to being a movie collecting medium, even supplanting it's nearest rival Betamax. So you see, LD was in direct competition with VHS & Beta initially.
Of course there was RCA's CED system which tried to compete directly with LD and muddied the waters even more (that format was a blatant attempt to low-ball consumers into collecting movies with a cheaper stylis read device), but CED never caught on and disappeared after a few years. VHS continued to marginalize LD into it's niche status.
> > > "Period. End of story." < < <
Not quite. You realize Jazz, that I should be charging you for this history lesson, but because it's late and I still have a little ale left, I'll be generous! ;0)
You seem to suffer from long term memory loss, dude, or maybe you're just too young to remember. You keep refering to events no more than 7 or 8 years past, and you're stuck on the idea that the advent of DVD somehow created LD niche status, but that's impossible. Let me repeat: LD was a niche product well over 10 years before the advent of DVDs; you can't rewrite history.
> > > "Collectors clung to laserdiscs for years afterward; but no laserdiscs were in production." < < <
Heck, I still have laser discs in my collection and a Pioneer unit capable of playing them! I was buying Japanese import LDs back in the late 80's because many titles I sought weren't issued here. Even back then it was clear that some newer technology, probably similar to CDs and using a laser would replace LD, but that isn't the reason folks shied away from the format.
Most folks saw the convenience of recordable tapes satisfactory and the 12" disc cumbersome and space consuming. Then the laser rot issue reared it's ugly head and drove LD enthusiasm even further underground. Again, all this occurred long before Toshiba's Super Density Disc was a sparkle in the DVD Consortium's eye.
Nighty nite, Jazz! :o)
Cheers,
AuPh
> > In order for DVD to have been a factor in laser disc's niche status it would've had to have been around and competing against it's larger cousin from 1985 onward. < <
Bullshit. CD was being marketed very successfully. The promise of a smaller optical video disc had arrived. The writing was on the wall. To supplant VHS, the industry needed something compact with the potential of recording. Laserdisc wasn't going to do the trick.
> > Let me make this perfectly clear: by 1985 LD was a niche product. < <
Yes, and the reason was that the industry didn't get behind it to develop it and market it the way it would have needed to target the mass consumer. Why do YOU think that is?
> > So you see, LD was in direct competition with VHS & Beta initially. < <
Bullshit. No consumer interested in VHS or beta ever said, "maybe I should get Laserdisc instead.
> > You realize Jazz, that I should be charging you for this history lesson, but because it's late and I still have a little ale left, I'll be generous! ;0) < <
You're like a bad wiki narrator.
> > You seem to suffer from long term memory loss, dude, or maybe you're just too young to remember. You keep refering to events no more than 7 or 8 years past, and you're stuck on the idea that the advent of DVD somehow created LD niche status, but that's impossible. Let me repeat: LD was a niche product well over 10 years before the advent of DVDs; you can't rewrite history. < <
I know you and racerguy would like to erect strawmen and knock them over, but the fact is that my position is that the promise of a more elegant optical format, DVD, made it silly for the industry to get behind Laserdisc in any way that would make it anything but a niche product. Is that clear enough for you?
> > Heck, I still have laser discs in my collection and a Pioneer unit capable of playing them! < <
Yeah, you also have photos of yourself with long hair and leather pants 30 yrs after it went out of style.
> > I was buying Japanese import LDs back in the late 80's because many titles I sought weren't issued here. Even back then it was clear that some newer technology, probably similar to CDs and using a laser would replace LD, but that isn't the reason folks shied away from the format. < <
What can I say, auph. You had a great deal of disposable income, as most of us here do. But the overwhelming majority couldn't afford Laserdisc if they wanted to and the only way it was going to come down in price or beecome the studios' format of choice is if the electronics manufacturers really wanted to develop and push it. They didn't. Why? Because they needed a more elegant technology and they knew it was coming. Compact disc was taking over the audio market and the promise of a more compact optical video disc was here.
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
Grade: F
Come back when you're less argumentative and more open to learning the facts.
Regards,
AuPh
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
.
You've got to be kidding.
Why not post 1969, for that matter.
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
Thanks for clearing that up, Jazz. Whatever would we do without you?
So, since (according to you) the product we were told was called "LaserDisc" didn't exist, what exactly was it that Pioneer reps were demonstrating that day, and why did they keep calling it "LaserDisc?"
Now you say early 1979.
Do I hear a "late 1979"?
Going...going...DOA. It wasn't a feasible format and never had wide industry or consumer support.
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
Apparently not. Or, are you just grasping at straws again? If so, you're wasting your time. As Auph said, you are (once again) in the deep end without a life preserver.
Jazz, no one ever claimed that Laserdisc became mainstream. Everyone is simply laughing at your statement that "the industry" didn't support it because they somehow knew back when Laserdisc first hit the market that DVD was coming. All you are doing by thrashing around and throwing out accusations and non sequiturs is making yourself look more ridiculous.
Here is what I said, my exact words:
Laserdisc's competitor was DVD, which thoroughly kicked its butt once introduced.
And the industry knew that was coming and never fully got behind laserdisc.
So what exactly is your problem with that?
Please answer the question without misrepresenting what I said as you did above: > > Everyone is simply laughing at your statement that "the industry" didn't support it because they somehow knew back when Laserdisc first hit the market that DVD was coming. < <
Tell me why YOU think the industry didn't support Laserdisc, and I'll bet it's exactly the same as mine, minus the semantic hurdles your mind can't seem to jump.
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
> > Here is what I said, my exact words:
Laserdisc's competitor was DVD, which thoroughly kicked its butt once introduced.
And the industry knew that was coming and never fully got behind laserdisc.
So what exactly is your problem with that? < <
Here's my problem with that:
So when exactly do you think "the industry" knew that DVD was coming? 1980? 1981? 1985?
Jazz, Laserdisc was relegated to niche status almost from its inception. It was obvious that it would never break into the mainstream long before the concept of DVD was even a gleam in someone's eye.
Your claim that "the industry knew [DVD] was coming and never fully got behind laserdisc" is simply ludicrous. Where do you come up with this stuff?
You don't think anyone in the industry could have possibly understood that they needed a more compact optical disc? That was like Jules Verne talking about SCUBA gear.Give me a break.
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
By 1980 the term LaserDisc was being fully utilized if you want to get technical, but the optical videodisc system was designated Disco-Vision as early as 1969. In 1978 it was called DiscoVision (hyphen eliminated) and the discs were being marketed as Laser Videodiscs.
Sorry dude, but you should've stuck in the shallows. You're in the deep end now and treadin' water; no offense, but you're way out of your depth:
- Technically, it was called Laser Videodisc in '78, but it existed. Here's a clue, but sorry, no life preserver: (Open in New Window)
It was not marketed (certainly not marketed as laserdisc) until 1980, and it never gained mass market appeal or penetration. And as for Racerguy's overarching point that the industry didn't know a better optical format was coming along or Jack's point that Laserdisc had "the entire industry behind it", those are both idiotic claims. MCA/Universal was the only studio where laserdisc had any real traction, and electronics companies, with the exception of Pioneer, were lukewarm at best to the format.Anyone can click wikipedia.com, auph. It doesn't mean you know anything.
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
> > It was not marketed (certainly not marketed as laserdisc) until 1980, and it never gained mass market appeal or penetration. And as for Racerguy's overarching point that the industry didn't know a better optical format was coming along < <
So, you are claiming that "the industry" knew in 1980 that a better optical format would come along in 1998, so they deliberately withheld support for Laserdisc, and allowed tape-based media to rule the market for 18+ years while waiting? That's...surreal.
Jazz, what color is the sky in your world?
> > So, you are claiming that "the industry" knew in 1980 that a better optical format would come along in 1998, so they deliberately withheld support for Laserdisc, and allowed tape-based media to rule the market for 18+ years while waiting? That's...surreal. < <
That's surreal? Then what do you think happened during those years? We know Laserdisc did not have wide support. We know DVD killed it once and for all. That's not surreal. It's real. No one had a crystal ball, but obviously the concept that LaserDisc was a costly, cumbersome, clunky technology that would be supplanted by a more elegant technology was seized upon by many CE manufacturers and home video execs.
> > Jazz, what color is the sky in your world? < <
Blue.
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
.
I still think with firmer studio backing and a push by the industry to get lots of inventory on hybrid SACD, it could have replaced CD. Granted, downloaded music would still be far more popular.
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
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