Forum - View topicNEWS: Wal-Mart Chooses Blu-ray Disc over HD DVD
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GATSU
Posts: 15470 |
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I'm not sure why that would be a coup for Sony, since they'd have to slash their prices to unprofitable levels, if they wanted to sell their wares at Wal Mart. And considering they've already done so for the PS3, I imagine they're still gonna be in the red next for a while. Or, at best, they'd have made their money back from more units sold during the holiday season, but that would be about it.
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Randall Miyashiro
 Posts: 2451 Location: A block away from Golden Gate Park |
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I actually am glad that the end is near. Like I've stated before both HD-DVD and Blu-ray have been good to me and it is a sad necessity to see one of them go away. There is no way that the market can afford to have both formats around since many potential HD television owners have been waiting for a dominant format before buying a player.
This is just my speculation, but I still believe that Blu-ray remain a niche market much like LDs (which I consider a successful format) did throughout the 80s and 90s. Although I love Blu-ray I will agree with those that say that the benefit is fairly minor on sets below 32" or so, and I have found most of the extras nice, but not a huge selling point. Because of this I don't foresee Blu-ray players dropping in price any faster than the PS3's price drop which will most likely follow typical game hardware trends. I do however believe that high definition is really worth it if you have a screen larger than 50" or a projector since the differences start to become rather apparent. If the general populace makes the shift to large screen HD sets Blu-ray will catch on, but I don't know if this will happen within the next several years. It is really quite a shame to have a nice HD set without any HD content. |
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penguintruth
 Posts: 8491 Location: Penguinopolis |
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Tell me when they phase out regular DVDs. Until then, I'm not shelling out what little money I have to switch to yet another format, even though I haven't finished replacing my VHS tapes with DVDs yet. This whole thing makes me retch.
Last edited by penguintruth on Sat Feb 16, 2008 3:31 am; edited 1 time in total |
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LydiaDianne
 Posts: 5634 Location: Southern California |
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Well, my DVD player is still good. I don't think that I'll buy a Blue-Ray player until 1) my DVD player dies on me or 2) the only way to get the anime or movies that I want to watch will be to have one.
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clsnwbrdr616
 Posts: 22 |
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I'm pretty much the same, haven't gotten too many Blu-ray discs yet. Tho I have bought two Blu-ray movies, 300 and the anime movie Paprika, but I've had my PS3 for a year now and that's all I have. I'm not much of a movie watcher (I only have about 7 movies on DVD compared to about 100 anime DVDs) so that's part of it, but that said if more anime starts coming on Bluray soon, my Blu-ray collection will surely increase. LOL
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perpetual159
 Posts: 32 Location: Washington D.C., United States |
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Well it's about time. Now it's only a matter of time until the Blue Ray player price goes down... I seriously think the way it's priced is a little exaggerated.
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W-General
Posts: 280 Location: Ithaca, NY, USA / Taichung, Taiwan |
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However, much truth there is in HD DVD being a superior format so far (Blu-Ray is still stuck with having no standard supported version. With players having versions from 1.0 to 1.3...discs are stuck having to include the minimal amount of extras to make sure they work on all players), I am at least very glad the format war is finally over. I am going to wait for the dust to settle a bit, then get a full-spec Blu Ray player and a nice HDTV.
Can't wait to get my hands on HD versions of those beautiful shinkai makoto movies (5cm/s, the place promised), looking forward to getting Paprika and a bunch of assorted others too. |
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BleuVII
 Posts: 672 Location: Tokorozawa, Japan |
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Don't forget UMDs. Anyway, I am still quite happy with DVDs, like many have said. There are times when I wish I had a higher resolution, but it doesn't happen often enough for me to dish out the money. I honestly don't think Blu-Ray will ever dominate the digital media distribution. Heck, in rural Japan, where I live, video stores still rely heavily on VHS. They've just started replacing their stock with DVD's, but at least half to 2/3 of the store is VHS. I don't see much hope for Blu-Ray. It's nice, but it's not enough of an improvement to warrant an overhaul in distribution. |
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Wyvern
 Posts: 1585 |
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I remember jumping on the DVD bandwagon when it was brand-new, and paying like $400 for a player. Six months later, they were half that price. Now you can get a smaller, more functional model than the one I paid $400 for, for $25.
So I think the moral here is that there's no point in shelling out huge wads of cash to support a format when there's another viable one still around. DVD is still the dominant format and will probably stay that way for at least a couple of years. Once the price of Blu-Ray drops significantly and we start to see DVD go the way of tapes, then I'll switch. Until then, there are still tons of DVD's I want to see which I haven't gotten around to yet, no point in complicating that situation even furthur. |
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Randall Miyashiro
Posts: 2451 Location: A block away from Golden Gate Park |
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This might be true for you but not for me. My first DVD player (cost me about $1300) was really clunky compared to my Laser Disc player. At the time I was not sure if the format would catch on so I ended up spending a ton of cash buying Laser Discs (a format that I had loved for about 15 years by then) on many titles that were also available on DVD at the time. Here we are 10 years later and I wish that those LDs that I bought in the late 90s were convenient and cheaper DVDs instead, and there are a number of titles where I ended up rebuying on DVD. I completely agree with all of you that DVD will be a viable format for years to come. Because of this I think that Blu-ray will not take off with the general public, hence you might not see a price drop anytime soon. |
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marie-antoinette
 Posts: 4136 Location: Ottawa, Canada |
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It definitely is good to have the format war ending (and I'm not the least bit surprised that Blu-ray won, it always seemed to get more attention than HD-DVD). Of course, until I get a TV with high def, I don't really care. Plus, the pricing is still way too high (but I'm sure that will change, because demand should be going up as people stop waiting to see who wins the format war).
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Jarm
Posts: 87 |
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I feel sorry for all the people who bought HD dvd players. By this recent announcement, the war is shifting in Blu-ray's favor.
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 9902 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
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No "shifting" anymore; the war has ended. Toshiba has announced termination of all HD DVD products, effective immediately. They've lost tens of billion Yen on this. http://www.nhk.or.jp/news/2008/02/16/d20080216000104.html http://www.itmedia.co.jp/news/articles/0802/15/news077.html |
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Primus
 Posts: 2802 Location: Toronto |
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Sony never wanted UMDs to replace or even compete with DVDs, that is why they never made a UMD Player for Televisions, which totally defeats the purpose of a format, when it's called the Universal Media Disc, when it can only be used on One Device(The PSP is still the only player), it is also the reason why the price was high for movies, despite being bare-bones. However, the recent PSP Slim & Lite series allows, with the use of a cable, to play UMD Movies, and games on a Television. That and the prices going down has lead to a some what rebirth of the format, and has lead Sony to negotiate deals with Movie Studios to allow the release of their films on UMD, and the manufactering costs would be Sony's. |
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varmintx
 Posts: 1225 Location: Covington, KY |
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I suspect this holiday season we'll see a lot of package deals at B&M stores for HDTVs and Blu-ray players (there should be plenty of 2.0 players by then for those who care about web extras). I just hope the PS3 gets DTSMA decoding so I don't have to buy a standalone player anytime soon. Whether you think the upgrade from an upcoverted DVD to a HDM disc is worthwhile is debatable (though I've stopped buying DVDs now altogether), but I can't possibly understand how anyone could not see the difference between an analog TV and a HDTV. I'm blind-as-a-bat and the difference is night and day to me. LCDs some how continue to drop in price; so, go get one and see if you can pick up a free Blu-ray player in the process. |
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