Comments

riredale wrote on 1/11/2008, 11:24 AM
Maybe trying to avoid lawsuits?

Anyway, here's another review on the subject. Guy says BluRay is pretty much just as "dead." Lots of comments following.
fwtep wrote on 1/11/2008, 11:43 AM
The fact that Universal and Paramount say they'll still support HD DVD doesn't mean they won't ALSO support Blu Ray. Notice that in NONE of their official statements do they say they're staying HD-DVD exclusive; they just say they don't have any *current* plans to drop it. And of course "current" is one of those shifty little words that mean nothing-- they could both announce on Monday that they're dropping HD-DVD and that wouldn't mean that they *currently* are doing so.

I bet they'll support HD DVD for another few months and that's all. The retailers will force their hand, and the public, knowing that eventually U and P will cave in, will go with Blu Ray too. Heck, if either studio wants to release any of Steven Spielberg's films, such as the Indiana Jones series at Paramount and virtually all his other ones at Universal, they'll HAVE to go with Blu-Ray. He is a Blu-Ray supporter and doesn't want his films on HD-DVD (and it's contractual with both U and P). How long do you think U and P want to miss out on the money they'd make with those films in HD???

Now, as for whether Blu-Ray is dead too, that's just silly. The public will buy what's available, and if all of the studios are supporting Blu-Ray and start phasing out regular DVD, what's the public going to do? They'll have no choice. And don't go talking about downloads either, because we're a LONG LONG way away from that being a possibility for the masses. Not only do most people not have the bandwidth, most people don't have their computers set up as part of their TV system. Yeah, I'm sure a lot of people on this forum do, but the other 99.999% of the people in the world don't, and it'll be a long time before they do. DVD has had a 10 year run and is now going to be phased out. Blu-Ray will have that long of a run too.
farss wrote on 1/11/2008, 12:48 PM
"Now, as for whether Blu-Ray is dead too, that's just silly."

Far, far from it. TV itself is on very shaky ground. Our peak marketing group 18 months ago was saying 40% of marketing budgets have been pulled from TV advertising and put into 'new media'. Broadcasters are all red ink, aside from PSAs and adds for 'adult' services the next most common advertising is for, television!

The internet is killing TV, as one marketing guru said, we fought over the viability of have an extra OTA channel, the internet is another 1,000,000 channels. You simply cannot compete. And they can't. Every TV station in this city is selling off their studios, there main income now is from property sales. And in the final gasp, they're now making cheap content out of Youtube content.

You don't want a computer in your living room, you don't need one to view downloaded content. That's what home networks are for. Already we're seeing HD panels with built in wireless networking, so no cables even, that'll be a huge hit with the wives. Of course BD goes way out of it's way to prevent all this new tech from working and that's just going to hasten its demise.

Bob.
craftech wrote on 1/11/2008, 12:56 PM
Of course BD goes way out of it's way to prevent all this new tech from working and that's just going to hasten its demise.
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Exactly what my posts have been about recently. Greed and monopoly. In the past six years, especially in the United States, greed has been nurtured and unfortunately the rest of the world has suffered. That I feel the worst about as an American. But, how do you fight a complicit American news media? It seems hopeless here and I can't entirely blame people for using the television remote control to think (falsely) that they know which station tells the truth when there are none. A few weeks ago they quietly passed another FCC rule change that will exascerbate the problem ten fold and almost no one knows it even happened. You know more about what goes on in the United States living in Australia than most Americans citizens do living in their own country.

John
fwtep wrote on 1/11/2008, 1:35 PM
Far, far from it. TV itself is on very shaky ground.

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!!!!!!!!!!

TV is fine. And it'll be fine for many, many years to come.

[b]You don't want a computer in your living room, you don't need one to view downloaded content.[b]

What I meant was that people think of the computer and television as two completely different things, and they will do so for at least several years to come. Eventually physical media like movies on a disc will disappear-- I don't think you'll find anyone who says otherwise-- but that time won't be for several years. In other words, it won't be until the end of the expected life of the Blu-Ray cycle, which is about 10 years.
farss wrote on 1/11/2008, 3:23 PM
"You know more about what goes on in the United States living in Australia than most Americans citizens do living in their own country.

Nothing new really, decades ago I worked with an American, not too long after the Vietnam saga. He told me how he always listened to Voice of Australia (sadly shutdown I think). His best anecdote was how he was listening to VoA listing off the places in Laos that had been bombed while Nixon was on TV saying the US would never bomb Laos.
Really I don't think the average American cares about what happens outside the USA and that's OK, I can understand the reasons for it. Just so long as the US keeps behind it's fortress walls all is well.

The wider question though of competition is huge. It goes beyond cross media ownership. If we want true competition we have to limit corporations to one area, no vertical markets. In a competitive world no studio could own the distribution of their content. They have an across the board price per copy for anyone who wants to market it. That's why I'm so against BD. The competition might be backed by M$ but at least M$ don't own the content. When BD wins how is anyone going to get a better format to market if there's no content available. Letting either camp buy off studios, yeah gods, how anti-competitive is that.

Bob.

Laurence wrote on 1/11/2008, 9:40 PM
One of the things that you can do with the PS3 is download and play HD trailers for movie releases in theaters and Blu-ray. The reason I'm mentioning this is because once you download a trailer or two in HD and realize just how much data needs to be transferred and stored even just for a short trailer, it is easy to see why we still need optical discs for HD movies.
Chienworks wrote on 1/12/2008, 4:23 AM
Yep, for most of us in North America bandwidth isn't there yet. I've got 2Mbps cable. When i recently downloaded a 3.4GB Centos install image it took about 6 hours. A typical Hollywood DVD release is twice that much. HD movies usually run, what, 20 to 30GB? So it would take at least 2 full days to download one. There aren't any faster options in my area. My parents are still on dialup and probably will be as long as dialup is available. For that matter my 500GB drive would be full with less than a couple dozen movies.

Or, while i'm at the store, i can grab a few off the shelf pretty cheaply and bring them home with me and watch them that evening.
craftech wrote on 1/12/2008, 6:34 AM
Really I don't think the average American cares about what happens outside the USA and that's OK, I can understand the reasons for it. Just so long as the US keeps behind it's fortress walls all is well.
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Our media teaches us that what happens outside the USA isn't inportant to us unless it affects us directly because they brainwash us into believing that we are better than anyone else in the world. And then when they do tell us what is going on elsewhere in the world it is invariably a distortion or fraught with intentional omissions so that the wrong people are blamed and of course, it's never the US or our "allies" that are at fault. And when our "allies" change, the news media is right there to brainwash the public (through repetition) into thinking that they were never our allies and the new allies were. Repeat something over and over again and it becomes the truth. The news media has determined the last two presidential elections and will determine the next one. I can learn more about what goes on in the US by watching the BBC on the internet or listening to it on satellite radio than I can from any of out corporate controlled media networks. Huge stories with widespread potential impact on our citizens are covered by foreign press and intentionally omitted by the US press especially the television news media to keep the public dumbed down. It's horrible.
The FCC quietly passed a new rule change (without media attention) a few weeks ago that will allow television stations to buy up the local newspapers across the country so that they can control what they print. This happened with the radio stations a few years ago so that we get 99 percent Right Wing radio nationwide. That will happen to the newspapers. After the next Republican president is elected by the news media in 2008 the internet is the next target thereby eliminating virtually all the "leaks". All of this will work and people will defend it because without knowing it they can be easily trained through endless repetition, even repetition of lies.

Ivan Pavlov proved that.