$100 HD DVD player
 

http://www.deadlinehollywooddaily.co...d-dvd-players/

Today only, though I can see this happening again. Only for the 720p/1080i units. And if you read the Blu-Ray reaction, it seems like they don't want to fight back so much.

Heath

I know this has been discussed a million ways but...

No crystal ball here, but I have a tealeaf feeling HD DVD is going to win out for distribution and BlueRay will be used for Professional acquisition/archive.
Sort of like the 80's. Sony Betamax ended up being Betcam and Betacam SP for production while VHS (Remember the RCA VHS Hawkeye?? I'm really dating myself) and SVHS never worked really at all for pro/broadcast production.

But I wish someone would hurry up and win.....

When I read about this last night I thought to myself, "Looks like HD DVD just won".

I'm all for BluRay, but it really does come down to price for the masses. If HD DVD can keep these prices going, they'll win out for sure.

I do think that a disc based system is only a stopgap at this point though. Digital distribution is going to be the wave of the future. It just makes too much sense. Look at the music industry. When's the last time you bought a CD? It's coming for video too. Just wait.

Big issue in Digital Distribution: Download sizes and Bandwidth. Too big for that right now.

Blu-ray's capacity will ensure it's survival right now.

And thats about the only thing it has. Take that edge away and Blu-Ray becomes a total waste of money.

It must suck for Sony to see history repeating. I almost feel sorry for them.

I wouldn't feel too sorry for them. If they can get better profit margins for BluRay and subsequenct anncillary professional broadcast products, then they might make much more money in the long run, and I stress long run, than they would selling $100 consumer products. One of the local TV stations here has completely standardized on XDCAM, XDCAM HD and a XDCAM BluRay cart machine for commercial/program insertion. They're stuck with BluRay discs for a very long time. And Sony can charge a broadcast TV station a lot more for products and service support.

I read several years ago that Sony more than made up for their Betamax losses by moving the format into broadcast. After 20 years Betacam SP is still being used, although less and less every year.
So you never know, history might serve them well.

Cheers.

David,
XDCam Cart machine? That's freakin hilarious. Put the darn stuff on a server for God's sake. Look, I understand the reasoning behind it, but a cart machine? Really? HD 8 track is around the corner :) Maybe I should call Sony HQ on my CB Radio and give them the idea. Why don't they have a computer tap out the 1's and 0's of the digital file in morse code while they're at it.

.... somewhere, a Sony Exec just put down his Pong controller and almost had an idea.....

Speaking of BetaSP, I just moved from Monroe, La. and the TV stations there still wanted most everything on BetaSP. We were constantly fighting with them trying to get them to take mpegs to put in their system since they were digitizing the BetaSP's into a server anyway. I love the forward thinking at TV stations.
US: "hey, why does our audio sound crappy on that spot?"
STATION: "must have been that way on the tape"
US: "you sure it wasnt the guy who you pay $6/hr digitizing the spots at 3am with a hangover?"
STATION: "nope, it must be you. we never do anything wrong"
US: "look, just let us give you an mpeg file on disc with a tape as the backup in case you lose the file... see, we just demonstrated that it works fine. So can we do that from now on?"
STATION: "I don't know, let me talk it over with the head engineer... he gets back from his geriatrics appointment in about an hour."

HD DVD/Toshiba is selling these things at a massive loss, too. Bigger than Blu-Ray. I guarantee the Blu-Ray guys will strike back, if only to survive.

Heath

Ethan,

That's pretty funny. But you know how it is at a TV station. They pretty much go with what they know will work or they hold on to equipment way passed its prime. If a guy making $6/Hr has a better chance of not screwing up by physically putting a disc in a cart machine than accidentally deleting an MPEG file or screwing up a playout routine then so be it. After all, they're already used to Betacart.

But you make a good point.

Kmart is reportedly dropping Blu-Ray except for PS3.

Lawrence,

Do you have a link to that?

heath

I really don't care who wins this battle, and I certainly don't care how much money they make. HD will not become a mass-market medium until HDTVs routinely cost less than $200-500 and players cost around $100. Whoever gets us there fastest gets my vote. My target audience is average, middle-class schmucks with day jobs, not bleeding-edge techno-geeks with too much disposable income.

With $300-400 LCD screens with HDMI and $100 players, we're getting mighty close, though.

Now, if I could just find $7K in loose change under the cushions of my sofa, I'd order myself a PMW-EX1.

The EX1, very cool. But I agree; I am waiting patiently for people to make a move so I can put out my HD content in HD vs. SD. The industry won't 100% declare the winner, but they can make it more appealing.

heath

I hope both formats last for a while so there can be many threads here debating blu-ray vs. hd-dvd. It's clear that this argument will become as important as pc vs. mac, A1 vs. Hvx and Panny vs. Sony tapes.