Format war may be almost over?

[Paulo Teixeira]

I didn’t get to read the post from Douglas Spotted Eagle before I wrote my previous post but I will also add that Sony have mentioned that the next PlayStation may not use discs for future games. You may get them strictly from downloading off the internet.

[Thomas Smet]

Games are also slightly different then movies. Games are usually played many many times making a download worth it. Downloading games isn't all that much different then many of us buying and downloading software. These like music are items that are mass used everyday by the person who buys them. Movies on the other hand some people only watch once or maybe once every few months.

I agree with Spot that it could and maybe will happen but not for another 12 years.

As for the 50MBPS pipe. I will believe it when I see it actually working. I'm not saying it will not work just that I don't usually hold my breath for things that cannot happen yet. I try to live with what I can do now and not what I can do in 7 years. Verizon may be laying the optic foundation now but how long is it going to take for that to start up and become mainstream?

I think a more realitic option in the future if we have that much bandwidth is to just forget buying movies and have an advanced form of cable's on demand video where we could choose to watch every single movie or show known to man right over the network whenever we want and all we have to pay is a monthly fee for the service. That would beat the pants off of downloading movies because it goes back to the "how often do people watch the same movie?" Remember cable will want to play a big part in how movies are watched as well. Hollywood may prefer this option because it would be easy to control illegal duplication. Very few people would even want to make illegal copies because there would really be no reason to since you could watch whatever you want whenever you want. Why have a copy of Star Wars when you could just turn on your nice new ultra definition TV and select it from an Amazon.com type list and watch it within a few minutes?

[Andrew Kimery]

Originally Posted by Douglas Spotted Eagle

Not even close to accurate, Andrew. By far, the majority of my music sales are online, and according to a recent ASCAP newsletter to it's artists (of which I am one), online sales eclipsed in-store record sales for all but the largest labels in the last quarter. Look at Apple's recent iTunes press release for more information.

Maybe I'm just not understanding the context of what I'm reading then.
According to info from the IFPI, "Digital sales now account for around 10% of the music market as record companies experiment and innovate with an array of business models and digital music products, involving hundreds of licensing partners."
http://www.ifpi.org/content/section_...ic-report.html
Am I'm reading about revenue generated and you're reading about "units" sold (# of downloads vs # of CDs)?

Paulo Teixeira,
I wouldn't be surprised at all to see the use of physical media in video games severely decline (if not flat out disappear). Many users user hardware and/or software means to retain playable copies of their games on their console or computer HDDs and never touch the disc except for the initial install. The waters are already being tested, so to speak, and the XBL Arcade and Wii Virtual Console are two of the biggest draws for those respective consoles.


-A

[Paulo Teixeira]

Originally Posted by Paulo Teixeira

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/lg-bh100/...ned-228490.php

It ends up being shipped afterall.

LG ships first HD-DVD/Blu-ray hybrid player
http://www.computing.co.uk/vnunet/ne...hd-dvd-blu-ray

[Paulo Teixeira]

Originally Posted by Andrew Kimery

For reasons Mike Teutsch mentioned I think media center appliances (like the AppleTV or Xbox 360) are how TV over the internet is going to reach the masses. Microsoft already offers HD movies via Xbox LIve and announced a partnership w/major telecos at CES 2007 to have the 360 also function as the "cable box" for IPTV.

Sorry about this late reply but this is exactly what I mean about online distribution.

[Jad Meouchy]

When we talk about streaming media, we need to distinguish movies from more episodic video series'. Everyone keeps saying that it is much easier to download a song than go to a store to buy it. But when it comes to a movie, it still takes a while to get them. If streaming, nothing would tick me off more than losing the connection (for whatever reason) 10 minutes before the ending. And nobody is going to like watching commercials because they are accustomed to uninterrupted viewing in the theater. A movie streamed will not have much value added.

So take a look at it from the other perspective. The media companies will focus on what they can add value to, repackage, and sell. They already started this with being able to download tv episodes from the broadcast company's website minutes after it has aired. They've realized that they don't have to be locked into a broadcast schedule and can sell the same ad space with an on-demand type of service.

Keep a close eye on the X360 and its strong internet model. Microsoft has distracted Sony with its cheap HD addon and is poising to flank the format war with IPTV.

[Paulo Teixeira]

Originally Posted by Jad Meouchy

Keep a close eye on the X360 and its strong internet model. Microsoft has distracted Sony with its cheap HD addon and is poising to flank the format war with IPTV.

Microsoft is a huge backer of HD-DVD since they are helping with the development of future HD-DVD players.

[Paulo Teixeira]

http://www.channel4.com/player/v2/pl...sp?showId=4684

[Paulo Teixeira]

http://wesleytech.com/blu-ray-vs-hd-...osts-revealed/

Also click part 2 when you’re done reading.

[Philip Williams]

Did anyone else catch some of the numbers that have come out for sales? Apparently in the first three weeks of January, Blu-Ray's number 1 movie was "Crank" which sold.. drum roll please..... 7,500 copies. Yup, with about a million players in the market (and yes, Sony absolutely considers the PS3 to be a player), three-fourths of one percent of Blu-Ray customers purchased the format's most popular film over a 3 week period.

Here's a write up (seems slighly biased to me, I'm not sure how anyone can keep a straight face and call 7,500 sales a good thing):

http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/sh...ar_is_Over/468

[Philip Williams]

The per/Gig cost becomes important for data or video storage, definitely. Referring specifically to movie replication costs, it becomes a bit of a different animal.

Honestly, I like a lot of things about HD DVD and it's my current HD format at home, but the whole "replication cost" thing seemed like a pretty goofy marketing point. Hey, if its cheaper to replicate, why isn't the MSRP lower? If Warner saves 10 or 20 cents on printing a copy of some movie on HD DVD vs BD, what's the consumer advantage again when its priced the same??

[Paulo Teixeira]

Anyway, the point of the article is this:

Hopefully this article will help to dispell the myth that Blu-ray disc replication is significantly more expensive than HD DVD replication.

-Wesley Novack

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

EVERYONE uses cost per gig of storage as a means of measurement. Whether it's authoring, storing, or recording to a medium, the cost is virtually *always* based on storage capacity. It has nothing to do with Sony, Toshiba, or anyone else. I'm not understanding how you draw that distinction.

~P2 costs XXX per gig. (about 165.00)
~XDCAM costs XXX per gig (about 1.00)
~Infinity costs XXX per gig (about 1.30)
~HDD (Think Firestore) costs XXX per gig. (about 24.00)

That's the *only* logical means of measurement when you're discussing different formats of differing sizes. HD DVD has a max of 54 gig. Blu-ray has a max of 200 gig. How can you talk about the two formats without looking at the cost per gig? Both discs cost about the same in a bulk format, so you have to delineate the differences one way or another.
BTW, I have *no* affilation of any kind with Sony Electronics, the division of Sony responsible for duplication, manufacturing, and reselling of BD. Other than knowing one guy in their laptop division, I have no relationships over there at all.

Sony didn't create the cost-per-gig benchmark, that was done long, long ago by others. Notice I'm not saying BD is better, HD DVD is worse, or anything else that might qualify as a marketing opinion. Quite the opposite; cost per gig allows for factual comparison.

~HD DVD=(max size) 54GB or about .03 cents per GB.
~BD=(max size) 200GB or about .008 cents per GB
~P2=8 GB or about 165.00 per GB.

Is that a fair comparison? Of course not, because they're different formats, 2 delivery and one acquisition. But this is where comparisons of cost per gig becomes important.

It costs nearly triple to author a full BD disc compared to a full HD DVD disc, because the storage is significantly greater. Which costs more at the store, a 300GB HDD or a 500GB HDD? If cost per gig doesn't matter, why aren't they the same price? Whether it's a Western Digital, Maxtor, Toshiba, whatever brand you want...more GB costs more to buy, store, author, deliver.

[Paulo Teixeira]

The main focus of that article was not really about which format cost more per gig since they also showed an example of a 15 gig HD-DVD costing 1.69 and a 25 gig Blu-Ray costing 1.99 but like I quoted earlier, its to show that Blu-Ray discs does not cost significantly more than HD-DVDs. There are a lot of reports of Blu-Ray costing 3 to 4 times more to replicate. This was only to prove them wrong.

I didn’t mean for this thread to be in a middle of a War since I left the U.S Army in 2003 and I was only there for just a little over 3 years.

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

To be fair, Paulo, when BD was initially announced, a lot of replicators were pretty upset, because it was clear they'd have to buy new gear that was considerably more expensive than the HD DVD counterpart, and the SD counterpart. However, that equipment was brought down in cost very rapidly (I believe it was subsidized). Initially, replicators were saying they'd pass the higher equipment cost on to the customer (us).
So, now the costs are pretty equal as a replicator and as a customer.
I don't think we've a "war" on here, but rather a couple of very strong viewpoints, that at the end of the day are saying *almost* the same thing.

As far as only 7500 units, maybe you should be reading Billboard. That's pretty respectable for what it is. You know that the total sales of CDs in the first year were less than 100,000 units?
Besides, "Crank" is terrible, IMO. :-)
I'm really glad I didn't sit through it at the theatre. The editing style on my wall display gave me a headache.