Warner to go Blu-ray only, $300 player in works?(rumor)

[BR7]

A seem deal with Warner Bros. could hand Blu-ray victory in the fight against HD DVD, claims a tip from industry insiders speaking to BusinessWeek. The magazine points to rumors of its own and from Lionsgate Studios vice-chair Michael Burns that Sony and other backers of the Blu-ray format are close to persuading Warner to ship movies only in Blu-ray, abandoning its rare policy of shipping movies in both of the HD formats.

Link to story

[admin]

I doubt this will happen, since Warner has put a lot more effort into producing HD DVDs than Blu-rays, even if Blu-rays do sell better. There are quite a few Warner HD DVD exlusives, versus none for Blu-ray, and most of Warner's HD DVD releases are better than the Blu-ray version (eg. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix).

The article quoted (from businessweek) also states the $150m incentive to Paramount as a fact, when pretty much all sides have denied it. The same with the 18 month exlusivity claim. There will have been money spent to help Paramount in producing HD DVDs, and that's a financial incentive which may help Paramount to make their decision, just like there is money moving from the BDA to Fox and Disney to get their continued exclusivity support.

What is true is that both sides are trying to get Warner to go exclusive, and that if Warner does choose a side, it could be decisive.

[admin]

It's also worth noting that the latest Nielsen HD sales figures has HD DVD making a strong comeback after the previous week's great figures for Blu-ray (76/24 split last week, 58/42 this week). The number two seller for all Blu-ray/HD DVD titles was Warner's Planet Earth HD DVD, and because it's more expensive than all the other titles, you could say that it was the most profitable HD sale of the week.

Note that these figures *do not* include Wal-Mart, which is probably the US's largest seller of DVDs and HDTVs, and is HD DVD exclusive.

Another note of interest, out of the top 5 HD DVD titles, 4 of them are from Paramount (the number being Warner's Planet Earth, of course). Where are all the Universal releases? (Bourne Ultimatum will be released soon though)

Full stats here:

http://www.dtvforum.info/index.php?showtopic=50965&view=findpost&p=866988

[BR7]

Yea it's hard to figure out who's telling the truth or not.You got one side saying one thing and about an hour later you got the other side putting out stuff to dispute it or telling their version of their success story. Like this story here

[admin]

Warner Home Video Australia has denied a BusinessWeek report that its US parent could decide to support only one format, likely Blu-ray, dependent on sales for each this quarter - a switch that could have tipped the balance in the HD format war.

Warner Home Video denies switch to Blu-Ray imminent

[BR7]

Well it's not the end of the world I guess It's not to hard to figure out why they are staying with both formats they will make money selling movies like The Dark Night on Blu-ray,DVD and HD DVD

[admin]

Looks like they may have shipped some Harry Potter: The Goblet of Fire Blu-ray versions with HD DVDs in then instead. A hint of things to come?

http://avzombie.com/blog/2007/12/13/warner-muggles-red-faced-over-hd-disc-error/

[Derree]

Now how much of a difference does watching a movie on blu ray make? I have an 42" LG Enhanced Def plasma tv, so not true hd....would I notice a big difference?

[BR7]

Now how much of a difference does watching a movie on blu ray make? I have an 42" LG Enhanced Def plasma tv, so not true hd....would I notice a big difference?

I found this at the Blu-ray site I hope it helps.I can't give you a comparison because I have never viewed any HD-DVDs.I can tell you that the BRD movies I have seen the picture quality is remarkable.It's hard to watch a DVD after your eyes get such a treat

What benefits does Blu-ray offer compared to HD-DVD?

Although both Blu-ray and HD-DVD are similar in many aspects, there are some important differences between them. The first is capacity. Because Blu-ray utilizes a lens with a greater numerical aperture (NA) than HD-DVD, the laser spot can be focused with greater precision to fit more data on the same size disc. This allows Blu-ray to hold 25GB per layer (50GB on a dual-layer disc), whereas HD-DVD can only hold 15GB per layer (30GB on a dual-layer disc). Blu-ray has also adopted a higher data transfer rate for video and audio (54Mbps vs 36.55Mbps). The greater capacity and data transfer rates for Blu-ray will allow the movie studios to release their movies with higher quality video and audio than the HD-DVD format. The second is content. The Blu-ray format has received broad support from the major movie studios as a successor to today's DVD format. Seven of the eight major movie studios (Warner, Paramount, Fox, Disney, Sony, MGM and Lionsgate) have released titles for Blu-ray, whereas HD-DVD only has support from three major movie studios (Warner, Paramount and Universal). This is an important difference because some of the studios might only support one of the formats, so you won't be able to get your favorite movies in the other format. Choosing the format with the most content support minimizes this risk. The third is hardware support. The Blu-ray format has broad support from the world's leading consumer electronics, personal computer and media manufacturers, including Sony, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung, Pioneer, Sharp, JVC, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, TDK, Thomson, LG, Apple, HP and Dell. The Blu-ray format will also be supported in the next-generation PlayStation 3 (PS3) video game console. This means that you will have a lot of choice when it comes to players and hardware. The HD-DVD format has far fewer supporters, so the amount of players and hardware will be very limited. Currently, Toshiba is the only company offering a stand-alone HD-DVD player. Here is the link the FAQs

[admin]

blu-ray.com is a bit of a fanboy site though (as the name of the site suggests), so some of the points they've made are a bit biased towards the blue format. I'm actually writing a Blu-ray/HD DVD Buyer's guide at the moment which covers some of the reasons why you should get into HD, as well as some specific hints and tips about purchasing for each format. It's basically just a summary of some of the answers I've already given out on this forum and others. It includes a Blu-ray vs HD DVD section as well, looking at some of these differences. You can see a preview of the "why should I get into HD" section here:

http://www.digital-digest.com/blog/DVDGuy/2007/12/20/blu-ray-hd-dvd-buyers-guide-coming-soon/

Derree: EDTV seems to suggest a 480p or 576p based display, which is not the best for HD content. You will most likely see an improvement when viewing HD movies as compared to normal DVD, but the difference may be minimal - it will be less to do with detail, and more to do with less compression artifacts I think, which may be worth the upgrade.

As for differences between Blu-ray and HD DVD, video quality wise, there's so far nothing in between Blu-ray and HD DVD. In fact, Warner Bros' releases use the same transfer for both their Blu-ray and HD DVD releases, so they are in fact identical in quality. The Blu studios tend to use more H.264/AVC, while the HD studios tend to use VC-1 ... both are similar in terms of quality and compression ratio, and both are much preferred over MPEG-2, which some early Blu-ray releases uses. Judging by people's experiences (see this thread for example: http://www.dtvforum.info/index.php?showtopic=58835), they tend to find the picture quality slightly better for HD DVD, mainly due to the more mature VC-1 encoder (based on WMV technology) as compared to AVC (the main reason quoted for Blu-ray's use of MPEG-2 at the start was lack of experience with AVC). But from the same experiences, Blu-ray seems to have better audio due to it's increasing use of PCM 5.1 audio and DTS-MA, whereas HD DVD prefers Dolby TrueHD to both of these formats. Of course, you will need a proper receiver to take advantage of these new lossless or uncompressed audio codecs, but the funny thing was that the recent HD awards gave the best HD soundtrack to the Transformers HD DVD, which didn't even have lossless or uncompressed audio (it used lossy Dolby Digital Plus).

The biggest difference right now is the number of movies and the quality of the movies being released on either formats. Blu-ray is winning because it has more studios coming out with more hits. The HD DVD studios, on the other hand, hold a huge range of library titles that is greater than those of the Blu-ray studios, as well as some recent hits such as Transformers, the Bourne series, Beowulf ... I think the main issue with the studios for me is that no matter which side you choose, you end up missing a lot of good releases, so the best thing is to not choose and get both formats, or get neither and stick with DVDs.

So my advice for your Derree, is probably wait a bit until dual format players become cheap and then that might be a good to upgrade your TV to a HD one (720p, or even better, 1080p). If you already have a HDTV, then I don't think people should take too long to wait and either get in with one format, or preferably, both formats. But if you don't already have a HDTV, then at this early stage, you are probably not missing out on too much yet since both sides are still tentative in their releases (especially of library titles), so save up for that HDTV first.

[Derree]

I was going to go with a pricer tv, but I got my 42" LG for $800 so it was worth it