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Weekly News Roundup (9 March 2008)

Sunday, March 9th, 2008

Sorry for this slightly later than usual roundup. The server hosting most of Digital Digest’s websites started experiencing some problems, which were later traced to a bad hard-drive. To avoid any outages, I had to quickly source a new server and transfer the sites across, which was not easy at 3am in the morning. I ended up going to bed at 7am, and 6 hours of sleep later, I’m back again continuing with the transfer. Ah … the glamour of being a webmaster.

Let’s not waste any time, because I have none to spare. In copyright news, finally a content provider that has the right idea. Instead of pursuing layers of DRM, the band Nine Inch Nails will release their new album through P2P using a donation based system … you decide how much you want to pay for the music, and of course, no DRM. Doing it this way really “goes with the flow” of how content is distributed on the Internet, and bypassing the studio system has many advantages (least of which is getting 95% of your profit back, which otherwise would have belonged to the studio). Using a system normally used to distribute pirated content has many advantages, one of which is ease of use. Jumping through hoops just to buy some DRM infested crap just doesn’t work anymore. And to prove this point, a new study confirms that piracy is better than the real thing. Better content, easier delivery are all reasons why people are choosing the piracy route, rather than through official channels. Studios are obviously worried, but is it really hurting them? Movie ticket sales broke new records again in 2007, despite movie piracy at an all time high. Is piracy helping to sell movie tickets, as people watch a low quality version of a film, likes it, and then decide to watch it proper in the cinema or on legally purchased discs?

Moving quickly onto HD, BD-ROM is set to take off in 2008 following Blu-ray’s victory in the HD format war. The most interesting part of the story is a revealing quote which suggested that BD burner prices are high because of low yield issues. It seems low yield is a problem that Blu-ray suffers from a lot, with disc pressing a huge problem causing releases to be pushed back time and time again due to insufficient manufacturing capacity. To ensure capacity though, new factories will have to be built. And consumers will end up having to pay for them. Some reports suggest that both Blu-ray player and disc prices have gone up since the demise of HD DVD, and you can’t really blame the BDA, studios or CE manufacturers (and online rental stores) for doing so, because the format war has been costly on top of the cost of developing a new format. There is certainly less Blu-ray disc sales than before, and even the redemption offer for 5 free discs seems to be over now with no signs of it coming back. Competition is good for the consumer. But there is no competition to Blu-ray now, apart from competition from within (which will be somewhat limited, as everyone involved do not want a price war to drive down profit margins just yet). Further evidence comes straight from Sony, who says that they do not want to license Blu-ray technology to Chinese firms in order to lower prices (their stated reason is “piracy”). Sony has ruled out $200 Blu-ray players coming this year, and they hinted that you might have to wait until the end of 2009 to see Blu-ray players match the 2007 price of HD DVD players, and even then, it’s probably just a basic Profile 1.1 player that won’t play a lot of the special feature content on the majority of discs released at that time. One way for player prices to drop is for HD DVD firms to get involved, and Microsoft is the first to suggest they may join the Blu-ray bandwagon and release an add-on drive for the Xbox 360. Nothing more specific than that, unfortunately. Microsoft has also released the HD DVD emulator for the Xbox 360 for free (used to cost a few thousand dollars) – with this software, you can test your HD DVD projects and HDi content without having more specialised equipment than a Xbox 360.

The HD DVD fire sale continues, although I have a feeling the best is yet to come. Prices continue to drop, now to as low as $8.50 for selected titles. I’ve written a bunch of blog entries on this already, so I won’t waste too much time on it again. Suffice to say that I’m still pretty mad about JB Hi-Fi Online and their Planet Earth ordering fiasco – read more about it here. And I guess it sort of belongs in the HD section – Pioneer has responded to rumours that it will cease development of plasma screens and move onto LCD (the plasma vs LCD battle is just as fierce as the Blu-ray/HD DVD one, along with the numerous unfounded rumours being reported by allegedly reputed news sites). Pioneer will continue to release plasma TVs, except that the panel these TVs used will now be outsourced, instead of being manufactured by Pioneer. The rumour (I know, I know) is that Panasonic will take over, and Pioneer will share their design secrets with them. If true, this is good news because Panasonic’s Viera range is already pretty good, and with some infusion of Pioneer technology, both Pioneer and Panasonic plasmas will continue to be at the top of the pile in terms of picture quality. The best plasma screens will always look better than the best LCDs, and will remain so until new TV technology becomes available (I’m putting my money on OLED, but not before 2010). 

And finally in gaming, PS3 firmware 2.4 will be released in the US summer, and will feature in game XMB for messaging. There is no word that it will feature Blu-ray Profile 2.0 support, or DTS-HD MA decoding – the only two features lacking from the PS3’s otherwise excellent Blu-ray capabilities (but to be fair, no Profile 2.0 player will be available anytime soon, although DTS-HD MA decoding would be nice to have since many titles now use this new audio format and it sucks to be limited to plain old DTS 1.5 Mbps). A new Xbox 360 SKU may also be on the way, perhaps featuring a 60 GB hard-disk. I think getting rid of stability issues and lowering the noise level should be Microsoft’s main priority, because a quiet, non RRoD’ing Xbox 360, with a large hard-drive, will be a must-have even for existing 360 owners, let alone new users.

Okay, so that’s it for this week. I have to get back to fixing the new server. I’ll see you next week.

Posted in Copyright, Electronics, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, PS3, PS4 | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (9 March 2008)

Weekly News Roundup (2 March 2008)

Sunday, March 2nd, 2008

The month that can never make up its mind as to how many days it should have is finally over. Down with February. Long live March. I love March, not just because it’s the month that contains my birthday, but this is usually the time that I start to feel like the new year is officially here, and now in transition mode as per January, or the confused-as-to-how-many-days-it-has mode that is February.

The fallout from HD DVD’s death continues. Analysts have finally caught onto what I’ve been saying for months now, that Blu-ray’s victory owes much to the BDA’s love for copy protection, as it does to any other factors like the PS3. With DRM being public enemy number one these days, it’s funny to see DRM winning a major format war. I think Toshiba should have promoted the more consumer friendly nature of HD DVD more to the public, in terms of both region coding and less DRM, but I do understand why they didn’t. To do so would have opened another battlefront with DRM and region coding loving studios like Fox. It seems Toshiba really did not like the studio’s way of doing things, and they have now officially released DVD region-free firmware for several of their HD DVD players (or the XE1 at least, install 2.5 first and test to make sure, since once you go to 2.8, getting back to 2.5 is hard and only 2.5 has the region free patch) on their website (at least their Australian website). Unfortunately, it was this pro-consumer, anti-studio attitude that eventually lost the war for them. While as a HD DVD supporter, Warner was not our best friend in the format war, but at least you have to commend them for not supporting region control. Universal and Paramount too. F*ck Fox and their region coded and BD+ discs. Speaking of region control, there is now a new software for the Nintendo Wii that breaks region control (PAL and NTSC) games to work on your Wii. Simply insert the disc, it does its work, eject the disc and insert your game disc. Not sure if Nintendo intend to close this loophole with a firmware patch, or whether they even care about enforcing region control or not.

In HD news, the fallout from HD DVD’s death … wait, I’ve already used this line. Anyway, the big news for HD DVD supporters mourners this week has been Paramount’s (and Dreamwork’s) rather harsh decision to pull all their upcoming HD DVD releases. Just like what they did when they pulled Blu-ray support, with total disregard for consumers. If it wasn’t for their region-free stance, they have done nothing to help either HD format with both low quantity and quality releases. In my last blog entry, I talked about fire sales, and with Paramount stopping HD DVD releases, I think their fire sale will be coming shortly. I’ve started a thread in the forum to talk about HD DVD fire sales, and I will be posting news of any new fire sales there, and in the usual places. The fire sales here in Australia have attracted a lot of buyers (some genuine, while the people who bought 350 discs and 5 copies of each movie trying to take advantage of genuine buyers are scum of the Earth), me included. It’s surprising, but I feel lucky that I’ve bought into HD DVD, as the cheap $8 discs is something so rare, it hasn’t even happened regularly to DVDs yet (at least no in Australia). For the HD DVD movies I’ve bought to be released on to Blu-ray would take months, if not years, and it would still probably be the exact same content, but at 5 times the price. The only risk now is having discs, but not being able to source a player if people’s current players die. But that may not be a problem for long, as HD DVD might live on partly in another format. The DVD Forum (the official body that controls the DVD format) is continuing its support for the China-only CH DVD format, which is basically HD DVD with a different set of software. If CH DVD is a success, then chances are, one will be able to source a HD DVD player without too much problem in the future, which bodes well for those that have dipped their feet into the HD DVD fire sales.

Moving onto Blu-ray now, those worried about price rises now that Blu-ray has no competition will be startled to see a new Blu-ray player being priced at nearly $17,000! Obviously this is not a sign of things to come, but it’s still funny the price some people are willing to pay. I bet it’s not even Profile 1.1. Better news for those of us who don’t earn 7 figure incomes, Sony has announced two new Blu-ray players to be released in the latter part of the year. Both might eventually be BD-Live (Profile 2.0) compatible, although the cheaper of the two players, the BDP-S35,  might not have enough persistent storage to quality as a BD-Live compatible player, without you adding external storage through a USB thumb key. Not the most elegant solution, so I think the more expensive BDP-S550 is the way to go. It even has 7.1 analogue audio output, plus on-board decoding of all the major HD audio formats, so it looks like a good one. The more cynical side of me thinks Sony held back the news of these players until the format war looks to have ended, as it did not want to upset fellow CE manufacturers in the BDA. Now that Sony owns the one and only HD format, it looks like they won’t just sit back and let the other companies take advantage. Monopoly time …

Netflix is also set to take advantage of the conclusion of the format war. They will quadruple the number of Blu-ray titles available to rent, but may raise monthly subscription prices as a result. They’ve been harping on about raising prices for ages now, so don’t be too surprised when it happens. And while not strictly HD news, the people over at Secrets of Home Theater and Hi Fi have released an updated review for the PS3’s video playback performance. The previous review was criticized for only testing the then most updated firmware, which did not even include DVD upscaling. But unfortunately, the new result based on the latest firmware did not improve the scores by much. I’ve tried to explain the situation in the link above, and I think most people feel the same way: The PS3 is an excellent Blu-ray player, a more than adequate DVD upscaling player, but don’t expect it to compete with top of the line dedicated upscaling players as that’s not what it is designed to do.

To segue effortlessly from HD/video to gaming, this middle of the road story about the PS3’s new PlayTV (turns the PS3 into a DVR) feature will be DRM free. Good for Sony for taking a sensible approach to DRM for once. Let’s just hope people don’t take advantage of Sony’s lapse and turn the PS3 into the mother of all video piracy machines.

Segueing now to gaming completely, LucasArts will now produce games on the PS3 and then port it over to the 360, as opposed to doing it the other way. I don’t think this is because they luuurve the PS3 more than the 360, it just make more sense from the developer’s point of view to do this as it will mean better games for both platforms. Developers have often complained about porting 360 games to the PS3, since the PS3 has several design bottlenecks that is not easily solve when doing ports. It’s much better to design the game for a system that is more restrictive, and then port it over to the less restrictive/easier environment. And finally, Dead Rising, the game I’m still playing at the moment and the game that I played so much that caused my 360 to RRoD, has been sued for infringing the copyrights of the Dawn of the Dead franchise. So let’s see, Dead Rising is a game about a zombie outbreak and survivors holding up in a shopping mall. Dawn of the Dead (both movies) is about a zombie outbreak and survivors holding up in a shopping mall. Sorry, but I just don’t see the connection.

Over the next week, I will be bringing you details of a new competition that I will run on Digital Digest, prizes courtesy of Roxio, the makers of the famous Popcorn and MyDVD series. The prize includes copies of their latest DVD production, copying and conversion software, as well as a grand prize of an iPod. More details when they are available.

Okay, that’s it from me for this week – I’m going back to look for more HD DVD fire sale details, credit card in hand …

Posted in Copyright, Electronics, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, PS3, PS4, Video Technology, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (2 March 2008)

Weekly News Roundup (24 February 2008)

Sunday, February 24th, 2008

Welcome to the first weekly news roundup post the HD format war. Upon hearing the news of the war’s end, did you let your emotions get the better of you, go up to complete strangers to hug and kiss them? And did you then get arrested and placed on probation for being a public nuisance? No? Umm … me neither. I didn’t do any of that, honest. 

This week has all been about the end of the HD format war, so either there has been very little copyright news (or very little news that would be considered relevant/interesting), or that I haven’t been paying attention as usual. I’m sure the MPAA and the RIAA got up to their usual tricks, that some politicians took their money to support a new legislation, and that some hacker found some way to hack into some DRM. So basically nothing new.

And of course, the big news of the week is that, yep you guessed it, Apple has dropped the price on the iPhone and iPod touch! Oh, and Toshiba also dropped something. I think it was called HD DVD. The news that HD DVD supporters didn’t want to hear, but probably thought was only a matter of time, did come on Tuesday (Japanese time). I’m sure Toshiba could have held on a little bit longer, but it would only be to wait for a miracle, that sadly, won’t happen now. You all know how I feel about HD DVD, and Blu-ray, and if you didn’t, you can read my latest thoughts (pre-Toshiba decision) here. While I’m sad that a consumer friendlier format like HD DVD didn’t work out, I’m not overly fussed as I’ve been supporting both formats for a while now. And by supporting, I don’t mean going onto Internet forums and gloating and posting FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) posts, but rather in the more practical way of forking over cash to buy stuff. So one format that I’ve bought into has died, the other has grown stronger as a result, which means I’ve not lost anything. In fact, not only have I not lost anything, I’ve picked up a few things too – like no less then thirteen HD DVD titles for an average of $USD 7.01 including postage (titles include Evan Almighty, Knocked up, Casino, Carlito’s Way, Jarhead, Rambo Trilogy, Deer Hunter, Apollo 13, Spartacus – and a few more items at the same low price which if not out of stock, includes Shaun of the Dead, Smoking Aces, The Kingdom and The Thing). The rush for these discounted Universal titles has created such as storm here in Australia that it caused disruptions to several leading online stores, and stock sold out within a matter of minutes. Which just goes to show that low prices is the most consumer friendly feature of all.

Anyway, in the aftermath of Toshiba’s announcement, the HD DVD exclusive studios all eventually followed suit and headed towards the Blu camp. Both Universal and Paramount has announced that they will now support Blu-ray, with Universal unsure of what to do with their HD DVD lineup, while Paramount and Warner appears to be willing to continue releasing movies on HD DVD for the time being. So the chance of more bargains like the one I listed above from Paramount and Warner remains high, and my credit card awaits patiently as well. And for those slightly worried about not having a player to play their HD DVD discs, then the good news is that LG still plans on releasing dual format players for the future, possibly both standalones and computer drives. I suspect Samsung, which seem to do everything LG does, will continue to do so as well. And word is that Sharp will release a player too, since I think they provide the laser diode for these dual format players. What isn’t so clear is the details of Paramount and Universal’s switch to Blu-ray, like which titles will be available and when. I’m guessing 3 to 6 months before we see the first Blu-ray title, and for the Bourne Trilogy and Transformers to be in the starting lineup. There is also the chance that if Paramount still has some recalled Blu-ray versions of Blades of Glory and other titles that were shelved following their defection to HD DVD, that these might be released first. What is also not so clear is what Microsoft will do in regards to a Blu-ray add-on drive for the Xbox 360. The initial rumour was that one will be available within 6 months, but then Microsoft issued a (somewhat soft) denial for a drive being available in the short term. I guess they don’t want to be seen as supporting a Sony format, not when they’re still at war with them in the game console arena.

So the focus now turns to whether Blu-ray can become the next digital video format to replace DVDs. Certainly the end of the format war, and format confusion, will help. I will go over two Digital Digest polls soon in regards to this issue, but suffice to say, Blu-ray has a long way to go before it can even call itself a competitor to DVD. Even with Blu-ray and HD DVD combined, discs sales have only been half of what DVD did after the same initial period. While player sales have been fine, thanks to cheap HD DVD players and the PS3, the low attachment rate of Blu-ray movies and the generally low rate of sale of HD DVD, has all contributed to the low disc sale figures. And the high prices when compared to DVDs won’t have helped (remember that when DVDs first came out, there was no “low price” alternative, because VHS often cost more, not less, than DVDs).

And while I’ve harped on about Blu-ray manufacturing costs and such in the past, a new type of BD recordable could start to lower cost of BD blanks. Dubbed LHT BD-Rs, and developed by Taiyo Yuden, Mitsubishi and Maxell, these use organic materials to lower production costs. Unfortunately, and this has been somewhat of a Blu-ray trait, is that compatibility problems might occur with earlier players. Some players can be updated through firmware to read these new BD-Rs, while others will have to be replaced. Might be best to hold off buying a BD burner until something concrete materialises.

I’ve also harped on about Blu-ray region coding and how it sucks, but there might be a solution now for the PC at least. Read my Blu-ray Region Free Guide to find tips on possibly making PowerDVD Ultra and WinDVD BD region-free for Blu-ray playback.

And finally onto gaming, as promised, the January NPD figures have been released and analysed. While it looks like Blu-ray has helped the PS3 to beat the Xbox 360 and nearly beat the Wii, remember that both the Wii and 360 had serious stock shortage problems thanks to last month’s record sales figures for both consoles. The PS3 took advantage efficiently, but the Wii and 360 are still the consoles to beat, in the US at least. And thanks to consoles becoming more and more like PCs in terms of functionality (media sharing, Internet browsing, movie downloading …), PCs are now struggling to stay in the gaming market, at least here in Australia. For me, I’ve not played less games on the PC, but I’ve definitely played more on consoles (not surprising, considering the current 3 main consoles are the first ones I’ve owned since the SNES). I still prefer PC gaming, mainly because I prefer strategy games, and first person shooters using the mouse/keyboard combination. But I can definitely see the appeal of console games. And some say that the increased spending for console gaming has led to decreases for movies, which I would have to agree with. So in some way, the success of the PS3 as a game console might actually hurt Blu-ray.

[PLEASE INSERT INTERESTING, IF NOT FUNNY, CONCLUSION TO ARTICLE. AND DO NOT FORGET TO MENTION “SEE YOU NEXT WEEK”]

Posted in Computing, Electronics, Gaming, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (24 February 2008)

Game Consoles – January 2008 NPD Sales Figure Analysis

Thursday, February 21st, 2008

In the excitement over the end of the HD format war, I had almost forgotten about the January 2008 NPD game console sales figures for the US. As expected, sales dropped quite a bit after the Holiday sales, but were still quite respectable. You can read last month’s analysis here. The figures are from NPD, a marketing research firm that releases games console sale data every month.

The figures for US sales in January are below, ranked in order of number of sales:

  •  Wii: 274,000 (Total: 7.7 million)
  • PS3: 269,000 (Total: 3.5 million)
  • PS2: 265,000 (Total: 41.3 million)
  • DS: 251,000 (Total: 17.9 million)  
  • Xbox 360: 230,000 (Total: 9.5 million)
  • PSP: 230,000 (Total: 10.8 million)

    • NPD January 2008 Game Console US Sales Figures

    NPD Game Console Total US Sales Figures (as of January 2008)

    There’s a bit of a controversy over this month’s figures. Microsoft has claimed that stock shortages, due to January stock being sold in December to cover the unexpected strong demand, has severely affected sales figures in the month. Nintendo has claimed the same reason for the low Wii sales numbers. This confirms my personal experience during December here in Australia, where most stores had no stock for Xbox 360 and Wii’s, while the only game console on sale was the PS3. Sony’s PS3 did not suffer from similar stock problems, and with the positive vibes coming from Warner’s decision to support Blu-ray exclusively, the PS3 recorded the first ever monthly victory over the Xbox 360. But as mentioned before, these numbers should be treated with some suspicion. And as such, I will limit my analysis for this month, which is also due to the low figures being reported as compared to last month.

    Probably more indicative of the actual market was software sales. It was another strong month for the Xbox 360, with 5 titles in the top 14, including the coveted number one spot (once again taken by the excellent Call of Duty 4). The Wii also had 4 top selling software in the same list, while the PS3 had two (one of them is, you guessed it, Call of Duty 4). The Xbox 360 therefore accounted for 40% of the top 14 selling software, Wii at 33% and the PS3 at 10%. If you look at the total console sales figure graph above, the ratios do look similar.

    Next month, hopefully, will see some figures that aren’t possibly affected by stock shortages. See you then.

    Posted in Gaming, Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, NPD Analysis, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | 2 Comments »

    Is the High Definition Format War Over? (Yes, it is)

    Tuesday, February 19th, 2008

    So how does one end a format war? Do you do it quickly and out of the blue, like Warner’s Blu-ray exclusive announcement? Or do you do it gradually as to soften the blow? Or perhaps news is leaked and your hand is forced.

    It certainly sounds like the third of the above scenarios has come true for Toshiba and HD DVD. Just before the weekend, reports circulated that Toshiba was about to drop HD DVD. Toshiba did not issue any statement since their press department was closed for the weekend, although most news services took the earlier report’s word that Toshiba had officially made the announcement. It was only on Monday that it was revealed Toshiba had not made any official announcement yet, and that the earlier reports only cited unnamed sources that may not even have worked for Toshiba. But the earlier leak had the effect of forcing Toshiba to respond, and with all major news outlets writing off the format and no doubt affecting consumer sentiment, it has really forced Toshiba into a corner. If it doesn’t drop the format, it will be accused to extending the format war unnecessarily. While this is tinfoil hat category stuff, you’ve got to wonder which parties were responsible for the leak in the first place. Some say it’s Toshiba wanting to soften the blow, but there are surely better ways to do this with a gradual withdraw over months, not days. The fact that Toshiba’s PR department was caught unawares during a weekend suggests something a bit more unplanned.

    While Toshiba are still denying that they have made the decision to cut back, if not completely stop, HD DVD development and production, the rumours about the format’s imminent demise haven’t stopped. The latest news says that Tuesday (that’s today) will be the day Toshiba officially announced something.

    Update: Toshiba has, as expected, announced the discontinuation of their HD DVD business. In a press release available on the official Toshiba website, the following statement was made:

    Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has undertaken a thorough review of its overall strategy for HD DVD and has decided it will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders. This decision has been made following recent major changes in the market. Toshiba will continue, however, to provide full product support and after-sales service for all owners of Toshiba HD DVD products.

    Toshiba HD DVD: RIP?
    Toshiba HD DVD: RIP

    Whether a format declaration is forthcoming or not, I think it is clear that if there was to be a winner of the format war, it will be Blu-ray and not HD DVD. Unless Toshiba can pull a rabbit out of a hat and get another major studio to back its format, the format war is all but over, and it has been since Warner’s announcement.

    Those that have followed my ramblings will know that I hold a soft spot for HD DVD. While I have both formats, and I’ve spent more money on Blu-ray (mainly due to it having more movie sales), I like HD DVD due to it’s more consumer friendly approach, and I have recently grown to dislike Blu-ray due to a reason not entirely related to the technical aspect of the format (more on that below). No region coding, no excessive DRM in BD+, and no messing around with unfinished specs, are all major advantages of the format. And from an environmental point of view, HD DVD’s usage of existing DVD manufacturing technology means it is more Earth friendly than Blu-ray’s demand for new manufacturing plants and assembly lines to be built (and it will be cheaper for us consumers in the long run, because the cost of building these new facilities will be passed onto us eventually). It is a shame that HD DVD as a format looks to have failed, but the positives is that it may signal the end of format confusions. HD DVD’s role in the format war has also allowed prices to drop faster, forced some studios to turn away from region-coding (Warner, Paramount and Universal all haven’t used region coding, so far) and has given us a preview of what Internet connected features will be like when Blu-ray Profile 2.0 (“BD-Live”) is launched later in the year.

    As for how Blu-ray has (almost) won the war? Well, I think it has to do with the greater studio support (thanks to its studio-friendly, consumer un-friendly features), greater support from CE manufacturers, and of course, the PS3.

    It is unfortunate that the format war, towards the end, has gotten a bit out of control. With personal insults flying between the two camps, one again wonders why people invest so much into supporting proprietary formats and multi-national corporations. Now I mentioned earlier that I’ve grown to dislike Blu-ray over recent months. And much of it has to do with these Fanboys. While I could write another blog twice as long as this one to explain how I feel, I think this post by AdamNZ that I found on the DTV Forum Australia sums up what I feel best, and I shall end this blog entry with his words:

    When Blu-ray and HD DVD began to be discussed at the end of 1995/early 1996 I had no particular preference for either. I still don’t really. There were enthusiasts who preferred one over the other, but everyone realised it was about the movies and the discussion focused mainly on what movies would be coming out on which format. There were a lot of home theatre enthusiasts who really looked forward to the prospects of both formats.

    When HD DVD came out people were very pleased about the quality and features straight out of the gate. I expected the same from Blu-ray; and while it wasn’t as smooth out of the gate it improved very quickly and soon caught up. I was pleased that HD DVD was feature-complete, and that Blu-ray had the potential to be even better (the potential it still has). I wasn’t happy about region coding, but I was there at the outset of DVD so I knew this would be overcome eventually so it was an annoyance and no more. I and my friends bought both formats and enjoyed the films.

    Then it became clear that the most vocal advocates of both formats were youg people who bought Xbox 360s or Playstation 3s. I thought that was good for adoption, but their annoying arguments based entirely on theoretical benefits and without any direct comparisons or personal experience with the other side really turned me off. I feel this grew at an alarming rate as the formats’ fans (who often weren’t genuine home theatre enthusiasts, just people who supported the format that their console supported) became more and more dominant. People stopped talking about movies and began talking about bandwidth, Profiles and BD+ and all sorts of other issues that aren’t directly relevant to watching movies (and their supplemental materials) in high definition.

    This was when I started to become biased. Not toward a particular format, but to the followers. Blu-ray’s most annoying ‘fans’ all seemed to me to have one common denominator: a Playstation 3. I really resented the future of a format being decided by gamers with no direct interest in home theatre. These people had the same 12-year-old’s self-righteousness as the Xbox 360 buyers, but there were more of them. A seemingly unending army of them it seemed.

    Sony and Buena Vista were producing some great looking titles, but the people who supported it most were watching discs on 19″ LCD monitors and using the optical output to get stereo, and going on and on about 1080p this, bandwidth that. Most of them only had a vague notion of what they were talking about (not uncommon) but because they seemed so much younger they were quite belligerent that they knew best. Xbox owners suffered a similar affliction, but at least I knew that those with HD DVD had knowingly and deliberately sought out an add-on specifically to play movies. Many of the Playstation 3 posters admitted that they didn’t own a single Blu-ray Disc themselves.

    Today I continue to buy Blu-ray (played on a standalone so I can listen to lossless audio via analogue outputs) and HD DVD, and I have seen some great movies in both formats. I am not unhappy that Blu-ray has won the war, but I hate seeing the insufferable gloating of these same owners who claim credit for apparently single-handedly winning the war. I feel like the war was won by children on the back of a game platform.

    I just want to throw my slippers and pipe at them and yell at them to get off my lawn. Well, not really as I’m only 32. But I think Blu-ray would have a much better image among home theatre enthusiasts if it wasn’t for its game platform fans. Damn kids! This format war had created more vitriol and division in the last two years than any format war I can remember (including DIVX and Betamax) and I’m glad it’s over. Now if only Blu-ray’s younger fans would shut up and start buying some movies.

    Posted in High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | 3 Comments »

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