SydLexia.com - The Forums :: View topic - Blockbuster drops HD-DVD

Posted: Jun 19 2007 03:31 pm

If you’re one of the people who bought a Blu-ray player, pat yourself on the back. In what is probably the final and defeating blow for HD-DVD, Blockbuster announced today that they will no longer support HD-DVD rentals, opting for Blu-ray instead.

Blockbuster has been renting both Blu-ray and HD DVD titles in 250 stores since late last year and found that consumers were choosing Blu-ray titles more than 70 percent of the time.

Blockbuster Announcement wrote:

The consumers are sending us a message. I can’t ignore what I’m seeing,” Matthew Smith, senior vice president of merchandising at Blockbuster, told The Associated Press.

The decision was helped in large part by the lopsided availability of titles in Blu-ray, Smith said. All major studios except one are releasing films in Blu-ray, with several, including The Walt Disney Co., releasing exclusively in Blu-ray. Only Universal Studios, which is owned by General Electric Co., exclusively supports HD DVD.

Warner Bros., a unit of Time Warner Inc., and Paramount Pictures, which is owned by Viacom Inc., release films in both formats.

“When you walk into a store and see all this product available in Blu-ray and there is less available on HD DVD, I think the consumer gets that,” Smith said.

The rollout of Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 3 game console, which comes standard with a Blu-ray drive, also helped give the format momentum," Smith said.

Hmmm. Maybe Sony wasn’t as dumb as we all thought for pushing Blu-ray so hard with the PS3, and releasing a game console that costs over $600. As Blue-ray becomes more widely adopted, it should make buying a PS3 all the more tempting for everyone who held out, or who hasn’t yet made the leap to a high-def movie player.

Posted: Jun 19 2007 03:35 pm

Damn...I just wanted tog et the cheap 360 HDDVD player and be done with it, lol.

Joined: Apr 14 2006 Location: Lake Michigan Posts: 3332

I'm not planning on buying a high-def dvd player for quite some time. All that extra money in order to improve the image quality, when dvd already has crystal clear presentation. How clear do you need it? DVD is fine by itself, and that's coming from someone who gets HD TV through Comcast.

Posted: Jun 19 2007 03:45 pm

Cattivo wrote:

I'm not planning on buying a high-def dvd player for quite some time. All that extra money in order to improve the image quality, when dvd already has crystal clear presentation. How clear do you need it? DVD is fine by itself, and that's coming from someone who gets HD TV through Comcast.

The people who buy the hi-def DVD players are the same people that buy the super duper mega ultra whitening/polishing toothpaste so that they can blind people at night driving in the opposite direction.

Morons, in other words.

Posted: Jun 19 2007 04:00 pm

I don't own many DVD's, so I thought it'd be ok to get HDDVDs or something seeing as I don't have a lot of them. I have an HDTV too and can notice the difference between 480p and 720p, but fuck paying out the ass.

Joined: Feb 24 2006 Posts: 2578

S. McCracken wrote:

The people who buy the hi-def DVD players are the same people that buy the super duper mega ultra whitening/polishing toothpaste so that they can blind people at night driving in the opposite direction.

Morons, in other words.

Time for my obligatory "Right on, brotha!"

Also, I own hundreds of DVDs, and I'm not about to start buying those movies again.

Posted: Jun 19 2007 10:37 pm

DarkMaze wrote:

Time for my obligatory "Right on, brotha!"

Also, I own hundreds of DVDs, and I'm not about to start buying those movies again.

What you said.

Posted: Jun 19 2007 10:41 pm

The next-gen formats might be for me.

I don't own much DVDs....

Posted: Jun 20 2007 12:23 am

Most porn companies have dropped going HD-DVD because it's resolute enough to make imperfections, such as scars from surgery, incredibly noticable.

Posted: Jun 20 2007 12:35 am

lordsathien wrote:

Most porn companies have dropped going HD-DVD because it's resolute enough to make imperfections, such as scars from surgery, incredibly noticable.

So, they are trying to hide the fact that 98.9% of thier porn stars are fugly and mostly plastic? I think everybody already knew that. If they were model quality, then they would be models and not porn stars. Wink

Joined: Aug 25 2005 Posts: 287

I guess this would be a bad time to mention I own both the Playstation 3 and the Toshiba HD-A20. Very Happy

Granted, I wholly and completely admit that owning these machines is utterly idiotic on my part and I do NOT recommend that anyone just rush out and jump into the format war. I do, however, notice a pretty substantial improvement in a well-mastered HD disc vs the SD counterpart ("Pirates of the Caribbean" on Blu-Ray, for one, and the "Planet Earth" miniseries on HD-DVD for another). Besides, I still own a laserdisc player, so it's not like format obsolescence is a huge deterrent to me.

As far as the topic of the thread, well... I prefer HD-DVD (mostly because it's not supported by Sony), and I'm iffy on how important Blockbuster *really* is. They've been losing ground to Netflix over the past few years. If you factor in PS3's, the Blu-Ray player adoption rate crushes the HD-DVD rate, but if you remove the PS3's, HD-DVD wins. Also, on Amazon, the A2 and the A20 both outrank any Blu-Ray player sales-wise and the software to hardware attach rate is all around better for HD-DVD.

Porn this generation is probably a non-issue, thanks to the internet, and now that the BD Java standard has finally been set in stone, studios can get around to putting real extras on BD movies ("Pirates" was a definite step in the right direction). But studio support is what'll probably give Blu-Ray the ultimate edge. Shit... Disney, Fox, Lions Gate are all BD exclusive. Warner does both. The only major player to support ONLY HD-DVD is Universal, which is big, but not insurmountable.

I do want to point out two things, though. In August, the first season of "Heroes" comes out in HD... on HD-DVD. And in September, season 1 of "Battlestar Galactica" will be HD-DVD exclusive, too. This alone makes me glad to have the A20. Very Happy

I really need to go outside one of these days...

Posted: Jun 24 2007 12:26 am

It's too early for either format to take off. There aren't enough TVs to take advantage of HD-DVDs or Blu-Rays yet. Declaring one a winner, a loser, better, or worse right now is so premature.

Posted: Jun 24 2007 04:27 pm

Agreed, most of us are still trying the save up the $1000 - $2000 dollars to buy a 1080p TV, before we invest $200-$600 on a HD movie format to play on it.