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Warner goes Blu-ray exclusive

SamuriHL said:
I have not found any titles at all that don't play with 3319a.
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Pan's Labyrinth HD-DVD doesn't play audio in mine (3319a). It seems it can't read properly the core DTS-HD 7.1 audio. 3516 reads it as 5.1, but it works.
 
Notebooks tend to have a standard fitting so they fit most laptops, If you can remove your old drive then the new drive will fit it ( you may need to remove the molded front of your old drive and fit it to the new one, and some drives have locking mechanisms screwed to the drive which you can remove and put on the new one). Laptop drives have been for the past few years pretty much all the same size and shape, it's only the fittings like the molded fronts and the bits the laptop manufacturer screw to the drive to lock it in that differ and all the drives we've ever had in all have the right holes in them to make them interchangeable. If I look in our old stock box of drives for laptops I can go back about 6 years to just cdwriters and they are all the same shape and fittings as the ones today. The PC writer is due out this month as well
 
Adbear said:
Notebooks tend to have a standard fitting so they fit most laptops, If you can remove your old drive then the new drive will fit it ( you may need to remove the molded front of your old drive and fit it to the new one, and some drives have locking mechanisms screwed to the drive which you can remove and put on the new one). Laptop drives have been for the past few years pretty much all the same size and shape, it's only the fittings like the molded fronts and the bits the laptop manufacturer screw to the drive to lock it in that differ and all the drives we've ever had in all have the right holes in them to make them interchangeable. If I look in our old stock box of drives for laptops I can go back about 6 years to just cdwriters and they are all the same shape and fittings as the ones today. The PC writer is due out this month as well
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Well, that's all well and good, but to me this equates to "it will probably work, you might have to remove parts and such though to get it to fit." Spending several thousand dollars on a laptop just to get the ability to burn HD-DVD that will probably work is just not worth it. That's why to me the only real solution is IDE or SATA.

Where are you getting your information that Toshiba will finally be releasing the SD-903A this month?
 
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Pelvis Popcan said:
Well, that's all well and good, but to me this equates to "it will probably work, you might have to remove parts and such though to get it to fit." Spending several thousand dollars on a laptop just to get the ability to burn HD-DVD that will probably work is just not worth it. That's why to me the only real solution is IDE or SATA.

Where are you getting your information that Toshiba will be finally be releasing the SD-903A this month?
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From our suppliers, We build video editing systems so I know that just about all of laptops (unless they use ultra slim drives which then tends to mean the laptops aren't powerful enough for HD anyway) use the same drives, it's like the PC drives all being made to the same basic shape so they are interchangeable. The only parts you may have to change over consist of a couple of screws that hold a piece of plastic onto the drive to help lock it into place. It's not difficult. Most laptops have either a latch or screw that keeps the drive inside the machine, undo that then the drive slides out. Then you normally see a piece of plastic down the side or along the back that is the locking mechanism, unscrew that and screw it into the same place on the new drive thats all there is to it. Some laptops have molded plastic bezels along the front of the drive which just unclip, this can then be clipped onto the new drive. It is very very simple to do and I've done this on HP, Sony, Asus, Dell and Clevo laptops
 
IMO the stakes of BD+ implementation by James et. al. have gone up significantly for everyone regardless of format preference. Most users have sizable sums invested in HTPCs for the purposes of juke box convenience. If, as most would agree, the tide as turned for the format war, then more titles will indeed be released Blu. Adding BD+ to all newly released titles, does not seem so implausible. In the near future, I could easily envision a situation where HTPCs are merely overpriced stand-alone players without a BD+ solution.

Having said all that, I have tremendous confidence in SlySoft's technical expertise.
 
andy o said:
Pan's Labyrinth HD-DVD doesn't play audio in mine (3319a). It seems it can't read properly the core DTS-HD 7.1 audio. 3516 reads it as 5.1, but it works.
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Yey. Another bug in PowerDVD. The fact that it can't decode the audio properly is just great.
 
i feel Toshiba never really had there heart in it in terms of marketing HD DVD as much as sony does with blu ray it always seems that toshiba does not have the fight in them like sony does, but i still feel both will be around for a while longer and if Blu ray does take out hd dvd, i still feel they will be nothing more than a niche product because if hd dvd is gone blu ray prices will stay high keeping the masses out
 
I tend to agree with bk1987, I think it's mostly due to lousy marketing on the HD DVD camp's side behalf and better choices/marketing on the Blu Ray side. Toshiba has always had pretty lousy distribution and marketing over here - so it doesn't even surprise me at all.

It's not unlikely that HD DVD is more successful in some other regions of the world, but similar can be said for Blu Ray: over here and for example also in Japan Blu Ray has much stronger sales than HD DVD. In any case: in the USA there are MANY more titles out on both Blu Ray and HD DVD then over here... (I purchased most of both my Blu Ray and HD DVD titles via amazon.com in the USA) Sometimes certain products are just successful in certain parts of the world, but completely fail/are a disaster elsewhere...

Apart from that the HD DVD camp has another problem: Blu Ray has had both players and writers (some supporting reading both High Def formats) out on pc for quite some time AND blu ray writers can handle larger capacity (better as a backup medium, eventhough harddiscs are far cheaper per gig - but they often take up more space to store). It seems like they failed to notice / respond to any demand on the retail market - atleast over here(they did furnish some OEM product to e.g. some laptop brands and microsoft for the Xbox 360 drive for example). I needn't remind you that the Toshiba-Samsung-Matsushita camp and the like are also firmly entrenched in making Blu Ray products. They didn't bet on a single horse...

As Adbear correctly states: most laptops will pretty much use standard drives with an IDE slim connector, however: be careful - some OEM tend to change things so standard drives will NOT fit properly (other frontbezel to go with the design, use special adapters to connect to a motherboard PCB connector that will not fit just any drive, or put the connector at an other location then normal or reversed etc..). Also: replacing the drive by opening the laptop personally will often negate laptop warranties. Then there is also the move from the standard IDE to SATA interface, albeit this transition is even going slower on slim drives than on regular 5.25" opticals...

IF AND WHEN HD DVD ends up in the grave: the people who tend to be loosing out - as usual, are the endusers that invested in HD DVD discs and a players. Not so much the industry. By now the people who payed lots of money for the first gen players probably made them already earn back their money on the R&D anyway (that is why these devices are so expensive early on: to get back on the R&D investment as quickle as possible. And then: you'll get the first gen problems and bugs for free too!) They'll just release the disc on the other format and phase out production of the HD DVD discs...

For movie playback, technically either would do fine - though HD DVD would be less restrictive in terms of no AACS enforcement, no region code, no BD-J/BD+.

But look at it positively: atleast more people would be buying/needing to buy AnyDVD HD for enforcing Blu Ray playback without DRM/HDCP/region coding - or allowing for a fair use copy - and James would be forced by his employer to shift his development focus from HD DVD to Blu Ray :) Which I expect is going to happen some time soon when it becomes pretty clear that the Blu Ray camp is winning. Haha... However - in my language there is an expression (roughly translated): if two dogs fight for a bone, a third one may come along... (look at what happened video 2000 vs. betamax when VHS came along...) Who knows... In that case: both early adopters might loose out. That said, I haven't seen any signs of that happening very soon on a global scale...

Keep in mind: High definition sales are currently no where even near DVD mass market sales numbers. You would be surprised about the number of people that are still quite satisfied with their current CRT TV set, analog TV and a DVD player/DVD discs that don't even know what Blu Ray or HD DVD is and have no plans to adopt soon...
 
James said:
It is delayed, but it is coming.
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We love u.........

PS i dont and wont buy BR but want it cracked to stop there being a reason for stuidos thinking BR is the way to go.....

PS i love the exlcusive Star Trek Original HDDVD disk box set......
 
I have to agree with Barry Meyer as it is said that the 2 formats are just confusing the customer or potential customers.

"The window of opportunity for high-definition DVD could be missed if format confusion continues to linger," said Barry Meyer, chairman and CEO of Warner Bros. "We believe that exclusively distributing in Blu-ray will further the potential for mass-market success and ultimately benefit retailers, producers, and most importantly, consumers."
 
digitalfreak said:
I e-mailed Warner...


... and congratulated them on making the right decision, which will end this pointless format war.
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How is siding with a format that is more restrictive to the consumer "the right decision"?
 
Not really the right or wrong desicion as there is none. However I say a godd decision so this makes it that much closer to the end of the war and I can start upgrading my hardware for my Home. Don't get me wrong if this happened to bluray and a bigt stufio went from that to HD I would still say the same. I haven't invested in either so I am not at a loss but in a way left behind.
 
If there is a bright side to this, I simply hope it means that more consumers jump on HD discs and that the sudios start releasing some of the killer discs in HD. If that has to be blu-ray, well, so be it I guess. A protracted war was never a good thing for anyone. It became clear to me in July when the PS3 started dropping in price that HD DVD was never going to be able to win. The best they could hope for was a stalemate. A few weeks later we got that with the Paramount/Dreamworks announcement. Now that the balance has shifted back towards Blu-ray, I don't think there's any stopping it now. It would take an enormous miracle like Fox going HD DVD exclusive in order to even regain a balanced equation, but, to tip it into HD DVD's favor at this point? I'd say the odds aren't very good. So, if you've got HD DVD equipment now, buy all the HD DVD's you can and hope they go on fire sale as retailers abandon the format. (And you can be sure they will. Best Buy is itching to get rid of HD DVD as shown by the enormously smaller shelf space allocated to it vs Blu-ray.) After that, it would be wise to get a Blu-ray player. For those Blu-ray people holding out, you can breath a sigh of relief because I'm hearing you'll get Batman Begins just before Dark Knight comes out and Dark Knight will now be Blu-ray exclusive later this year. I have a feeling they'll probably do Matrix Trilogy on Blu-ray at some point this year. And if they do LotR trilogy this year, it'll likely be Blu-ray exclusive now, as well. So, I guess what I'm saying is, get used to Blu...
 
Charlie said:
Not really the right or wrong desicion as there is none.
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There is a wrong decision for consumers that are interested in fair use rights and/or being restricted less when they purchase HD movies. The wrong decision is supporting Blu-ray.

But anyway, this is all pointless now since I am fully of the opinion that HD-DVD is doomed.
 
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Webslinger said:
There is a wrong decision for consumers that are interested in fair use rights. The wrong decision is supporting Blu-ray.

But anyway, this is all pointless now since I am fully of the opinion that HD-DVD is doomed.
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It's unfortunate, but, quite true. If I'm right and Universal caves in the next 6 months, this is completely over and done with. Paramount will then be kicking someone's @$$ to get out of their deal with HD DVD. At that point it's just simply dead and a small footnote in history. Those of us with the equipment and discs can still enjoy it, but, I certainly won't be recommending HD DVD to any of my friends at this point. The one who took my advice and got an HD DVD player last week is now pissed at me and looking to return it. I can't says that I blame him really. I tried to support the format, I really did, but, in the end, the studios have to decide what they want to release their stuff on. And they aren't known for being consumer friendly. Average consumers will just follow along for the ride...picking the format that has the most titles on it. Yea, it all sucks, but, this is what happens when people don't pay attention to the enormous educational release notes that Slysoft provides. :D HEHEHEHEHEHEHE
 
SamuriHL said:
It's unfortunate, but, quite true. If I'm right and Universal caves in the next 6 months
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Oh yeah, for sure they will. Unless, I'm missing something, they'd be foolish to cling on to a sinking ship.

And they aren't known for being consumer friendly.
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Ain't that the truth. :agree:

Average consumers will just follow
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Average consumers are just clueless. And I find that most who flaunt/promote Blu-ray have no idea that HD-DVDs
are region free and have less DRM than Blu-rays.

I wouldn't mind Blu-ray so much if the region restrictions were removed (along with the extra DRM junk).
 
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Stormlord said:
I tend to agree with bk1987, I think it's mostly due to lousy marketing on the HD DVD camp's side behalf and better choices/marketing on the Blu Ray side. Toshiba has always had pretty lousy distribution and marketing over here - so it doesn't even surprise me at all.
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I agree with you !
frankly the whole format wars threads are hilarous, no one really wants to confront the facts...go ahead sue toshiba...you better have several 100,000 friends to help you, you won't make a dent

i started out w/ HDDVD (mid '06), spending almost $400 on an XA1 and 10 or so $30 titles, also got 5 free ones. what did I get? a player that everyone says I should dump/resell as it is slow as hell, almost 2 minutes just to get to a menu screen. HDMI issues when switching from the movie stream to the extras or trying to use a switcher, movies that right out of the shrinkwrap would stutter or even just die in the middle..absolute waste of money...YES the picture was stunning when it worked, yes the hardware looks great and the upscaling was phenomenal...
then out of luck I got a ps3 and then lucked into a burner and some blanks and of course ANYDVDHD...the ps3 had NONE of the HDMI issues, booted fast as hell and played movies without the stuttering or freezeups. I am no fanboy... i own both, but it seems to me HDDVD screwed up majorly by not having burners and media out...their early players plain stink...

bottomline, BOTH formats have their positives and negatives, neither are perfect but what everyone is missing is the total market for HD is probably infinitesimal compared to DVD and at the rate these companies are screwing up, will remain that way for quite awhile...
 
I understand quite well webslinger but most of the cosumers are like me will wait to see a light at the end of the tunnel and then boom the sales begins shortly after. I am not knocking HD-DVD and joked a bit with you and SamuriHL about it at times but I am not one for this one or that one but merely read and wait.
 
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