The HD war is not over yet
If you thought that the HD war was over with the switch of Warner Studios from supporting both HD formats to just Blu-Ray then you might want to observe the market a little bit longer. The effect that Warner has left the HD DVD supporters will not be visible to consumers later this year when the contract expires (May 2008). From then on Warner will only release movies on DVD and Blu-Ray.
Two studios, Paramount and Universal are still backing up HD DVD and press releases suggest that they have no intention to change their stance in the near future. Movie fans are still facing the problem that a choice can't be made if they wanted to watch movies from all studios unless they would purchase a more expensive dual player that would play Blu-Ray and HD DVD movies.
Many Blu-Ray and HD DVD movies are currently offered at Amazon for 50% off and player prices have been reduced as well. You can purchase a HD DVD player for $149.99 and get five HD DVDs free as a bonus which is an attractive offer.
My stance on this matter remains unchanged. I will boycott both formats and won't purchase a remaining format as well if there should be a winning format in the near future. I do so mainly because of DRM and all the crap that is loaded into those players. I also have no intention to update my player's firmware regularly because the manufacturer published a new firmware to fix some security holes.
That's not what I want and I'm pretty confident that this is something that most consumers do not want as well - if they would know that is.
Advertisement
@rumswums
The porn industry won’t have as much of an impact as you think, they are very much on the fence on this one, and Sony is actually licensing Blu-Ray to them this time around.
Actually, Samsung has new player that call BP-U5500,it can play HD/Blu-Ray formats. The price about $599. I think that is only way to finish format’s war.
Guess I’ll have a snack till they slog it out…
Best HD format is x264, which easily fits old DVD :)
Same high quality, but no need to change hardware. Of course if you play it on PC.
pornindustry will have the last word on this issue :)