Blu-ray will beat HD-DVD, says Forrester (again)

HD-DVD FTW!!!!

ah, another analyst who sees the facts, but misses the point entirely.

The only way you could think HD-DVD will win is if you hate sony. I guess cause its cheaper also.

But Blu-ray is the clear winner at this point, say disney and fox moved to HD-DVD, maybe things wouldn't look so good. But HD-DVD has one exclusive. Blu-ray has companies like Disney, Sony, and Fox. So movies like Cars, Spiderman 3, and Star Wars will all be Blu-ray. And you can bet your ass Lucas will release all of the movies again next christmas on a next gen format.

but ur missing the point whoever likes blu-ray is gay,
now this guy will stfu, also the ps3 hasint came out yet

I really hate people that just say HD-DVD is going to win Just for the fact that they are Xbox supporters... It's stupid .... Use your head instead of the collective penis of Microsoft..

You guys are forgetting one thing, Sony has a history of creating new and expensive formats that lose their respective wars.

For example: BetaMax, MiniDisc, UMD, and (coming soon) BluRay

digital distribution FTW!!!

Yes, but you are also forgetting that the blu-ray will have a penetration rate of 500,000 units via the PS3 at launch. With the PS3 alone, blu-ray will have the upperhand against HD-DVD

http://www.thedvdwars.com/index.cfm

Well, currently HD-DVD is winning but we shall see this Nov-Dec.

Is that why HD-DVD is outselling blu-ray 11 to 1?

Here is the issue I have with Forrester; these are the same characters who stated that the PSP would kill the Nintendo DS; did not happen. Futhermore, if Wal-Mart enters the show with a $399 HD-DVD player all bets are off for Blu-Ray.

The issue I have with HD-DVD is that these idiots are not doing a massive marketing campaign to show why HD-DVD is better than Blu-Ray. My other issue is with this report is the fact that the analyst does not look at the big picture so to speak. When the PS3 launches, most adopters will focus on games not Blu-Ray movies. Blu-Ray may end up like UMD. Why buy a movie that looks marginally better than a DVD, old codec? I think these gamers are going to spend %59.99 on a game and not $30.00 on a blu-ray movie.

I am buying a PS3 and the only movie I have will be Spiderman; which is going to ship with said product.

@#8
A massive half a million units worldwide, what is HD-DVD going to do? O thats right all there are going to be just as many or more HD-DVD players.

@#5
People dont just want hd-dvd becuase they are xbox fans. Sure some do but just as many want it because Sony's formats have never taken off. Just as many again just flat out dont like sony after delaying the PS3 launch in europe. And then there's the facts that HD-DVD is being supported by more stores (especially in the UK), it is more resistant to damage.
But like the post says unless people start to see a clear winner then the next gen disk battle will likely go on for too long for either side to "win" and another format will come along and make both sides lose out.

"For example: BetaMax, MiniDisc, UMD, and (coming soon) BluRay"

And what, exactly was UMD in a format war against? DVD? CD? I'm slightly confused. There was nothing about the UMD that was causing it to compete against any other format. That's like saying the movies they put out for the Gameboy Adveance were in direct competition with DVDs. UMD, like GBA carts, GameCube discs, and pretty much every other format, is just a proprietary format for a game system. They do not fail or succeed, because their purpose is limited to one usage. Calling UMD a failure is a complete irrelevance to the topic at hand. It may not have been a great format for movies to be played on, but frankly, other than a memory stick, it was the only thing that movies could be played on for the PSP, so it was quite successful at what it was supposed to do. Oh, it's also quite successful as a format to put PSP games on, for the reasons stated above. Talking about UMD as a failure is ignorance in the grandest degree.

As for MiniDisc, it actually won the format war with its only direct competition at the time, Philips Digital Compact Cassette. At the time MiniDisc and DCC were the only two formats that were easily able to be recorded and overwritten, so MiniDisc had some early success. It was only the advent of easily writeable CDs that really did the MiniDisc in. But CD was already an established format at the time, and MiniDisc was a new one, so competing with an improvement to an established format was a battle no format could hope to win.

Regardless of all of this, you act as if these things are pre-determined because formats in the past have failed. That is complete ignorance. The success of future formats does not rely on the success of former ones. In fact, it's because of Sony's past failures, particularly the VHS/Betamax failure, that they've come to have the dominant position they are in now. During VHS/Betamax Sony wasn't quick enough to woo the attention of the major studios, and in the end it was the lack of support for the format that did it in. This time around Sony leapt at the chance of getting studio support. They learned their lesson from past mistakes. It's because of their tenacity at pursuing studio support that gave them the upper hand that they have this time. The very thing you point to as evidence of future failure is actually one of the main reasons they will succeed so handily this time around.

who cares about the format wars when you have on demand in high def on comcast cable for only 3.99 a movie rental

Yeah, he's right Blu-Ray will beat HD-DVD. The HD-DVD is cool, but, the Blu-Ray supports a lot more than just movies. But their sucessors like the DMD, AVCHD and the HVD will kick Blu-Ray's butt.

Yes, Blu-Ray will probably end up winning but I don't see regular DVDs going out the window. It'll be a good 3-5 years before DVDs are completely replaced. Even then, that might not happen. DVDs may go on for another 10 years. I for one am not ready to change my DVDs to Blu-Ray. (At least until I get a fancy HDTV.) So, even if Blu-Ray wins, DVDs will still be the number one format by the mainstream consumer.

"who cares about the format wars when you have on demand in high def on comcast cable for only 3.99 a movie rental"

I do. I like to own my movies. I like the extras that they come with. Digital distribution will never be as good as these next-gen formats (re: uncompressed PCM 5.1 audio).

For those who say no sony format has taken off, apparently you never used or seen a 3.5 floppy, because while other companies were trying to devople a successor to the huge floppys of the 80s, it was the sony 3.5 that took off and was adopted by the industry at large.

You also apparently have never used, listened to, or seen a cd. Since the prototypes were developed by sony and philips.

But didn't HD-DVD use better compression so that blu rays bigger size doesnt really matter? Stupid analysts...

in all honesty i could care less who wins in the HD war. i'm a gamer first and foremost. unless its about video games, i could really care less.

I don't think Blu-Ray or HD-DVD will win.
They will just be like DVD-Audio,ie,for a niche market
who will pay the extra to get better quality even if you won't notice it.Try seeing a difference on anything less than a 42" between an upscaling DVD player and a high def one playing the same film on a 32" screen.
Older films are low-res grainy affairs that will have to be upscaled and filtered to look better.
For that reason a good upscaling DVD player which is cheaper and will upscale your whole collection for free will be enough for most people.
I wait for films to come down to a third of it's price before I buy so waiting for HD movies to do the same is unlikely to ever match that value.
How many people have upgraded their TV yet?
Those who have,may have to upgrade again because they have lower-res 720P without HDMI 1.3 (Deep-Colour!)
It's just getting too expensive to keep up with all this constantly changing specs technology and it's pissing the consumer off.
I'm also guessing that newer tech is around the corner producing 2160P visuals in uncompressed form just as the sound has become uncompressed 6.1 PCM audio.Whether its Holographic Disk or piped into your homes it's going to happen.

Sticking with DVD is the best valued choice right now and the majority of people are price conscious.

HD-DVD has Microsoft behind it. I think this was rumoured a long time ago, but I'm not sure. Microsoft was said to be considering a rebate system where PC Manufacturers would get a rebate for some of the cost of Vista on every HD-DVD drive they included in their PCs. That's Dell/HP/Gateway etc etc.

If they make their offer lucrative enough, and if the HD-DVD drive is already half the price (or less) than that of a Blu-Ray drive, it's really not a contest. And with Media Center PCs becoming a bigger deal these days (the software is bundled with the better half of the Vista SKUs, I believe) this is a pretty huge opportunity.

Oh and then there's digital distribution (which eventually will include the extras and high quality we all crave), and that hologram stuff that has... what... 100GB on a space the size of a fingerprint? Forget about discs.

"For example: BetaMax, MiniDisc, UMD, and (coming soon) BluRay"

Surely youre forgetting about Floppy Discs, CD, DVD!! How exactly were these failures for Sony?

Betamax died because Sony did everything they could to stop porn appearing on the tapes which was a big mistake for them.

The MiniDisc was tremendously popular in Japan but quite rightly died off when cheap MP3 players were introduced.

A few year from now the 100Gb rewritable Blu Ray discs will have left behind the maximum capacity 50Gb HD-DVDs.

digital distribution will be the clear winner because it is cheaper and you take up less space on a shelf!!

Why own movies when you can rent, save your money on better things. You watch the extra features on a dvd a couple times but how many times can you watch the same movie over and over again unless you have no life? You can pay per view it 30 days after it comes on on dvd and still watch it 8 times before it equals the cost of actually buying it. I think digital distribution will beat hddvd and blu ray, but if i had to pick an actual format i pick hddvd because of the price. even if hd dvd doesnt hold the same amount of data they can always give 2 disks instead of 1, its not a big deal.

@13
You have some really good points about the UMD and mini-disc formats, but I'd argue that minidiscs were done in by increased hard drive storage rather than CDs. (This is coming from an indie music recording background)
Also, UMDs was destined to flop as far as movie studios were concerned when they failed to target their audience. If you have a gaming device that can play movies you don't release Queen Latifah comedies for it, you stick with what the audience would want, namely action, horror and sci-fi. They simply oversaturated the market with crap no one was interested in.
Having sad all that, I was originally a Blu-Ray supporter, but I'm really leaning toward HD-DVD now. The sole reason is that Sony has failed to deliver on almost everything it has promised for the format in terms of both software and hardware. Unless the next crop of Blu-Ray players show a substantial improvement in performance and the discs really take advantage of the increased storage space, I'll go with HD-DVD, which has shown solid results so far.

HD-DVD will win.

It's cheaper. $500 player versus $1000 player.

Blu-ray has bugs. Look up some reviews. It may be because of the the individually reviewed player, but the point still applies.

Dual-sides DVDs. Has HD-DVD on one side, and DVD on the other. Great value for consumers so they won't have to buy the same movie twice. Blu-ray can't do this.

These are the main reasons HD-DVD will win, but if you want to go further, you could start discussing things like people will simply not want Blu-ray because it's a Sony product, and Sony is looking less and less favorably in the consumers' eyes every day.

As Mike (#2) said, people and groups like Forrester can see the facts, but they can't come to the correct conclusion.

blu-ray does not have more movie titles than HDDVD. Sure, it has the potential to have more movie titles than HDDVD because of the number of studios supporting it, but alot of those studios are beginning to support both formats. By the time 2007 comes to a close, HDDVD will have an available library of nearly 400 titles, while blu-ray will have an available library of just over 200 titles. HDDVD is also outselling blu-ray, and due to the extremely low number of PS3's shipping and MS selling the HDDVD addon for $200, I really don't see that changing anytime soon.

the1-

Wal-Mart is already selling RCA HDDVD players for $439.

I think DVD is gonna win.

No, not HD-DVD. Just plain ol' boring DVD.

Imagine how many times the following conversation will take place..

---
Customer: What's the difference between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray?

Salesperson: You can only get some titles on HD-DVD and only some others on Blu-Ray.

Customer: But I can still get both on regular DVD, right?

Salesperson: Yeah.

Customer: Well, fuck this.
---

We'll hang out at the DVD level for awhile, until the next 'true' evolution of digital medium comes around.

LMFAO IMNSHO HD/DVD & BLU-RAY R LAME. U WOMBAT FOAD.

SCNR

26. the1-

Wal-Mart is already selling RCA HDDVD players for $439.
--------------------------------------------------------
Thanks for the update. I think Walmart is supposed to market their own brand of HD-DVD.

"Sticking with DVD is the best valued choice right now and the majority of people are price conscious."

Considering that I'm buying a PS3 anyway and that Best Buy has Blu Ray and DVDs for the same price, I think Blu Ray movies are the best valued choice.

Digital distribution is so over-hyped. Does anybody really believe that it will outstrip hard media in the near future? It works for renting films, but consumers enjoy collecting movies. With all the bandwidth and storage required for HD movies (can you imagine a long movie at 1080p with multiple audio options and extra features?), is anyone going to own enough terabytes to store digital content?

Personally I'd kind of like to see them both lose just to teach them a lesson about trying to shove a new format down everyone's throats only a few years after the old one has really gained acceptance.

I simply don't understand why any of you guys would be parading around, WANTING a format that costs more money to buy (and has arguably "better" features) to win... I mean, I know we all just love throwing money down the toilet or in fires, but come on - I don't want Blue Ray to win the format war mostly because of the ridiculous prices.

I know the fate of the PS3 could hinge on BRD, but lets not put blind favoritism in front of common sense - most people out there do not have the setup to actually enjoy or tell the difference between DVD and high def movie formats, and most people do not want to pay $29.99 for a bomb of a movie, like Benchwarmers.

And Darryl, I don't know what Best Buy you were looking at, but BRD and DVD prices are NOT nearly the same.

Who cares, does it really matter? Lets see, the Xbox 360's native Media bay is a DVD-ROM drive so the success of HD-DVD won't effect the games on the 360. And so what if BLU-RAY is the next major video format, like the article said, soon everything is going to be Digitally Distributed anyways because the ease of distribution. So stop the fanboyism and give an un-biased opinion.

HD-DVD has a better name than BluRay. With the name "HD DVD", people are gonna immediately recognize that it's just like a DVD, only with the capability to store high definition content. With "Blu-Ray"...well, the normal person isn't gonna know what to think. They might think it's a blue manta ray or something.

It's also harder to mispell "HD-DVD." Sure, some might forget the hyphen, but that's not as annoying as adding an "e" to Blu-ray.

But it's just a name. I doubt that'll determine who wins, but it's something to think about.

I'm voting for HD-DVD by purchasing the Xbox 360 Add on.

Y'know what?
I'm sick and tired of Sony trying to pull some new
standard down over our heads. They've done it for years without luck (UMD, their stupid music .attrc or whatever, memorysticks, MiniDisc and the obligatory mention of Betamax are some)and I see no reason for favoring Blu-ray over HD-DVD's. To me it seems they have no respect towards the consumer or that they just don't have a clue as to what we want. BRD may be somewhat superior to HD-DVD, but that's not the most relevant thing for me at this point. As a company Sony
has become arrogant and demanding, and quite frankly, a company I in no way can see myself supporting... espacially not a new format like this with their current track record.

well, I know that whatever format will have burners for them eventually, and I will want one of these for my PC to backup files to and for general storage. I already know that the dual-layer variants will be more expensive than plain single layer discs, so you're talking 15GB vs. 25GB. Winner: BD.

As far as movie titles go, I can only really see HD hitting 1080p as the top end before things go 3D. I really cannot see them going to 4k x 2k unless for home theaters, or otherwise, in the future. So that means that all the movies that have been produced thus far, are all on standard film, which is filmed in 2D. HD (whichever) is going to be the best possible format to watch all the movies you know of like the Matrix, Starwars, Lord of the Rings, ect. ect... So I know that whatever movies I buy, if I buy them on a HD format, I will have the closest thing to the studio master that I can have.

Now I myself do NOT have an HDTV set yet, but soon enough, I will have a PS3. I'll have half of the equation for watching HD movies already in my house. Why should I spend another $200 for an alternative strap-on when I have a HD player that already will work? (yes, I am buying a PS3 at launch, I love games in all forms on all formats, I'm a gamer.) The HD-DVD add-on has no real added value to me because I will already have a way to watch HD movies. Besides, when talking of market penetration, the PS3 will have 500,000 units in homes on Nov. 17th (or shortly thereafter once the eBayers ship their overpriced stock). That number versus the number of people who both own a 360, HDTV, and have $200 that care about HD. I'm thinking that number won't be anywhere near 500k.

That's all the studios really care about, how many people they can sell their movies to. I know I'll be buying Pirates of the Carribean 2 on Blu-ray, I also know that I'll be picking up a few others as well.

One last thing, with all those snide comments about "that game doesn't look like $600" Ask yourself what movie is worth $200 for your HD-DVD add-on. It's only worth it if you only ONLY like xbox.

@ darryl
"Considering that I'm buying a PS3 anyway and that Best Buy has Blu Ray and DVDs for the same price, I think Blu Ray movies are the best valued choice."

Sorry, but I don't think DVDs and BluRays will ever be the same price, especially not when they are brand new technology.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8019912&type=product&id=1567906
"Click" BluRay $34.99

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8012802&type=product&id=1567897
"Click" DVD $16.99

Someone throw Hayabusa a star. It's the only sense I've seen on these comment boards.

Also...
Justsomeguy: Why do you believe that Sony is shoving these new formats down our throats, or "Pull some new standard down over our heads"? Do they send you death threats when you DON'T buy UMDs, Memorysticks, Minidiscs, and Betamax? You speak for tons of others that have graced these boards with such comments. All of the above inventions were great ideas, some of which just didn't catch on, but nevertheless no one is stopping you from buying compact discs, compact flash cards, etc. Also, the last time Sony shoved a standard down our throats, in relation to a gaming system, was DVDs with PS2. I remember JUST as many complaints back then, but now DVD is the only way I was personally want to watch movies.

Also, what is the REAL reason why HD-DVD is superior to Blu-Ray? So it costs about 5 dollars less as of now, but it also holds less information on the disc. All that talk of saving money for companies not having to redesign factories sorta went nowhere, since the licensing boots the price up to 35 or so for a HD-DVD movie, not far behind Blu-Ray's 39.

Last Rant:
A lot of this discussion really shouldn't be here on the Joystiq boards. The success of Blu-Ray as a format for movies is inconsequential to the production of games for PS3, if using the UMD format as an example. UMD movies are a relative failure in terms of sales of movies, but nevertheless PSP games will be released on UMD for the life of the console. The same could happen to Blu-Ray, althought this is doubtful as Blu-Ray is supported by multiple devices and companies.

Everyone is forgetting that the CD, and DVDs were not Sony exclusives. Every Sony-led format has failed. Sony jumped in on CDs and DVDs when their own format of choice failed to gain support and caved into the other guy and helped out with development. The 3.5" floppy was just a simplified AmDisk, not something they came up with on their own. Sony's success in a format requires that other major players make the headway and Sony takes a backseat in the direction of the development.

Sony didn't develop any of those on their own. Sony's choice for the DVD was completely abandoned and they jumped on the bandwagon with Toshiba et al.

Everything that Sony ventured out on their own since the 3.5" floppy has failed. UMD is a failure because, very soon, it will only be used to stamp PSP games, which don't sell well on the whole. The other formats Sony led the charge with were also failures because they didn't make any money, the only reason Sony does any of this.

Sony has a major problem of trying to go too far, too fast. Being a company run as a group of competing engineers does that. Projects come out to be way too expensive to market to consumers. BluRay is the same thing and will inevitably suffer the same fate as the rest of their babies. Sony has to fall back on technologies developed by other companies (DVD, CD, plasma, LCD) to actually make a profit, which ends up getting sucked into these projects that are simply too far advanced for the consumer base.

BluRay is a great piece of technology, but it is being rolled out way too early. BluRay would be a worthy successor to HD-DVD, not a direct competitor. Prices of these technologies need to come down by developing predicessor technologies so they don't end up dying because they were simply far too expensive.

The real question to be asked is this: "How many ROUND-EYES will it take to push one format over the other?"

With the PS3, I really see Blu-Ray being able to pull ahead, but I also see the possibility of just leapfroggin' too. I doubt we'll see digital distribution take off for another ten years. not until FiOS is widely available, and Europe gets higher bandwidth.

I really believe this format war is moot. We're hearing about so many advancements in technological storage, that I really don't see this war having a positive outcome. Holographic storage and laser that can play both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. This "HD" is a false future.

Before I catch some flak on my earlier post about disc prices, I am going to post some links just to show how HD-DVD is every bit as expensive as Blu-Ray.

HD-DVD: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=7976808&st=hd-dvd&type=product&id=1561310

Blu-Ray:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8019912&st=blu-ray&type=product&id=1567906

Now I realize that some movies are cheaper than these examples, but these are new releases as fa as I'm concerned, which I think should be the standard for judging prices.

"Blu-ray has companies like Disney, Sony, and Fox. So movies like Cars, Spiderman 3, and Star Wars will all be Blu-ray."

Disney has stated repeatedly that the "big movies" (Pirates 2, Cars) won't be on Blu-Ray until the market penetration is there.

Fox does not control the release of Star Wars on any home format, Lucas does. And how long did it take Lucas to bring Star Wars to DVD?

And finally, Sony's biggest hit of the last five years, the Spider-Man series, isn't even available on Blu-Ray.

I don't follow what analysts say, especially in the electronics or computer industry, because they almost always draw the wrong conclusion. Sometimes analysts are "funded" by the vary companies they're analyzing and draw biased conclusions.

Analysts predicted Sony would be a major player in the digital music business, which we all know didn't happen.

Analysts also predicted BetaMax would beat VHS, which also didn't happen.

Outside of Sony, several major analysts predicted that SCO, in it's Linux case against IBM would win and IBM would end up paying TONS of money. Today, we know the case is meritless, and SCO is almost bankrupt.

So much for analysts...