And the winner is - Blu-Ray

[wildcat09]

Yeah, they'll start charging based on bandwidth use for their internet services, and then even fewer people will want to download movies.

 

[Bayerithe]

high def disc content only has 1% of the movie disk market right now anyway. Blu-Ray has a long way to go if they want to get a bigger foothold on the market. Their players are way too expensive right now to gain more than a couple %'s of the dvd market. Warner realized the 1% and took the 500 million bribe from Sony as they figure that's more money than they'd get profit wise from the high def market. Sony lost 2 billion on the PS3's, what's another half billion?

This format war was retarded and totally anti-consumer

 

[bevo_daddy]

Question about the HDMI cable for PS3. Do you use this in ADDITION to the A / V cables that come with it? And does it increase the resolution of the games themselves or just blu-ray movies?

 

[eflow24]

Yes, it helps the games too.

 

[kevwun]

No, you only need the HDMI cable. You can disconnect the others.

 

[Hobbes2702]

The HDMI is used instead of A/V cables. It provides the highest quality sound and picture. The reason it is great is because it keeps the signal digital at all steps of the process that way you don't lose any quality. It holds both the Audio and Video in one wire.

 

[Seattle Husker]

Blu-Ray won because of the millions$$$ that Sony paid to movie companies. They also have the largest installed based with 1,000,000 PS3's floating around. Of course, there is that pesky issue of 60% of PS3 users not knowing that it plays Blu-Ray disks and HD content DVD's still vastly underperforming compared to regular DVDs.

What we just witnessed was the last great format war. I'd agree that it will be greatly shortlived though. Blu-Ray will never become the dominant format because users will just as quickly jump from DVD to downloadable HD content. BluRay is simply for the early adopters but given on-demand HD is so near on it's heels it will be overtaken within the next 5 years.

I'd lay heavy money that BluRay never overtakes standard DVD in terms of market share before both are overtaken by downloadable HD content.

Blu-Ray is great for those that want HD content now but the movie industry will just as quickly turn it's back on it in favor of downloadable content as they did in turning their back on HD-DVD.

 

[bevo_daddy]

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[Bayerithe]

I dunno, my audio system only has your typical A/V inputs in the back. I'm curious about that myself as I'm picking up a Toshiba A30 this week

 

[TaylorTRoom]

Here's the deal from a HD-DVD owner (since last November). HD DVDs (HD-DVD and Blu-Ray) are a great product. I bought in when the price of the player dropped to where I could buy one without worrying about losing the format war. I'm now sold on the concept, and will go Blu-Ray when it gets cheaper. Sure, it will be great when the HD movies can be downloaded, but I'm not going to wait that long.

The next great step will be when Criterion goes Blu-Ray.

 

[DCLonghorn]

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[jimmyjazz]

What's the current usage split between DVD and pay-per-view? I think hardware will always appeal to a large part of the market.

 

[Hobbes2702]

If you have an HDMI compatible surround sound than it still works as a plug in and go. If not then you will probably have to use it through a couple different components and will lose some power and performance. You may want to just use component cables which will still give you very good picture.

 

[ilsa]

HD VOD looks worse than upscaling a regular DVD right now. Until they figure out better compression techniques I'd much rather have the physical media.