One Year Later
by Pravin on February 19th, 2009 in articles.
A year ago today, on February 19, 2008, Toshiba officially withdrew from the high-def DVD format war. Their announcement was inevitable, and came after many weeks of bad news from various companies like Warner, Netflix, Walmart and Best Buy ending their support for the HD DVD format. Toshiba had spent many, many, hundreds of millions of dollars developing and marketing HD DVD technology, and many partners had put in their share of time and money as well. But in the end, there was just too much negative momentum to fight back.
Toshiba moved on to continue advancing technologies they were already involved with such as flash memory, hard drives, HDTVs, laptops, and their work on the Cell processor. Last year, they came out with a super duper image enhancement technology for standard DVDs, and have more recently demonstrated Cell processor applications for more of that image enhancing for HDTVs and computers. But neither Toshiba or Microsoft have announced any plans for doing anything with Blu-ray.
I’m sure many of you who were deeply involved with format war battles can remember all of those days and weeks very well. The last several months have been characterized by big discounts, such as the current $5 HD DVD titles at Amazon and Fry’s, and Kroegers/Ralph’s stores clearing out more discs at prices even lower than that.
Some of you have gone on to buy a Blu-ray player, or are planning to get one later. Those players are starting to come in at under $200, and there has been some progress in movie titles getting cheaper, but most are still on the pricey side.
Digital downloading of movies is becoming more popular, but it still only represents a tiny fraction of the whole market for movie consumption. For the HD afficionado, it doesn’t help that only a small part of the download selection is high-defintion (and the audio is usually not high-def).
It’s inevitable that Blu-ray stuff will get more affordable and ubiquitous, and that digital downloads will also become more feasible. We can also expect more entertainment activity in the mobile and computing space as phones and laptops acquire more media related features.
We can also be sure that there will always be inventors and companies who keep pushing technology into better and better places. Some of these efforts will result in new format wars, for which there will be new winners and losers. Some of us may end up on the winning side next time, or maybe the time after that. Whether or not we choose a winner, early adopters can at least take some credit for helping make the progress happen which ultimately makes things better for every one.
February 19th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Now at the bottom of this letter it says we HD DVD people may be on the winning side next time. Now lets look at that for a moment. Toshiba, Universal, Microsoft may all be big losers in this, but am I ? No way ! I have known all along that Blu-Ray would win. I am the owner of 2 HD players and around 78 movies. I am getting everything I can on HD for around $5 dollars each. They look and sound just as good as Blu-Ray and I am paying a 6th the price. I also got 10 free movies with each player. To top it off, I received a $50 gift card from Best Buy. I don’t know about you, but I am huge winner in this. I wish HD DVD could have stuck around for new releases and rental reasons, but then I would not be scooping up all these classic movies for peanuts. Thank god I did not buy an HD DVD player when they first came out. I would be pretty mad. I just hope that HD DVD playing capability comes standard on future Blu-ray players. I think Toshiba should have to by law. They owe it to us HD movie owners.
February 19th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
i worked at a television/appliance store and bought the hda1 when it first came out. paid a pretty penny 4 it also oh well i had the money at the time. i eventually bought the 2nd generation lg hybrid ppalyer that play both formats 4 the same price i paid 4 the hddvd player. i just decided whether the format war went on 4 the forcable future there were titles on bluray that i wanted 2 own. since hddvds demise i have found several great titles of films that i like 4 sum great deals. one that stands out is batman begins got it brand new never been opened on ebay for 8 bucks. it goes for 25 to 30 bucks on bluray. i have the player that plays both 4mats and i will continue 2 by hddvds as long as they are availble out there. if what im looking for is only available on bluray then i’ll buy the bluray but if can get the same movie on hddvd for a huge deal then i will go with the red hddvd case. i agree with the gentleman that if toshiba puts out a bluray that it should support hddvd playback.
February 20th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
A year goes fast; the better format lost.
February 21st, 2009 at 4:50 am
I bought my first player about a week or 2 before the Feb 08 announcement for about $100. Now I have 4 players and over 250 discs. I never bought DVDs like this. It took me about 8 years to amass about 100 Of those. Anyway, I bought a lot of great movies on hd-dvd for some great prices… A few I paid a considerable fortune to acquire but that’s a dufferent story all together. So I still haven’t bought a Blu-ray player, and it’s not that I won’t buy one, it’s just that I’m going to wait it out a while longer. I am typically at the head of the curve on most CE buying trends, and in my experience it is expensive to adopt early… And though prices have come down significantly on Blu-ray hardware, software prices are still high in my mind. I didn’t buy an hd-DVD player until it cost $100, so I guess I’ll be waiting a while until blu players can come down to that price point.
K-
February 21st, 2009 at 6:33 am
About a year ago, I bought my second Toshiba HD DVD player (A35) from Amazon for a mere $175, in which it was the lowest price point from Amazon to sell Toshiba’s top of the line HD DVD player. Just a few days after I bought it, the news from Toshiba came out that they throw the white flag. All of a sudden, the price for the A35 went sky rocket. Had I know that the price would’ve gone up, i would’ve purchased two A35. I do have an Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on drive as a spare but I do not have an Xbox 360 console. My plan is to use the Xbox 360 HD DVD drive as my spare/backup in an event the A35 goes south. Only then I will consider getting an Xbox 360. I still keep on buying bargain HD DVD movies from Amazon, Frys, iNetVideo, etc. You cannot beat their sales prices.
February 21st, 2009 at 8:49 am
I too have been reaping many low cost HD-DVD titles, particularly collections lately. In addition to an HD-DVD player (I got one with the get a free Star Trek phaser offer), I also have two PC’s with LG drives that read DVD, HD-DVD, and that blue format….can’t remember what they call it.
I also really enjoyed this site in it’s heyday, and it’s good to sse it is still here with the periodic post and sale announcements.
February 22nd, 2009 at 7:28 am
Yep the smoke is clear but the blu dog aint out of trouble yet. Sony just doesnt get it. Pricing the players and movies out the ass while the other format burns is the worst strategy that any business has ever run. I say this as an hd a2 owner and have seen that there is no difference in identical blu and hddvd except for the crappy and artificial looking cgi enhancements that are just strange looking because they try to look more real than reality. Hddvds are really high quality and im glad to see titles at 1/6 the price of identical blu rays.
Lately i have noticed some matching blu titles going for like 15 to 20 bucks. For me this is too little too late. Im probably gonna skip blu until the disks are coming in at 19 bucks for new releases just like dvds are now. Sorry sony but i would rather own a dead format than one that is determined to kill my back pocket.
February 23rd, 2009 at 3:14 am
This is very simply summed up. HD-DVD will not come back, it is pointless now. Blue-ray is a huge misconception. What really happend with this format war was very simple.
Microsoft comes out with xbox 360, Sony craps their pants.
In an effort to compete with Microsoft, Sony releases Blue ray, exclusive to Playstation 3. In a sceem to mislead people that better games would come out for PS3, since the discs could hold more Data. Well this proved to be crap since time has passed and the only way games are being enhanced is through downloadable content, which microsoft is 10 steps ahead of sony still.
Another thing IMO that played a role was tech-ignorant people who didn’t understand what was different. Example………Hmm I have an HD TV and I can play my DVD’s on it……….so that’s HD dvd ? right?
People like the color BLUE……..FACT
Sony is a hugh company that also makes Movies, they have a leg up on microsoft there.
Keeping in mind microsoft is in partnership with Toshiba, before the HD DVD drives, so they want to try and get ahead of sony once again by realeasing the add on HD player, which timing was good because I bought one. But it failed anyway.
The reason Blueray came out on top is because of sony’s leg up in the Film industry. As long as Microsoft/Toshiba were stuck with a restricted list of movies, they could never succeed.
I give no credit to sony for coming out on top, I bought a PS3 and it sucked. I’ve always had an XBOX, and always been happy with it. I figured adding the PS3 to my home wouldn’t hurt. I had it for about 3 months.
IMO regular Dvd’s look just as good as the HD counterparts. Both Blueray and HD-DVD have no real benefit other than the extra features, which also IMO is just a bunch of trash that was lying around and put on a take home version of the movie to make it worth buying. btw, I have a 65″ rear projection dlp, and a 3K surround setup to please my A/V needs. I get lot’s of joy out of new technology especially Home entertainment.
At any rate, the future is in digital content anyway, downloadable rentals, and now many places have download to own features, it’s really not worth spending money on any of it, Blueray HD DVD whatever. Once again IMO the newer Release standard DVD’s are on Par with the High Def Discs, so save your money for the next best Television craze, and by then I guarantee disc’s will be obsolete.
February 23rd, 2009 at 5:58 am
In reading the “just browsing” comments a second time, I do agree with some of those points.
Microsoft’s “early” release of the 360 (consoles usually come out about every five years, but the 360 came out a year earlier) gave the 360 a whole extra year to establish a user base, and for developers to get better at making its games. Though the PS3 has a lot more features built-in (the feature count has dwindled to make cheaper versions of the console), the total worldwide installed base favors the 360 by about 8 million (source: http://vgchartz.com/). Microsoft did not wait for HD DVD to be launched, and released the 360 many months before Toshiba released the first HD DVD player. So, yes, the 360 did lead to problems for Sony.
And we know from a Forbe’s article last year that Sony’s presence in the film industry did play a large role in keeping some of the smaller studios on the Blu team. If you recall, the proposition was something along the lines of, “how many movies will you be making with Microsoft next year, and how many will you be making with us?” In the end, some of these studios had to go with their homeys. Beyond that, Sony has plenty of its own movies to put out for any new format they ever come up with.
In the same way, Microsoft is way ahead of Sony in the online content field, and it’s much cheaper for them to develop (and control) how that works, than for them to have become a major force in consumer electronics, which Sony already is. Pushing digital downloads of all sorts, is a natural fit for Microsoft.
I do not agree that Blu-ray and HD DVD are just as good as DVD on my HDTV, however. I don’t have an expensive home theater setup at home, and even on that, I can clearly see how much better the HD content is. My HD DVD player does a good job of upscaling DVDs, but the native HD versions of those titles are still sharper looking.
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:05 am
What I hated was Michael Bay ”PARAMOUNT WAS BRIBED BY TOSHIBA AND MICROSOFT HD DVD SUXXX!!!” Oh wait, Sony owns Columbia Tristar and MGM, but Bay has no beef with that. Jackass.
February 26th, 2009 at 8:42 pm
OT:
Pravin,
I just wanted to say thank you for the continued converage for what sadly, history has chosen to make a novelty.
I for one am slowly using the clearance prices to attain every HD-DVD worth having… or maybe just all of them
Either way, I know there’s lurkers out there who feel the same but fail to express their appreciation.
Thank you and please keep updating!
March 3rd, 2009 at 10:47 am
I Love that I can get 20 HD DVD’s for 75 bucks shipped to my door. Lets see when BlueRay Discs come down to that level.
March 3rd, 2009 at 12:22 pm
re Kevin: Blu ray won’t come down to that level until they are overtaken by a different format and stop being produced. I mean, we all love to get HD at great prices but lets be realistic, the only reason HD DVD is so cheap is because they’re not longer being produced (besides a few titles supposedly being released in the UK). Most new SDVD’s aren’t even as cheap as we’re getting HDDVD right now. I can’t wait to get the 5 HDDVD’s I just ordered from Traderbora@Amazon either, but I’m not going to hold it against the manufacturers of Blu Ray for not costing 5 bucks a piece. That’s just not realistic.
March 7th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
hey just posting letting everyone know about the deals at inetvideo.com, they have hddvds as low as 1.99 and others at 3-4.99 really good titles
March 7th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
I have owned a blu-ray player since May of last year,and like it very much,but I’m certainly not a blu “snob”.
So,I just bought a used A1 player from a seller on ebay for S75.99 including shipping,and four HD DVDs used from Amazon Marketplace for about $28 shipped.Three of them are titles that aren’t available on blu yet,and one (Transformers) I got for the low price of about $4.00 with shipping….that title on blu-ray still runs about $18 or $19 at Amazon and about $24.99 at Best Buy!
So,I am very happy to declare myself purple,and will continue to look for HD DVD bargains every chance I get!
Oh,and to “Just Browsing”,while it is true most people like the color blue,I have to say I much prefer the red color of the HD DVD cases!
March 24th, 2009 at 11:52 pm
To the rest of you folks championing DLC as the “thing of the future” read this: DRM will be the biggest obstacle. If you think that DRM is tight enough now, it will definitely tighten more as DLC becomes more popular due to people trying “reverse-engineering” the codes or other crazy things for piracy purposes. What that means to you regular consumers? Should your hard drive fail on you, please do not cry about spooning another $18 downloaded version of a hi-def movie because you can’t re-download it for free. Heavens forbid if your hard drive contained an entire collection of $4000 worth of movies goes kaput because that would be another…$4000 out of your pocket!!
March 25th, 2009 at 6:09 am
Macalatus – Another issue with downloads is that the files may not play on a future device or another device than the one they were downloaded for.
March 25th, 2009 at 9:26 am
Whenever you download something on XBL, you have it downloaded. Meaning if you switched hard drives and recovered your gamertag you’d be able to download that same media you bought for free since it registers your account. So the idea of losing money if your hard drive fries is ridiculous. I am much more worried about Blu-ray’s quality control; which as of now is not so good and gives me no incentive to buy into a format that can barely stand on its own legs.
March 25th, 2009 at 9:36 am
Yes, Dan, I should have pointed out that if your provider maintains a record of what you’ve ever purchased, then there’s a good chance that you can just download that material again and it’s not lost forever.
I wonder if our local drives may only need to store the content that we are actively viewing, and only if there’s space will we need to store a larger local library. For everything else, we might just be able to redownload a title we have paid for when we need it again, or explicitly want to download it.
The one drawback is that you may be tied to the service and/or device. Hopefully, upgrading to a new device or computer does not hose you.
March 30th, 2009 at 12:01 am
A late adopter to everything HD-DVD … “and loving it”. Picky about my movies but got everything I wanted (and then some) in hi-def, for DVD-bargain-club prices. Built-in up-conversion handles all the rest thank you very much. If HD-DVD wasn’t clobbered by back-room pay-off dealings, I wouldn’t be here.
Blu-Ray? Just another Laserdisc. It probably will putter along as Laserdisc did. “Hi-Def” was never that really that big step up as, say, DVD was to VHS. Symmetry.
DLC? Capture cards will solve that problem. Media is the message. Storage is transparent. Ah-Oom!
March 31st, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Pravin, if I were to write an article about the format war, would you be willing to post it on your blog?
> I would strongly consider it. Come up with something and I’ll see if there’s any editing help I can provide and we’ll put it up.
April 3rd, 2009 at 10:18 am
Inetvideo with yet another few HD DVDs in, If you don’t have what they’re depleting stock offers, nows the time!
(Harsh shipping charge of 10.46, slightly bufferred by automatic 15% discount when checking out.)
Plus the more you get the less that shipping is a percentage of the cost.
Good hunting…
http://www.inetvideo.com
April 3rd, 2009 at 7:09 pm
one thing about the inetvideo sale. I dont know if this is true for all copies, but i purchased a copy of Letters From Iwo Jima a few weeks ago, the hd version, not the hd/standard combo, and when I received it, it came in the HD only packaging, but upon opening it, it included a combo version disk. not sure if this means much to anyone, but it might be worth taking the gamble and saving a few bucks.
September 7th, 2009 at 7:03 pm
It’s too bad the better format lost. It’s also too bad Sony bribed many companies to stick with Blu-Ray exclusively. They banked on the PS3 and won but at a great loss. Now we see Hi Def Downloads starting to trickle in which will most likely be the winner in the end.