The headline has a lot of consumer confusing/fooling potential.

I wouldn’t consider something or someone to have won the race before it really happened.

It’s like the last soccer world championship.
The French already considered theirself as winners shortly before they lost against Italy.

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Hi Markus,

Hey, it’s a blog, an opinion – Not a concession statement by Toshiba and the HD-DVD group. That is probably 5 to 10 years off, if history repeats itself.

And in the article, I do allow for the slim possibility that HD-DVD could find a way to get back in the game, especially since the number of households with either format, is still relatively small.

But, let me tackle it another way. If I were in the market for a hi def player, I’d sure hope some people would provide some good, useful advice on the situation, not the usual, “no winner yet”, no advice that seems to be the corporate media reaction post CES.

The corporate media gets headlines with the format war, that’s good for media biz. Once the “war is over” then the media moves on to the next crisis or controversial non-crisis, or invents one. We all love the press in general, how they can milk a story to death, re-birth it, and repeat the process, for what seems like forever. (can you say Britney, Paris, OJ, etc.)

Sony launched the Betamax in 1975 (I sold them back then), and the first VHS was from JVC I believe, a year later. From the standpoint of consumers, the “war” was over somewhere around 1980 – 1981. By 1980, in the US market, VHS had 70+% market share (source, wikipedia) of the installed base, and that was growing rapidly.

That number is roughly similar to Blu-ray’s advantage today. Had the Sony name not been behind Betamax, it probably would have been dead within a year or two. Now Beta/VHS was a different era, and people for the most part didn’t buy pre-recorded movies – often $99 back then (by todays dollar’s, that would be about $700 for the Lord of the Rings 3 movie set), but recorded movies off of TV and cable. Or, if you wanted a movie, you would rent it, buying them was too expensive for most.

My point being, however, Sony continued to make Betamax players for many years, I think through 1986 or 1987. In 1988 they finally stopped making consumer Betamax units, and started producing VHS.

I have no doubt that HD-DVD players will be around for years to come, but it look like, right now, that for most consumers, the “war” is over.

And the important thing is, millions have been sitting on the fence, waiting for a winner, and/or for prices to fall. Well we aren’t yet down to $69 players, but then DVD players were in most homes by the time prices for the least expensive players were finally getting down under $100. And today, with sales with “free, multiple movies”, have brought many the opportunity to buy a blue ray player down around $100 – $150 after you net out the value of the movies.

If a Blu-ray player is within someone’s budget, I’m simply saying, stop worrying about Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD, looks like Blu-ray has won, although it’s never over “until the fat lady sings”. (Is that now politically incorrect to use?).

And I hate the thought of millions of people not enjoying Hi-def movies, because of some mysterious “war”, and the media (overall) playing it up, and confusing them. Most consumers don’t want to know why one won and the other lost, or the technical details, or which is better. They just want to know which is the smarter buy, considering all the hype.

And that’s my 2 cents – spend it as you will -art

Art wrote:
To all you projector owners who haven’t picked up a hi-def player – what are you waiting for now?

Not so fast Art.

It took me a while to make my decision to get off the fence. I needed to select the two major components in my new system, the projector and the DVD player. After the new Samsung BD-UP5000 was available it became the player of choice since it solved the format war problem and the reviews were good. After your review of the new Epson 1080UB it became the projector of choice. I was ready to order the system and decided to learn more about long HDMI cables. During this research I found out that there is some confusion regarding the new HDMI 1.3 type cables and then the big mess regarding the BD profiles. I am a retired HW and SW engineer and spent over 40 years in this business. During my entire career I was a witness to the common practice of the electronic businesses to ship to market half-baked solutions. The PC industry is notorious for this practice. The Blu-ray manufacturers are the latest example. In order to win the format war they shipped BD players they knew will not play next generation DVDs. In the owner manual of the current Sony BD players it states that these units may not play future DVDs thanks to the new future BD profiles. Some of the current and older units will not be able to be upgraded due to the lack of HW and Internet connection. The only known unit that is current and will be so in the future is the Sony PS3.
So now I am back on the fence learning some more about the future BD profiles and the PS3.
I know that Oppo was your choice of player for SD. What do you use for BD?
I am writing to you so you can pass this information to other readers to educate them about some potential problems before they plunk $$$$ into some half-baked and obsolete technology.
Finally I want to congratulate you on a great job you are doing. Your passion and enthusiasm comes through loud and clear in your writing. I feel lucky to have met you in person at CES a few years ago.

Keep the great work going.

IK

Read this article
http://www.betanews.com/article/Bluray_Early_adopters_knew_what_they_were_getting_into/1199841379

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Greetings IK,

Sorry, thought I had moderated your comment and responded, but apparently not, so I’m 3 weeks late.

Yes, there are some issues with future compatibility. However, from where I sit, and I’m not an expert (believe me) on DVD players, it seems like most of the future blu-ray versions offer extra features that are primarily used for “extras”, rather than affect watching the movies themselves. If that’s the case, then there is some loss of value, but the show does go on, even if some special items and effects in the bonus areas aren’t fully functional or workable.

Assuming the movies will run, I don’t see the future blu-ray versions, including 2.0 to be a big problem for those buying today. Please consider:

Today, lower cost blu-ray players net out (when you have a good deal), to $100 – $200 for the less expensive players. (As we have all been told, the PS3 is supposed to be fully upgradable).

Now consider, by the time we get 2.0, it may be a year and a half or two. By that time, low cost players will, of course be under $100, and I expect they will all have upgradability. And of course for all of us who have or are getting players now, we’ll be building up our movie inventory of blu-ray titles. AND that means in a year or two with the lower prices, we’ll be replacing our old SD-DVD players with Blu-ray players in our other rooms. Don’t know about you, but in my house, our family of three has five displays with attached sd-dvd or blu-ray players. I imagine in 2 years those will all be Blu-ray players.

So, if your first blu-ray player can’t do some of the newer features, everyone, upon buying more players, will relegate the first one to a less used display.

And, this is nothing new. The original Betamax players were one hour max. The original VHS decks were two hours max. Entertainment hardware is just too complex, these days to have a fixed unchanging standard for a really long time. Consider computers: How many versions of windows have their been since 1992? at least 7 significantly different Windows come to mind without thinking hard. Cell phones evolve too, you can’t use most 5 year old phones on most systems anymore. I’d rather have evolving standards, than get stuck in a rut for a really long time. DVD’s – 12 years? Our TV standard – 70+ years. Two years or so from now, all of us with cablemodems will need new routers to handle the 10x increase in speed.

Cie La Vie! -art

I still don’t understand why everybody seem worried about the price of blu-ray players, when the real issue is the price of blu-ray dvd. Who cares if the player cost you 100 or 150 $, as long as you are going to spend $30 or $40 on each disc?

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While I basically agree with you, the issue is simply this: A $300 outlay is more than many people will be willing to pay. Those with more restrictive budgets will simply wait until the player itself is more affordable. One might look at it this way – if one has a budget of $500 for content, and you have to pay $299 for a player (and remember, everyone already has a DVD player), then they can only afford perhaps 6-10 movies over the first year. (Lets assume $25 a disc, so 8 discs).

However if one year from now the price of a player is only $99, then by waiting, even without a price drop in the content, then, by waiting, that same person can afford the blu-ray player and 16 movies instead of 8.

Blu-ray players are like most consumer electronics, in that once you get the price of the hardware below a certain point, the number of people who will buy it, increases dramatically.

Therefore, the world really does need a $99 or $149 player, to really get a lot more homes equipped with blu-ray.