Home audio & video forum: Poll: In your opinion, do you think HD DVD has a chance?

The end of analog TV broadcasts is indeed nearing; it is about a year away now. But the broadcasters are NOT ("N" "O" "T" !!!) required to broadcast High Definition. The requirement is that they broadcast a digital signal and abandon the analog bands which will be used for other services.

The choice of whether to provide "high definition" content in the digital broadcast is to be made by the broadcasters and content providers.

There are consortia which deal with these standards; one is known as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and their standards are being used right now by me to transmit this message to you as it was being used by you to post your message to which I am responding.

Relax and let the marketplace do its work. You have not been materially affected by the Beta-VHS competition. In fact, if there had been ONLY Beta-Max, you would probably still be watching tapes on a player that cost over a half a grand! SONY is like that!

Competition brought us affordable tape media, affordable optical media, and it will bring us affordable media that we can hardly imagine.

Breathe deeply; slow your heart rate; relax; wait just a little longer now!

Pax

All I can see is a YUPPIE who likes his toys. There is a planet called the BIG PICTURE! Which it seems u locked out of. Blu-Ray may be a better format but the story is hard 2 swallow, the background is dark and we will fight!

I would not, will not buy a sony product. I used to love their products, nice sound at a reasonable price. Until I bought a mini disk digital recorder that swore it recorded in MP3 (this was very early in MP3 life). As it turned out it turned MP3's into their proprietary Atrac format. As well, the sonic software was terrible. I've been using computers since before there were Mac's and PC's, I kept trying to make it work. Pretty soon I couldn't return the machine. I haven't bought sony since. When you buy a sony Laptop or other sony computer it doesn't have ripping software on it (or didn't, I got out of the biz about 18 months ago), and my fear was always that it might not run any ripping software even if purchased separately.

This is also a big reason I won't buy Ipods, Itunes takes over ownership of your music. You can't load music from two different computers ( I use at least 4). I was a very early Mac user and loved them, but Apple has made too many deals with the devil, or many devils for my taste. I want to own my music and I don't want it erased If I choose to load music from another computer.

Folks, when you buy, you are voting with your dollars. US consumers have become sheep. They are led around by the nose, the marketing hype. When you buy, do some research, find out about the product, find out if you can use it the way you want. Would you buy a car that only allowed you to use Exxon gas? (Don't get me started on the oil industry)

Sony didn't make it when they put a stranglehold on video recording using betamax tape. Don't buy sony products, don't buy blu ray disks, don't buy blu ray players. Or we may end up in a sony video world, they will own and make the movies, set the price of tickets, set the price of disks, and set the price of equipment. Make sony bite the bullet, don't buy blu ray.
Rick

I agree with you on this, if we let Sony win this battle, we will be under their thumb which is what they want. I can see high prices for Blu-Ray disk, and players if they knock out HD-DVD. I have never liked Sony, to me their products are high price, and no better than other brands that are much cheaper. They are the Japanese Company who's CEO said that American workers were lazy and that we were a lazy country. From that day, I vowed to never own any Sony equipment. I bought a XBOX because it was just better than the PS2, but if it were not, I still would have purchased it. The XBOX 360 is better than the PS3, it has outsold the PS3, but both have not sold as well as the Wii. I read here on Cnet that in the past week the Blu Ray has taken 90% of the market, but what they fail to tell you is that most people have not purchased either one, and the only reason that the Blu ray has that distinction is the sales of the PS3 which has a blu ray player built in. We are not talking millions of units here, only in the mere thousands and that over the whole country is nothing. They assume that if the major movie companies like Warner says they are on the blu ray band wagon then Blu ray will win, but again, right now blu ray is not selling very well and most people are simply buying the movies in regular DVD format. I asked a sales person at Circuit City and he told me they are not selling hardly any blu ray, and in fact was selling more HD-DVD simply because the players are much cheaper, but most sales are still regular DVD. Even if a larger percentage of movie companies go blu ray, people do not buy movies by who the movie company is, they buy it for the movies they like and if they like a movie that only comes in HD-DVD, and maybe one in BLU ray, they will purchase the DVD version because they are not going to buy two players. I always said the way around this is make a player that plays both then both can survive. If that happens, and HD-DVD disks are much cheaper to make, guess what will happen, eventually movie companies will start making movies in both formats and see which sells, even if they are the same price, if it is even, then they will go with HD-DVD simply because they will save money on the cheaper format except of course movie companies owned by sony. I say just make a player that reads both and let both be on the market. I bet eventually there will be more HD-DVD disks eventually from the companies that are not owned by Sony and that is the way to beat sony.

My first VCR was Beta, I thought 8-track was better than cassette. I have come to the point where I voted the way I now feel which is I really REALLY don't give a crap!

I agree, its the moral of the story, lets hope the executive staff see these types of forums, hope they catch a wake up very soon.

People are getting sick of following a crowd like sheep, I think like AMD and LINUX I expect to find HD on a major comeback. The underdog will always come up, its a modern fact. I think its all started with the 'BIG software company', I expect HD to pull up their socks and get ready 4 a fight. Ask the public for support by advertising the warrior underdog!

HD- DVD will only survive ONLY as long as it can hold onto exclusive top movie titles. If Parmount and Universal go neutral or side with Blu Ray then it's all over, but the singing.

Lol, thats true however its the use of blue and brown, all I can say is I can see you wearing blue to a Safari, bright blue at that. Who knows maybe the animals will find u attractive.

If the hardware manufactures can develope a cheap dual mode player that can accomadate the two different DVDs then HD-DVD may survive a longer life span. If the hardware manufactures do not develope a cheap dual mode player then HD-DVD will head towards extinction sooner rather than later. I believe BlueRay won this round.

In terms of having a storage media to store all of the new HD movies, I personally do not find that practical. I store lots of DVDs movies here in my house and with HD content having a very large data files you will need a fairly large harddrive or other storage device that can store lots of HD movies. Its sounds expensive. I like the idea of pulling a disk of my rack and viewing it in my player. Trying to turn HD movies into a IPOD like format may not be as practical for movies as with music. IMHO

Only if the maufacturers of the HD DVD players can smuggle a VHS tape into the cage match, & use it as a weapon later on - (think folding chair).

If that tactic doesn't work - then I'm afraid HD DVD is down for the count.

To give Sony the license to dictate is a mistake, People think hey the play-station is ultra cool and it beats anything. Yeah right, I'd like to add that my PC is much better than any play-station and besides a play-station doesn't have a Tera-byte hard drive. Its people are lead to think that smaller is better. The mindset is so obvious that u see that in the women of today and the Chinese women of yesterday. Smaller is not necessarily better. Blu-Ray may have the upper hand but the players are the key and so far HD has managed to clinch the hardware title. The fact remains that Nokia is better than Sony and HD is better than Blu-Ray in terms of user friendliness.

I, personally, do not buy or rent movies, so this battle does not really affect me. A big question in my mind would be why Warner Bros. decided to drop HD. Was this decision driven by some kind of under counter agreement with the blu-ray patent holder or was it strictly a supply and demand situation where the buying public was overwhelmingly demanding blu-ray? If it was the former, then the buying public has an obligation to themselves to, in effect, boycott Warner and force them to reverse their decision. If, on the other hand, the overwhelming majority of buyers demand blu-ray over HD, then it was a responsible business decision and one would expect others to follow suit soon. Personally, I don't like the name "blu-ray", and for that reason would like to see it die. I also don't like the name "Google" either; and do not use it and would like to see it die. I think a lot of these dot com companies need to put a whole lot more thought into the names they place on their products; but that is a different thread.

no it's a dead body lppking for a grave. It's a repeat of the vhs/beta format war. It had nothing to do with what was better, but who marketed smarter. By the way, Beta 20 years ago was a better machine than VHS today.

Back then it was still the space race, now its the money race, things have changed. Lets use a good angle, beta and vhs was the space race, Blue ray and HD is the money race, old way of thinking = old war methods = space race, new war methods = money race, Old war = tanks and soldiers, New war = nuclear and Bio. What fuels war? Money? What fueled this war of formats, Money? Its a case of the BIG get bigger and rich get richer cause they win wars with money. At the end of the day we pay towards corporations cause they want us 2, even make us 2. At the end of the day its who thinks for themselves that will be happy with what they buy.