another blow to sony

For those that cba to click the link:

Universal Studios boss deals Blu-ray death blow
By Stan Beer
Sunday, 17 September 2006

In what could be a telling moment in the high definition format war, a high level executive from a major movie studio has publicly come out in favour of the HD DVD format, developed by Toshiba and backed by Microsoft.

Comments supporting HD DVD last week by Craig Kornblau, president of Universal Studios Home Entertainment, at the electronics design show CEDIA EXPO 2006, have dealt a serious a blow to the Blue-ray camp, led by Sony.

“The reviews are in and HD DVD is hands down the leader in picture quality, audio experiences and interactive capabilities that have never been seen before,” said Kornblau.

“Look at the blogs, look at the reviews by the early adopters and even look at the mainstream media – HD DVD has maintained its first-to-market advantage and delivered on the promises of providing the best high definition image and sound quality at the best value for consumers today. Take today’s announcement of new players from Toshiba, new PC hardware from Niveus and new titles like ‘The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift,’ and add the hardware and movies that are coming this Fall and you can see why HD DVD is poised for a strong holiday.”

According to the the North American HD DVD Promotion Group, with more than 60 of the latest titles available from major studios, HD DVD offers the most titles of any high definition format, with nearly 150 titles expected by the end of 2006.

Originally, nearly all the major studios lined up behind the Blu-ray format.

However, HD DVD now has the backing of Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Warner Home Video, Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment, HBO, New Line Home Entertainment and The Weinstein Company.

Meanwhile, the higher priced Blu-ray format, which was later to market, received a serious set-back two weeks ago. Sony announced that the production of its PlayStation 3 games console, which will offer a way for consumers to get a lower priced Blu-ray player, has been delayed by four months.
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HD-DVD certainly is doing on the Movies front it seems, though it sounds rather marginal.

I wouldn't look too much into those comments or it being a massive blow to Blu-Ray, as Universal are on the HD-DVD camp already. If Universal were on Blu-Ray and decided to jump ship, then it would have been a big deal.
 
from what ive read the blue ray movies were just mpeg2 but some new ones using the VC1??? (something like that) compression was equal in picture quality to HD-DVD
 
For some reason Sony is still encouraging the use of mpeg-2, which would probably be fine if only used on 50GB discs. The first Blu-ray titles to use the better VC1 codec are being released in November, with many more from 2007 onwards. At the moment HD-DVD has the upper hand in both quality and cost, but time will tell which of the formats (if any) will 'win'.
 
As said the quality issue is because the blu-ray disks are using mpeg2 and are only single layer, if they were using vc1 and dual layer as they will be soon then the blu-ray movies will be better quality because they have a higher bit-rate.
 
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Energize said:
As said the quality issue is because the blu-ray disks are using mpeg2 and are only single layer, if they were using vc1 and dual layer as they will be soon then the blu-ray movies will be better quality because they have a higher bit-rate.
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HD-DVD can do VC1 also can't it? I guess if the disc makers were to go all out on just video quality, Blu-Ray would win because it'll have that extra bit of space available, or Blu-Ray could match it then slap on lots more extra content with all the extra space available.

I'm personally waiting to see what they're like on a TV in front of me, as reading all this drivel arguing about the stuff without ever actually seeing either of the formats in front of me is kind of silly. It's all tech spec wars, and I guess most people havn't even seen HD-DVDs yet apart from those with the money.
 
Well if the new triple layer DVD + HD-DVD on one disc gets approved soon and becomes the norm for DVD releases, even if each movie is £2 more then it would sway a lot of customers to then buy a HD-DVD player due to the fact they already own lots of content for it.

It's a shame Blu ray cannot offer something like this, it does have higher capacity but that is usless unless they put it to good use and improve the PQ so it is better than HD-DVD, not 'as good as'.

I'll wait and see, but I really will be surprised if the cheaper of the two does not succeed.
 
NokkonWud said:
Universal as a studio is hugely important, there aren't many that are equally important.
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Sony Motion Pictures are more important IIRC ;)

Universal is the only major player that is only going to release on HD-DVD, and i see them changing that policy to being both soon.

As for the cost i am confused as on a website which may be banned to talk about but its the USA branch of a certain store they dont like on here ;) the Blu-Ray movies are actually cheaper, which surprised me somewhat, considering on another american site the HD-DVD where cheaper.
I think there will end up being kick backs etc to distributers from both camps tbh to reduce prices.
Sony Motion Pictures will reduce the price of there movies by a few bucks if they have any sense, although given Sony's track record at the moment, Sony Pictures will be the most expensive with the least features lol
 
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Generally Blu-ray disks are currently (from what i've seen) a few dollars more at retail for "new" releases, and a couple of dollars more for older films that have been released on the format than HD films of a similar nature (new titles/older ones released on the new format).

That's based on a fairly quick look at one of my main DVD suppliers, so the price difference may not be huge but the HD/DVD hybrids could make a lot of difference in the end - I think they've already been selling them in Japan without any problems for a few months (at least one distributor if memory serves).
 
Universal have always been on the HD-DVD side, of course they are going to say the tech that they are using is better. This is kind of like Sony coming out and saying blu-ray is better.

At the moment it’s far too early to call a winner, there is still a lot of doubt that either will take off with movie downloading starting to go mainstream.
 
If Sony want to win all they need to do is sell the PS3 for £99. The returns on being the next format and major gaming console make it the smart thing to do.
 
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