Hey All,

Warner Brothers announced that they are going Blu Ray exclusive, which is being seen as a big blow to the HD-DVD camp.

Link to more info

Thoughts??

Since I'm Blu Ray only (PS3 owner), this is good news for me.

They by no means have a monopoly in distribution, so I think you'll still see others offer HD-DVD.

In other news - Sonys 1st Qtr Profits are down by $250 million today - after someone wrote a huge check to Warner.

Did they really, or are you joking around? I know HD-DVD bribed one of the production companies with a $150,000,000 check so it wouldn't be surprising if it went both ways.

Works for me. Now if friggin' Universal would hurry up and switch over, I'd be good to go...

I'm joking. They would never announce it - but I'm sure it happened. Warner wouldn't just make a decision like that without some kind of financial incentive. If they did - they're dumb!

Rumor is that Apple is going to put Blu-Ray burners into the Macs (and therefore, support Blu-Ray in DVD Studio Pro and, I assume, iDVD).

They've held off putting any HD drives in them so far. We'll see in about 2 weeks.

Nice - yet another ploy by Apple to make an overpriced computer even more expensive.

:rolleyes:

When you can edit video on a PC as well and as easily as on a Mac, come back with that statement.

Oh...and as cheaply.

Premiere is a joke compared to FCP. The only program worth anything on a PC is Avid. And it's more expensive than FCP.

Totally agree. But it was probably at least two, three or four times that amount of dough ($250 mill). Think of the future sales secured by such a move.

Just give the PS3 another year and watch the sales go through the roof. Already kicking myself for buying one before the price went down...d'oh!

Blu-ray is going to win out and everyone knows this, why would Warners waste their time with a dead format?

I'm glad I still haven't had the need to commit to either. Upcoverting my DVD's is looking great as well as my free (for a year) HD pay channels.

Then again, didn't something like this happen last year and then a month later something else happened to swing it back the other way again? Oh well, I don't need to be involved in any of this yet.

PS3 owners probably all just got boners at the same time today though. If this does finally seal the deal, they can finally somewhat justify paying so much.

Mike704 - You're a retard. (Had to get that in)

I don't believe PS3 ownership alone will have any bearing on Blu Ray winning the war. If Sony wanted to drive a fatal nail into the HD coffin they need to drop the price of players like HD already have.

Right now HD-DVD is the much more affordable format, with players for $99. Yes Warner hopping on the Blu Ray bandwagon is a setback for HD, but by no means is it an end to the war.

NismoXse02 - I did the same as you. I owned a HD-DVD player for 1 day, but it didn't play my British Region 2 DVDs and there was no way to hack it to do so. So I took it back and went with a high end Oppo up converting DVD player and I'm Very impressed with the image quality on my 42". When I upgrade to 60" soon tho - we'll see how well it does on the bigger screen.

I hope someone wins soon. I just bought a HD TV and will not buy a DVD player until one format is set on.

I'm look at getting an unconverting DVD player. What's a good model to look at for a good price?

Where? Wal-Mart did that and others matched it. But they aren't that cheap anymore.

Good luck finding one under $200.

(Of course, that's still cheaper than the Blu-Ray players.)

http://www.oppodigital.com/dv981hd/dv981hd_index.html

or

http://www.oppodigital.com/dv980h/default.asp (Bit cheaper)

Weird! My local Costco this morning still had the Toshiba HD-DVD player for $99. Maybe I should snap a few up and Ebay em then if the prices have gone up everywhere else.

Rinky no need to be a douchebag...read a fucking newspaper or magazine and they all say that HDDVD lost the battle a while ago.

You obviously have no fucking clue. Do you believe everything you read in the newspaper?

Walmart had some el-cheepo Magnavox 1080P Up-converting DVD players with the HDMI output for $39.95 right before Christmas and I picked one up (along with a HDMI cable from monoprice.com for 9 bucks). I've played a quite a few movies on it so far and I am quite impressed with the quality of the picture. In fact the difference between this cheepo and my three year old top of the line Sony DVD player (with progressive scan) on my 1080P 46" Samsung is staggering. The up-converting really does make a difference.

The best quality films (least pixilation, errors, best color depth, and contrast) I've watched so far on the up-converting DVD player is Starship Troopers (for some reason it just looks fantastic), Spiderman II, the Matrix Reloaded, the Ring Trilogy and Star Wars Ep. II and III look great as well.

As a supporter of both formats, I have read many articles about the format war. I have no idea what articles you are referring to, but most I have read did not pick a winner. Most unbiased articles point to issues with both formats and advised there was no clear winner up to that point.

Either way - while BD is beating HD-DVD, both these formats combined are only about 1% of DVD sales. And this is after over a year on the market.

I also recently got an hdtv. I am just going to wait for now to see which format gains more strength. Can get the hd dvd player for my xbox pretty cheap but don't want it to be paperweight material.

I certainly wouldn't purchase a hd dvd player at this point. All signs point to BD as the winning format. The studios supporting BD account for 70% of the home video market.

Blu ray exclusive studios -

Disney
Sony Pictures
20th Century Fox
MGM
Lionsgate
Warner Brothers
New Line Cinema
Starz/Anchorbay

Yes, but BD does have it's biggest negative going for it still...

It's a Sony developed standard

True - but for some reason, A LOT of people love Sony.