Blu-ray to buyers: Be smart, pay more

(Credit: codyl.com)

The format war between HD DVD and Blu-ray can cause some heated arguments from fan boys on both sides, but I think all fans of high-definition discs will get a kick out of this story. In an article by Pocket-lint, not only did Sony executive Don Eklund invite Toshiba and Microsoft to join the Blu-ray camp (ha-ha), but Vice President Rich Marty dropped this gem of a quote:

"The DVD format was good, but profitability only lasted for a couple of years before there was no money to be had in the hardware market," said Marty. "We believe consumers are smart enough to realise the benefits and pay the extra accordingly."

Note to Sony: consumers don't care that DVDs aren't profitable for hardware makers, as demonstrated by DVD being one of the biggest success stories in consumer electronics history. And if being smart is paying more, then those who shelled out $600 for an iPhone nine weeks ago, only to see it drop to $400 today, must feel like geniuses. One more quote from the Pocket-lint article:

And as for how consumers are supposed to get around the Dreamworks and Paramount shift to HD DVD? "Buy it on DVD," Marty suggested--before quickly adding that Blu-ray players have upscaling features so you can still get the most out of the picture quality.

That quote says a lot, and it's not good news for Blu-ray. As much as HD DVD and Blu-ray go back and forth, the biggest threat to both high-def formats is standard DVD, where you can get any movie you want, at a cheap price, that plays on a cheap player. HD DVD (and Blu-ray) may be the look and sound of perfect, but for most people, DVD is the look and sound of good enough.

Sources: Pocket-lint via SirDVD via AVS Forum

[MickBurke]

Note to dopes who write for Crave...

Um, hardware manufacturers are in the market of making products that are better so they can make money. Does a 84 K Car cost the same as a Corvette?!?!? We know you're a 'pupet for the white man' and all, but if your boy is such a winner, jsut let him fight on his own merits, not try to laugh at the fact that sony thinks people will pay more for HD than they will for SD.

[Canizorro]

Trying to piece your comment together.

The writer was pointing out that the sony exec was wrong in saying that the consumer cares about what the manufacturer cares about. They don't. Also, hardware manufacturers are in the business to making money first, which the end result is having to make a better product. It is laughable to think consumers will pay more than twice the amount of current DVD players and almost twice the amount for the media to play on these players. Early adopters and tech people sure, but not the average consumer.

[epitone]

Dear Sony dude:

I will happily shell out several hundred dollars for one of your beautiful Blu-Ray players once I can go to the store and buy (or rent) HD movies from ALL the major studios to play on it. Until then, I can DVR all the HBO and Showtime HD flicks I want for a relatively small monthly fee.

[toddnothingclever]

Sony's Arrogance

Sony has made good products for years and it?s given them big heads. They are so out of touch that they are trying to sell a high def player that?s twice the price of the competing format hd-dvd. Sony is always greedily trying to push their own proprietary formats that only end up hurting the consumer. The only smart thing they did to support the format was put blu-ray into the ps3, otherwise blu-ray would be gone by now.

[natejohnstone]

Cost is what matters

Which format/player is better is irrelevant to 98% of consumers. All that matters is price. That's why people haven't made the jump to HD of either format.

For Sony to say both "it's worth it to pay more for BR" and also "just buy DVDs" is both hilarious and very telling...for perhaps the first time Sony is actually scared!

I'd probably prefer BR, but Sony et. al have played their hand very poorly. Tosh and HD DVD are about to go all in, and if Sony can pony up, then we'll see who really has the best cards.

[brandonh33]

Cnet writers should be fair and balanced

Ok it is obvious that this guy who wrote this artical is anti blu-ray. This is more like his personal blog, this should not represent cnets opinion. If you look back at past blu-ray/hd-dvd articals, although you might not have agreed with everything, they were fairly balanced based upon the facts. All this artical is saying is that the person that wrote this is anti blu-ray and that he is willing to just make fun of some person who was intervewed to make a product look bad. Believe me HD-DVD representatives have said much more stupid things about this topic and yet nobody else on cnet wrote about those. Why? Because they really have nothing to do with how this whole "war" thing is going to work out in the end. In fact the statment "Be smart, pay more" makes sence, if it didnt come strait from sony. The real facts are that Blu-ray has more players out than hd-dvd mostly because of the ps3 there for more consumers for disk sales which may i mention have been becoming steadily more strong than hd-dvd disk sales. HD-DVD has an estimate top capacity of 60gb while Blu-ray dominates with an estimated 200gb future capacity, Google it. And the picture quality is the same on both disks! The only posible difference in the quality would be the cameras the studios film with! As for support, Blu-ray still is supported by around 70% of the production market even after the paramount deal(which is anything but permanent). So in the long run it WILL be smarter to spend the $100 extra for blu-ray, Blu-ray is the format that the future will choose. I am not at all saying that hd-dvd will disappear, but then again, they still sell music on tapes and video on VHS, if you get what im saying.

[nauqb11]

Sony Has 70 percent studio support give me a break

Look at the numbers

Blu-ray HD DVD
Columbia Pictures(1), MGM (1,3) Yes No
Disney Yes No
Dreamworks (4) No Yes
HBO Yes Yes
First Look Studios No Yes
Fox (3) Yes No
Image Entertainment Yes Yes
Lionsgate Yes No
Magnolia Pictures Yes Yes
New Line Cinema Yes Yes
Paramount (2) No Yes
Porn Studios (7) No(except Vivid) Yes
Studio Canal Yes Yes
Universal Studios (5) No Yes
Warner Bros. (6) Yes Yes
The Weinstein Company/Dimension No Yes

[brandonh33]

Look it up

Although you are missing some big studios in that list that are stricly blu-ray i will ignore that. I have a link to an artical you might remember on cnet a while ago before the paramount deal. http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9740033-1.html?tag=blog As you can see in the artical 51% of studios are stricly blu-ray, and that number has risen slightly present date. The total % of studios that market blu-ray was just below 90%. After the paramount deal I am ussuming abviously less percent. I believe i said around 70% support blu-ray. That was actually too nice of me considering that the paramount deal did not affect the percentage by 20%, the companys are simply not that big. So thank you for making me look back on this artical so now i can estimate more acuratly the percentage of supporters. I will say 75-85% including the more than 50% stricly blu-ray. That leaves HD-DVD with around 20% stricly HD-DVD and a total of around 40-45% distributing in HD-DVD. Blu-ray still almost has 2 times the support, not to mention all the other pluses.

[Nutcase2]

Spelling lesson

I take people, their opinions and their putative expertise much more seriously when they show some evidence of being minimally educated. It is like fingernails on a blackboard to see "artical" instead of article, "strait" instead of straight and "more strong" instead of stronger.

These are not typos, which everyone commits. These are the result of ignorance - not a basis for putting a lot of faith in the opinion of the poster.

[brandonh33]

Dang cnet!

I wrote a different article to respond to you but i dont believe that it is going to show up which makes me mad but I will just simplify the other one. A few mistakes out of a couple hundred words is common when you are not expecting a grade from some immature jurk who just wants to cover up the facts because he bought an HD-DVD player. I mean seriously why even bring it up? This is just weak. Here is some advice for you. Go get a friend or two! Dont respond back saying something like "I have friends but you dont!" or "You typed don't wrong" because nobody cares! And yes I am sure there are plenty of grammatical errors so you dont have to tell me, I am not going to proofread everything i type at around 100wpm to make sure that all of my I's are capitalized.