I'm reasonably certain Fox is trying to singlehandedly destroy Blu-Ray

[cubby1223]

Originally posted by: AlexWade
Hmm ... Well, Fox was a hair-trigger away from dumping Blu-Ray for HD DVD, but the BDA bribe got the better of them.

That's not even close to the truth. It was Warner that gave Toshiba an ultimatum to increase their sales last Christmas season. When Blu-ray still out-paced HD DVD, Warner made their decision. Fox had nothing to do with it. That story concerning Fox never had any verification, and seriously, was nothing more than simple fuel for forum outbursts.

 

[flxnimprtmscl]

And people bashed me back when the war ended when I said HD-DVD was a better format :roll:

 

[Muadib]

Originally posted by: flxnimprtmscl
And people bashed me back when the war ended when I said HD-DVD was a better format :roll:

That's because it's not.

 

[Slick5150]

Originally posted by: Muadib

Originally posted by: flxnimprtmscl
And people bashed me back when the war ended when I said HD-DVD was a better format :roll:

That's because it's not.

From a technical standpoint, maybe not. From a pro-consumer standpoint, absolutely it was. It was region free, was final spec'd at release, and didn't have the insane DRM on it that's causing the need for all these firmware updates.

 

[pcslookout]

Originally posted by: Oyeve
Wow, for a winning format it sure is a loser. Glad im sticking with DVDs until a stable HD format comes out.

:thumbsup:

 

[pcslookout]

Originally posted by: zoiks

Originally posted by: tk149

Originally posted by: Oyeve
Wow, for a winning format it sure is a loser. Glad im sticking with DVDs until a stable HD format comes out.

That's one reason why HD-DVD was superior. It came out with a finished spec, so no updating firmware.

There are so many bugs with Blu ray. WTF. Why did this format win over? Fucking movie companies.

Oh well better luck next time.

 

[pcslookout]

Originally posted by: Oyeve
Remember the good old days when you bought electronics it just worked like it was supposed to? VCRs for example. Only time there were issues was towards the end with Super-beta not being able to be played on non superbeta sets and SVHS not watchable on standard vhs sets. Now our TVs, stereos, video formats have ethernet and USB slots for updates. Your average consumer has no clue what a cat5 cable is or usb port. And not everyone has a usb flash drive, computer and internet to get these firmware updates. Its amazing. Truly amazing.

Well I guess we should be thankful we all know what we are doing and not the average consumer.

 

[Strk]

Originally posted by: tk149

Originally posted by: Baked
I love reading the BR bashing 'cause it's made by Sony and it won the format war over HD-DVD, a format that's backed by MS. Since Sony totally cock blocked the 360's HD-DVD player from ever getting any new movies, people come out in drones to add fuel to the fire of a simple firmware update process. Look, people knew about how shitty unreliable the 360, killing itself and scratching up discs from day one. It took MS three years to fix this problem w/ their latest version of 360. Meanwhile it didn't stop millions upon millions of people from buying an half ass product like the 360. Now, let's look at BR's market share. It is far behind 360, but most people who owns a BR player just so happen to have a PS3, a device that can easily update its firmware. The minority of people who own stand alone BR players are early adopters with higher knowledge of technology devices compared to your wal-mart shopping joe six pack. Do you really think these early adopters would have a problem updating their BR player's firmware? No. While there are some playback problems with early stand alone BR players, these problem can easily be fixed by updating the firmware, and newer generation of BR players shouldn't have this problem. BR isn't going anywhere, Sony put too much money into this format to let it "fail." I'm not sure where you got the idea that it's a stepping stone format, there's nothing replacing the 1080p HDTV format on the horizon, and there's nobody with enough capital or market share to bump the BR.

Try hanging out around the BD players at a Best Buy. People have all sorts of questions and it's pretty clear that a LOT of them have no clue about firmware updates.

Number of people who know how to update firmware <<<<<<<<<<< Number of people who don't know

The first group is much smaller than the second group. Without a lot of people in the second group, BD will remain a small niche market, and possibly die off. There just won't be enough demand for BD, if people start getting the idea that some Blu-Ray discs won't work in all players. They'll just stick to upconverted DVD's and avoid the hassle.

I doubt most people know what firmware is, let alone how to update it.

 

[pcslookout]

Originally posted by: Strk

Originally posted by: tk149

Originally posted by: Baked
I love reading the BR bashing 'cause it's made by Sony and it won the format war over HD-DVD, a format that's backed by MS. Since Sony totally cock blocked the 360's HD-DVD player from ever getting any new movies, people come out in drones to add fuel to the fire of a simple firmware update process. Look, people knew about how shitty unreliable the 360, killing itself and scratching up discs from day one. It took MS three years to fix this problem w/ their latest version of 360. Meanwhile it didn't stop millions upon millions of people from buying an half ass product like the 360. Now, let's look at BR's market share. It is far behind 360, but most people who owns a BR player just so happen to have a PS3, a device that can easily update its firmware. The minority of people who own stand alone BR players are early adopters with higher knowledge of technology devices compared to your wal-mart shopping joe six pack. Do you really think these early adopters would have a problem updating their BR player's firmware? No. While there are some playback problems with early stand alone BR players, these problem can easily be fixed by updating the firmware, and newer generation of BR players shouldn't have this problem. BR isn't going anywhere, Sony put too much money into this format to let it "fail." I'm not sure where you got the idea that it's a stepping stone format, there's nothing replacing the 1080p HDTV format on the horizon, and there's nobody with enough capital or market share to bump the BR.

Try hanging out around the BD players at a Best Buy. People have all sorts of questions and it's pretty clear that a LOT of them have no clue about firmware updates.

Number of people who know how to update firmware <<<<<<<<<<< Number of people who don't know

The first group is much smaller than the second group. Without a lot of people in the second group, BD will remain a small niche market, and possibly die off. There just won't be enough demand for BD, if people start getting the idea that some Blu-Ray discs won't work in all players. They'll just stick to upconverted DVD's and avoid the hassle.

I doubt most people know what firmware is, let alone how to update it.

Yep and I bet if you ask mostly anyone they will go what is that?

 

[vi edit]

FWIW, I couldn't get Hancock in Blu-Ray to run on my PS3 until I updated to firmware 2.53(I think it was). I just updated a firmware about a month ago on it.

I wonder how many people got hosed on that deal. Get a shiney new hot release movie and plop it in only to have you player puke and say it can't play it.

After a 30 minute painstakingly slow update from PSN I was able to get up and running.

PQ was pretty good but I thought the sound mix was horrible.

 

[sswingle]

Originally posted by: vi edit
FWIW, I couldn't get Hancock in Blu-Ray to run on my PS3 until I updated to firmware 2.53(I think it was). I just updated a firmware about a month ago on it.

I wonder how many people got hosed on that deal. Get a shiney new hot release movie and plop it in only to have you player puke and say it can't play it.

After a 30 minute painstakingly slow update from PSN I was able to get up and running.

PQ was pretty good but I thought the sound mix was horrible.

I've never had a PS3 update take that long...

That being said, HD-DVD should have won.

 

[Obsoleet]

The average consumer is needed to make the format ever take off, otherwise it's just limping around waiting for someone to perfect and execute a successful streaming implementation for the masses.

All this spells to me that streaming is not only the future, but likely coming sooner rather than later.
What Microsoft needs to do is remarket the 360 as a media device instead of a console, make a basic streaming UI with access to the gamer portions separate, and sell it as "the future to HD, streaming."

Your updates won't be a problem on that device, because everyone will know it's a streaming device to begin with. I never bought into Bluray, shiny discs belong in the 90s with the DVD and laserdisc. That said, HDDVD would've been the better format for the industry (rather than BR), it has a more marketable name for consumers, a final spec and region free is the way to go for those of us that travel.

Now that the consumer lost that battle, I hope MS can create a device that's basically Hulu + more in a box. It would work, and bandwidth and compression methods will only improve over time to go beyond 720P streaming, and the install base is already out there.

I don't own a BR player or 360 (or Wii). I'm building a HTPC setup to do everything that a media streaming or console should be doing.

 

[Shawn]

This is great. Fox updates it's BD+ to prevent copy protection. They break compatibility on a number of Blu-ray players as a result. Slysoft breaks the new BD+ in a few weeks, yet about half of the Blu-ray players that don't work with the new titles still don't have firmware updates to fix the problem yet.

http://www.engadgethd.com/2008...-down-bd-drm-once-more

 

[scttgrd]

Sony loves it when a plan comes together.

 

[Obsoleet]

Originally posted by: Shawn
This is great. Fox updates it's BD+ to prevent copy protection. They break compatibility on a number of Blu-ray players as a result. Slysoft breaks the new BD+ in a few weeks, yet about half of the Blu-ray players that don't work with the new titles still don't have firmware updates to fix the problem yet.

http://www.engadgethd.com/2008...-down-bd-drm-once-more

Market darwinism. It's going to eat itself alive before it even got off the ground from the sounds of it. Too worried about DRM, while frustrating legit consumers, causing people to avoid the format, watch Hulu, or steal movies instead.
The CD industry followed a similar path of arrogance and indifference.