spacejamz
Lifer
- Mar 31, 2003
- 10,999
- 1,750
- 126
3.5" floppy disk??
Betamax technology became the de facto standard in the professional recording industry and is just now being phased out in favor of digital media (i.e., Sony made a buttload of money selling professional grade beta equipment for nearly 20 years since that stuff was pretty pricey)...although it lost the consumer format war, it was not a failure.
UMD is used in the PSP which is still selling very well (what was it competing against??). Memory sticks are used in Sony Cameras, camcorders and cell phones and they are not going anywhere anytime soon...
PricklyPete
Lifer
- Sep 17, 2002
- 14,582
- 162
- 106
They switched to the internet a long time ago and physical media is not nearly as important for the porn industry like it used to be.
When are we going to see decently priced Bluray players? I won't buy one until they are closer to $100. I guess I will just stick to HD dvds for awhile longer........
PricklyPete
Lifer
- Sep 17, 2002
- 14,582
- 162
- 106
NFS4
No Lifer
- Oct 9, 1999
- 72,636
- 48
- 91
UNCjigga
Lifer
- Dec 12, 2000
- 25,715
- 10,471
- 136
Ahh, forgot all about the 3.5" floppy, yep that was pretty successful, but I don't know if Sony developed that internally or had help from partners?
Anyway, I was speaking specifically from the consumer point of view, and while UMD, memorystick, etc. are still around, they are almost 90% exclusively used in Sony products only--UMD never caught on as a standard because digital distribution owns the mobile video market (iPod, Zune, Archos etc.) Sure everyone has a 8-in-1 memory reader, but most consumer devices use a variation of the SD standard.
Glad to see it's finally winding down (even though I own an HD-DVD drive).
Blu-Ray was my preference from the beginning, if so many weren't blinded by their sony hatred I think they'd have seen it was the superior format.
I don't regret the HD-DVD drive purchase, it's great having the extra drive so I don't have to swap discs constantly.
Viper GTS
Blu-Ray was my preference from the beginning, if so many weren't blinded by their sony hatred I think they'd have seen it was the superior format.
I don't regret the HD-DVD drive purchase, it's great having the extra drive so I don't have to swap discs constantly.
Viper GTS
HD-DVD is dead:
Recent events:
- Walmart is discontinuing sale of HD-DVD by June 08
- Netflix is Blu Ray exclusive now
- Best Buy is pushing all of their Blu Ray merchandise to the front leaving HD DVD merchandise back where it isn't noticed as much due to "marketing research".
- Toshiba is developing their own Blu Ray player and there is heavy rumors going around about them dropping HD DVD completely
- Tons of big companies are rapidly dropping prices on HD DVDs and offering major sales like 50% off big titles including Amazon. This suggests that they are trying to get rid of their stock.
- Hardware companies that did not have either an HD DVD or Blu Ray player such as Harman Kardon are after their slice of pie and develop a Blu Ray player first or are talking about sticking with Blu Ray period unless demand for HD DVD rises.
- A trend has started to devleop cheaper Blu Ray players. This is most likely in response to the competition shifting from Blu Ray vs HD DVD to One Blu Ray player vs another Blu Ray player.
The list keeps going on and on and most of this stuff is just in the past week or month! It appears that everyone is following suit now and if they have not then they are definately talking about it at the exec tables. I think I am going to wait a few more months to see if the prices drop on the Blu Ray players. If they don't then I may just buy a PS3 for the player and any future games which might come out exclusively for the PS3 that I want to play.
Recent events:
- Walmart is discontinuing sale of HD-DVD by June 08
- Netflix is Blu Ray exclusive now
- Best Buy is pushing all of their Blu Ray merchandise to the front leaving HD DVD merchandise back where it isn't noticed as much due to "marketing research".
- Toshiba is developing their own Blu Ray player and there is heavy rumors going around about them dropping HD DVD completely
- Tons of big companies are rapidly dropping prices on HD DVDs and offering major sales like 50% off big titles including Amazon. This suggests that they are trying to get rid of their stock.
- Hardware companies that did not have either an HD DVD or Blu Ray player such as Harman Kardon are after their slice of pie and develop a Blu Ray player first or are talking about sticking with Blu Ray period unless demand for HD DVD rises.
- A trend has started to devleop cheaper Blu Ray players. This is most likely in response to the competition shifting from Blu Ray vs HD DVD to One Blu Ray player vs another Blu Ray player.
The list keeps going on and on and most of this stuff is just in the past week or month! It appears that everyone is following suit now and if they have not then they are definately talking about it at the exec tables. I think I am going to wait a few more months to see if the prices drop on the Blu Ray players. If they don't then I may just buy a PS3 for the player and any future games which might come out exclusively for the PS3 that I want to play.
They did not win because of format superiority. The vast majority of the customer pool out there really do not understand the difference. They won because of marketing tactics and because it came with the PS3.
Personally, I don't care anyways. I am just glad it's over. I have been holding off on that sweet 1080p movie watching goodness because of this shitty war.
Aikouka
Lifer
- Nov 27, 2001
- 30,383
- 912
- 126
Sadly enough, Amazon also has a Blu-Ray sale right now and as long as you can buy an even amount of movies (i.e. it's BOGO), you can still buy Blu-Ray movies for cheaper than HD-DVD. Anyone that's been following HD sales on Amazon will tell you that Blu-Ray has had numerous BOGO sales that have been incredible deal-wise where HD-DVD had one with very few good movies.
EDIT:
They have more studio support because of what I mentioned above. Plain and simple. Studios want profits and see world-wide distribution possibility as a hamper on their profits and selling of distribution rights to other regions.
Of course they didn't win because of it, but I'm glad it won nonetheless. The storage capacity of HD-DVD was already becoming an issue, so if we had to have just one I'd rather it be Blu-Ray.
Viper GTS
That's why I hate that Blu-Ray has won the format battle. There aren't really any good BD players except the PS3. They apparently all have problems, some can't even play some of the BD discs. Blu-Ray has successfully killed the high def disc movement altogether. My regular DVDs look great upscaled. Long live DVD.
Yeah, declaring Blu-Ray the "winner" doesn't make any sense yet considering overall HD media market penetration is miniscule at this point (both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray combined), and a recent survey showed that over 70% of HDTV owners see no value in upgrading and have no plans to do so. And that's just HDTV owners, which is still the minority of americans.
DVD isn't going anywhere anytime soon, and likely will remain the market leader until something else comes along that makes Blu-Ray obsolete.
Edit: And I have an HD-DVD player, but honestly I'm perfectly happy with the quality of regular DVDs over it (it really is an excellent upconverting player). The biggest difference I notice between DVDs and HD-DVDs is how awesome a Dolby TrueHD track can sound vs DD or DTS on regular DVD. But since 95% of people listen to movies on their TV speakers, I'm in a small minority of people that would even know the difference.
DVD isn't going anywhere anytime soon, and likely will remain the market leader until something else comes along that makes Blu-Ray obsolete.
Edit: And I have an HD-DVD player, but honestly I'm perfectly happy with the quality of regular DVDs over it (it really is an excellent upconverting player). The biggest difference I notice between DVDs and HD-DVDs is how awesome a Dolby TrueHD track can sound vs DD or DTS on regular DVD. But since 95% of people listen to movies on their TV speakers, I'm in a small minority of people that would even know the difference.
And how many triple layer HD-DVD's can you actually buy today (I'm legitimately curious, but I suspect the answer is 0 since the format was only approved late last year).
Viper GTS
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