« Dance Party Friday | Main | The Ettatorial for the Week of 1-04-08 »
WB Goes Blu-ray Exclusive: What Does It Really Mean?
By Jay Alan | January 5, 2008
When WB announced yesterday that they have officially drank the Blu-ray Kool-Aid and dumped HD-DVD support, it was a shock to the 3% of the market that has bought into the format war. Initial reaction consisted almost completely of, “HD-DVD is teh d00med, lol, lol”. WB claims no money changed hands, but rumors say anything from $620 million dollars was given by Sony, to complete immunity from Blu-ray licensing fees (that’s the whole reason for this war people. For every movie sold on Blu-ray, Sony gets a cut, for every HD-DVD, Toshiba gets a cut, that’s a lot of money folks, and that’s what this is about), we may never know the truth. But what does it really mean?
First off, a confession. I own a Toshiba A-30 HD-DVD player. I do not own a Blu-ray player of any kind, nor do I have any plans to. I purchased the Toshiba because my 1 year old Sony DVD player decided playing discs was no longer important, it wanted to visit the local dump (the third time a Sony player has crapped out on me just after the warranty expired, I might add). So when I went looking for replacements, I wanted a quality unit and Sony was out of the question. The Toshiba players got good reviews and I had good luck with Toshiba in the past, so I figured why not spend a few extra bucks for HD?
Does that mean I heavily invested in HD-DVD? No, I only bought one movie and that was because I had a $20 Best Buy credit, what else was I going to waste it on, an Ethernet cable? That being said, I did, and still do feel that HD-DVD is the superior format. Blu-ray holds the edge in storage size, but that’s it. HD-DVD wins out in special features, price, connectivity and it was actually finished when it was released to market, unlike everything Sony seems to release these days (I’m looking at you, PS3).
Now that I’ve explained my position, onto the point. WB going Blu-ray is a huge deal, don’t get me wrong. In the short term things look bad for Toshiba and HD-DVD, real bad. People won’t likely invest in HD-DVD players or movies, that’s bad news for the format. If people stop buying, stores stop carrying, and that would mean the death of the format.
In reality this thing could still drag on for a long while. HD-DVD is still home to many exclusive titles (including Paramount/Universal), so if you want every movie released in a HD format, you’re still going to need both players. Most of those 3% of people who have bought into this war are hardcore movie fans and they are going to want both. If Toshiba can hold on long enough (and with this move, that’s their best hope as Blu-ray doesn’t appear to be going anywhere now), dual format players will come down to a price that is equal to the price of a Blu-ray player. Why buy a Blu-ray player when, for the same price, you can buy a player that supports both? If that happens, you could actually see a swing back to HD-DVD by the studios, as the discs themselves are cheaper to press than Blu-ray discs. It’s a long shot, but it’s a possible outcome.
Another possibility is that HD-DVD dies off. This could actually be bad for us, the consumer. Hang on a second, let me explain. I know this war has been a huge pain in the ass (one caused by Sony and Blu-ray, as far as I’m concerned, HD-DVD hit market first and was a completed standard. Blu-ray hit later, not even finished, Sony should have dropped it then), but because of the war prices have dropped much faster than in the past. You can get a HD-DVD player with amazing specs for less than $200 and a Blu-ray for less than $300. It took DVD a hell of a lot longer than that to come down in price. If Sony really wants to be ass-hats (which they are) they could raise prices of both players and movies when they are the only player in the game. I’m not saying this will happen, but it’s certainly possible.
I can tell you what this means for me, I won’t be buying any WB titles for a good long time. HD-DVD is my format of choice, and if WB doesn’t want to support it, I can’t see supporting them. I also can’t see myself buying a Blu-ray player anytime soon, so if I want to watch a WB movie, it’s a good thing my A30 has outstanding upscaling capabilities. I guess if HD-DVD owners want to see a WB movie in HD, you’ll have to resort to piracy (uh oh, the P word!).
The next 6 months are going to be very interesting. We will have to see what, if anything, Toshiba can do to turn the tables back their way. They do have options, but losing the WB option limits them severely and if they want back in this game they will need a major announcement within that time frame. Also, before you Blu-ray fan-boys inevitably comment calling me a retarded HD-DVD fan-boy Sony hater (which I openly admit I do hate Sony, they have sold me far too many second rate, overpriced electronics over the years for me not to have any animosity), keep in mind this is an opinion piece: my opinion, and I was quite clear in stating my affiliation with the HD-DVD camp straight away. So keep things civil.
Image Via: Engadget
Topics: Movies, Technology |
Tags: blu-ray | hd-dvd | sony | toshiba | wb.
January 6th, 2008 at 9:35 am
Well said, my friend.
You’re absolutley right about this whole situation and, as the more patient one of the two of us, you now have less to lose in this than I do.
I am a huge movie buff who has purchased an HD-DVD player in the past two months. For Christmas, I received a few hundred dollars worth of Best Buy cards that I (to the chagrin of my wife) spent almost entirely on HD replacements for some of my favorite movies.
This WB news shocked the sh*t out of me. I hoenstly have been in a bad mood for the past couple of days just because of this…but all is not lost.
If nothing else, I’ll simply have to buy a Blu-Ray someday (but not anytime soon, as almost all the current players supposedly have software issues!) and I’ll keep the HD movies I have now to watch on that player.
I’ll tell you this, though: As somone who owns over 600+ dvd sets, I’m basically done buying movies for a long, long time. Oh, I’m sure I’ll make the occassional exception when The Dark Knight or the next Harry Potter comes out…but that’s it. No more spur-of-the-moment DVD purchases at the bargain bin at Wal-Mart or Blockbuster for me. I re-purchased the major movies I wanted in HD these past couple of weeks already, so I’m done. This format war was too nasty, too expensive and frankly, not all that important in the grand scheme of things. Your average consumer still doesn’t have either format and will most likely not buy into it for several years.
In the meantime, I’ll raise my daughter, love my wife, watch my satellite TV and when I want to watch a movie…I’ll be happy to be immersed in the great resolution of my HD-DVD player (which is still the only place you can watch Batman Begins, Tha Matrix Trilogy or Transformers!).
Here’s hoping for the best.
January 6th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Like you said, everyone thinks this is over, but it isn’t. Toshiba hasn’t responded because it’s the weekend and the announcement was obviously a huge shock to them right before CES.
It will be interesting to see what Toshiba does on Monday. They have WB until May, they could convince them otherwise (not likely), hell, as big as Toshiba is they could, in theory, just purchase WB and be done with the whole thing. They could also just drop the price of players to $80 bucks and hope tons of people buy them and WB, Fox and the others say, “Holy shit! We need in on that action!”. A lot of money has been invested in this, and I don’t see Toshiba giving up just like that.
We’ll know more on Monday I think, but there’s a few, “maybes” that aren’t all doom and gloom.
January 9th, 2008 at 7:11 am
[…] Comments Jay Alan on WB Goes Blu-ray Exclusive: What Does It Really Mean?Jason on I Am So Not Eating ThatJason on WB Goes Blu-ray Exclusive: What Does It Really Mean?Jay […]
January 23rd, 2008 at 6:51 am
[…] The Project Silence Podcast. From big news in movie technology to a change in an iconic superhero:Warner Brothers goes Blu-Ray exclusive, “for the benefit of the […]
February 19th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
[…] their money, but now we need to stop beating a dead horse and call it a day. It all started with WB going Blu-ray exclusive a little over a month ago, that was bad news for HD-DVD, but not anything they couldn’t […]