Warners to go BluRay exclusively

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lchiu7

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# 18310 6-Jan-2008 06:39

A number of sites have reported this - here is one

http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssConsumerGoodsAndRetailNews/idUSN0432340820080104

Tons of debate on avsforum with the consensus being this signals the death knell for HD-DVD.

Not much impact here I guess with there being only one (?) HD-DVD player available and that costs $800 I recall but big in the US.

Now I have a (US) PS3 and on my Xmas trip picked up the Toshiba A3 HD-DVD player for US$178 which included 10 free titles and have since bought a few more so I guess that purchase is not going to be long-term for me. Still the Toshiba is a very good upscaling DVD player and unlike the US PS3, it will play PAL DVD's (albeit with region coding removed since there is no region free crack available for it).

Just wondering if any other GZ's have purchased a HD-DVD player?

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# 103135 6-Jan-2008 11:35

Closely followed by New Line.

lchiu7

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# 103137 6-Jan-2008 11:50

Yup - already reported here that New Line will switch.

http://au.dvd.ign.com/articles/843/843709p1.html

Guess that means LOTR will be out in BR?

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sbiddle

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# 103142 6-Jan-2008 12:30

Personally I pick the winner as being H.264 downloads - IMHO 2008 will be the year of video on demand and it will render the whole Blu Ray vs DH-DVD battle almost irrelevant in some respects.

old3eyes

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# 103171 6-Jan-2008 16:10

sbiddle: Personally I pick the winner as being H.264 downloads - IMHO 2008 will be the year of video on demand and it will render the whole Blu Ray vs DH-DVD battle almost irrelevant in some respects.

With NZs internet standards I don't think so..

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sbiddle

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# 103173 6-Jan-2008 16:17

old3eyes:
sbiddle: Personally I pick the winner as being H.264 downloads - IMHO 2008 will be the year of video on demand and it will render the whole Blu Ray vs DH-DVD battle almost irrelevant in some respects.

With NZs internet standards I don't think so..

Why not? There are now plenty of people in NZ who are easily obtaining 6+ Mbps with their ADSL connections and the ADSL2+ rollout has started. While there are plenty of people with poor broadband connections in many cases it's really their own fault if they're willing to choose an ISP that is delivering a poor quality product.

lchiu7

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# 103174 6-Jan-2008 16:21

There is a new and quite popular VOD service out in the US called vudu (www.vudu.com). You purchase a STB and then only pay for the movies you watch or rent. No HD content yet but coming. Out of interest I did their speed test from NZ and it said my speed was fast enough to get instant playback(!). Theoretically could purchase one of their boxes, take it home and use it (so long I guess as we had a US billing address and they didn't do silly stuff like check IP addresses).

But given that a BD or HD-DVD already uses H.264 compression and disks range from 15Gb to 50Gb it's somewhat hard to see a viable VOD service here working for HD content. And who wants further compression on that content?

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Fossie

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# 103177 6-Jan-2008 16:32

.MKV has been the winner for some time.

old3eyes

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# 103240 7-Jan-2008 08:47

sbiddle:
old3eyes:
sbiddle: Personally I pick the winner as being H.264 downloads - IMHO 2008 will be the year of video on demand and it will render the whole Blu Ray vs DH-DVD battle almost irrelevant in some respects.

With NZs internet standards I don't think so..

Why not? There are now plenty of people in NZ who are easily obtaining 6+ Mbps with their ADSL connections and the ADSL2+ rollout has started. While there are plenty of people with poor broadband connections in many cases it's really their own fault if they're willing to choose an ISP that is delivering a poor quality product.

That may be true but how many HD movies are you going to get before you use your monthly allocation??

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Old3eyes

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# 103245 7-Jan-2008 08:58

old3eyes:
That may be true but how many HD movies are you going to get before you use your monthly allocation??

With some providers having 'autosense', pay as you go, or data blocks - is there really an allocation any more? You just pay for more traffic.

Yes its going to cost money, but its time for the trolls to grow some balls (who keep going on and on about it) and stop making poor comparsions to other countries without taking into account other factors.

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sbiddle

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# 103249 7-Jan-2008 09:10

old3eyes:
sbiddle:
old3eyes:
sbiddle: Personally I pick the winner as being H.264 downloads - IMHO 2008 will be the year of video on demand and it will render the whole Blu Ray vs DH-DVD battle almost irrelevant in some respects.

With NZs internet standards I don't think so..

Why not? There are now plenty of people in NZ who are easily obtaining 6+ Mbps with their ADSL connections and the ADSL2+ rollout has started. While there are plenty of people with poor broadband connections in many cases it's really their own fault if they're willing to choose an ISP that is delivering a poor quality product.

That may be true but how many HD movies are you going to get before you use your monthly allocation??

Without giving anything away (because I have heard some whispers) all I can say is that it depends who your ISP is.

If you look in Australia for example movie download services have partnered with certain ISP's to zero rate traffic. The chances of such a thing happening here in the future could be very good.

cyril7

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# 103254 7-Jan-2008 09:25

Yep, if the services are mirrored locally via your ISP then its local traffic which for many ISPs is not counted or for certain services provided by them is not an issue.

Edit, just checked out the Vudo site, very nice bit of kit, and I also managed a 3.2Mb/s speed test to their server at the end of 3.5km of corroded old PostOffice special. I did note on their forums that typical 100min HD movies streamed in around 4Gbyte.

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walt12

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# 103258 7-Jan-2008 09:35

With the current state of our network, if VOD were to take off in a menaingful way here, I seriously doubt it would handle it.

When we all have fibre at the curb, this becomes viable.

On another note, have any of the major video chains begun stocking many Blu Ray or HD-DVD titles yet? My locals have nothing, and at ~$50-60 a hit, I'm not particularly keen to purchase outright.

rscole86

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# 103261 7-Jan-2008 09:41

walt12: With the current state of our network, if VOD were to take off in a menaingful way here, I seriously doubt it would handle it.

When we all have fibre at the curb, this becomes viable.

On another note, have any of the major video chains begun stocking many Blu Ray or HD-DVD titles yet? My locals have nothing, and at ~$50-60 a hit, I'm not particularly keen to purchase outright.

What is wrong with our current network? Ok so I am on cable, but still there are a lot of ADSL customers that can get higher speeds than I do, and more reliable at times. Regardless on whether you have ADSL or cable I still think we would be able to implement a VOD service here in NZ.

Some Video Ezy stores have Blu Ray or HD-DVD titles AFAIK.

lchiu7

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# 103262 7-Jan-2008 09:42

My local VideoEzy and also the other chain have both BR and HD-DVD for rental but the selection is limited as you would expect.

Looking at Whitcoulls yesterday I noticed they had inserted all their BR movies into the main DVD area sorted by title - an interesting idea I hadn's seen anywhere else in the US stores. Prices ranged from $34 to $49. I have been taking advantage of the BOGO deals on Amazon - buy one get one free. While I bought a ton while I was there with BOGO even with shipping to NZ prices for discs are averaging NZ$25 which is a great deal.

The forums are awash with talk about VOD being the future, primarily I guess from the HD-DVD supporters! But even with the US Internet infrastructure, nobody is saying that this is certain in the near or even medium term future. And as for here, it's hard to see how that would work with our current infrastructure and billing mechanisms.

And finally, who wants to have their titles tied down to a particular machine or face complex mechanisms to move titles from a machine to another?

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walt12

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# 103265 7-Jan-2008 09:46

A few thousand customers downloading HD 25GB+ content simultaneously would bring a whole new meaning to peak time. In addition to the existing crowd of "regular" (light) users. As it stands, the state of the network currently seems to have finally caught up with existing usage patterns ... HD VOD is a whole different ballgame.

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