Netflix is confused
The “war” of formats is far from over.
If you took a snapshot today, in the player arena you would say that HD DVD has the lead. If you take a snapshot in the PC arena you would say Blu-Ray. Content? HD DVD has more titles right now, but Blu ray has more announced titles. HD DVD has had a firmware patch to fix many problems, Samsung is working on one for their Blu-ray player.
So who wins?
Quantities of players and content are way too low right now to call anything for either side. Companies like Netflix, Blockbuster, and Walmart aren’t going to decide this right now. They all will sit on the fence and distribute both formats.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:
This “war” will be decided after Christmas 2008. Quote me on that. This will be the time where there will be affordable (under $100) players, and lots of content will be available. This is when the Walmarts and Netflixs of the world will determine a winner by pulling support for one of the formats.
The only caveat I have to my quote is if a company comes out with an affordable dual format player and is allowed by both sides to ship it. Then it will be like the DVD +R-R+RW&^$ whoha where it doesn’t matter which disk you get, it will play. I still see this as the most likely scenario because if one side starts to falter significantly then it will capitulate to the other and allow multiformat players to be shipped.
Netflix CEO sees HD DVD and Blu-ray war “maintaining stalemate”
Check out our new sister blog on Home Theater, HTBlog.net
July 27th, 2006 at 11:02 am
[…] Geez. I just get done talking about the rumors that we can’t have a dual-format HD/Blu-ray player because of limitations in their licensing and here comes the EU asking questions from both groups to see if the limitation is true. Maybe my caveat from the Netflix is confused article may become a reality sooner than later, but I still don’t change my quote. […]
July 27th, 2006 at 11:41 am
I don’t think a multi-format player will solve things. Because unlike the DVD-R/W versus DVD+R/W thing, studios have to decide whether they’ll support BD or HD DVD. While very similar, the two formats are different, and the industry will move towards the one with better support so that everyone is doing the same thing.
July 31st, 2006 at 3:09 pm
The review I read of the patched version of the Samsung BD player was still poor. HD-DVD retained the lead in image quality–even after the “fix”.
July 31st, 2006 at 3:16 pm
Forgot the link: http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/article.asp?section_id=3&article_id=1683&page_number=1
July 31st, 2006 at 3:24 pm
There are bound to be problems on both fronts with new technology. If you are following this blog I stated some time ago that this first batch of movies has all been create with beta (Yes beta) software. It’s only been a month or two since the software to create movies existed.
As you probably know also version 0 of anything is far from perfect either. Itis usually not untill a second support pack do things start calming down. That would be 1st quarter next year. I still will hold my judgement for a while on this one. I would like to see how the Pioneer will stack up.
July 31st, 2006 at 8:54 pm
I understand. All I’m saying is I wish there was one Blu-Ray player that got a good review or one Blu-Ray movie out that took advantage of VC-1 compression and was actually dual-layer. As things are today, it’s no contest. Maybe, when this happens, and that problem is solved, and the other thing gets released, Blu-Ray will totally blow HD-DVD out of the water. But today, Blu-Ray is the more expensive, lower-quality choice.