Blu-Ray Disc Association sinks to new low with childish YouTube attack ads!

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pascal said:
HD-DVD can win or die. Blu-Ray can win but will hardlly die.
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UMD is dead why can't BR be? Let's be honest. If neither format ramps up significantly in the next year, chances are both will be remain niche, aka DEAD! for mass consumer adoption.

Even though I own almost 90movies between the 2 formats, I'm still realistic about the fact that both have as much, if not more, of a chance to remain niche formats vs gain mass adoption.
 
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Mintmaster said:
You really like 60fps for video?

It looks so amateurish, like it was filmed with a HandyCam. Once in a while I see it in low-budget TV shows and movies, and it almost makes me wince.
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The amateur look of video has more to do with lighting and color grading than frame rate. I can make 60fps have the 'film look' quite easily with proper lighting and color grading in Final Cut Pro Studio. Motion Blur only accounts for a small amount of the 'film look', and there are many Studio films shot with fast lenses at high ISOs which have little of the tradition film blur, especially action films. (the other artifacts, grain, f-stop range, aperture, fov, etc have nothing to do with the framerate, but also contribute to film look) BTW, check out Autodesk's Lustre 2 tutorial to see the difference between graded and ungraded *film*. A staggering amount of post-production work goes into film that does not go into video. That's why 'deleted scenes' (the ones with time-code at the bottom where you still see the full 35mm frame) footage which is ungraded/post-processed often looks very amateurish. (Edit: here's a great example of pro color grading, http://www.autodesk.com/us/lustre/tutorial-2007-01-23/)

Roger Ebert, one of the country's top movie critics, and someone who undoubtedly appreciates the nature of film and has seen more movies than either of us, says that MaxiVision 48 is amazing (48fps). I have no reason to doubt his evaluation.

Here's an experiment: Go shoot something on a handy cam. Convert the footage to 24fps and restore temporal blur effects, but no color grading. Then take the same 60fps footage and use color grading software to apply some professional color correction. Now tell me which one stills looks amateurish.

Anyway, both formats could easily go the way of LaserDisc or DVD-Audio/SACD. Of course, in my opinion, Microsoft doesn't care, and Toshiba/Universal/Paramount/etc are repeating the same mistakes CircuitCity/Paramount/Dreamworks/etc tried with the minority DIVX format (remember exclusive releases for DIVX/DVE backed against DVD? Only this time, HD-DVD had the minority studio support)

The only thing that could stop the madness is <$200 dual format players.
 
RobertR1 said:
UMD is dead why can't BR be? Let's be honest. If neither format ramps up significantly in the next year, chances are both will be remain niche, aka DEAD! for mass consumer adoption.

Even though I own almost 90movies between the 2 formats, I'm still realistic about the fact that both have as much, if not more, of a chance to remain niche formats vs gain mass adoption.
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Yes, became a niche market is a real risk. The price of players and content are still high. Also some people complain about where is this "big wow factor" to justify the hidef content/player. We are living in the time of MP3 and MP4, quantity over quality.
 
pascal said:
Also some people complain about where is this "big wow factor" to justify the hidef content/player. We are living in the time of MP3 and MP4, quantity over quality.
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Then where are all these HDTV sales coming from? Anyone who has an HDTV and watches 1080i content regularly gets to noticing that standard DVDs are a step down. Anyone who doesn't watch 1080i isn't the market. . .

Sony can nearly single-handedly keep B-r alive because of PS3 and their massive film library, and as of today there's still more studio support for B-r than HD DVD. Any talk of even a remote possibility of B-r dieing should stay in the closet until there's a switch of a B-r only studio to a HD DVD-only studio (and, no, that didn't describe Paramount. . . Paramount was originally a HD DVD-only studio that was reluctantly convinced to give B-r a try as well, and then regretted it).

Stalemate seems to be the most likely scenario now. In which case, it seems likely to me, that focus will start to shift back to multi-format players.
 
DemoCoder said:
The amateur look of video has more to do with lighting and color grading than frame rate.
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I think that's very true. Video is often shot without any kind of filters (a matte box can be quite pricey) whereas movie cinematographers has a complete arsenal.

Cheers
 
Geo said:
Then where are all these HDTV sales coming from? Anyone who has an HDTV and watches 1080i content regularly gets to noticing that standard DVDs are a step down. Anyone who doesn't watch 1080i isn't the market. . .
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Well, in my country people is just buying this big, flat TV.
And many are buying some cheap chinese DVD players (sub $50) with HDMI output. The TV do the desinterlace and scalling, and the image quality is great. The HDMI connection is much better with color saturation/fidelity which is the main atraction factor. Resolution comes after. So many people is still viewing SD and DVD. A good Panasonic plasma (1024x768) with a cheap chinese DVD/HDMI player has great price/performance.

In fact I am buying a chinese player for my small daughter see her DVD movies collection.

I personally like hidef and I am buying more BDs, but many people are concerned with price and will just keep buying DVDs for while.

Geo said:
Sony can nearly single-handedly keep B-r alive because of PS3 and their massive film library, and as of today there's still more studio support for B-r than HD DVD. Any talk of even a remote possibility of B-r dieing should stay in the closet until there's a switch of a B-r only studio to a HD DVD-only studio (and, no, that didn't describe Paramount. . . Paramount was originally a HD DVD-only studio that was reluctantly convinced to give B-r a try as well, and then regretted it).
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Who knows what will happen? Maybe Paramount will be back again.

Geo said:
Stalemate seems to be the most likely scenario now. In which case, it seems likely to me, that focus will start to shift back to multi-format players.
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Do you mean cheap multiformat players in the future.
 
pascal said:
Do you mean cheap multiformat players in the future.
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Yes. How far in the future is the question. Obviously the LG was pretty pricey. I believe that B-r getting what looked for awhile like a decisive upper hand (before Paramount jumped ship) probably slowed interest in that route down. . . but the prospects of a longer term stalemate should revive it.
 
Nielson numbers (The source has not compiled last week's data yet)

Week 11/18 BD 66, HD 34 YTD: BD 65, HD 35 SI: BD 61, HD 39
Week 11/11 BD 65, HD 35 YTD: BD 65, HD 35 SI: BD 61, HD 39
Week 11/04 BD 71, HD 29 YTD: BD 64, HD 36 SI: BD 61, HD 39
Week 10/28: BD 55, HD 45 YTD: BD 64, HD 36 SI: BD 60, HD 40

The Axel Music (Europe) numbers are:

As Of 11/23: Week: BD 57.9, HD 42.1 Month: BD 50.8, HD 49.2 YTD: BD 53.0 HD 47.0,
As Of 11/16: Week: BD 52.6, HD 47.4 Month: BD 45.5, HD 54.5 YTD: BD 52.2 HD 47.8
As Of 11/09: Week: BD 52.1, HD 47.9 Month: BD 41.1, HD 58.9 YTD: BD 52.0 HD 48.0
As Of 11/02: Week: BD 41.1, HD 58.9 Month: BD 35.4, HD 64.6 YTD: BD 51.7 HD 48.3
(EDIT: The source swapped the YTD numbers in my original post. Corrected)

The AxelMusic.dk numbers are:
As Of 11/23: Week: BD 91, HD 9 YTD: BD 75, HD 25
As Of 11/16: Week: BD 78, HD 22 YTD: BD 74, HD 26
As Of 11/09: Week: BD 74, HD 26 YTD: BD 73, HD 27
As Of 11/02: Week: BD 89, HD 11 YTD: BD 74, HD 26


I don't know how many absolute units these represent.

EDIT:
DVD Empire

WEnd 11/24: Week: BD 66.10, HD 33.90 Month: BD 62.6, HD 37.4 YTD: BD 61.8, HD 38.2
WEnd 11/17: Week: BD 63.98, HD 36.02 Month: BD NA, HD NA YTD: BD NA, HD NA
WEnd 11/10: Week: BD 59.72, HD 40.28 Month: BD 59.4, HD 40.6 YTD: BD 61.6, HD 38.4
WEnd 11/03: Week: BD 63.87, HD 36.13 Month: BD 62.6, HD 37.4 YTD: BD 61.7, HD 38.3
 
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BDA is actively skewing the Nielsen numbers by placing BD buy-one-get-one-free sales at retail outlets during weeks they don't have a blockbuster release. Even the free titles count as a "sale" during these BOGO events.

I counted up the weeks and the BDA has had over 3 months worth of buy-one-get-one-free or half price deals over the course of the year. That's a lot of weeks worth of skewed Nielsen numbers.

From what I can see, BD was winning earlier in the year but now it appears HD DVD has caught up and the BDA is trying to hide that by strategically placing alternating blockbuster releases and BOGO sales so their lead does not disappear in the sales numbers. Its a nice marketing tactic that may deceive some not in-the-know, but it is fairly obvious what they are doing to anyone watching closely.
 
Discounted players (Toshiba A3 or PS3) and inexpensive movie titles are both valid strategies to build the base though. FWIW, HD DVD also has movie title promo. Are you saying they don't count the discounted movies when they do it ? I also remember Blu-ray title sales being higher than HD DVD even without promo, plus worldwide Blu-ray sales seem to be doing better.

From what I know, the existing industry-wide tracking mechanisms are not good enough to differentiate discounted titles from regular priced ones. Channel data collection is time consuming and few (no) companies are willing to pay for a sophisticated infrastructure to count precisely.
 
I find it entirely curious --approaching bizarre even-- what some studios are choosing to release on these HD formats from their libraries. . . I mean for current releases you are pretty much at the mercy of what you are currently releasing. . . but for libraries I sometimes want to rattle some teeth, or at least hear someone provide the thinking. . .
 
Geo said:
I find it entirely curious --approaching bizarre even-- what some studios are choosing to release on these HD formats from their libraries. . . I mean for current releases you are pretty much at the mercy of what you are currently releasing. . . but for libraries I sometimes want to rattle some teeth, or at least hear someone provide the thinking. . .
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Ya there's a few blockbusters that have been ported over that make sense but I see a lot of titles that went from new release to the bargain bin, to HD. There's a massive catalog of AAA movies that would be a big draw not getting the treatment. I can only think the studios are holding them back until the install base is large enough so they can cash in big on a re-release.
 
DemoCoder said:
The amateur look of video has more to do with lighting and color grading than frame rate. I can make 60fps have the 'film look' quite easily with proper lighting and color grading in Final Cut Pro Studio.
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I have no doubt that colour and lighting is a big part of making video look professional, but what I'm talking about is entirely motion related. When pausing the scenes I'm talking about, nothing looks out of place.

The movie theater has conditioned our perception of what looks professional. It's the primary reason that people like the look of 24p over 30p or 60i, and why 24p is a hot feature in prosumer and high-end consumer camcorders.
 
These ads clearly show how desparate the BDA is. Does anyone know why they are getting so desparate though? They keep on bragging about how they're outselling HD DVD 2:1 but then they go out and create these clearly desparate attack ads...oh the irony.
 
Ruined said:
BDA is actively skewing the Nielsen numbers by placing BD buy-one-get-one-free sales at retail outlets during weeks they don't have a blockbuster release. Even the free titles count as a "sale" during these BOGO events.
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How is this 'skewing' of BD sales any different than the 'skewing' of hardware sales on the HD DVD front by having $100 HD DVD players sales?

Each camp uses the tactic that works best for it; Blu-ray motivates the PS3 ownerbase to start participating in the format war with cheap media, and HD DVD motivates people to become HD DVD consumers with cheap hardware.
 
How is this 'skewing' of BD sales any different than the 'skewing' of hardware sales on the HD DVD front by having $100 HD DVD players sales?
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Because Walmart had that sale (then BestBuy/Sears followed), Toshiba had nothing to do with it. Should we not count units sold on sale? :rolleyes:
 
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