Blu-Ray/HD-DVD, the dance continues...

[jvd]

it says in the long term it will cost the same as making dvds . What about the short term ? how how long is the short term and how short is the long term ?

I.e when do we actually see prices in line with current dvd pirces ? We have hd-dvd which should be barely more expensive than bluray right off the bat , it doesn't need to wait till the long term

 

[Guden Oden]

This thread ought to be moved now that it is confirmed (since many days even) that HDDVD won't make it into any of the next-gen consoles. The discussion has totally lost all relevancy to consoles.

Not that it ever really belonged here anyway, and besides, it would be nice if there was one less thread in here for PC-Engine to poop on sony and anything they do, say or manufacture.

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

I don't see how there can be a 'period of transition' with both standards on the market.

Who's going to buy them? Or rather, who is going to sell them? Use up valuable shelf space with players and movies? Nobody.

If both come to market, neither will sell, both companies will lose money until a merged format comes out.. or, one company will lose hard if the other standard is adopted.. but that seems unlikely with even the staunchest BR supporter claiming that there will be some sort of "compromise" that will result in a "BR win".

I also have a question about the timing. Haven't BR and HD-DVD both claimed to have made huge storage gains and significant cost reductions in the past handful of months?

"Oh! We can add yet another layer and that gives us.. <whatever>.."

If HD-DVD and BR can actually make these gains in the past 30, 60, 90 days.. why are they rushing to market now? Why not wait another 60 days?

Normally, the harm in waiting is because eventually your tech becomes obsolete. So you rush to market to penetrate the market to stay in the market as long as possible.

But yet, everybody here seems to be in agreement that 100 GB disks would just be foolish and absurdly large and worthless. If that's the case, there should be no rush to market for HD-DVD or BR-DVD.

 

[cthellis42]

We don't know any of that, jvd. We certainly don't know any of that, and we certainly don't know the long-term outlook. But companies certainly look at a broad sweep of costs and savings for umpteen numbers of years, and make their decisions based on that. At the moment, HD-DVD and BR have been showing things off in "pilot lines" and "expectations" and "aiming for"s and "in the long run"s... Despite demands for "proof" as to any of this, all we can really go by are press releases. (Which seem to be putting them all relatively close to each otherk optimally.)

What the realities are, how the costs will break down in the next year or two, what projects are for Year 5 and Year 10... That's what the publishers will be looking at and figuing in. And they'll certainly be looking at more than press releases.

Manufacturing costs will have little bearing to what it costs US anyway, as they'll be pricing it for the consumer at what they think the market will bear. ...and it will undoubtedly still be bringing in a tidy profit for them. They'll just factor in how the profits will change from one option to another.

In the meanwhile--who cares? We won't know the full picture (hell, we don't really know all that much about relative DVD costs, either), and the companies aren't really concerned with the short term. (After all, what were the adoption costs of DVD itself? Yada yada...)

Mainly it will depend how well they can judge what is currently in play, and make their own determinations as to how well that would match projections.

 

[wco81]

Whatever Blu-Ray costs them, it will be a lot less than VHS replication for instance.

Someone posted interviews with studio execs but it was done in another language and the translation may not be trusty.

Warners and Universal talked about replication costs but Fox and Disney said those will take care of themselves so they're not worried. Fox talked about additional capacity to fit a whole TV season in and both Fox and Disney cited the Java interactive layer.

Take it FWIW.

 

[quest55720]

I don't see how there can be a 'period of transition' with both standards on the market.

Who's going to buy them? Or rather, who is going to sell them? Use up valuable shelf space with players and movies? Nobody.

If both come to market, neither will sell, both companies will lose money until a merged format comes out.. or, one company will lose hard if the other standard is adopted.. but that seems unlikely with even the staunchest BR supporter claiming that there will be some sort of "compromise" that will result in a "BR win".

I also have a question about the timing. Haven't BR and HD-DVD both claimed to have made huge storage gains and significant cost reductions in the past handful of months?

"Oh! We can add yet another layer and that gives us.. <whatever>.."

If HD-DVD and BR can actually make these gains in the past 30, 60, 90 days.. why are they rushing to market now? Why not wait another 60 days?

Normally, the harm in waiting is because eventually your tech becomes obsolete. So you rush to market to penetrate the market to stay in the market as long as possible.

But yet, everybody here seems to be in agreement that 100 GB disks would just be foolish and absurdly large and worthless. If that's the case, there should be no rush to market for HD-DVD or BR-DVD.

I think there will be such a large markup that stores will stock them. Just like how satelite providers charge good money for a few HD channels. There are people out there with HD-TVs who are content starved and will pay a premium for that content.

 

[PC-Engine]

Where are you pulling this out from? There is no information that says BRD is cheaper or will be. Sorry but making promises does not qualify

First and foremost this is an ignorant post. News stories like the one below prove otherwise.

The Blu-ray Disc Association said this week that the long-term cost of manufacturing BD-ROM discs in line with current DVD replication costs.The ability to keep the cost of Blu-ray discs near the cost of current DVDs is expected to be one of the key factors that decides which optical media is used by movie studios to deliver High Definition (HD) movie content.

In film bonding, the development of new extruded film technology by several leaders in the chemical industry has significantly reduced film costs. A new film product from Teijin reduces the cost of the cover film to one-third of the cost of conventional polycarbonate materials, and Degussa, a new BDA member company, projects a single-digit cents per-disc cost at launch

Press releases don't prove anything, actually they prove that people are gullible mistaking promises as fact.

 

[mckmas8808]

Press releases don't prove anything, actually they prove that people are gullible mistaking promises as fact.

Ok PC you have reached an all-time low now. Press releases don't prove anything? So I guess your thoughts mean more than Sony's press releases. Do you even know that people are actually spending thousands of dollars in stocks depending on press releases. How in the heck can you say that Sony explaining why the cost for Blu-ray disc doesn't matter. They explained how the cost is coming down. Did you even read my post?