Mmmkay said:
Perhaps you missed page 4 of this thread
Nobody is claiming that Paramount has switched sides. The hugely significant news is that until now Paramount had no commitment at all for Blu-Ray. One of the strongest HD-DVD arguments has been its unilateral support by several major Hollywood studios.
No, I didn't miss page 4, but I saw no mention there that Paramount still plans to release HD-DVDs in addition to blu-ray discs. The tone of the comments seem to imply that Paramount has seen the light, or at least changed their opinion of Blu-Ray, when I don't think that's the case at all. I doubt they feel any differently about the two formats than they did a year ago, it's just that they see the writing on the wall. Assuming we are going to have two parallel formats for a while, any major studio would be stupid to reduce their potential customer base by only releasing on one format or another.
Mmmkay said:
I would like to hear your thoughts on how HD-DVD will benefit the consumer over Blu-Ray also. It's quite frankly naive to believe that these products will not be sold to the consumer with huge profit margins because of the [initially] niche market they are being developed for. When manufacturers talk of the cheaper cost of HD-DVD disc production it will be in terms of cents per disc at retail not dollars. Nothing of which the consumer will see.
I'm well aware of the profits companies try to squeeze out of new formats. It happened when music switched from cassettes to CDs, and you can see the same thing in stores now in the UMD section ($25-30 for some of the worst movies on earth, which are only being released so Sony can claim a large library of available titles).
I think the competition between the formats should lower costs, which is a good thing. But speaking in absolute terms, HD-DVD is the cheaper format, and I think they'll use that to their advantage to try and win the market. They'll make more money in the long term that way than they would pricing it the same as Blu-Ray to make a higher margin in the short term and take more risk on who will win.
Mmmkay said:
This interview with a hardware manufacturer talks of an initial 20% difference in cost per disc. That is a trivial amount per disc but enough for manufacturers who are keen on maximising profit.
That's a pretty vague figure, and it's missing a lot of details that matter. What kind of discs is he referring to? ROMs or R/RWs? How many layers/sides? Hybrid or single format? Does the 20% production difference include the factory upgrade costs?
And what about the electronics to run the media? If the PS3 does ship with Blu-Ray drives, that's a benefit, but there are a lot more people with DVD players than PS2s in the world, and even within a single household I bet most people have more TVs with DVD players than they have TVs with PS2s. There's also computer drives to consider, both read-only and burners. Cost of this equipment does factor into consumer purchasing. There's a reason that HDTVs aren't flooding every room in people's homes now. The quality improvement isn't worth the cost for most people, especially for secondary sets, and it's not likely to change by the time the government mandated broadcasting switch is scheduled to occur in the U.S.
