Blu-Ray Titles Announced and Dated
may 23rd.
that’s the day you can go in and buy a movie you already own for $30-$40. heh. damn that’s funny.
this is my favorite quote from the article, tho:
Other Blu-ray studios, including stalwarts Fox and Disney, sat out Monday’s announcement.
that says to me, “we’re not sure.”
yep. hdcp is going to guarantee that no ‘next gen’ dvd format takes off. the people who would likely start the revolution are the same ones who will get screwed by the silly digital copy protection scheme. high definition dvd is dead before it starts.
and, can sony really expect to piggyback the blu-ray drive into the marketplace (a marketplace where people don’t actaully play optical media movies on their consoles) when it’s growth is determined through attrition?
hdtv doesn’t hit any pain points for the consumer. high definition dvd even more so.
m3mnoch.
p.s. thanks for the tip, oncnawan.
Addicting Entertainment 
Assuming people have TVs with HDMI inputs, why would they be deterred from buying a High Definition DVD player just for HDCP? Isn’t it only meant so you can’t copy content that you don’t own anyway? And which company would support products that allow you to copy and manipulate their IP in anyway they want? Who in their right mind thinks any company will let that happen (without being hurt out of it, of course)?
It’s not like people will buy movies they own anyway, unless they are definition whores. It’s unlikely that a big sample of random people definitely has a lot of the movies on another big random sample of movies.
It’s probably too early to launch so many “high definition” products in a market that is not entirely compatible, but it is much earlier to start online distribution of movies.
i totally understand where you are coming from.
my point is, that, generally, movie buffs are irritated with this idea that the mpaa is pushing where the consumer doesn’t actually OWN any movie they buy. the same with the recording industry.
we’re seeing tons of people who just want to listen to their music however they want. they want to rip it to an ipod or their computer at work, or whereever.
that same battle is coming to movies. hdcp is just their way to screw the customer.
if you want to watch a movie on your portable media center or video ipod or psp you are going to have to buy it again. in a different format. the format should be neutral. i’m more than happy to pay to watch a movie. i just don’t want to pay again no matter how often or in what format i want to watch it.
i only want to buy a movie once and consume it however i see fit.
hdmi and hdcp don’t allow me to do that.
m3mnoch.
You are welcome, M3mnoch.
As you pointed out, the early adopters that would drive sales of Blueray are the same ones who purchased HDTVs without HDMI inputs. That makes the PS3 even more important to Blueray’s future. The PS3 is designed to get Blueray players into the hands of people who are not early adopters of movie formats (though they may be early adopters of video game platforms, I see the two crowds as very different), circumventing that barrier to acceptance.
As I mentioned to M3mnoch in the email, given the importance of the PS3 to Blueray’s success, and given Sony’s plan to have the PS3 debut as the first Blueray player on the market, and given that Blueray will debut on May 23 WITH BD PLAYERS MADE BY SAMSUNG AND PIONEER, it becomes evident that Sony is not going to release the PS3 this spring. If they were to release this spring, they would have Samsung and Pioneer hold back and roll out the PS3 with the BD content. This throws an interesting kink into things, as HD-DVD is releasing in March, with players costing $500 – half of the cost of Blueray’s $1000 machines. This was supposed to be offset by the presence of the PS3 on the market, but it has not arrived.
Faced with the option of buying HD movies on a $500 player or a $1000 player, what do you think consumers are going to do? Of course, content is also going to cause issues, as not all movie studios are supporting both formats, but that extra $500 is going to hurt.
I think that what you want to do is soon, but not soon as blu-ray soon. Hell, Microsoft might at some point do what they did with Hotmail first, and then with MSN messenger. You will be able to watch the media anytime, but you won’t own it in discs or hard drives. You will probably have a subscription like service where you register which WB, Fox, Sony, MGM, etc. you paid for watching anytime, and you’ll be able to receive that anywhere, either wirelessly to an iPod kind of device (for travel), or directly to your home via an Xbox/DirecTV tunner. So not only will retailers be jumped, but pretty much all kinds of disc player and storage manufacturers (at least at some important degree) will be jumped (therefore forcing dead/evolution on those parts of the industry). Only amateur and professional video creators will need media discs, and Microsoft and their competitors will need “Colossal Storage” (you know, that atomic holography method). That will be relatively awesome (if there is enough competition to make it a healthy industry for consumers) because standards won’t matter (because there will probably be a unified HDMI sort of thing), and no matter what kind of resolution you have, you’ll always be able to watch the movie in that resolution, or lower if you go to a friends house, you want to watch it on a PSP5/iPod7, an airplane or a Hotel Room (and you’ll probably just have to pay a prime once the next resolution of movies comes out and you get a TV that supports it). Either movies will get cheaper, and/or better movies will be made.
Something similar applies to games, jumping publishers and retailers, making either the same great big games for a cheaper price (no media required), or games with much bigger budgets that will cost the same amount we pay right now.
Well, Sort of.
Oh, and if you don’t watch those movies/play those games, you can just rent them for cheaper prices “Watch/play once” sort of thing. Blockbuster will also be jumped.
It seems that with Technology, a lot of businesses will be forced to evolve or disappear, but a lot more new businesses will be born anyway.
m3mnoch, Oncnawan, et al-
Do you guys secretly work for the NY Times?
haveblue – awesome link
m3mnoch, people have already forgotten divx players and the whole deal where they had to be connected to a phone line to authorize your ability to play a movie. Sony didnt learn from that lesson apparently.
The blu-ray announcements are now a constant source of hilarity for me every day.
The pricelist I saw released today for blu-ray movies was ridiculous:
“Sony plans to sell new Blu-Ray titles wholesale into retail at $23.95, with back catalogue titles being sold wholesale at $17.95 – which will probably translate as around $29.95 and $24.95 respectively on the price tags for consumers.”
http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/692/692368p1.html
The really absurd thing is that none of those movies are worth owning. A blu-ray version of the Terminator will further reveal the shortcomings of 1984 special effects…
Here is what I see happening – a slew of new HD-DVD players that obviously play regular DVD’s, in a range of prices since it’s a derivative technology. By Xmas 2006, HD-DVD players are bundled with HDTV’s at firesale prices. Warner Brothers and the rest of the HD-DVD studios sell their movies at the same price as regular DVD’s. Since there is so little overhead with HD-DVD, it’s no skin off their nose.
When 20th Century Fox or another blu-ray backer studio figures out it cant move product at 29.99, it adds support for HD-DVD. It could be any of the big blu-ray backers, but it doesnt matter. Once a large studio switches alliances, blu-ray is dead.
When you compare the two side by side on the same tv, there is no compelling reason to pay more for blu-ray given blu-ray will be so much more expensive.
Sony can’t afford to sell these things at a deep loss (see the related articles on them exploring the sale of 5 divisions and the exorbitant price of the blu-ray).
As m3mnoch has stated repeatedly, Sony can NOT undercut their hardware licensees with the PS3 – which means it has to sell for 700 and up at launch if the cheapest blu-ray player standalone unit is 1000. At that, the PS3 blu-ray will have to be crippled in some way as to justify the price cut over a standalone player. Sony could very easily face a scenario where they are the ONLY blu-ray manufacturer as third party hardware vendors abandon a losing market.
Meanwhile, HD-DVD players quietly supplant existing dvd player production and you’ll be able to pick them up for 49.99 in a year. Think of the AMD 64 chips. They still do 32 bit windows and programs just fine, and it doesnt cost anymore. AMD has quietly switched all of their lines to 64 bit procs, but the prices are the same as their old procs.
I have to agree with m3mnoch that it’s very interesting that Fox and Disney sat out. Either they are waiting for a must have release title to announce, or are reconsidering entirely. In Japanese culture, the lack of an announcement today by Fox and Disney would be considered bad form.
Sony really has created their own perfect storm for their own demise.
haveblue.
my favorite quote from that article is one from hp — a third party company with no emotional equity in either blu-ray or hd-dvd:
if an unbiased tech company who’s main business is manufacturing electronic components is having doubts about the blu-ray manufacturing process, i think it’s time to worry.
interesting read. thanks.
m3mnoch.
opa.
i totally forgot about divx. what a nightmare! you couldn’t give those things away.
that’s what happens when you try to alienate your base customer. i really do think sometimes that sony, in its arrogance, has come to despise the ‘ignorant’ customer.
“they should just buy our brand and stop questioning what we do!”
m3mnoch.
Haveblue;
Heheh. Funny it is how, when people think about the same set of facts for a long enough time they come to the same conclusions. I think the HD-DVD camp said it best when they acknowledged that this generation of disk format will be a short-lived stepping stone to digital distribution. As such, it is more efficient to go with the format that offers the same benefits as the competition, but is 25-50% less expensive.