HD DVD disk amnesty - Should studios replace your disks with BR?

[oilblue]

Originally Posted by hugh

The HD DVD for Blu-ray exchange would be a nice idea but the logistics would be pretty costly.

Considering studios are in dire straits, not much chance of that then...

[Stargazer]

Originally Posted by David Susilo

I welcome that too. I have about 3,000 SD DVD need to be traded up

So that would mean maybe.... 3000 SD discs = 1 BD disc or maybe $20 off a BD player?

All joking aside, I think what it really means is that those 5-free-BD-movie offers are still going to continue.

[David Susilo]

Originally Posted by jvincent

Great googly-moogly! Is there a big blue and yellow sign above your house?

ROTFLMAO! I still remember the days when I went to BB with my friends and their comment have always been "you have more titles than BB!" (it was true up until 2004, I think, when I had about 2,000 titles)

[Hoowaa]

3000 DVD's ?

At 1.75 hours per that's 5250 hours of just movie material.

If you watched one movie every day each year, it would take over 14 years to watch all of them. Wow.

That said, I agree that I would love to see some kind of trade up program.

I only own 50 DVD's and ~ 10 BD's but I have my favorites flicks that I want to have in Blu-ray format that I don't really want to spend 25 bucks but could see myself parting with $15 to upgrade.

[99semaj]

I'd bet the retail channel could help with it, for a small consideration.

[WestCDA]

Great googly-moogly!

JVincent, it's nice to see FZ resurface, albeit briefly... David, that's a whopping big collection.

I'm not concerned about the studios issuing replacements, though I have a number of HD-DVD titles. I did order one of the LG HD-DVD/BluRay drives for my HTPC today so I can take the A2 out of my equipment rack. I've got the PS3 for Bluray and upconversion (and games, etc), as well as a DVD-A/SACD player for multichannel audio formats. There's only so many disc trays one should have to deal with for the same disc format!

[Joxer]

Reviving an old thread a bit here, and I'm not really too invested myself as I think movie purchases are one of the worst things you can do in general and so have only 3 titles (besides the POS KingKong that came with the xbox hd unit - painful enough when I watched it in a theatre).

1) Those people that bought HD-DVD may buy a blu-ray player and BD movies, or be just pissed off enough to stick with DVDs, or get a PS3 (or wait for prices on other hardware to drop again) and rent.

2) The consumer didn't really have a chance when the 'war' was won on anti-consumer grounds - the perception that Bluray was going to be an impregnable DRM fortress preventing all fair use. IOW, the studios did it expressly to screw the consumer, not out of market forces or superior technology.

3) Everyone that had an HD-DVD player was an early adopter - the numbers are small, but each one is likely an evangelist of some degree, and any goodwill bought for the price of stamping a disc and thowing it in a cardboard box would likely be paid off by the acceleration of movies purchased by these early adopters (now that they don't feel burned) plus the additional blu-ray hardware and software sales driven by their influence on others.

4) Comparisons between DVD and HD-DVD are just pain silly, and I know you know that but here's the quick blow by blow to demonstrate just some of the reasons why. I bought my first DVD player 11 years ago so there's not much early adopter premise here, you can get your content off of them easily unlike HD-DVD, and the new players all play DVDs and likely will continue to indefintely whereas combo players will dry up soon.

[zyad]

Originally Posted by TECHNOKID

All along the fact that consumers were not consulted or involved in the decision was a big grief for me. Now, how about teasing the devil? 99semaj, what you propose makes sense and why don't you make it official with one of those petitions? I think all of theses companies that had led this war to this end result without consumer approval or insight deserve to spend the big $$$$ to make it right to consumers. I feel that many consumers outside of this forum will follow suit and this should therefore be the consumer voice and power and should teach the involved companies to think twice next time around they make such decisions without consulting in some way their consumers when making such decision as that do affect consumers and not to say the response these companies will get from consumers in the future.


Consumers had every rights to get involved and companies involved should of had the decency to seek consumers approval (after all, aren't they the ones buying their crap). It should of been the decision of consumer that decided the faith of the format not theirs and should suffer the consequences of it not the consumers. Having studios and all of the other involved that decided the faith of the format pay dues to consumers that chose otherwise is simply logical as far as I am concerned after all, isn't the main reason those hungry companies exist??? Do you really think as a consumer we have to be cheeps? Don’t you think you or we have a say in the manner?

I don't buy into this "consumers weren't involved" idea.
Consumers spoke with their $$$. It doesn't matter who was paying off who (on both sides). Blu-Ray outsold HD DVD pretty much since inception.

[99semaj]

Originally Posted by zyad

I don't buy into this "consumers weren't involved" idea.
Consumers spoke with their $$$. It doesn't matter who was paying off who (on both sides). Blu-Ray outsold HD DVD pretty much since inception.

You're correct in saying that BD outperformed the other guys almost from the get-go, but there is a widely-held belief that the final decision was really based on royalty-sharing agreements between the studios and the format proponents.

I share that belief. The fact that BD was the stronger performer merely made it easier to spin to the public.

[james99]

Consumers weren't involved. We the consumer didn't decide that Disney was blu only and Uni was Red only, etc.

All of this was decided but the studios.

We went along for the ride.

[Stargazer]

Consumers speak with their pocket books and corporations follow the bottom line. If there weren't profits to be had, the studios would not move in that direction. They saw the writing on the wall and moved away from HD-DVD because they didn't think that was where they could make the most profits.

[g011um]

Consumers speak with their pocket books and corporations follow the bottom line.

Unless you are a corporation the size of Toshiba, Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Sony.... How much money do those companies lose on every product they sell? I could be mistaken, but I think Microsoft is still losing money off the 360 hardware; it's the games and marketplace that keep the business afloat.

Which leads nicely into the format war. With the amount Sony is losing on the PS3, they couldn't afford to have Blu-Ray lose. They placed a heavy investment into an unproven technology, and having HD DVD triumph would have meant the complete and utter demise of the PS3 before Sony could gain enough market share to see returns on software sales (a la Microsoft).

Sure, Toshiba bought off some studios, but Sony and the BDA bought off more. I don't see where the consumer had any choice in those backroom dealings. Had Toshiba offered Warner more money than Sony, and swayed them to HD DVD exclusivity, Blu-Ray (and the PS3) would have died instead. Again, no consumer choice there.

[james99]

Originally Posted by Stargazer

Consumers speak with their pocket books and corporations follow the bottom line. If there weren't profits to be had, the studios would not move in that direction. They saw the writing on the wall and moved away from HD-DVD because they didn't think that was where they could make the most profits.

Warner moved to BD for the sake of ending the war. WB and Fox could have went red for the same reason.

Consumers weren't part of any decision making.