I love movies and I have a pretty good collection of DVDs. With the end of HD DVD you'd think we'd see an increase in Blu-Ray adoption. Sales of stand alone players though were so low that they won't publish the numbers. I'm not too surprised at this because the players are still really expensive and the movies are a ripoff. It doesn't help that the economy sucks. Having two HD TVs at home, I'm left with one player and that's the PS3 in the living room. I'm not going to pay $300+ to get a player to watch $30 movies when a $12.99 up converted picture is still pretty damn good on the set. 

I thought I'd go out and snatch up some Blu-Ray movies to watch especially those heavy on special effects. I usually pick up DVDs on release day of movies I want. I mean I picked up a pretty nice TV a few months ago so I can get the best picture quality possible. But having the movies in hand, I was left with a conundrum. If I pick this up instead of the DVD version I can only watch it in one place in my house. If I want to curl up in bed and watch it in my bedroom, I'm SOL. DVD on the other hand is readily accessible in all the rooms of my house via a dedicated player or streamed through Media Center. I can't do that with a Blu-Ray movie and that's where I stopped. Even with regular DVDs, the picture quality is still pretty impressive so it's hard to justify spending almost double the price on a movie where I am limited in my current household on where I want to watch it.

I guess my other option would be to pick up a Blu-Ray drive, stick it in my server Media Center, and stream it through there but the 360 has trouble sometimes even streaming regular standard definition TV on an Ethernet connection so I can't see it doing too well with a HD stream.  

So, if an avid movie collector and owner of several HD televisions is hesitant to jump into purchasing Blu-Ray products, I can see why the numbers are low. I'm enjoying watching HD broadcasts of local and cable programs so at least the TVs are being used to some of its potential. The companies though need to drop the prices on both the players and movies if they want to see mass adoption and I would hope they do it sooner rather than later. 

I find it funny that some people think MS should've built the 360 with an HD DVD player. They think if MS would've done that then HD DVD would have have had a better chance or even win the format wars. Personally, I don't think Microsoft cares about the format.. First and foremost, they want to succeed as a gaming console whereas Sony has more at stake having their hand in not only gaming but multimedia. In my opinion, MS is thinking digital distribution all the way and thats what they want to focus on. The add-on was a way to keep the 360 from being caught with a dead format and of course to make the console cheaper to produce. Before all this, the majority of folks were glad MS decided to separate the HD drive from the main console. I still feel they made a smart decision. In the end, it doesn't matter which format wins as long as there's one left.

Everybody's reporting now that Warners finally chose a side and that's Blu-Ray. Could this be the end to the format wars? The Consumerist has a nice little summary of the distribution in exclusivity formats:

Blu-Ray:

• 20th Century Fox
• Walt Disney
• Lionsgate
• Warner Bros
• Sony
      - MGM/UA
      - Columbia TriStar
• New Line & Fine Line

HD DVD:

• Paramount
• NBC Universal

Doesn't look too good for HD DVD does it? While this doesn't mean an end to HD DVD it certainly does look bleak. I'm just glad to finally see a small light at the end of the tunnel though. If this is indeed it, I do feel bad for all those people that invested in HD DVD. It's still not good enough for me to warrant any purchase of Blu-Ray movies yet as I want a clear cut winner and the death of one format. Maybe tomorrow, we'll see Gates announce a Blu-Ray drive for the 360 or a 360 SKU with a built in Blu-Ray drive. I'm just kidding of course. :)

 

OK it looks like Cyril can take a victory lap around his apartment as this article backs up his arguments in my PS3/Blu Ray post.  Maybe we are looking at Laserdisc 2.0...

As I read Chuck's post, I got to thinking about Blu-Ray and the PS3 as a player. I've been sitting on the fence not getting any HD DVD only movies or Blu-Ray movies preferring to wait it out and see who wins before I plunk money down on a format. As a machine, the PS3 is a great build since it runs very quiet and it isn't affected by heat as a 360 is. I've kept my PS3 in my entertainment cabinet without any problems. A 360 would die in there in a few minutes. In any case, the PS3 is an adequate Blu-Ray player but I wished Sony had included an IR receiver so that I can use my Harmony remotes. I'm forced to pick up a third party option that adds a receiver but you still can't turn the console on or off with it from a remote. The inclusion of 1.1 does put the extra features capable closer to HD DVD but it's still got a ways to go.

As far as formats I don't care as long as we are down to one. The dual formats are really silly. On technical specs alone, I like HD DVD over Blu-Ray because there's less DRM, more features available currently, and older players won't have problems with newer discs unlike the evolving Blu-Ray standard that can force some players to become obsolete. Capacity is pretty much the same with HD DVD having triple layer options in the future to come close to Blu-Ray's highest capacity discs. However, if HD DVD doesn't become the standard format I won't be disappointed. I would just like it to be one or the other.

Everytime I go in looking to pick up a Blu-Ray movie, something holds me back. That's new for me since I jumped into laserdisc and DVDs from the onset. For now, I'll probably wait as long as possible before giving in and getting a movie on one format or the other. Until then, regular DVDs will suite me just fine.