Warner Bros. Pictures will go Blu-ray exclusive
 

http://www.darkhorizons.com/news08/080104h.php

The crippling blow of the high-definition disc war may have just taken place with Warner Bros. Pictures, the sole major studio of the big six that has been releasing on both formats, announcing just hours ago that it will go Blu-ray exclusive.

The studio, which also has the biggest market share of any studio in the format, plans to continue releasing in both formats through til the end of May 2008, after that however it will be Blu-ray exclusive.
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This is bad.

Word is they got bribed to wait until after the huge shopping season.. 200-400M..but I still think HD-DVD will win out OR LG player will drop dramatically due to competition from China. HD-DVD is cheaper to produce and you know all those porn studios in The Valley aren't going to the more expensive Blu-Ray.

It's was what everyone was talking about at CES today. If i have to hear one more analyst say.. HD-DVD is dead.. I am gonna smack them with my Xbox360. (which was the 2nd most talked about topic--the over the holiday outage)

No joke... I ordered my HD DVD player for my 360 last night.

Fuckers....

If you video tape smacking idiots and make it a pay site, I'll join :)

Thats going to drop their DVD sales IMHO

This is the exact reason I have refrained from buying either. I don't want to wind up with a several hundred dollar paper weight. I can hold off until one is chosen over the other... plus until the prices come down.

Who the hell is left distributing HD-DVDs? Just Universal and Paramount, right? At least the better quality of the two formats looks to be winning out.

This is the reason my guy told me to just buy a regular up-converting DVD player for my theatre room until it all gets settled out.

It's going to get very ugly .. I don't think HD-DVD is going away.. and I think the real winners will be LG and other companies that have the dual players. Even Sony is in talks to make a dual set just to protect themselves after the betamax fiasco 25 years ago.

it will be interesting to hear today what the "experts" have to say. |thumb

From CNET
Editor's note, January 5, 2008: Because of the recent news that Warner Bros. Entertainment will be exclusively supporting Blu-ray, CNET recommends refraining from purchasing an HD DVD player in the near future. Exclusive support of Warner Bros. Entertainment gives Blu-ray a large advantage in terms of studio backing, leaving only Paramount and Universal as major studios releasing movies exclusively on the HD DVD format. This guide will be overhauled after CES to reflect this and any other news announced at the show.

I disagree that this thread is "Chit chat".

I posted this in the “Gen Business” due to the fact that the last "war" of this kind was Beta vs VHS and that was won when Sony, who owned the Beta format would not allow porn on Beta just as they will not allow porn on Blu Ray and Beta soon faded away. Now a huge company took the side of Blu Ray so this new war could very well effect our business’s in the future, so how could this not be a business related thread?

My second post in regards to my HD DVD player while true, has nothing to do with my comment of “this is bad” but more to do with Doc Holly’s post.

Samsung announced today that they are coming out the beginning of May 2008 with a dual format player currently priced at 599.00.

Also at one of the other press conferences .. I think it was Phillips.. the buy talking -- without going to look -- said that Target is going exclusively Blu-Ray.. BUT I really cannot see Target (or any other store) pulling off major portions of their products and shipping them back.

Walmart here sells a HD DVD player that also accepts regular DVD's and CD's. It has an up convert option that takes the regular DVD's and plays them at 'near' HD quality. I picked one up for 200 bucks and it really plays all formats. The make is Venturer if you are interested.

Long live Betamax and eight track tapes...

I really think this is all irrelevant. DVDs are going to fade away just like CDs almost have.

Going to be really interesting to see what happens here. This is WAR!!

When I moved the thread, I had no idea about the porn DVD angle on this.

I can sorta see your point, but we're an adult internet board, not an adult video board which is why I move this. There's not a lot of webmasters here that sell DVD's. For the most part, we sell access to online sites & unless I'm missing something, this does not effect websites that sell memberships to view online videos.

So that we don't get off topic, you can yell at me on ICQ if you wish :)

Amen. It won't be long before children are looking askance at their parents when they mention the old days of listening to or watching anything, music or video, recorded on any form of physically-distributable media.

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What's a "record?" I thought that was a verb! I mean, yanno, it has a button to push for it so it must be a verb, right?

Torn, I was always under the impression that Betamax lost the war because they were always a step behind VHS. And when the need or a 2 hour tape came around, Sony failed. And as of right now, there are porn titles on Blu Ray.

I agree on the "war" being moot over the next few years. IPTV with uplink to the HDTV is the way to go.