Is George Bush his screen writer.

What a lame excuse to back a more exp****ve format which is not even complete LOL. Sounds like Warner got paid off over 600 million by the BDA because this is lame. Once again they screwed the HD DVD backers.

What? I don't get it either, what does that has to do with anything?, yo no entiendo!.

Although I rather lean toward Blu-Ray, this is one of the stupidest way to support Blu-Ray. As lots of comments below suggest, Blu-Ray discs are still more expensive to make than HD DVDs, and .. what gas?

Guys! I am SUPER serial it was manbearpig! er Global Warming I mean that's the reason Warner went with blu-ray,

Ahh, so the logical decision in a declining economy is to back the more expensive format? Sounds like top-level executive thinking.

That has to be the most ridiculous explanation ever. They're apparently scrambling to offer anything that will appease those hungry for an honest explanation of what exactly transpired behind the scenes after the back stab they gave HD DVD immediately before a major public event.

He was probably still high from the ink of all those unmarked bills he was rolling around in.

"gas prices beginning to affect sales" he probably meant wind direction or sun spots. That would be extremely more logical than gas prices.

"What does that have to do with anything?"

With all due respect, that is spoken like a technoid devoid of any understanding of business costs.

May I suggest several things.

First, if they do not perceive the percentage of sales, especially with price cuts and incentives on the lower priced platform, that is not a glad tiding.

But more importantly, and for a parallel which does have historical precedent...

Remember records, you know, those large flat vinyl disks? For many of you, go ask your parents. Did they just go away because no one wanted the format? Absolutely not!

The distribution companies made the decision to 'end' them. Why? Simple.

It costs a significant amount of Money - something many of you still don't have to worry about as you still live off your parents - but something for which the business world still depends.

At it costs a significant amount to manufacture, process and ship duplicate format inventory across multiple formats. And this duplicate inventory results in no more sales, just cannibalized sales among the competing formats. In other words, if you need a copy of the latest Britny song, you are not going to buy it on multiple formats, you are going to pick one. And the average person only picks one. So having umpteen formats costing money and fighting for the same space
does not increase the amount of available titles in your product mix, it simply duplicates the same titles and costs money.

So they dumped vinyl, a very costly and heavy (think processing and shipping costs) and large (lower product density on display) in lieu of what was seen as the future format once a significant amount of players had been sold.

They didn't ask you what you wanted, they in effect told you.

And it looks like the industry, faced with an incredible amount of pressure from the online deliverables industry witnessed by the plethora of announcements for streaming and on-demand product delivery coming out of CES, is being forced to face the reality that the world is not waiting for a bunch of silly politics in a less than 5% total market share to figure out what they will do.

They are starting to make the decision for us.

You see, the world really doesn't revolve around simply which format the fanboys happen to like. There are business considerations. And anyone who fails to align their technology according to these realities is destined to become one of the amazing whiz bang technologies just like Beta - a superior technology where Sony insisted upon charging manufacturers a one time licensing fee, while JVC smartly told the manufacturers - just make them, we will soak the idiot consumers with a fee every time they buy a crummy videocassette. Thus the manufacturer's cost were reduced and they acted in their best interests. So enjoy.

And despite Sony doing essentially the same #%$@& thing with Blu-Ray, the HD hard copy format war may be quickly becoming superfluous with the advent of online deliverables and a format such as CH-DVD where the Chinese would LOVE to sell their affordable machines here - especially with the previously announced (in BetaNews) LEGALLY PROTECTED BURNING OF MOVIE DOWNLOADS becoming available.

So you see, sometimes the COST of doing business sometimes DOES have something to do with the BUSINESS of media delivery.

and BTW, the editor does not like special characters!
;-))

Oh give it a rest. Don't give us this line about it being a "smart business decision" for Warner to drop HD DVD format ONE DAY before CES. Anyone with any sense at all knows perfectly well that isn't true. If Warner wanted to make anything close to a smart business decision, they would have done far more years ago to prevent the format war from ever happening in the first place!

Warner didn't make this decision based on anything other than the under the table money that Sony offered to pay them as a bribe to do so (in multiple forms) and absolutely everyone knows it. This isn't Sony winning. It isn't anything even close to that. This is Sony BUYING a market that they knew they couln't legitimately win fair and square with their so called "superior technology" in the marketplace. Sony knew perfectly well that they couldn't afford to lose this battle so they simply saw to it that losing wasn't an option. "If you can't beat 'em, buy 'em" the old saying goes I think. You can do that when you are a big multi-national with a couple billion in ready reserves in the bank.

Remember, money talks...and a lot of money SCREAMS.

Wow... that was, uh... enlightening.

As intelligent as you appear to make yourself out to be, you could still learn a thing or two about properly replying to someone else's post. :)

Warner has a great track record.. Netscape, AOL, CNN, all the top of the class.. (Atleast before Warner purchased them)

Too bad he didn't ask the follow up question. What does that have to do with anything?

I can't imagine a BD disc costs more than $2 to make... or an HD disc for that matter... I think the cost of the disc is misleading... now, maybe the cost of having to master 2 seperate discs for 2 formats that each account for really low numbers is the real problem...

Thats the most retarded explanation I've heard thus far. HD-DVD players are obviously cheaper by as much as 4x, and I know for a fact that producing HD-DVDs is cheaper than producing blu-ray disks. What on earth do gas prices have to do with media sales... I understand that theres less money on consumers hands, but its not exactly your average Joe Blow who can afford these products.

I don't get it, what is he trying to say? People could not afford HD DVD players so naturally they went over to an even higher priced format? Does not compute...

Seems to me like they are trying to sway from the truth that they took a sh!t load of money from Sony et al to go blu-ray exclusive. I'd hate to say it, but the stupider they sound the less suspicious people get.

The saddest part of this is that most Americans will accept this as fact and not blink an eye as they pull out their credit cards to buy yet another overpriced thing they don't really need.

Except most Americans aren't buying either player still, and likely won't until prices come down a fair bit.

"We've typically been recession proof. But the thing that we saw in the fourth quarter...was gas prices beginning to affect sales. And since we're considered an impulse purchase, it's beginning to impact us."

Interesting explaination...but that's all that they actually said and the rest ofd this article is speculation. All we have is a quote with no context except the one BN is giving us, so he may have said this in relation to something else.

I do appreciate BN trying to force WB into clarifying their reasoning behind this sudden change, however. They really have yet to explain the reasoning behind the move.

Bluray sales are 2-1 when compared to HD-DVD, in the U.S. Around the world it is more 3-1. Incase you people forget, United States is -not- the only nation to watch HD movies.

HD-DVD claims 1 million players sold in the U.S. This includes the 360 HD-DVD add-on. Yet, they say you cannot include the PS3 sales as part of the Bluray install base. I call BS. 25% of the people I know that own a PS3 purchased it primarily for Bluray movies. If this percentage holds through-out the current PS3 install base in the U.S., then that means Bluray still has a larger chunk of the market with nearly 2 million bluray players in homes (including stand-alone players). Early Bluray adopters will pick the PS3 over many others due to the frequent firmware updates provided by Sony, also noting that it is one of the few players in the market that supports the new 1.1 profile.

People seem to forget one other major pusher of HD formats - PCs. DVD took off so quickly due to integration with PCs. Porn is no longer the sole big pusher, we are in a new age.

When it comes down to it, BRDs were selling more than its competitor, HD-DVD.

This includes the 360 HD-DVD add-on. Yet, they say you cannot include the PS3 sales as part of the Bluray install base.

The 360 add-on can *only* be used to watch HD-DVD movies. The PS3''s main use is gaming.

Perhaps that might help explain it for ya?

Your 25% figure is wonderful until you also realize that 100% of the HD-DVD 360 add-ons were purchased for movies.

See?

Where are you getting the 2-1 ratio from in the US, or the 3-1 ratio outside for that matter? "I call BS."

"Your 25% figure is wonderful until you also realize that 100% of the HD-DVD 360 add-ons were purchased for movies..."

That means nothing. Blu outsold HDDVD in movies EVERY WEEK of EVERY MONTH in 2007. Transformers, Borne Identity... In the end, it didn't matter. 2-1 every week.

You can say whatever you want about the U.S. entertainment market, but the simple truth is that the U.S. market is and has always been much larger than other regions around the world. No, we are not the only country to watch material in HD, but we are still the largest consumers of it.

In other words, even though there is a 2:1 Blu-ray software lead over HD DVD in the U.S., and in Europe it's more like 4:1, I guarantee more Blu-ray titles were sold in the U.S. than in Europe. Looking at the ratios alone doesn't tell the whole story.

While apparently in the end that's all that matters, why is it that not one single Blu-ray fanatic can explain why that ratio isn't much larger than it should be due to an incredibly higher number of Blu-ray-capable players? After all this time, the ratio has remained 2:1.

Yes, that signifies 'winner', but it doesn't signify 'clear winner'. If anything, they were doing much worse in the U.S. than they should have with such a clear hardware numbers advantage. Over time, that gap should have continued to widen, but the fact that it never did indicates to me that as the pace of Blu-ray titles sales picked up, so did HD DVD at a proportional rate. Blu-ray never managed to 'leave HD DVD in the dust', so to speak (as many of you would like to have others believe).

That's a very good question. A question I probably couldnt asnwer with any facts and figures.

Maybe it had to do with that study that came out a while ago that stated that something like 70% of PS3 owners didn't know what Blu-Ray was (or something like that). But that was also before the major revamp to the marketing strategy that Sony had (thank god). Before the "I Do BLU" campaign kicked off.

It could also be that maybe many people who owned a PS3 were sitting on that fence afraid to invest more in a format without a clear winner. I know that I had purchased like 5 or 6 movies then decided to wait until things cleared up.

So your question as to why that gap isn't wider, in all honesty... I don't know. But I guess it did enough to keep that lead week after week. And I do believe that in the end, it wasn't the "dedicated" player sales that mattered, it was the title sales.

Those are all very good determining factors, and I happen to agree with all of them.

Thanks fernz33... seriously. My hat off to you for stepping up. That wasn't an attempt to provoke anyone. I was simply curious as to why others seemed to shy away from even attempting to explain it.

yountmj,
Not to kiss your a** or anything... But I think I respect you more than anyone here. Mainly because we tend to start off swinging, but usually end up with a respectfully comment.

Yea I know I get caught up in the name calling, BN bashing, and "fanboyism" (as people call it), but I do have moments from time to time. Something about this site just does that to me???

[/gay]

I know exactly what you mean. It's easy to let things get out of hand sometimes, especially when a particular topic is one that people are rather passionate about... one that will have a potentially significant impact on people's lives. On several occasions I have posted a reply, only to look back and re-read what I have typed and felt ashamed of myself afterwards for such an immature response. I'm 36, but every now and then I have my 13 moments. :)

Hopefully no one takes things too seriously, though. Sometimes it's therapeutic to just vent frustrations, even though it may come off as a direct personal attack on someone else. I really try not to succumb to that, but I have my moments of weakness like anyone else would, I suppose.

Anyway, I appreciate that... it made my day. I have the utmost respect for everyone here because of differing opinions.

Hahaha... I know exactly what you mean.

I'm 30 and married and my wife makes fun of me like you wouldn't believe. She a hot girly girl and doesn't get any of this. She calls me a nerd and a 12 year old... But she does have very valid points sometimes though. Classic.

Dear Beta"News":
Feel free to delete my post as now I know I'm way off topic!

Wow, now thats a pathetic excuse.

uhh I guess that's code word for we decided to stab our partner in the back.

It sure is

LOL =D
Agreed.

Recession???

Yay! Execs on crack.

A recession is multiple back-to-back down quarters, of which we have had none. Gas prices a re a product of artificially limiting the supplies by denying the gas companies the ability to expand and increase production. Simple as that.

These guys are high.

This excuse certainly sounds like hot air to me.

i have transformers on hd. regardless of what happens with this retarded "war", nothing can take away the joy that brings me. love that movie.

One small problem:
Transformers was a crap film

So he sees highly defined crap. That has got to feel better than blocky crap.

Haven't you heard? All the blu-ray cheerleaders are looking forward to Transformers 2 on blu-ray...

Everyone is entitled to their own wrong opinion. Transformers was an awesome popcorn movie.

I had the same initial reaction to the film in the theaters, but I've warmed up to it since home release.

Story aside, it is an excellent title visually and aurally to showcase what high-definition can or should be.

They shouldnt be, they promised never to buy a paramount movie after that back stab

if sales on hd-dvd were so bad then why didn't they try doing something about the insane prices of hd movies? or atleast put them all on bogo's like blu's got...