[The News Bot]

The BBC’s home video division says it will continue to release in both HD disc formats, after racking up solid sales with its Planet Earth release. BBC discs are distributed stateside by Warner, which is now exclusively supporting Blu-ray. Adult video maker Digital Playground, however, which blasted Sony for making it difficult to manufacture Blu-ray [...]
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[Rasczak]

Well it looks like the formats are carving markets up for themselves then - high brow documentaries and dramas are selling on HD DVD, porn is selling on the Blu-ray.

[dbs2]

I know which one i'd prefer

[reingam]

This is what ultimately decided the winner between beta-max and VHS - looks like blu-ray has taken a leap forward in the race!!

[eric pisch]

Originally Posted by reingam

This is what ultimately decided the winner between beta-max and VHS - looks like blu-ray has taken a leap forward in the race!!

porn will probably have a very minor impact now as its widely availiable for download in the privacy of ones home, so no need for a brown mac, or so im told

i think its still gonna come down to the studios and the "big gun" releases that everyone wants and thats toped by

star wars and lord of the rings

for me its Aliens and Preditors, Preditor is scheduled on BD in april as is AVPR

[mikim]

I think we have seen a number of leaps forward for the blu-ray format recently. Porn heading to BR will certainly make a difference in sales. Although I don't think that it's quite as prominent as it was back in the 80's, as the internet seems to cater for a huge sector of that market.

Documentaries are available on both as far as I can tell... good old beeb for sticking unbiased... although being a former employee I happen to know that they favour BR over HDDVD… and have for some time.

I know everybody feels differently about this topic, but I personally still believe that this will be the format of choice for the UK at least (regardless if it's better or not)!

Either way, like the rest of the caring public I hope one or other becomes mainstream soon so we can just get on with watching films

[mikim]

Originally Posted by eric pisch

i think its still gonna come down to the studios and the "big gun" releases that everyone wants and thats toped by

star wars and lord of the rings

Very true!

[Simon3119]

There are no decent games around for PS3 owners so they now have something else to do whilst waiting for games to appear

[Shaun666]

Originally Posted by Simon3119

There are no decent games around for PS3 owners so they now have something else to do whilst waiting for games to appear

Maybe they bought them mainly to play Blu-Rays anyway rather than to play games on ?

[Crabman32]

Porn played a very big part in the VHS and Betamax war so I think the switch to Blu-ray is yet another nail in HD DVDs coffin. Universal and Paramount will surely be taking notice. I hope so anyway.

[Rasczak]

Originally Posted by Crabman32

Universal and Paramount will surely be taking notice. I hope so anyway.

TBH I doubt it - I really don't think porn is going to determine very much in this format war and the studios are well aware of that fact. Back in the 1980s it was a choice of buying adult material on VHS or going to dodgy cinemas - it is therefore not surprising that VHS won.

Fast forward to today though and there are many ways to consume porn - most noteably DVD and Internet. So what does HD DVD and Blu-ray offer that these doesn't? Nothing on the flexibility side so the single selling point is going to be the higher resolution. And for 99.5% of adult titles out there this will be irrelevant as the production standards are simply not high enough to benefit from HD. There are a handful of high quality titles and these will do well - but they are a tiny minority.

[Rasczak]

So has Digital Playground actually 'dropped' HD DVD or not? This article suggests not:

“We are currently producing both HD DVD and Blu-ray. HD DVD is still a viable market for us and we’re selling a lot of units. There are over a million players out there, so it may be perceived as ‘dead’ in the long term, but on an immediate basis, it’s still a viable market. We will continue to grow our Blu-ray business as well, and for us, it’s going to be a smooth transition if we have to go from one to the other. For the time being, we will continue to release our movies on HD DVD. We have a good, solid customer (HD DVD) base that is buying a healthy quantity, so until that number starts coming down, we will continue supporting it.”

[dbs2]

But that comment came from an unnamed forum member at High Def Digest who got it from an unnamed source...... so that a nice solid statement.... not denying it isn't true, just it could be cobblers.......

[Rasczak]

Originally Posted by dbs2

But that comment came from an unnamed forum member at High Def Digest who got it from an unnamed source...... so that a nice solid statement.... not denying it isn't true, just it could be cobblers.......

Well let's backflip that - where is the explicit (no pun intended ) press release saying they are terminating HD DVD releases? Yes it could be true, but it could be cobblers. Whichever it's irrelevant to the format war IMHO.

[P-P-S-S]

I just hope this war is going to end soon. if BD wins then that would be great because that way all the manufacturers can jump on the bandwagon and we can see some great BD players appearing and buy them without being scared that they might be obsolete in a month's time.

Microsoft is going to take a hit when HDDVD loses the battle but it's about time that Bill Gates got punished for his greediness (especially after inventing the most horrible and rubbish operating system, Vista that is.)