Paramount drops Blu-ray support -- everybody groans

[Shrygue]

via PS3 Fanboy (http://www.ps3fanboy.com/2007/08/20/paramount-drops-blu-ray-support-everybody-groans/)


After months of reports proving that Blu-ray sells more movies than HD-DVD, Paramount's parent company Viacom has announced that they are dropping Blu-ray support and going HD-DVD exclusive. According to Viacom, they made this decision based on researching the benefits of HD-DVD, which "confirmed the clear benefits of HD DVD." Some of the benefits of HD-DVD that they mentioned included lower sales, a much smaller user base, and limited storage space (okay okay, they actually said 'market ready technology' and 'lower manufacturing costs').

There are rumors of a 150 million dollar payout by the HD-DVD consortium to nab the Viacom exclusivity, which sure would help explain the move more than the officially given reasons. Regardless, we now can look at the format-war that nobody wanted getting strung out even longer. Yay -- thanks Viacom.

[rmedtx]

Viacom sucks! I can't believe they did that.

[omega:-:joe]

Anything that hurts Sony's shit consoles sounds good to me

[vsniper]

Anything that hurts Sony's shit consoles sounds good to me

I hate the idea of Blu-Ray winning the war because it's largely a Sony product

[JKKDARK]

That's really big news. Glad to see 360finally getting exclusive releases.

[jerrt]

ugh, a] this stretches thing out more which is bad, b] i really wanted to pick up a few of those titles on blu ray. man, this sucks. :[

[jerrt]

Anything that hurts Sony's shit consoles sounds good to me

well that is your negative side, who is on your possitive side? [trying to make this as simple as possible]

[Basil Zero]

umm thats a dumb move they've made(guess they dont care about making money), and oh wow ,geez, xbot fanbots will rejoice over this for some weird reason xD.

forget movies, i want games lol

[omega:-:joe]

well that is your negative side, who is on your possitive side? [trying to make this as simple as possible]

I'm a fan of games in general, but I have never had a good sony product. I do not have a single friend who has not had to buy 2 or more PS2s because they broke. I have a friend on his 3 PSP, and a nother friend who had a Vaio laptop for all of 3 months before it fried. I personally had to get 3 PS2s just to finish FFX because the disc drive kept crapping out.

That and I hate Sony's corporate attitude, and basically how they have lied their balls off recently "so the Wii is outselling the PS3, what does Sony have to say about this?" "The PS2 is outselling the will constantly" Not only did they a) use the wrong system as a comparison, it's not even an accurate statement for months now.

Also I will never forget going to last E3 and seeing the complete blatant ripoff of the Wii mote that is the Sixaxis. I mean, no developer aside from like 2 select one knew of that until E3.

I support Nintendo and Microsoft. Nintendo for their exclusive games as well as potential games like Orb, Thorn, Sadness, and such, and Microsoft because they actually are helping indie devs it seems (despite the issues I've heard of the 360, I only know one person who had to get a replacement)

[Tree]

OMFG i cant believe dis its true who pays the most money gets wat they want ... it pisses me off

[ish420ism]

ugh, a] this stretches thing out more which is bad, b] i really wanted to pick up a few of those titles on blu ray. man, this sucks. :[

Yeah dude, i hate this damn incompatability issue. someone should come up with a way to incorparate both formats into one piece of hardware. maybe a softmod for the ps3 to play hddvd.:thumbup:

[pibs]

Don't see why BR fans are complaining, it will only cost them about $200 for a HD-DVD player while BR players range on the $400-500 price for those who own a HD-DVD player. I own both format players and it sure sucks switching back and forth for watching my fav movies but thats the price to pay thanks to the format wars.

for those who would want an even cheaper HD-DVD player w/o a 360
http://digg.com/hardware/Xbox_360_HD_DVD_Players_works_on_PC_with_NO_DRIVER S
edit:Just a heads up, it works but u need a HDCP-compliant video card, my pc came with one so i don't know if it will be a problem with you guys.

[DPyro]

You can already play HD-DVDs on PS3 through Linux.

[Elven6]

You can already play HD-DVDs on PS3 through Linux.

Source?

[Timstuff]

This sucks, I NEED my Transformers Blu-Ray! I say we storm Paramounts' HQ and flip over some cars! :mad:

[bah]

The death of blu-ray as a movie format is a good thing (I'm not saying this is the start of its death, just hoping).

The standard copy protection (AACS) of both has been broken for all intents and purposes, but blu-ray has a secondary protection (BD+) that has not yet been cracked.

I'm no 360 fanboy, I own neither a 360 nor PS3 and have no intention of getting either ATM, but quite frankly Sony should not have sole responsibility for a widely used format if you look at their track record.

Minidiscs that cannot be used as data discs, only support Atrac3, and only lets you add music to the thing via line-in (I know they changed this eventually once the format was essentially dead).

The whole DRM fiasco on audio CDs, installing dodgy drivers onto peoples systems.

Crappy DVD burners that wont read DVD video discs at anything above 2x. Makes ripping slow.

UMDs that are not universal in any sence of the word now that the video side of the format is mostly dead. Before it could still be universal because it 'held all types of media', regardless of the fact only 1 device uses the things.
The fact that video would not playback at full screen res on PSPs just to try and sell more crappy video UMDs.

Sony is too influenced by its media devision to provide products that have the features people actually want. Their suits have a major hard-on for restrictions and DRM.
The electronics industry is larger than the entertainment industry, and it sells more devices when they do what people want than when they do what the entertainment industry want.

I'm sick of features that actually remove abilities of a technology.
At least we cant blame sony for HDCP I guess (dam you intel).

/end rant

EDIT: I will add, I was truly surprised to read that Sony now sell DivX certified DVD players. Its almost a standard on LG players that are available in WA and is the best feature Ive seen on a DVD player since playing DVDs.

[irongiant]

This is typical of Microsoft's approach to just about everything, throw enough money at it until they dominate. All they're trying to do is prolong this format war in the hope that consumers will turn to their own download service instead. You can guarantee all those Paramount titles will appear on the MS download service at the same time they're released on HDDVD. Customers and movie studios prefer Blu Ray, the disc sales figures and support backs that up. How anyone can support a company that throws endless amounts of cash at something until the competition is wiped out is beyond me.. they dropped the original XBox like a stone remember, if the 360 ain't successful enough they'll do the same and keep spending until they're on top. If Blu Ray does lose this so called war and Microsoft also win the console war then Sony may well pull out altogether then there goes competition and MS will dominate the office environment and home entertainment, is that what we really want? Microsoft won't be getting another penny out of me.

As for faulty consoles and hardware my brother had his 360 picked up by a courier to be taken back to Microsoft for repair as it had the infamous red ring of death.. the driver said they were collecting over 300 a week and that's just in the midlands area.

[irongiant]

Interesting response from Michael Bay to this news..

"I want people to see my movies in the best formats possible. For them to deny people who have Blu-ray sucks! They were progressive by having two formats. No Transformers 2 for me!

Bay"

[bah]

The sales figures show that a game console like the PS3 has a quicker adoption rate than standalone players for a new video medium.

Sony looses money on each PS3 so they can push their blu-ray format, isn't that throwing money at a problem?

"According to research group Digital Entertainment Group, there are 1.5 million Blu-ray players in the US. That's made up of 100,000 standalone players and 1.4 million PS3s. As for HD DVD, there are 150,000 Xbox 360 HD DVD players and 150,000 standalone players." - Source. (http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/format-war/blu+ray-players-dominate-5-to-1-over-hd-dvd-in-us-270696.php)

Console sales to people that may or may not use that feature (or even know about it) (http://www.games-digest.com/2007/08/next-gen-consol.html) won't make that much difference in the end. Its the standalone sales that will eventually dominate and its those that will reflect which format will 'win'. How many 100s of millions of standalone DVD players are there? What % of DVDs sold do you think are watched on a PS2?

Where does it say Microsoft paid viacom to make this choice? There are 'rumours' the consortium paid out.
Considering the profit made from DVDs and the fact one or both of these formats will eventually replace DVDs as the standard, you would think it would cost them a rather large amount if they had.

Also, the PS2 had its fair share of issues with deciding not to read discs anymore. At least M$ extended the warranty to 3 years on the 360.

Once again, I own neither system and have no loyalty to either (I own both an original XBOX and PSP, mostly for emulation, though).

EDIT: Hell, why is Microsoft being singled out as paying for this decision? They are far from the only backers of HD-DVD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_DVD#Corporate_and_industry_support) and don't even include one as standard in their top console SKU.

Its like politics, neither side is worthy of loyalty/fanboyism, its about trying to pick the less 'evil' option.

[Shadowblind]

Oh great. More reason for the format war to continue. I wonder how much Paramount was paid for this to happen?

Paramount probably had to pay whoever owns HD-DVD to do this :rofl:

I dont see how this is 360 news, though...

[Elven6]

Paramount probably had to pay whoever owns HD-DVD to do this :rofl:

I dont see how this is 360 news, though...



The 360 can play HD DVD's, so its the closest thing I guess.

[Cap'n 1time]

OMFG i cant believe dis its true who pays the most money gets wat they want ... it pisses me off

Apparently you arnt familiar with the way we do things in America :(


You can already play HD-DVDs on PS3 through Linux.

I'm pretty sure you have to have the HDDVD optical drive to actually play the media. Do you mean you can mount HD-DVD images? That makes more sense.

[jerrt]

I'm a fan of games in general, but I have never had a good sony product. I do not have a single friend who has not had to buy 2 or more PS2s because they broke. I have a friend on his 3 PSP, and a nother friend who had a Vaio laptop for all of 3 months before it fried. I personally had to get 3 PS2s just to finish FFX because the disc drive kept crapping out.

That and I hate Sony's corporate attitude, and basically how they have lied their balls off recently "so the Wii is outselling the PS3, what does Sony have to say about this?" "The PS2 is outselling the will constantly" Not only did they a) use the wrong system as a comparison, it's not even an accurate statement for months now.

Also I will never forget going to last E3 and seeing the complete blatant ripoff of the Wii mote that is the Sixaxis. I mean, no developer aside from like 2 select one knew of that until E3.

I support Nintendo and Microsoft. Nintendo for their exclusive games as well as potential games like Orb, Thorn, Sadness, and such, and Microsoft because they actually are helping indie devs it seems (despite the issues I've heard of the 360, I only know one person who had to get a replacement)

That is why i asked and i'm glad you responded.

see i'm on the other end of the quality chain than you are. the only problem i have seen among friends ps2's was i had a friend who bought one at launch and the fan hadn't been connected causing the unit to over heat. he took it back to best buy that night and never looked back. i have owned mulitple cd players, i own multiple minidisc player/recorders, multiple ps1's, multiple ps2's, multiple psp's, mulitple digital cameras from sony,a ps3, a 55 "inch rear projection and many other smaller sony products. i've never had problem one with any of them. i've always appreciated the aesthetics and intuitive user innerfaces of their products as well as the inherent quality in most of their products.

all that said, i'm sure with all the advance technology that is stuffed in smaller and smaller spaces, things are bound to get screwy, but i have personally never had any problems.

sony's attitude is open to debate as i see the point you made, yet feel it is less severe when compared to the 360 failure rate and microsoft's hush hush actions surrounding it. at least with what sony said, i can look at real statistics and information and make my own decisions. There are plenty of things we could volley at each other, but i think a drastic different in the asian culture that surrounds sony and the american culture that surrounds microsoft makes that debate all the much more difficult. [and even if the numbers may have been wrong, they didn't use the wrong system. they ment to make a comparison about the fact that they still sell a lot of last gen hardware in the face of all these next gen systems. their only mistake may have been to use the wrong numbers, but my previous statement still stands]

your comment about the control expresses a personal opinion on the situation, and while you see it as theft of an idea, i'm just glad that i get have another layer of player interaction added to my gaming experience. Nintendo did it completely different, but this idea and concept has been around for sometime.

again, i thank you for your response as it helps me better understand what is going on when people spearhead negative comments at someone/something.

[DPyro]

You can use a USB HD-DVD drive or mount an image ;)