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Well scratch that rumor about a dramatic price drop: according to Microsoft's Gamerscore blog, Microsoft and Toshiba are discontinuing the Xbox 360 HD DVD drive. So long friend, we'll see you in the next life (or in the bargain bin at Goodwill soon enough).
http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/23/x...le-theyre-hot/
It is not dead. It will be back and will send the Blu-ray to the oven.
These comments from /. make a good points.
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additional DRM was optional? Yes and no:
BD+ optional? Yes. But it's still an extra layer of DRM we now have to live with. And with HD DVD, AACS was also optional. With Blu-Ray, AACS is MANDATORY (Most recent PowerDVD switched to profile 1.1, and won't play AACS-less movies anymore!)
Nevermind HD DVD also:
-had no region codes
-didn't need bullshit profile updates, 1.0 to 1.1 now, and 2.0 soon
-supported all codecs out of the box (TruHD and DTS MA support not optional)
-didn't need BD-J updates
-often had a plain old DVD compatible layer (so the same disc will also play in the car/bedroom or such -- i'm not getting a blu-ray player for the car anytime soon, nor buying the same movie twice for that, nor reencoding them)
-cost far less (even before price cuts, and sony is also losing money on PS3 sales)
-from what i've seen, the titles played faster (damn slow BD-J crap, damn slow players, etc) -- it can take seen several minutes of wait to play a Blu-Ray disc... (HD DVD used simple html-like markup, with free dev tools/full docs and all)
The *ONLY* advantage Blu-Ray had was more disc space, which is unnecessary -- just look at the DVD9-sized x264 reencodes from many groups out there... They look as good as the retail disc to me (on a fairly high end TV, and I'm not blind either). On a 25GB disc, that would still leave you with 14GB left for extra audio tracks and extras. From a computer storage/backup standpoint, that DOES make Blu-Ray better, but as for a entertainment/video format, not.
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Proponents of the HD DVD format (myself included) argue that because both formats have ample capacity for a full length feature film in 1080p/24 with lossless audio the trade-off wasn't worthwhile. For most titles the additional spaces simply isn't used or is wasted with inefficient encoding; for example, the majority of titles that contain lossless audio forego compression entirely because the BDA made lossless compression (TrueHD or DTS-MA) optional instead of mandatory like the HD DVD spec. And since the overwhelming majority of standalone players don't implement them the titles which do use advanced compression will simply default back to DD 5.1 sound (i.e. no better than bog standard DVD).
But then thinking about how valid and relevant to me many of those points are, yet the other format 'won', reminds me of another post I read the same day (from a different topic, the context seems a little off at first because of it but I think it's relevant):
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I'm not sure if this is a geek-specific variant version of the "I'm an important customer so they should do what I want or watch out", or if it's just the less arrogant(?) but equally deluded flaw of Slashdotters to assuming that their views and behaviour are representative of more than a tiny percentage of the market. Probably a mixture- they're both facets of the same thing anyway.
The latter case is something like when people say "I [or 'people'] would be more likely to buy the PSP if they removed the DRM restrictions etc. and let me do what I liked with it". Sorry, but a guaranteed sale to 1, or 5 or 500 people is going to be vastly outweighed by the profits Sony thinks (or hoped) it'll make by tying down the machine and selling people content or applications instead of letting them add their own.
I mean, personally I'd have been far more likely to buy a PSP if it had been more hackable or at least an open development environment, but I'm under no delusions as to my importance in the market, or to what Sony actually want.
And yet another:
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Society is not an amorphous blob with a clear will and an appreciation of its own good. Society is made up by people, and what the decision makers think is "good" is not necessarily good for society; both because the decision makers might be wrong, and because their own interests may be different from those of society.
The geeks may prefer something, and in terms of tech they're probably right, but the market is large enough to be almost entirely comprised of those who know nothing of the technical specs of either format.
It looks pretty dead to me.