Re: [OT] To****ba climbs on 'HD DVD exit'

Gnomus wrote:
> In article <o8adnX-gJM1WHFnanZ2dnUVZ_ryqnZ2d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>, Ned Ludd
> <andy.block@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> 
>> Gnomus wrote:
>>> In article <7dqdnU3KAJ3G1l7anZ2dnUVZ_oaonZ2d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>, Ned Ludd
>>> <andy.block@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>> HD-DVD is a new product, which should also be reflected in the retail
>>> price of the machines.  And yet, somehow, To****ba was selling them at
>>> greatly reduced prices.  So do Blu-Ray discs have to be more
expensive? 
>>> I don't know.
>> HD DVD (officially, no dash) is (or was, since it's now dead) an 
>> evolutionary product -- it leveraged against what was already known 
>> about DVD, and it used as much as possible from the DVD specification.
>>
>> That means lower manufacturing costs both in the player, and producing 
>> disks.
> 
> And then they went with the blue laser...

Anything can follow from a false premise.

The magic doesn't come from the blue laser by itself.  It's also in what 
kind of tolerances you can hold when you're making the disk.  The disk 
has "pits" that are stamped onto the media.

There are no lasers involved in the actual electroforming process, only 
in making the tooling leading up to that process.

If you can produce the same tooling to tighter tolerances without having 
to replace the machines outright, you can produce that new format disk 
without a huge investment in new format equipment.

>> But a big part of pricing is trying to figure out what the consumer is 
>> willing to pay, and a big part of marketing is trying to make the 
>> consumer think that what you have is going to change their life.  It's 
>> the "technological cocaine" that they've been missing.
> 
> Which is more difficult when you're also positioning your product as
> another version of DVD...
> 
>> That it's somehow worth more.
>>
>> For HiDef media, one way is to simply make sure that there are more 
>> movies on your format than the other one -- even if it doesn't cost
that 
>> much for the studio to go format-neutral.
> 
> That might be where the HD-DVD people went wrong.  They discounted the
> players, while the Blu-Ray people were discounting the discs with
> buy-one-get-one-free promotions, and buy a player and get five free
> discs, etc.  When you get right down to it, most cinephiles have a lot
> more money tied up in the media than the player.

I think the biggest mistake that HD DVD may have made is in making such 
a good upscaler for SD -- and I wonder if the Blu-Ray players do poorly 
in comparison on-purpose.

I agree with the argument that there is no way to upscale and make it 
higher resolution, but it does produce a better version of the SD image.

.... to the point that I wouldn't go out and replace most of my movies.

The movies that do justify HD are the ones that are visually dense, like 
Blade Runner, and Lucky Number Slevin, and Serenity.

I can't see going out and buying "The Game Plan" and paying a premium 
for HiDef.

.... and the HD DVD side did to the same free media offers, 5 by mail-in 
for the last year, and 2 in the box with the player for the past six
months.