Saving HD DVD??
Will Warner Respond to 20,000 vs. 8,000? Probably not...
Warner's CES announcement of Blu-ray exclusivity has created quite an uproar in the media. Many claim that the HD war has been won by the Blu-ray camp. Does Warner really believe that Blu-ray is the consumer's real choice for high definition, disc based media? Do they think we want higher priced hardware or incomplete and changing specifications? Are the rumors of a $500 million payoff true?
Here at Audioholics, we see the rumors, we play with the hardware, and we feel the pain of a format war. And, from our personal experiences, it's clear that both HD DVD and Blu-ray can provide a fantastic audio and visual experience. Dare I say, an identical experience? Even so, with nearly 90,000 new sales of low cost HD DVD players on Black Friday 2007, there will surely be a large consumer backlash at the recent shift of power.
As such, we would like to point you to an independent Internet based petition to Warner, Paramount, and Universal Studios. It seems that there are quite a few fans of HD DVD left out there. As of this writing, nearly 20,000 have signed the petition, and there will certainly be more. If you are an HD DVD user, and the format is important to you, then this may be a way to make yourself heard.
http://www.petitiononline.com/SAVEHDD/petition.html
Not only are the proponents of HD DVD actively seeking their
own preservation, but on the other side of the battlefield there are people
seeking its demise. Perhaps you feel
that HD DVD truly isn't for you, and the war should end quickly. Is Blu-ray your choice? Yet another independent Internet petition
exists, but with only 8,000 signatures at the time of this writing.
http://www.petitiononline.com/HDVDeath/petition.html
Will these petitions make a difference? We don't know. Of course, we may be on the verge of a new revolution of devices that will let us download HD content directly from the Internet, cable, and satellite providers. In 5 years, will bandwidth and content be so ubiquitous that physical media becomes obsolete? Only time will tell…
See also:
Recent Forum Posts:
Buckeye_Nut;363284
The customers have chosen, and the vast majority didn't choose HD-DVD.
Bingo! Any arguments to keep HD DVD around or winning or not compelling enough for me.
HD DVD is not designed to have all studios releasing 1080p content on it. It's a 720p/5.1 format.
Even Amir Majidimehr stated on behalf of Microsoft that only they can get the most out of the VC-1 codec.
Well that's great with a small release schedule, but if everyone wanted to release on HD DVD you'd see a massive drop in releases with lossless audio and a massive drop in quality releases. There just wouldn't be enough time to spend making all the releases look good.
With 18 Mbps extra bandwidth and 20GB more space, Blu-ray is ready for mass market numbers. That's the long and the short of it.
Warner's Blu-ray Discs have outsold their HD DVD offerings throughout the entire 2007. Their decision was an easy one and shows that only propaganda artists would have you believe there are some inherent replication issues when it comes to Blu-ray.
More than half the "save HD DVD" signatures are jokes.
Keep in mind over 350,000 copies of "300" sold on Blu-ray.
j_garcia;363629
Wow, up to 9000? I signed it at 1100...and that was only a few days ago.
The save HD DVD petition is over 29k, that is almost 3x the Let it Die petition!
Oh yeah, I voted to save the HD DVD format.
shamus;363297
I've ignored Audioholics biased view of the format war for quite sometime, but this is a little too much for me.
I've always come here for the great reviews, but with articles like this, I just don't trust this site anymore.
Please remove me from your membership.
lol! That was great. I didn't think anyone could have such a vested interest in the format war that they would get so upset they'd just quit being intelligent alltogether. Poor guy must have a hard time in life whenever anyone disagrees with him.
I'm still waiting for one of the formats to have more than a handful of movies I might want to watch. At this point that format is unlikely to be HD-DVD.
