Paramount backs Blu-ray, Warner and Universal may follow

emjohn basically said it best. I'm guessing that a large amount of people who spent a couple grand on HDTV's a few years ago (including the first plasma screens) will probably end up buying a new HDTV if their current TV does not support HDMI. For anyone that bought a HDTV recently (last 2 years or so), their TV should have HDMI, especially if they looked into it. As long as HDTV prices continue to drop, there should at least be a decent amount of early adopters for Blu-ray. At least for HD movies anyways. As I mentioned earlier, I don't see the format picking up steam as a movie format until a few more years, once HDTV prices are more affordable to the average consumer (come on CNT HDTV's ). Until then, the format will survive mostly as a storage and game medium. By 2008 or so, your TV will be ~7 years old, and chances are that you could find a much better TV for a affordable price (since they'll have to be if they want BR to become mainstream).

 

The best visual example I can show of the difference between movies in HD versus DVD would be the LOTR comparison link that I gave in my 2nd post. I personally have stuck mostly to DVD and standard definition, so I haven't really gotten that much of a taste of HD. There are some people that, after watching tons of HD content, cannot even attempt to watch movies on regular DVDs anymore; they'd rather stick to HBO HD or whatever (BR movies would actually look even better than the broadcasted HD content). IOW, I've seen others comment that the jump would be about as big as VHS to DVD, but that would be second-hand stuff.

BTW, what's the resolution of VHS again? I can't remember it exactly, but I believe there would be about as big of a gap (if not bigger) between the amount of pixels onscreen with DVD->BR (especially at 1080p) as there was with VHS->DVD. That doesn't necessarily mean it will be as noticeable though.

 

AFAIK, there are no Blu-ray players on the market right now. All the Blu-ray devices so far have been recorders, IIRC. Besides, it doesn't really matter what it costs now; what matters is what it costs around Spring 2006. And I don't think anyone really knows what a Blu-ray player will cost us at that time. They may sell Blu-ray recorders that can burn BR/DVD/CD discs (possible dual layer on BR) and also have a HD for ~$1000, but little has been said about just the BR players. FWIW, I believe Toshiba had the same estimates for HD-DVD.

If for some reason it did cost us that much to buy the players, it wouldn't cost them that much to make them. If they did price it that high, it would only be to make up for the R&D for BR.

Of course, I doubt many companies will price their players at ~$1000, or even anywhere near that. Even at say a $500 price tag (way more than expected), the PS3 would be a much better deal since it could play BR movies as well as offer a next-gen video game console experience.

Oh, and also that was coming from a guy who works at MS (Peter Moore?). You know, the same company that said HD-DVD has more capacity than Blu-ray.

Yeah, they did say that. Although it sounded more like a last resort in case both formats split the market. In that case, I doubt Samsung would be the only ones doing that (Sony and Toshiba may even give in after a while). However, at this point, there would really be no point in wasting resources in order to create a player that could play both formats, IMO. I just don't think HD-DVD has anything going for it.

 

Wow...you think $500 is a low figure?

A 10 year cycle is nothing new. I believe they said the same thing about the PS1 and PS2...and both have been/will be around for a 10 year cycle. That statement does not mean the PS4 won't be come out until ~2016; it just means that Sony will still be focusing on the PS3 ~10 years from now, just like they are doing with the PS1 and PS2.

As for the "working harder for the PS3" comments, I personally think Kutaragi is just using it as a tactic to get us all expecting something different, including MS. By saying that, he'll get us to expect something higher than the actual price, therefore making that price seem like a better value. If you're thinking it will be more than $500, then I'm guessing you'll be pleasantly surprised if it costs only $400-$450. FWIW, prior to those comments, Kutaragi said that he didn't think a console that costs much more than $300 could succeed in the market; there were also reports that Sony execs mentioned that the price of the PS3 in Japan would be roughly the same as the PS2.

I personally don't see how Sony would be forced to price the PS3 at that high of a price. The hardware is powerful, but not anything that would cost drastically more than hardware in other consoles, especially since Sony will be making it themselves. Since Sony will be using Cell and BR drives in other devices, they have a lot more options in manufacturing those than say Microsoft or Nintendo; for example, a Cell chip with only 6 working SPEs could still be used for a server or some other Cell device, while a Xenon chip with only 2 working cores is basically trash. Long story short, with enough careful planning and execution, Sony could price the PS3 as low as ~$300 and not suffer that much.