Unfortunately, ck, he's right. If it's too early in this video game generation to say that Sony's down and out, then it's too early in this DVD next-gen to say that HD-DVD is down for the count.

I don't think you understood his point.

No. He understood it fine, that guy was trolling.

Anyways, the key to the demise of HD-DVD is universal and once they realize they are losing more money by not releasing movies in Blu-Ray format. I know of a few off hand that I would buy tomorrow if they released it on Blu-Ray. I don't worry about the DRM, it will be cracked if it hasn't been cracked already. There are some very intelligent people who work on cracking those things and will find ways for a person to make back-ups of their movies.

The big difference between the video game and the DVD wars, is that Blu-Ray has signed on exclusivity deals with the majority of the movie studios and there are only very few of them. If Nintendo had signed all but a couple of the 3rd party software companies to exclusive deals and not allowing them to make games for any other system, then we would be comparing similar things and not apples and oranges.

That said, Toshiba, Universal. Give it up and concede already before you alienate people who enjoy your movies and products.

I don't think you're the best person in this forum to accuse someone of trolling. And no, he didn't understand it (or if he did, his post doesn't show it).

I still don't see why anyone cares. This HD disc war is like a schoolyard brawl. It doesn't really matter to the world who wins, because the real battle will be between the kid who wins the fight in the playground against the platoon of professional soldiers standing around watching.

...in case anyone was lost in the analogy, HD dvd and BluRay are the schoolkids and DVD is the platoon.

DVD still has like 95-98% of the market...so who really cares where those last 2-5% go? This isn't anything like the move from VHS to DVD. It's going to take a whole lot more work to move people from the cheaper DVD format.

In my opinion, most people just don't care about HD anything...seriously. HD TV's are increasing in market share, I admit it...but thats because it's becoming increasingly hard to FIND an SD tv, not because Joe Consumer particularily wanted one.

Unless everyone stops producing DVD players and DVD disks, I don't see any mass exodus of people to HD movies.

It's not too early. It's like if right now, stores started announcing they're not carrying PS3s anymore... is that too early? That sounds more like the end of the war to me.

If 80 percent of game makers said they won't make PS3 games anymore, would that be too early? No. This is exactly what has happened in the HD format war, the majority of studios, except universal have gone BR.

If you lose the majority of game makers and the stores stop selling your stuff or renting your games, is this too early to call or is this just the inevitable rolling out right before our eyes.

What will it take before we can finally say it's gonna be over soon? Walmart?

Again with the DVD argument, how does that not mean that the HD format war is over? It's not even relevant. That has to do with HD adoption, not with who is gonna win this war.

Also, you think the movie studios supporting the HD formats don't know about downloadable media in the future? What are they going to support, the format they put so much money backing or put their movies onto a downloadable media format, hmmm....

You do realize that Blu Ray and HD DVD are backed by the big movie studios that control what movies come out, so no it's not Toshiba and Sony fighting. All the movie studios want the next format to be BR or HD DVD.

If they want that to be the main format, it will be. They control the movies.

It's too early because next gen DVD sales pale in comparison to current DVD sales.  There won't be much pressure on Universal because they aren't losing significant revenue because most people are just buying standard DVDs.

Once next gen DVD sales approach 20-25% of current DVD sales, then you can say its time.  Just because you want HD-DVD to be dead, doesn't mean it will happen.

To use the video game analogy.  If combined 360, PS3, and Wii sales were less than 5% of PS2, XBOX, and GC sales, no one would care if the Wii was outselling the PS3 3-to-1.

I would say if MGS4 and FFXIII become cross-platform, that's when we can say the PS3 is effectively dead. 

Almost everything I would actually consider buying the HD formats for are still on HD-DVD only. Though it'll be awhile before I start considering paying $100 for a single season of TV.

Once upon a time back in the 90's people really wondered what the big deal with DVD's were and that they would just fail and not displace VHS as the standard for movies, etc.  When they were first released nobody knew why they would want such a thing as they had perfectly fine VHS movies that played good on their VCR's and TV's. 

 I think that when we really start to see this take off is when HD is the standard and is mandated to become the only option to get signals unless you have a box to convert those signals to your older TV.  People will see what the difference with HD signals and SD signals and realize that they love the clarity and sharpness of the HD sets.  Also costs of the HDTV's continue to drop and the technology moves forward even more.   Could there be a digital media distribution method that doesn't require DVD's or disks of any sort?  Sure, just as there is a chance that someone will develop a car that runs off urine and feces.  It could happen, but I wouldn't hold my breath for a technology that isn't on our doorstep.