Next-Gen DVD Wars Give me the Blues... 10
I’ve been seeing more and more movies I wouldn’t mind actually buying… except that I have a 56” HD TV set. It looks amazing, pretty good with DVD’s, but really amazing with HD so if I’m going to buy a movie I sure as heck want it in HD.
Unfortunately thanks to the tech companies refusing to come up with a single standard, I can either buy a $200 HD-DVD add-on for my Xbox 360, or a PlayStation 3 which I’ve heard is the cheapest Blu-Ray DVD player available. And of course, I really need to buy both if I want HD movies since some studios are only putting their movies out on one or the other format.
The end result? I’m not buying HD movies for HD-DVD or Blu-ray because its pathetic to have to have 2 players around (no, I don’t care about universal players). In addition, I’m not buying DVD’s anymore since I know that in a year or two I’ll want to re-buy it in whatever HD format wins (please let one of them win in a year or two!!!).
What are other people doing in this situation? Buying one or the other? Still buying DVD’s? Or not buying any movies at all until they get it straight?
Most of us are downloading ripped hd and blue ray disks and watching them through media center boxes (i have a little mac mini that’s perfect). VLC will run anything like a champ so there’s no need to use set-top players.
I would feel bad about “stealing” movies if I was given any other choice. I won’t agree to the usage agreement for hd and blue ray and you can’t download any video from these guys over any internet service that isn’t loaded up with DRM so I’m out of options if want to watch movies and keep any kind of principal i have left.
The DRM on HD-DVD or BluRay is bad enough that I would not give either one any money. I won’t pirate movies, so that leaves me with DVD. The picture on a DVD is not great, but it is good enough to satisfy me, considering the alternatives.
@Ralph: Sure, but DVD has DRM on it as well. Either way you need to strip the encryption should you want to make a backup. The movies anonymous speaks of downloading have had all DRM stripped off, just like you’d need to strip the DVD encryption should you want all your rights with your own DVD.
How pathetic an excuse, anonymous… Your only option is to avoid their products, not to steal them. If you boycott their products, they will get the idea. If you steal their products, they will only change their enforcement, which is exactly how we got to the current DRM environment.
If keeping your principles is anything but an excuse for feeling good about stealing their content, you would just avoid their products entirely.
Now, as far as what I’m doing about the formats… I purchased a PS-3 back in early January, really without much regard for HD formats because at the time I didn’t have an HD capable display. Since then, my projector had the bulb die again and instead of getting a new one I got a 1080p display.
I’ve largely been boycotting DVDs and the like because of how the industry is treating us. They’re acting like they don’t want me to view it, with CSS and HDCP and the like, so I’m avoiding buying…
I do get Netflix, and switched them to preferring BluRay. So, when available I get some content on BluRay. So, while I’m tempted to purchase some of my favorites in the new format, and I have the BluRay player, I’m really not interested in purchasing the content. Because of DRM but also because they couldn’t learn from Betamax.
Sean
First of all, my opinion is that neither format will lose out, I don’t mind hybrid players at all. I think they are inevitable.
I personally don’t mind DRM too much, unless it really gets in the way. Certainly backups are an issue here.
That said, we don’t really have a choice. There are many movies I want to watch, and they are only available through one distributor. “Don’t watch them at all” is not an acceptable answer to me.
With the majority of people not really caring about DRM because they just want to watch movies, I doubt boycotting is going to have any effect. However, if most consumers don’t see any real benefits to HD over DVD, then some sort of boycott might actually work.
Netflix.
Ycros:
Just wait until they want to watch their HD movies on a Windows system and find they have to upgrade their display because the driver won’t feed a display with an external output. Then we might start to see some market reaction against DRM.
Personally I have neither BluRay nor HD-DVD, and won’t be switching any time soon.
I buy HD-DVD’s, but am going to start using Netflix. Blu-ray is too expensive and ps3 blows.
oh btw, lol @ anonymous… I still just download most movies… Ive bought about 6 hd-dvds.
I suspect you know by now, but this seems to have been decided in favor of Blu-ray based on two more studios cutting over to exclusivity.