It seems appropriate that after striking the fatal blow in the war between HD DVD and Blu-ray, Warner is the first to break rank and ally itself with the
China Blue HD team. Ready to enter the ordinary Chinese consumer's family, according to Managing Director Tony Vaughan, the
Harry Potter series,
Speed Racer and others will launch for 50-70 yuan ($7.30 - $10.22) per disc. Excuse us while we pick our jaws up from the floor, but with at least one Hollywood studio in pocket and 1999 yuan ($292) players on the way
the son of HD DVD looks remarkably closer to a real Blu-ray competitor (and less like the destined for the scrap heap reject we predicted) than ever. With DVD sales shrinking and Blu-ray not quite ready to pick up the slack, how long until another studio decides the Chinese market has enough potential to publish movies on CBHD? [
Disclosure: Engadget is part of the Time Warner family]
[Via
Format War Central]
posted Mar 2nd 2009 11:31PM
My family and I just finally got Blu-ray players. I don't want to hear about other formats. I want to see this one take off and do well and let it rule for the next 10 years please. Having more competitors and confusion will only make things worse for everyone. I don't want to see people afraid and just wanting to stick with DVD any longer!
My take exactly Blue. I'm really dissapointed to see that WB jumped on this crap and hope it will never make it out of China. I think it is a stupid move and that it, in the end, will not profit anyone except possibly the ego's of some Chinese communists.
Sorry, but HD just looks unrealistic and odd, SD all the way!
Don't sweat it blue, this is just for china. They don't use anything that would require them to play a royalty, so unless I read their spec wrong, the only thing that's the same is the wavelength, focal distance of the laser and disc material.
It will be interesting to see if they manage Triple Layer 51 though.
This wont make it out of China... Piracy is rampant in Asia. The only reason WB has jumped on board is because it is an extra source of income in a country where they hardly get any profit from movies anymore. Why buy a new DVD when a pirated copy is out on the street hours after a release in theaters.
I am a former HD-DVD adopter (still am, buying bargain deals on hd-dvd discs from inetvideo.com or any other place where I can get new or combo discs for under $3.00) but the future is definitely "Blu" for the next 7 years.
New discs prices may be high new releases are around 29.99 MSRP from stores and thats not super far off since DVD's are MSRP around 19.99. Im predicting as blu-ray sales continue to pick up soon they'll be 27.99 and then 24.99 and then 19.99.
WTF!!
Looks like you may have to change your avatar.
Hmmmmm, firmware upgrade for the XA2, some very cheap Chinese HD discs with English audio tracks and were back in business!
You'll need more than a firmware upgrade. CBHD includes at least one new video codec (which generally requires hardware support), and while the disc format is based upon HD DVD, it isn't identical, using an entirely different modulation scheme.
Another reason to not get excited is that Warner China was linked to CBHD in the past, so this isn't big news.
There are good reasons for Warner to backtrack and allow the format war to restart, given their gamble last year has totally screwed everyone over (HD DVD sales and Blu-ray sales combined last year were only fractionally lower than Blu-ray sales this year.) But this is too little, too late, and I seriously don't think the US Warner has any desire whatsoever to push CBHD as anything other than an outlet for a few sales in China.
The chances of a firmware update that introduces 2 new mandatory codecs, a mandatory new copy protection scheme and a low level change to disk's modulation scheme run somewhere between low and non-existent.
Squiggle, thats a good point on the Blu-ray sales compared to last years combined blu-ray + HD DVD. Never thought of it that way. Should sells be doubling if Blu-ray was really taking off?
Ummmmmm, I was joking, OK?
So, because EngHD is part of the Warner family, does this mean a few un named writers here will now stop flogging the crap out of anything Toshiba, or is the stretch from CBHD too Toshiba stretching things too far for that too happen?
Nah, unless CBHD is introduced in the US and Warner backs it there, it's safe to say Warner will continue to pillory Toshiba for not backing a format Toshiba never thought would work, and appears to have been proven right about.
LOL? What is this crap? Another failure attempt? HAHAHA
@Dave, another failure attempt? Hollywood studios know they aren't going to make significant money in China selling BDs b/c of the higher cost. As stated in the article 'Chinese consumers are much different from international consumers due to the fact that Chinese consumers buy based on the “performance to price ratio”'. Warner doesn't give a flip if it's Blu or not. Making SOME money rather than losing out on it all due to rampant Chinese piracy makes sense. I've heard there are lot of Chinese people in China
CBHD isn't going to be considerably cheaper than Blu-ray. The hardware costs are almost identical (indeed, CBHD will suffer from failing to take advantage of BD's economies of scale), and while the discs should be slightly cheaper (taking advantage of the fact that HD DVD-derived disc media can be pressed using minimal modifications to DVD presses, and the fact that discs can be encoded using the new CBHD codecs which will not require MPEG LA licensing), the cost difference shouldn't be substantial.
Worse, making use of CBHD-only technologies means eschewing cross compatibilities with Blu-ray. Back when Warner was a neutral shop, they'd use a subset of HD DVD's video and audio features, and then remux them and add Blu-ray menus to make the Blu-ray version. It meant all the major work only needed to be done once, so it didn't cost them much to support both formats. If anyone wants to support CBHD and Blu-ray, then they're faced with a choice: either do the encoding work twice, or forget about saving money with the MPEG LA for CBHD.
So you can save money in one area, and end up spending more in another, or vice versa, but one way or another, supporting both formats doesn't really save you anything.
I'll admit, I'm heavily biased against CBHD. Everything that was bad about HD DVD is in CBHD. But CBHD doesn't feature what made HD DVD the superior format over Blu-ray. The HD DVD framework itself, that removed the barriers between online and offline content, by creating an infrastructure using Managed Copy, TCP/IP, and Advanced Content is gone. But it still has that great 15G per layer limitation, and the access controls are worse. There's now semi-proprietary crap in their in terms of codecs that lack any real world (outside of CBHD) implementations.
And it all seems unnecessary. If you just want a "cheap" HD format, BD9 or 3X DVD will do it. Ship 720p24 discs to China, with DD+. Dual Layer DVD is more than good enough to do that.
@Squig - what are you basing the claim that the discs won't be much cheaper than Blu-Ray? The attached article states that the discs range from 7.25 to 10.15 USD. That's not significantly cheaper than 30 USD MSRP on BD? Do you have a link to that source?
imonit - the linked article is talking about retail prices, not production prices. I stated my reasons for believing there will be no cost saving in producing CBHDs in my comment.
Fair enough - I assumed you were talking about prices in regards to Chinese consumers. That's the key here, and the only thing that ultimately matters. Point is, there is a market for this format and another poster's categorization of this technology as another failed attempt doesn't translate from the US market to the Chinese market.
imonit - I'm going to guess the real reason Warner is using it is as a kind of very difficult to break region encoding. The discs may not cost any less to make, in practice, but it'll be hard for American consumers to buy CBHDs, so they can at least sell them at cost or below cost and undermine Chinese pirates without harming American Blu-ray prices.
Well, I agree with most with the notion that this is meant for China only. Of course, you will never stop Chinese pirates (aarg) from getting these to the U.S. There's nothing stopping anyone from the U.S. buying one of these players and importing discs if they so choose, either. But, I believe your point suggests why there will be no attempt from Toshiba to release any kind of hardware add-on and/or firmware update for compatibility purposes. The 'war' will not spread to the U.S. (even though I'd welcome it). Hell, maybe then we'd even see the revival of those BD BOGOs.
I think the piracy problem in China is pretty funny. They rip everything off while the Chinese government allows it and actually denies the problem exists.
Yet companies from America and elswhere can't resist outsourcing every last job while at the same time trying to get the American people to flip the bill for diplomatic solutions to the piracy problem.
Wait! What were those prices?
($7.30 - $10.22) per disc
and that is profitable? Why did we go Blu-Ray again?
damn.
To Ordeith
"An average Chinese wage of $0.57 per hour -- or $104 per month -- is about 3 percent of the average U.S. manufacturing worker's wage"
No matter the product it is priced for the market where it is being sold. If CBHD disc's were sold in the US they would be comparable to DVD - Bluray prices.
Here we go again.
Ordeith, read some of the comments above, they are dirt cheap only because the companies that will/are releasing these discs dont pay royalties. If these discs were sold in the US the price would be comparable to a DVD or Blu-Ray.
Comparable to a DVD maybe, Blu Ray Royalties are way off the mark.
hahahaha... this is such a good joke!!! If this ever happens all these hollywood studios that teamed up with this format must either:
a) have a board full of retards, or
b) have members of the board married or married to Chinese, or
c) owned by the Chinese government, or
d) all of the above
Why would the hollywood studios back up a format that's born in the country that probably doesn't support the most important format called authenticity. When this format prevails we might as well all move to China because we can buy movies before they even come out. That's how bad this country is in terms of piracy. Trust me, I've been living in Shezhen for 8 years now and I still have a hard time finding a shop that carries authentic DVD's or BD. Yes the hardware (players) will have exponential growth but softwares (discs) will be nil.