More TotalHD details emerge
Although Total HD was announced with plenty of fan fare, there weren't many details. Those details are finally starting to come out and they're not good. We expected the Total HD discs to be available this summer, but we also expected dual layers on both sides. Warner previously said that, after they started to release Total HD discs in June, that they will stop releasing normal discs and that both sides will contain the same material whenever possible. We really hope this doesn't mean that the Blu-ray side will be capped at 15GB like the HD DVD side. They plan to release discs with dual layers on the HD DVD side by August, but this still caps the Blu-ray side at 25GB. While this is supposed to be a temporary problem, the question is when?[Via HighDefDigtest]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Scott @ Mar 16th 2007 12:37PM
Why would a blu-ray consumer want to pay more for an inferior disc? To future proof their movie collection? I'm just not worried about blu-ray not becoming the dominant format anymore. They should really think this through... I'll be LESS tempted to purchase these discs.
qwsxz @ Mar 16th 2007 12:55PM
I really hope all the boxes don't look this awful.
They should just blend the 2 colors and make it purple. Done.
KC @ Mar 16th 2007 2:42PM
Is this really that much better then just releasing for both formats?
The only thing that this does is protect Warner's interests by forcing every customer to buy something they don't need instead of Warner risking losing money on unsold product for whatever format ultimately loses.
I suppose it will be beneficial to the customer because no matter which format one owns they get more releases from Warner then they'd get if Warner released select titles on both formats as this tends to end up with each format receiving different titles from the catalog.
I still think this benefits the studio more then the customer though.
tv junkie @ Mar 16th 2007 9:25PM
this crap create more problem to the fiasco rather than a solution. what on earth were warner thinking. it sounds so much more expansive to make this disc than any other.
Kevin Murphy @ Mar 17th 2007 5:28PM
Disregarding techies and fanboys, the average consumer's questions about HD DVD are:
1) How much does the player cost?
2) Am I going to be left with $1000 in orphaned DVDs once someone wins the war?
Right now, the betting is that Blu-Ray will eventually win (due to PS3), but $900 is too much money for Joe Public to spend.
Now, if there was a guarantee that the disks would be playable no matter who won, spending $4-500 for a player might be OK.
So, this dual disk clearly helps the HD-DVD crowd, and might help everyone who isn't Sony. Might even be the thing that sets HD-DVD back in the fight, both by taking the fear out of a wrong choice, and getting Fox and such to support both formats.