“Blockbuster Inc. will rent high-definition DVDs only in the Blu-ray format in 1,450 stores when it expands its high-def offerings next month, dealing a major blow to the rival HD DVD format,” The Associated Press reports.
“Blockbuster has been renting both Blu-ray and HD DVD titles in 250 stores since late last year and found that consumers were choosing Blu-ray titles more than 70 percent of the time,” AP reports.
“Blockbuster will continue to rent HD DVD titles in the original 250 locations and online, the company said,” AP reports. “The decision was helped in large part by the lopsided availability of titles in Blu-ray, Smith said. All major studios except one are releasing films in Blu-ray, with several, including The Walt Disney Co., releasing exclusively in Blu-ray. Only Universal Studios, which is owned by General Electric Co., exclusively supports HD DVD.”
Full article here.
People buying iPods, using iTunes, downloading Safari, buying more Macs, salivating for iPhone… What’s gotten into people lately; recognizing quality and not settling for inferior junk? Whatever it is – more, please!
[UPDATE: 1:25pm EDT: Added “chair” graphic for MacDailyNews Readers “zerO” and “JadisOne.”]
You would think that porn producers would have identified with the “blue” in Blu-Ray. Unless they thought HD stood for “hard.”
Anyone else notice that MDN links to a FoxNews story on this ???
Hmmmmmm ………………….
Uh..what is Blockbuster? That company has been insignificant for 2 years now…a whale that’s beached itself because it knows it’s about to die!
Oh, god.
Another one to add to the long and growing list of Microsoft failures.
Its mediocrity is oh so apparent now.
As any Mac fan or Apple watcher knows, Apple is in both BDA for Blu-ray and in DVD Forum for HD DVD … and that Leopard’s iDVD software plays HD DVDs or Blu-rays discs.
This BLOCKBUSTER deal is old news, Sony promised the renter outfit excludive PS3 volume if they went Blu-ray exclusive. Blockbuster went for the deal thinking the console would make them a ton of money … instead they got stuck with a pile of inventory that’s hardly selling well. Yeah, great move Blockbuster.
The chair animation is a classic, as is the “Your frustration, our fault” pic. And headlines beginning with “beleaguered” or “more blood on…”. Please do not dump these running gags, MDN.
Good, Blockbuster made the obvious choice by going with Blu-ray. HD-DVD has been an abomination from the start and is inferior in every way. The sooner it dies and goes away, the better off everyone will be.
@RC
Back up your claims ….
Blockbuster??? Are you fucking kidding me? Who the hell cares what ball-buster does … they become more irrelevant by the day. If anything, this announcement is the Kiss of Death for BluRay.
When it comes down to it, HD-DVD is cheaper (players and discs), has a better selection of movies (AFAIS in both BestBuy & Circuit City), and has exactly the same image quality as BR. Every review I’ve read say even the HDDVD players are better than the BluRay players – particularly, faster access time of discs & no lags in playback.
Blockbuster … jeez, somebody wake me when the 1980s are over.
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I am sick of reading that “HD-DVD will easily win over Blu-ray because the porn industry supports it”. In today’s modern society, this means little to nothing, and I’ll tell you why.
The reason that VHS won over Beta back in the day *was* related to the pornography industry. However, there is one fundamental difference between then and now, and you are looking at it right now. Yes, kids, that difference is the internet. I ask you this: Where do you think most people view pornography now? Answer: The internet. Where do you think they viewed it in the 80’s? Answer: Magazines and VHS tapes. The result of this is the fact that the pornography industry will have a substantially lesser impact on format wars now, than it would have had even ten years ago.
Do not get me wrong. They have clout in the industry. The porn market is worth billions annually. But, where do you think an increasing amount of that revenue is coming from? The internet. And where is this increasing revenue from the internet taking away from? The traditional “video porn industry”.
I personally am glad to hear of this news regarding Blockbuster. I hope that Blu-ray is victorious mainly because Microsoft is providing all the software-level functionality on the HD-DVD standard. And I do not want any Microsoft “functionality” anywhere near my home-theater, thank you VERY much.
–mAc
@”God”
I know God. God is a friend of mine. And you, sir, are no “God”.
As for the porn industry, NYTimes ran an article recently saying that the porn movie industry is in crisis over all the free stuff going out on the internet.
As for Blockbuster, no comment.
As for HD-DVD, it was lost as soon as they chose that name.
I know my dieties — Ra, Set, Odin, Thor, the moon, the sun, Apollo, Zeus, Lord Ganesha, Allah, God — and all of them as unbelievable as the posts above.
Blu-ray is loved by:
(a) PS3 fanbois
(b) Sony fanbois
(c) people who think a spec ends with slightly larger capacity per layer.
Blu-ray is not loved by:
(a) Apple, as they support both formats
(b) people who buy stand-alone HD optical disc players, i.e. HD optical disc players that are not a PS3 games console
Dudes, it’s good that this shit is starting to sort itself out. Higher capacity makes more sense to me, especially as I would like to use an HD format as a back up solution at some point.
But frankly the price needs to go down and for that to happen volume and the number of manufacturers needs to increase.
Twit!
Gee the 15 year old DVD format is cheaper than the 1-2 year old HD-DVD/Blu-ray formats – what a rip off!
Did you ever pause that one brain cell of yours (hold your breath so you don’t have to use it for breathing) and remember that when DVD was released it cost a packet load more than VHS (the format it replaced)?
The HD formats will definately fall in price FASTER than DVD did over the years.
Why I can hear that brain cell of yours starining to comprehend – well because DVD didn’t have a competing similar format, so with HD-DVD and Blu-Ray fighting for the right to be THE HD format, there will be more intense pricing competition.
OK you can finish reading now – so yoru can start breathing again!
Yeeee-ha!
I don’t give a rat’s ass about hi-def video, but as a professional photographer with hundreds of gigs of photos to backup, I want an optical medium that’ll store my archive on the minimum number of disks. Burning DVDs is simply too time-consuming and labor-intensive. At 50GB/disk, with a 200GB prototype recently announced, Blu-Ray looks like a godsend for content creators.
The whiners complaining about drive prices are obviously too young to remember how fast $1,000 DVD burners fell to $169.