I can't wait to hear this be debated. Actually, I can wait cuz I don't care.
I'm surprised at the percentage of buyers went online to check the internet features.

Well, this may say something about the people who own HD players. That movie really sucked.

I've decided to stick with 1 format and not purchase any movies on even dvd if it is only offered by the opposing format.

Sony has an ace in the hole here with SM3. I think the movie will push strong numbers on Blu-ray, but it won't matter, since HD-DVD is doing very well, and it's really going to take off this holiday season, and bring that monthly ratio back closer to 1-1. I'm thinking Fox will be the next studio to bolt the exclusive club, and go dual format, which would be huge for HD-DVD.

I was going to buy this on bluray because for sure it would have been released on it but then paramount desided to accept 150 million from hd dvd to sell only on that format, if this came on blu-ray it would have sold triple the amount of hd dvd at least. HD DVD thinks its so cool that they have online interactig and crap yet only 20% of people actually care? thats pretty poor. Who wants to connect online and stream features when blu rays are large enough to keep everything on disc and still have enough room it fit a HD DVD discs storage capacity on it extra. HD DVD needs to die already, the only reason it took off is it is cheap and people are to cheap to wait for Blu-ray to come down, just like everybody waited for months for dvd players to come down, remember when those were crazy expensive too? If you can afford a HD TV to enjoy HD movies then you can afford the better format and let the other die.

I really don't see how either side will win at this point. By this time next year I would expect the combo players to be in the $300's. Once that happens who cares. Plus digital distribution is starting to become more popular every day and with broadband speeds getting into the 20 Mb range HD digital distribution isn't that far fetched anymore.

You've got to be joking. And exactly how long will it take you to download a 1080p quality video at 20mb? Ha. And I am so sick of the 'blu-ray has more capacity' crap. Toshiba has demo'ed hd dvd disks with multiple layers. Besides how much crap do you want on there? There's already enough space on both disks for hte movie and uncompressed audio, everything else is a waste of time. Despite what the fanbois of each side want to thing, each format is viable. There is no end in sight and no amount of fanboi-whining will change that. Our best hope is that the multi-format players will come down in price.

Why buy it when holographic discs are right arround the corner? those discs can hold massive ammounts of storage 50-500 times that of any HD-DVD or BLURAY disc. The first holographic discs that come out are going to be able to hold 1.2-3 terabytes(1000GB) and in 2 years after that a disc that can hold up to 1 petabyte(1000TB). So why do we even care about now when in 3 years they will become dust blowing in the wind?

If Transoformers was on Blu-ray they would have sold way more not to mention it would have been better. Even Mickeal Bay said so himself on US today. He also said his money is on Blu-ray. They really fucked this one up. Well I doubt HD DVD is going to find anymore block buster movies to buy the excusive so enjoy, as HD DVD has now released all their best movies so it's all down hill from hear for HD DVD.

Your dreaming, these companies are vary committed to Blu-ray and already know for sure they are going to win. If anything Warner Brothers is the one to worrie about. If Blu-ray does well enough over the holiday season, it's like they will drop HD DVD. Paramount of course will switch back to doing both for a wjile before giving way to blu-ray at some point, probably several years down the road. I don't really cear about Paramount anyway, as Im not will to pay $4o to $50 for them. They've always over priced their movies.

Doesn't make sence! $150 million for 190K HD DVDs. That means Toshiba paid $789473.69 each for movies their selling for $40. HD DVD must be really desparate.

Callan.....You need to grow up dude. Sony has done the same thing with their exclusive movies. Just because you can't play it on your PS3 doesn't mean you have to bash HD DVD. Blame it on Sony, not HD DVD. If it wasn't for Sony there wouldn't be any exclusives on either format.

Who cares about the web-enabled content. That's just HD DVDs way of trying to include more content because they don't have enough storage space on the disc like Blu-Ray. What a lame way of making a flaw a "benefit" or "feature" of HD DVD. Sounds like M$ is behind this, oh wait, it is!

they could have sold 3x the amount but.. oh yeah right.. that little quiet bribe by microsoft. It makes me ashamed that we buy their software.

Ur an idiot. Ur 1% of the dumb and boring population who thinks the movie sucks. Ur one of those idiots sitting in the theater OVER analyzing the plot and looking for every possible scene to criticize on. Sit back and enjoy the movie at the same time enjoy ur pathetic life too.

And I love how these large companys discriminate against one format, when really they would eventually make way more money on consumers buying multiple formats than the contract to keep with the one. The inrony here is that Paramount has put more money in advertising Blue-Ray than any other company *even sony* and now the have decided NOPE only HD. I hope they have fun shooting themselves in the foot.

HD-DVD players are still outselling the competition, and this is BEFORE the holiday push for Toshiba, which will include ALOT of incentives to buyers. I plan on getting my stand-alone during this period, so looking ahead You're smoking something, if you think HD-DVD is going to lose ground.

Title out on release for the first week. Some of you no fact check BD fan boys need to look down at the first week number for 300, which was tops...it was 250,000 for week one for BOTH formats...so...doing a little math...250,000 for 2, vice 190,000 for one...hmmmm....math please! It also show that Paramount made a VERY wise choice, as did Toshiba.

HVD is not the only technology in next-generation, high-capacity optical storage media. InPhase Technologies has developed a holographic format they call Tapestry Media, capable of storing up to 1.6TB with a data transfer rate of 120 MB/s (960 Mbit). Hitachi Maxell, Ltd. plans to enter the market by offering 300 GB discs with a data transfer rate of 20 MB/s (160 Mbit/s). Such large optical storage capacities compete favorably with both HD DVD and Blu-Ray Disc. However, the reader will cost around US$15,000, and a single disc will cost around US$120–180, but prices are expected to fall steadily.[6] The market for this format is not initially the common consumer, but enterprises with very large storage needs.


around the corner ... yeah !!!

Callan, you are missing the point here.

Blu Ray is controlled by a company that, historically, plays games like Microsoft. Im not claiming that Toshiba is a great deal better... call them the lesser of the two evils. Those of us opposed to Blu Ray are aware of the capacity of both discs.

HD-DVD was developed by Toshiba and associates. Blu Ray is controlled by Sony alone. Do we really want a single company owning the usage rights to the only existing HD format?

Think ahead, my friend. Let's say that HD-DVD goes out of business. Think Intel before there was an AMD, Think AT&T renting phones and not allowing people to buy them until the feds forced them to in the 1970s, altho that was probably before your time.

The consumer doesnt want a winner, friend. We want both formats to have to compete against one another so we all pay less. We want burners and players that do both, and we want studios choosing sides, so that both Blu Ray and HD-DVD have to be resonable regarding licensing, or lose them to the other guy. Anything else is very bad for all of us.

Just my two cents.

John... optical discs that cost more than hard drive storage do not typically do well in the marketplace, historically speaking. Also, there are many competing optical technologies for this market segment... That I have seen this particular one mentioned twice in comments of this article... Do tell, Discovery Channel? History Channel? Tech TV? Someone ran a program recently about this, surely.

About ten years ago I saw a program about storing thousands of petabytes on a crystal cube of some sort that was only ten millimeters square. Speeds were way in excess of modern memory, data wasnt volatile, etc etc. It's developers were claiming this was the technology that would be replacing both hard drives and memory in five years, saying things like imagine a computer where every installed program is always open, no more fetching .dll files... The very structure and flow of programming a computer was to be severely altered by this technology. They had a working prototype in the lab, these guys...

...and I never ever heard or saw another thing about it. The producers of these programs tend to assume much, all I am saying. Good TV and all that...

no matter which wins hd dvd or blu ray when one eventually does win, the movie studios can get all the hype back up and re-release there movies again and sell even more copys there isnt much difference at all so just pick the one that has the movies u like to watch

see 300 Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sales, both sold like crazy

...for players and PC drives that completely support both formats. They use the same lasers, after all.

The only physical difference between the two formats is that Blu-Ray discs have a thinner layer of plastic on the bottom side of the disc than HD-DVDs do. That's the only reason why it has more capacity.

For this same reason, Blu-Ray discs are less resistant to damage than HD-DVDs. We'll see how well they stand up to wear.

Despite selling 115,000 copies, the Transformer HD DVD didn't sell enough to take the sales lead away from Blu-ray. Winning yet another week in software sales (51% of total unit sales), Blu-ray has yet to lose a week to the rival format this year. Consumers once again voiced that their preferred high definition format is Blu-ray, and despite not having access to this year's 3rd highest grossing film, they still support the format.

Was that from a press release or something?

What kills me is the spin that Blu-Ray diehards put on the sales reports; they're worse than politicians, I swear.

Blu-Ray outsells HD-DVD BECAUSE OF THE P-S-3. You guys RELIGIOUSLY sweep this fact under the rug. OF COURSE there are more Blu-Ray discs sold per month. There are 3 million PS3's in homes worldwide, about 1.75 million in the U.S alone (hell, I have one...). SONY pulled a modern day trojan horse attack -- SURPRISE! NO GAMES!

Do the math -- if 10% of those people (300,000 worldwide, 175,000 U.S.) buy one Blu-Ray disc a month (1-2 discs per year), that is a HUGE sales advantage right now. It doesn't matter if more HD-DVD players than non-PS3 Blu-Ray movie players have been sold. Neither has sold 3 million, not even close. So please, stop with the "Consumers once again voiced that their preferred high definition format is Blu-ray" bullcrap.

I was willing to buy the movie on Blu-Ray so I went over to Walmart and behold they only have it available in either in HD-DVD or standard DVD format. I was so peeved at this fact I didn't buy anything and went home.

This is lost sale and I'm sure others have felt the same.

Darkk

I was the same way. I was excited to buy this movie on blueray and when I heard it was only on HD dvd I was pissed. I will not buy the sd dvd either becasue of this. Ss a business owner I look at the decision paramount made and thought how could you pay these guys millions of dollars, they probably made the worst decision possible and lost millions of dollars in sales. In business your goal is sales and profit, I guess paramount execs didn't learn that in college. Releasing it in both formats would have netted them millions in additional revenue. Sometimes I wonder what people are smoking sometimes.

Transformer wins another week, and Disney and the like have to be thinking...damn...that's LOST REVENUE in all those HD-DVD owners...maybe we should reconsider the exclusive deal, or at the very least...get a better percentage. Given that Sony is already losing their freaking shorts on the PS# (No Snake for the holidays, btw) They might not be able to hold these guys. Fox is probably going to bolt soon...and that will open the floodgates. Walmart is going to be pushing a sub-$200 HD-DVD for the holiday, so wanna guess how that effects the ratio?

red laser technology, backward compatible, cheap to produce discs and players, will need to work with studios for contents
http://www.nmeinc.com/
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_zdpcm/is_200610/ai_n19413012

I am dumbfounded by some of you guys. I mean you spend thousands of dollars on a HD TV (I assume 1080p or at minimum 720p) and you don't have the capability to play both formats?

I assume you are using a PS3 for playing BRD because it would be idiotic to pay for a stand alone player given they cost the same as a PS3. And thanks to Toshiba and retailers willing to sell at a loss, you can pick up a stand alone HD DVD player for $100 (albiet 1080i and not 1080p).

This covers you for the short run. In the long run, players will handle both formats and hence still irrelevant who wins the format war.