As a bit of a Tech geek, I am not only interested in the new evolution of movies but the technologies involved in delivering them to me.
Back in the good old days of the Civil War of NextGen DVD Formats™ we had PS3 touting its new BluRay features, and in the other corner we had Microsoft’s XBox backing the HD-DVD with an addon unit for their console. We all know how that played out.
After HD-DVD addons couldn’t sell in the $20 bin at BestBuy it was only a matter of time. When I heard that XBox was now going to offer a BluRay addon, it just made logical sense. The one competitive feature XBox was now missing was a next gen movie capability. But apparently someone took the old rhyme “Blue and Green should never be seen…” a little too literal and the rumour that BluRay was coming to your XBox360 was shot down.
But Microsoft has again banished that rumour to way outside the Garden of Things I Actually Want, and reminded all of us, the consumers, that you bought your 360 to play GAMES on, not watch movies.
“”As we’ve said before, Microsoft has no plans to introduce an Xbox 360 Blu-ray add-on. Games are what drive consumers to purchase game consoles, and we remain focused on providing the largest library of blockbuster games available. “”
Hurm. A pretty ballzy quote from a company that wants its console to be the centre of my digital entertainment system.
Obviously Microsoft is hedging its bets in hopes that downloadable content will be more predominate than physical movie collections.
I was in the camp of “wait til the dust settles” on the Civil War of NextGen DVD Formats™ and this affected my next generation Console purchase as well (I have a Wii) but now that XBox is not bothering to pursue the Blu, I will be throwing my money at Sony.
If I have to pay $200-300 on a Bluray player AND a console system I might as well get more bang for my buck. Frankly I was rooting for XBox and was waiting for them to go Bluray, but if this isn’t happening they are making my mind up for me.
My gaming is on the PC anyways, so the gaming side of the console is purely for my kids. They can live with the Playstation library.
So far all I’ve seen from DLC is just the movie is offered, that don’t cut it with me. I need my special features, it’s just not the same without it :P
I have no experience with the PSN, are the downloaded movies actually yours to keep or are they like the Xbox Live movies and just time limited rentals?
they’ve said this over n over, as a ps3 fanboy who doubts sony would actually let them i say na na, nanny boo boo
Alex, every dvd I continue to buy is also irrelevant to they DLC.
The point is that I already have 400+ movies so it wouldnt be long before I had a heaping pile of digital movies as well. If I got new ones or replaced the old ones, I would have to worry about failing hardware, and the daunting task of replacing them.
@Rodney
The 400 movies you already have are IRRELEVANT to the DLC issue,
You ALREADY HAVE THEM on hard copy so thats great, why would you DL them again? And as long as they are not BLU-Ray then you can play them on 360 anyways!!
And as for HDD dieing, I’m sure PS3s die 10 more times than 360 HDDs, my freinds PS3 died out just this summer…..
@Alex, hard drives die all the time. Don’t fool yourself. And “redownloading” these files will not only take a LONG time and most internet providers would limit your bandwidth for downloads. I have over 400 movies in my collection. Redownload those? sorry. I don’t have a week and 16tbs worth of space.
You make it sound like you snap your fingers and pop you have your library back… its not that easy even if they are willing to let you have em back for free.
So far, if one of my movies gets damaged its one movie out of over 400 that I need to replace. Downloaded media is not allowed to be put to disk. Until they change that I will have no use for it.
I guess everyone has their personal preferences — mine just happens to be with a slip case, cover, and DVD. I enjoy having my flicks out on display. But I do think those that would prefer DLC is currently in the minority and will be so for quite a long time. I think it’ll take many years to get people out of the habit of owning hard copies of media and go to a strictly digital medium.
@Rodney
If your HDD dies (which is a long shot) you just send it in for repair or buy another one and re-download all your files for free!
Just call them up and they can take a look at your account and your purchases and you can re-download everything!!!
Actually I’m pretty sure you dont even need to call them, when you log into your account and go to the store it will list that you have purchased a file and you can download it!!
And when your hard drive containing all your data dies… you have nothing.
Or spend hours backing up your backups. Oh wait. You can’t locked content cannot be recopied.
I will wait until its more viable.
DLC also offers a minimalist and organizational esthetic perk of taking up next to no space in your living area.
More importantly you’re not relegated to constantly dealing with updating hardware to play higher and higher def movies
Xbox is out selling PS3 in Japan now also!!!
http://kotaku.com/gaming/console-sales/360-outsells-ps3-in-japan-320908.php
Only a couple weeks till Gears of War 2!!!!
Hey isn’t their supposed to be a Gears movie in the works??!!
SethRex, the problem is that you are comparing BluRay to HD-DVD. The quality on these compared to standard DVDs is astounding. People used to say they couldn’t tell the difference between VHS and DVD either but its a non-argument now. No one says VHS was better than DVD.
If you couldnt tell the difference between these and standard DVDs then you don’t have an HD television. Use the proper TV and right quality cables and there is a world of difference.
However, the Civil War of Next Gen DVD Formats™ was pointless as two major creators both wanted their format to be it.
All downloadable content means to me in relation to movies is DRM of some sort, waste of hard drive space that I would rather use for game DLC, and wasted bandwidth. Until we are able to download at 5-10 gigs a minute with infinite hard drive space and no DRM when purchasing content, I will be a proud purchaser of Blurays and DVDs. Microsoft’s attempt to force DLC upon people when there is still a large market for physical content is really to bad. Why limit yourself?
Personally I could never understand the whole Next-Gen War to begin with. I’ve seen HD DVD and Blu-Ray in action through full 1080p, and I really didn’t see any difference on my TV. They all do the same thing, all have the same features. The disc space on the Blu-Rays didn’t really enhance anything more than the disc space on a HD DVD did. In my honest opinion, Blu-Ray, while the winner, is OVER-RATED.
I concur. I find it far preferable to have hard copies — sorry, but I find it far more ‘manageable’ to have my movies and games sitting neatly on my shelf than on my hard drive, out of sight and buried in the bowels of my PS3.
I don’t buy all this talk that digital content is going to bury hard copies anytime soon.
“downloadable content. Its far more
manageable and is usually cheaper!”
And easy to lose.
I recently bought a PS3 after only have a Wii for a while I couldn’t be happier. The blue-ray content looks fantastic and the games, while currently limited, are loads of fun to play.
There are some cool streaming solutions as well if you’re big on downloading content. Word on the street is Sony is bring downloadable streaming content to Canadian customer soonish…
don’t be a slave to hard copy formats! I’m glad microsoft is taking a page from apple and focusing in downloadable content. Its far more
manageable and is usually cheaper!