Call it a going away present


Back up in your ass with the resurrection.

Back when things really started to look bleak for Toshiba and HD-DVD I said I had always been rooting for them, but I really didn’t care who won as long as there was a clear winner and we could stop all this foolishness. Well, finally the troops are pulling out and coming home. The war is officially over.

I’m still not ready to buy a Blu-Ray player. Let’s pretend this format war never happened and consider this to be the day High Definition optical media is first released. Essentially it is, because the war stifled the format adoption, market growth, title availability, etc for the last 2 years. We would probably be looking at sub $300 Blu-Ray players and $15-17 Discs by now if not for the unforgivable stupidity of the movie and technology industries. Instead we are looking at the PS3 being the only Blu-Ray player worth buying (t’s firmware upgradable and has the online connectivity that most other current players do not offer) and $25-30 for new titles at big box retailers.

The price drops we saw from the HD-DVD camp around November and December of 2007 were false so they don’t count. By that I mean they were slashing retail prices for players WAY below the cost to produce them in the hopes early adopters would flock in and secure their position as the de facto HiDef disc. Instead of a viable consumer install base they now have about a half a million angry Wal-Mart customers that want to beat them to death with their shiny, obsolete “Ayche-Dee-DeeBeeDee” boxes.

Josh said, “I don’t care! I want to watch beautiful moving pictures on my new giant HD-TV!” and bought a decent sized library of HD-DVD’s. He contends that the are still playable, no matter who won. I contend that his choice was bad and he should feel bad. Those of you in the same predicament may want to consider converting your HD-DVD collection to Blu-Ray. All you need is a bunch of money, nearly unlimited time, and a master’s degree in computer science. You could also just pretend it was a fancy DVD player and play like it never happened.

I can’t think too hard about the contestants and the outcome, because Blu-Ray winning makes no fucking sense. HD-DVD was cheaper to produce, cheaper to buy, higher capacity (at first), region free, more interactive right out of the gate, and posessed the foresight to give their product a LOGICAL name people could understand. If we are looking for a replacement for sandwiches and the contenders are “Sandwich-2” and “Purple Explosion Ninja” I am certainly going to be curious about the PEN format but I’m also not going to immediately recognize it as something tasty and nutritious for my lunch time enjoyment.

The thing that really bugs the shit out of me is the fact that Sony actually won a format war. God damnit.

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111 Comments

  4. I'm gonna debate the part about a HD-DVD upgrade being "logical".

    Some of those special dual-format burned disks were total crap. And I'm not really sure what you meant about higher capacity either, since BR held more data.

  6. I fucking LOVE this comic. Though, you're cutting out a few lyrics. No biggie.

    Shoulda totally had Bald Guy (Kratos) do the Samir hand spin.

  9. Re-read please: the naming convention was LOGICAL.
    I fixed the part about the capacity. Right off the bat there were 51gb HDDVD but they never went into production. Seems they are working on 200GB BR.

  11. (this) close. I was going through that clip and I picked out 21 clips I wanted to draw. the first draft was 6 panels and I had to take it to 9. Thats why it was so late. This would have made a better cartoon. That scene is one of my favorites in all of film history.

  13. Any chance we'll see a "director's cut" of this strip with all 21? I'm sure someone around here would be willing to do a flash animation like that sweet "sharksplode" one.

  14. Best lyric in the history of music – "Cuz when the shit jumps off, what the fuck you gonna do?"

    No freakin clue what it means, but it nudges out "Here Come The Hotstepper" for top spot.

  19. Yeah, umm, HD-DVD.. Yeah, we're gonna need to go ahead and move you downstairs into storage B. We have this Blu-Ray guy coming in, and we need all the space we can get. So if you could just go ahead and pack up your stuff and move it down there, that would be terrific, OK?

  30. I was told that I could have a reasonable retail display space from nine to eleven, I told bill that if Blu-Ray is going to have giant displays in Best buy then I should be able to have a small Kiosk in Wal-Mart so I don't see why I should have to give up my retail space because I enjoy having a reasonable market presence from nine to eleven.

  31. they say the HD-DVD player is useless but i say "nope"….
    the porno "Pirates XXX" is only in HD-DVD.

    my Xbox HD-DVD drive is worth more than just a paper weight

  32. I guess that would make the studios the Swingline stapler then…
    "..I couldn't see the Toshiba reps…and-and they were married…"
    It would explain what Toshiba was doing the whole time HD-DVD went up in flames around them.

  36. "it's not hard. nye-ee-na-na-jad. nyeenanajad."
    "at least you arent named michael bolton"
    "there is nothing wrong with that name"
    "no, there was nothing wrong with that name, until i turned 14 and that no talent ass clown
    came out with his first album."
    "so why dont you change your name to something like, mike bolton."
    "why should i be the one to change my name? he's the one who sucks"

  52. You know, I hear there's a way you can take a PEN recipe, write it down on a previous generation cookbook, and then rewrite it in Sandwich-2 format. Although current rumor is you need a bunch of expensive cooking utensils and a masters in culinary arts to do it.

  53. You know, I hear there's a method where you can copy the PEN recipes down on a previous generation cookbook, and then rewrite them in Sandwich-2 format. Although current rumor is you need a bunch of expensive cooking utensils and a masters in culinary arts to do it.

  54. Ok, hopefully this doesn't double post like the last one did. Now I've seen two problems, and I'm not sure if it's ID, or myopenid.com that has the problem. I can post comments ok most of the time it seems, although this is my second attempt at this post as the first time I did it, it reposted one of my previous comments (so, sorry about that). The other problem I'm running into is that I can't login using openid. If I try the login link it just reloads the page and I'm still not logged in.

  55. I noticed the double post. I think you are having the same problem I was having a few days ago. if you wouldnt mind, email that issue to ID support. they are very responsive and working every day to make this system better for users.

  57. Ok, I sent them an e-mail. Also, when I checked my inbox I noticed an e-mail from Intense Debate that asked me to setup a profile. After I did that I was able to login. It looks like you can create a profile using OpenID, and use that to "login", but it isn't itself a valid login until you finish the sign up process through Intense Debate. Would have been nice if it redirected me to the profile page when I tried to sign in instead of e-mailing me and redirecting me back here. I told them as much in my e-mail, so hopefully this won't bite any other OpenID users.

  58. Drew: All right, Peter! Ooh! Ooh! Right on… When you read that comic, make sure you wear a rubber, dude.
    Peter Gibbons: Why is that, Drew?
    Drew: Are you kidding me? HE gets around. All right?
    Peter Gibbons: It does, does it?
    Drew: Oh, yeah. Like a record.
    Peter Gibbons: Like, with who?
    Drew: Oh, let's see, uh… Hell, Lumbergh read it. Ha ha ha. Oh, let me see who else…

  59. So, out of curiosity, how much research went into the guts of the HD-DVD drive in panel 6? Is it a fairly accurate rendering, or did you just sort of guesstimate? Was a real HD-DVD drive sacrificed for this comic, or did you maybe find a dissection piece on the internet?

  60. No research. I just kind of know what things had to be there for it to work. I figured stock PC optical drive, motherboard, power and maybe a PCI card of some kind. I try and make stuff like that legit to the point of spending way too much time on it. Usually for stuff that no one will ever notice. But hey! You noticed!

  73. This is first consumer format war Sony has won. They cornered the broadcast market with Betacam, BetaSP, DigiBeta, BetaSX. Now they're losing that, but gaining the consumer … time will tell how this turns out.

  83. I was surprised to learn from a friend when i was in highscool that television stations basically ALL used Beta. WTF was that about? I assume they are all involved in the process of converting to digital format.

  88. You take that back! Office Space is not obscure, all my friends know about it. Wait, maybe that makes me and my friends obscure…. You take that back!!

  93. Rerun has a point. To the population in general, Office Space is little know and less important than desperate houswives. To geeks it has replaced The Holy Grail as, well, the holy Grail of quotable movies.

  97. or…
    "I was told that I could watch the Blu Ray at a reasonable volume from nine to eleven, I told Bill that if Sandra is going to watch her HD DVD while she's filing then I should be able to watch Blu Ray while I'm collating so I don't see why I should have to turn down the Blu Ray because I enjoy listening at a reasonable volume from nine to eleven."

  99. Sony won because they had no choice but to pay studios off to adopt blu-ray over HD-DVD, look at how well the PS3 was selling as a games machine, now imagine its sales if HD-DVD won. Sony couldn't have that the failure of the PS3 would have probably taken the whole company down with it.

  101. I read a few reports that the PS3 wasnt selling very well as a games machine. But rather as an early adopter blu-ray player. Both Josh and Eli purchased it for exactly that reason. I have to believe that this was a big part of Sony's strategy.

  107. I must be missing some joke here, because I'd seen this joke on Shortpacked! a while back and I've only just started reading this comic yesterday. I guess this song is a smash hit? *ba-dum tch!*

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