Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

"There is growing sentiment in the industry that Blu-Ray, as it was originally intended, is a failure. How can that be? Wasn’t it just a year ago that Blu-Ray, with its greater data capacity, triumphed over the opposing HD-DVD standard? Well promises were made to achieve that victory and now it appears promises may have been broken. Understand that the success or failure of Blu-Ray has little to do with games and everything to do with movies. Two historical events informed the battle between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. First was the epic and costly 1980‘s competition between the BetaMax and VHS tape cassette standards. Second was the triumphant succession of DVD over VHS, when we all replaced our tape libraries with disks, gladly paying anew for what we already owned, buying every Hollywood exec a new Mercedes in the process."

Cringley argues that the reason Activision is putting pressure on Sony has more to do with a failure of Blu-ray than game sales. Although I was hoping HD-DVD would win, I think the perceived failure of Blu-ray is really a matter of falsely defining the definition of success. Expecting Blu-ray to replicate the success of DVD was not reasonable. Neither HD format offered the kind of upgrade that DVD offered over VHS. Plus, people have lots of DVD players, so unless they want to restrict their viewing to just one TV, they've got to replace all their players, which is not exactly cheap. One of the great features of HD-DVD was the combo disk, which eliminated this problem. Eventually, Blu-ray players will achieve penetration through a slow war of attrition as old DVD players get replace and Blu-ray players reach a price that DVD players will no longer be produced.

I placed my order back on 4/24/2009 with delivery confirmation and it was received by them on 4/30/2009. The web site indicated you'd received an e-mail when they received your order. By 5/7/2009 I'd not received an e-mail so called. I was told they had received my order and that they were just waiting for Casablanca to get in stock to ship it out. The expected wait was 1 to 2 weeks. Called again on 6/15/2009 since I had not received them. I was told they still had not gotten it in stock and expected it in 2 to 4 weeks. I asked if there was anything they could do like split my order or substitute a different movie. The representative told me that "they" (their bosses) said no. Asked to speak to "they" and was told they don't take calls. Asked to leave them a message with my complaint and the representative said they would deliver it, but that "they" do not reply to complaints. So with no other options, I gave up for the day.

Today I received a postcard stating the following:

"Dear Customer:

Thank you for your recent order. Unfortunately, due to delays in restocking our inventory, we are unable to process your order at this time. Please contact us at your earliest convenience for the expected ship date, or to cancel your order. Your product will be shipped upon availability. Please refer to the information listed on the reverse side of this card when calling on your order.

Once again we greatly appreciate your business and apologize fo this inconvenience.

Thank you."

First off, I thought it was kind of stupid to send a postcard telling me to call. Why could they not have just saved some money and sent me an e-mail with the actual information (no printing, postage, or phone charges)? When I did call, I was given two options. 1) Cancel, but I would not get the covers I had to mail in back or 2) Pay double shipping for them to split up the order. Option 1 was clearly unacceptable and after waiting 2 months, I didn't really feel like paying a $6.95 premium.

Warner Brothers had a great idea in coming up with the Red2Blu promotion. I'd already paid for the content in HD anyway, so what a better way to get goodwill (and probably a little profit) than by re-offering the same titles on BluRay at a discount. Unfortunately, their poor service and follow-through will probably offset any goodwill they might have gained, at least from me.

OK, I confess, as much as I hated having to do it, I have gone back and purchased multiple copies of the same content in different formats. Normally, I'm against this as a matter of principle since I figure I should not have to pay twice for the same content. Of course, the move to HD content changes that equation for me since just like the move from VHS to DVD, whether you like it or not, you are getting a higher quality level, which has value. For VHS, over time, I've replaced everything in my collection with DVD. For DVD, I'm being more selective since a) for a lot of content the difference from DVD to Blu-ray is negligible or unimportant and b) Blu-ray players are backwards compatible so I can still use my DVDs. But, there are always certain titles that I'll want the latest and greatest versions of.

Star Wars is an obvious example for me. I've bought it 4 times already and I'll be buying it a 5th when it eventually comes out on Blu-ray. Lord of the Rings is another example, I bought the regular and extended versions on DVD, but I'll only be picking up the extended versions on Blu-ray since I find the extended version massively superior to the theatrical release. Also, I'm a big Firefly fan, so I bought Serenity on DVD, HD-DVD, and Blu-ray. Interestingly, I don't plan on buying the Firefly series on Blu-ray. I rented it and found that due to the grainy style of the series, it did not benefit much from the Blu-ray transfer. So, what are your guilty pleasures that have caused you to double dip for the same content?

This is a really smart thing to offer consumers! Warner brothers is allowing consumers to swap their HD-DVD movies for Blu-ray movies, for $4.95 per movie and a $6.95 shipping charge on the whole order. All in all, not bad - I'd certainly pay $5 per movie to get them in Blu-ray format. Unfortunately for me, this offer is only available in the USA - but one of my American Thoughts Media editors may be getting a shipment from me to make the swap happen. It seems also that you only have to send in your DVD sleeve - you can keep the actual discs. I wonder if they do anything with boxed sets? I have Heroes season one on HD-DVD...