Well this seems like as good as a place as any to tell you about my current frusterations at my place of work: Circuit City.
I don't know if it's just our store, or company-wide, but last week, with the arrival of the first BR discs, our store has started pushing BR.
We have the first week's set of BR discs, and the first BR player in stock.
We have the BR player setup on a 40-some inch tv, and it was playing House of the Flying Daggers at first, but then the next day it was playing a special disc made for BR Demonstrations.
Now the funny thing is that when we went over to check out the picture on this BR player...we really were quite suprised. It really does look no better than DVD.
Now don't get me wrong. I was here last year when the Sony BR Truck stopped by to show off the upcoming format. I saw the Spidey 2 trailer on a huge 72" TV, and it was almost 3D looking it was so great of a resolution. Really, I was blown away.
But not with the first round of BR discs. I *believe* it's just because those movies are upconverted or something? I don't know, but it really was lackluster. I suggested they pop in Underworld: Revolution, since I suspect that would've had a better transfer...but of course they couldn't cause it's an R-rated movie. DUh, Ian...
Which I believe is why they so quickly took out that disc and replaced it with the demo disc. I haven't had a chance to check out that one yet, so I can't say how nice it looks. I HOPE it looks better than HOFD. But really...anyone who buys that movie or any other one with such transfer's going to be disappointed.
ANNNYWAYY...My main reason for this post is to explain that, while we got in the BR movies/players/and demo stations in their first week. And while we now have BR advertisements in our national ads and around our stores...we STILL have not had a single THING HD-DVD in our store yet.
That's right. No HD-DVDs. No HD-DVD players. No HD-DVD in the national ads. No mention of it at all.
I asked our TV guys why this was, and they said because Circuit City does not carry Toshiba products. And apparently only Toshiba has HD-DVD players out so far? I thought there was at least an RCA one out now, too, but I could be wrong. Maybe we don't carry RCA stuff either? (I just work in DVD/CD/Video Games, if you're wondering why I'm so unsure of the Home Entertainment section)
But yeah, this angers me. HD-DVD stuff has been out for, what, almost 2 months now? There are plenty of titles out that we can sell, even IF we don't carry the early HD-DVD players. But no, it seems as though Circuit City is in Sony's hands, too, or something. Because we're waving a big ol Blu-Ray sign all over the place, and not even MENTIONING HD-DVD.
...oh, and I've yet to sell a single Blu-Ray movie yet.
k. sorry. Rant over.
