Tough luck if you were planning on buying Avatar 3D on Blu-ray. The only way you’ll be able to pick one up is by purchasing a Panasonic 3DTV or Blu-ray player, as Panny has an exclusive deal until February 2012.
Considering the distribution deal began on December 1, that’s a walloping great exclusive they have – but it’s not going to be welcome news to those who fancied showing off what their brand new 3DTV is capable of. Sure, there are other 3D Blu-rays available – but Avatar is the one everyone’s been talking about. [AV Zombie]
Simon Reidy
Wednesday, December 15, 2010 at 7:10 AMThis will probably kick-start a new era of 3D torrenting! :) Actually speaking of which: is there any way to rip and compress 3D films using formats like DivX or MKV yet? I’m guessing no given there are only about 3 3D Blu-ray titles even available..
Ashur
Wednesday, December 15, 2010 at 7:37 AMExclusive deals have just gotten stupid. I thought Gamestop, EB Games and AT&T (AT&T especially) having exclusive deals was bogus as it reduces competition and smaller retailers cannot compete. However this single instance would probably be the worst I have seen in a long time. Maybe some legislation needs to be put forth to start to monitor and guidelines set to control these deals. A line needs to be drawn between companies doing exclusive deals to differentiate there product or service offerings and exclusive deals which reduce competition in the marketplace
Steve
Wednesday, December 15, 2010 at 2:51 PMThis is silly. Gamestop and EBGames do not have meaningful exclusives. They only offer exclusive bonus content with pre-orders eg download codes. This gives consumers more choices, eg you can buy from Kmart and get X character skin, or Y from EBgames. It’s never anything substantial, and is always offered later as paid DLC anyway.
The phone thing is a necessary evil. It helps differentiate carriers. What if every carrier had the same line-up? Different phones foster competition in hardware and design as people vote with their wallets.
moloko
Wednesday, December 15, 2010 at 8:39 AMIt’s just a movie in 3D. It’s not like anyone really cares.
Ashur
Wednesday, December 15, 2010 at 9:05 AMI disagree. A huge amount of 3D televisions have been sold since being launched, with the largest quantity shipped by Samsung. Avatar was the movie that led to many of the sales of these units and now that it is being released on one platform has narrowed down the purchasing options for consumers. Avatar 3D Blu Ray sales will be huge and for many people will be a deciding factor in making the choice for a 3DTV, having only one platform able to play it reduces competition between the brands.
Theophilus
Wednesday, December 15, 2010 at 10:18 AMJust Dumb… this will hurt Pana as much as anyone else. Everyone knows the only way 3D can be successful is if the content is available… so Pana take Avatar, Samsung annex Tron, Sony etc etc. Running and exclusive on launch is fine, but this sort of behaviour will just turn people off 3D and as Simon has said, encourage more torrent downloads.
jason
Wednesday, December 15, 2010 at 9:10 PMwell it’s pretty easy to rip a blu ray disc image, i see no reason the same process wouldn’t work on a 3d blu ray disc. sure the torrent would be huge.
but I’m sure if it were the only way to watch it then a decent number of people would do it.
i suppose this means that even video stores wont have a copy to rent.
i don’t have or intend to get a 3dtv any time soon but this type of crap would definitely put me off if i were interested.
that said i saw avatar 3dat HN today and it wasn’t too bad on the set i viewed (didn’t pay attention to which one) but you really do need a huge set to get the best effect, the jarring sides really put me off on the 46″ i saw