Is it time to start counting HD-DVD's Days?

[JoeSp]

I wonder how many of you were watching HDTV in 2000? How about 2001? How about now? I think you get my point. We are still in the infancy of High Def disc movie viewing. And my guess is that we are all going to be in the fringe area until there is only one format. The thing is - I believe that time is running out on HD-DVD. Here are 10 reasons:

#1 -- their biggest box office title Transformers cannot eek them out a win for one week.

#2 -- their biggest selling point (low cost players) is being erroded by the BDA. There are BD players under $300 right now. How soon before they get to the sub $200 range?

#3 -- HDi was very nice dressing but BD-Java 1.1 is on its way in January and that is pretty much the equivalent of HDi without adding internet access -- the BDA is coming in the Summer with BD-Live. This is not that important because I have yet to read where a title was number one for the week because of the extras on the disc or internet access. I guess we will see if this is really important.

#4 -- the PS3 is really starting to sell -- and sell well. Every one an excellant BD player and a fine piece of electronics. What you guys failed to notice about the Trojan Horse theory is that the Trojan Horse wasn't sprung immediately -- it took patience and a little time to work right.

#5 -- by the time that BD-Live has been fleshed out players will be available that meet these specs and will be under $300 - many of them will be 1.1 spec'd under $200 -- most supporting all Java features. The last bastion of HD-DVD will fall. Just at the time J6p starts taking notice.

#6 -- Disney and Fox are far more important to this whole picture then everyone believes. If Fox can get their act together and stop worring about a few folks doing copies and just put their titles out on the market you might finally see that 3 to 1 BD over HD-DVD ratio sooner then later.

#7 -- there is no where else for Toshiba to go -- $98 players is just about as low as you can go without giving them away. Money is not going to buy them anymore exclusives - the BDA will not allow another coup like Paramont and Dreamworks.

#8 --If the Onkyo HD-DVD player really was a bust -- then what other CE would dare put out a HD-DVD player unless it was coupled with a BD player? And they still want over $800 for a combo!! I don't see this as saving HD-DVD.

#9 -- The cost of producing BD discs is going to drop greatly in the second full year of production. The more you make -- the lower the cost -- a simple rule of supply and demand economics. Everything gets cheaper with time.

#10 -- Toshiba shot themselves in the foot with dropping the cost of the players way too quickly. They virtually assured that they would be the only CE manufacturer of HD-DVD standalones and they dropped the price to where nobody -- including the retailers (especially specialty HD shops) could make money on selling their products. Contray to what others have said about being the only manufacturer, if your product is not vastly supperior you can not win the sales war. And HD-DVD is not supperior at all to BD in what really counts -- Picture Quality and Audio Quality. For the most part they are equal -- except where BD gives you PCM support. Sometimes a product can become too inexpensive and gives the impression that it is selling off product -- which is exactly what Toshiba did with the $98 sale. Most folks are suspect of a firesale -- some will still buy -- but most will be very skeptical. I am sure that Toshiba was not looking for the "Firesale" moniker -- not the best thing when you are the only CE trying to prop up a format.

Everything that I have stated is current market conditions. If someone can come up with something that Toshiba can do besides start buying studios to improve HD-DVD's foothold -- lets hear it. Numbers from around the world are not positive for HD-DVD -- and as I said -- we will all be in the fringe until there is only one.

 

[meStevo]

Here ya go Joe

 

[IcEWoLF]

I wonder how many of you were watching HDTV in 2000? How about 2001? How about now? I think you get my point. We are still in the infancy of High Def disc movie viewing. And my guess is that we are all going to be in the fringe area until there is only one format. The thing is - I believe that time is running out on HD-DVD. Here are 10 reasons:

#1 -- their biggest box office title Transformers cannot eek them out a win for one week.

#2 -- their biggest selling point (low cost players) is being erroded by the BDA. There are BD players under $300 right now. How soon before they get to the sub $200 range?

#3 -- HDi was very nice dressing but BD-Java 1.1 is on its way in January and that is pretty much the equivalent of HDi without adding internet access -- the BDA is coming in the Summer with BD-Live. This is not that important because I have yet to read where a title was number one for the week because of the extras on the disc or internet access. I guess we will see if this is really important.

#4 -- the PS3 is really starting to sell -- and sell well. Every one an excellant BD player and a fine piece of electronics. What you guys failed to notice about the Trojan Horse theory is that the Trojan Horse wasn't sprung immediately -- it took patience and a little time to work right.

#5 -- by the time that BD-Live has been fleshed out players will be available that meet these specs and will be under $300 - many of them will be 1.1 spec'd under $200 -- most supporting all Java features. The last bastion of HD-DVD will fall. Just at the time J6p starts taking notice.

#6 -- Disney and Fox are far more important to this whole picture then everyone believes. If Fox can get their act together and stop worring about a few folks doing copies and just put their titles out on the market you might finally see that 3 to 1 BD over HD-DVD ratio sooner then later.

#7 -- there is no where else for Toshiba to go -- $98 players is just about as low as you can go without giving them away. Money is not going to buy them anymore exclusives - the BDA will not allow another coup like Paramont and Dreamworks.

#8 --If the Onkyo HD-DVD player really was a bust -- then what other CE would dare put out a HD-DVD player unless it was coupled with a BD player? And they still want over $800 for a combo!! I don't see this as saving HD-DVD.

#9 -- The cost of producing BD discs is going to drop greatly in the second full year of production. The more you make -- the lower the cost -- a simple rule of supply and demand economics. Everything gets cheaper with time.

#10 -- Toshiba shot themselves in the foot with dropping the cost of the players way too quickly. They virtually assured that they would be the only CE manufacturer of HD-DVD standalones and they dropped the price to where nobody -- including the retailers (especially specialty HD shops) could make money on selling their products. Contray to what others have said about being the only manufacturer, if your product is not vastly supperior you can not win the sales war. And HD-DVD is not supperior at all to BD in what really counts -- Picture Quality and Audio Quality. For the most part they are equal -- except where BD gives you PCM support. Sometimes a product can become too inexpensive and gives the impression that it is selling off product -- which is exactly what Toshiba did with the $98 sale. Most folks are suspect of a firesale -- some will still buy -- but most will be very skeptical. I am sure that Toshiba was not looking for the "Firesale" moniker -- not the best thing when you are the only CE trying to prop up a format.

Everything that I have stated is current market conditions. If someone can come up with something that Toshiba can do besides start buying studios to improve HD-DVD's foothold -- lets hear it. Numbers from around the world are not positive for HD-DVD -- and as I said -- we will all be in the fringe until there is only one.

100% agree with this.
Only a miracle can help Toshiba as of now to survive.
BR is fighting to win the war and get some parasites out of their backs and Toshiba is fighting to sell whatever they have left so in the end they can all pack up and work on the next big thing in the next 4-5 years.

 

[akodoreign]

I am not sure. I have seen quite a few posts where. let's see.


Sony refuses to repair dusty PS3 under warranty - GameGrep

People May buy PS3's but they get bored with them quick.

When Final Fantasy XIII makes it state side it would be a stronger argument.

I have a few friends that own PS3s never use them for movies (80 gig models before spider man came out) In fact one of them traded their PS3 in to gamestop for a 360.

But as of right now. They are just dust magnets.

 

[vurbano]

The ultimate FUD thread. Proof that Joe comes straight from Blu Ray.com.

 

[akodoreign]

The ultimate FUD thread. Proof that Joe comes straight from Blu Ray.com.

he he.

• BetaMax (1975)
• Mini-Disc (1991)
• Sony Dynamic Digital Sound (1993)
• Multi-Media Compact Disc (1994)
• ATRAC (1999)
• HiFD (1998)
• Super Audio CD (1999)
• Hi-MD (2004)

So where do we put Blue Ray on this list?

 

[teachsac]

This is the #rd thread in the last year claiming HD DVD is dead or on its last leg? I lost count. What did it take for BD to eek out a win when Transformers was released? A BOGO sale at every retailer? BD live is optional, not mandatory. I can understand the time period for 1.1 (although I don't agree), they were desperate to get at least some players out there before it was too late. HD DVD was ready. But 2.0 a year later and optional? Totaly foolish. No reason it couldn't have been implemented at the same time as 1.1. And the PS3 mentality of I'm an expert having a game machine as the centerpiece of a HT........?

“The Wal-Mart thing and other indicators show that people aren’t hung up on the format as much as they are about price,” said Souder. “We sold out of every [HD-A2] that we had at $129. People are willing to make that level of investment, but they didn’t seem willing to spend $399 and $499.”

"Ultimate sold three times as many of Toshiba’s third-generation model, the HD-A3, than all of the Blu-ray models combined. Using its own price reductions and Toshiba’s $100-off rebate, Ultimate offered $149 HD-A3s, which regularly list for $299."

High-def hardware sales jump with Black Friday discounts - 11/30/2007 - Video Business

 

[loves2watch]

And the one will be HD DVD as it is currently and has been a finished specification from the beginning. No profile issues, no having to but a new excessively expensive player because your current player can't play a current movie. No companies bullying the format by owning studios (SONY). And a player that is backed by the DVD forum, the only body that qualifies next gen formats. So when this war is over (if it ever is) and all of the Blu-ray spec whores are left sitting with useless equipment just who do you think the looser will be? Me with a fully finctional $98 player that plays anything I feed it or you who has an $800 piece of junk that won't play any new movies.

FYI - Onkyo is now and will continue to produce a HD DVD player for the US market, the only one that matters to me. So all of that FUD about Onkyo ceasing production is just absolutely crap.

 

[loves2watch]

One of the inevitable side effects of the High Definition revolution is that the advanced video and audio technology used in the Blu-ray and HD DVD formats tends to bring out the know-it-all tech geek in home theater fans. Sometimes this can be a great benefit, when knowledgeable users band together to analyze specific technical deficiencies that have occurred and share their feedback with the parties responsible, hopefully leading to improvements in the future. We've seen some of this at various points during the format war. Early Blu-ray releases such as 'The Fifth Element' exhibited obvious visual deficiencies due to weak source materials and poor digital compression encoding. Likewise, HD DVD catalog titles from Universal have been hit-or-miss in quality, many of them recycled from dated and problematic video masters (like 'In Good Company', with its ghastly edge enhancement artifacts). Reviews published on this site and others were negative, and buyers voiced their displeasure to the studios, eventually resulting in improved mastering on subsequent releases. 'The Fifth Element' was even remastered in significantly better quality as a direct result of owner feedback. That wouldn't have happened had no one spoken up about it.
Generally speaking, the High Definition studios, knowing the intense scrutiny their work is placed under, have maintained a much higher standard of quality on recent releases (with some notable exceptions, of course). Just imagine what might have happened had the public been apathetic and merely accepted whatever shoddy treatment they were handed. In this case, the voice of the people resulted in a better end product for everyone to enjoy.
Unfortunately, the above example is a best case scenario. On the flip side of that coin, we have countless cases of agenda-driven individuals attempting to use a partial understanding of technical matters as a bludgeon in arguments supposedly "proving" the superiority of one format over the other. Anyone who's spent time browsing home theater discussion forums has suffered through an endless string of debates about how the HD DVD format "sucks" because its discs can only store 30 gb of content, while Blu-ray discs can store up to 50 gb, and therefore must be amazingly superior. Never mind that HD DVD has time and again proven capable of delivering exceptional picture and sound quality, plus copious bonus material, easily equaling even the best available on Blu-ray. At the same time, there are others who point to the occasional Blu-ray encoded with MPEG-2 compression as being "unacceptable", even though MPEG-2 can certainly achieve excellent results when given enough room to breathe (witness 'Black Hawk Down'). To some people, the actual quality presented to them is irrelevant if they don't like the sound of the specs on paper.
This "specs above all else" mentality has reared its ugly head again recently with the release of 'Transformers' on HD DVD, a title that delivers stunning video and audio, as well as a number of innovative interactive features. What could possibly be the problem here? Well, the soundtrack is only encoded in Dolby Digital Plus format, not a lossless codec such as Dolby TrueHD or an uncompressed one like PCM. In his review of the disc for this site, our Peter Bracke gave the DD+ track a perfect "5" for audio quality and said of it that, "Directionality, imaging, accuracy of localized effects, and the sheer depth of the soundfield are all fantastic stuff." Nonetheless, in the minds of many, this disc is a huge failure, and its soundtrack a pathetic disgrace for not including a TrueHD or PCM option.
I should mention at this point that at least one working Hollywood sound mixer has voiced his opinion that, when played back on his professional dubbing stage, well-mastered Dolby Digital Plus soundtracks encoded at the high 1509 kb/s bit rate that Paramount uses can be audibly transparent to the studio masters, when tested on movies that he mixed himself and would presumably know better than anyone else. But what use is the informed opinion of an expert in the field when it's easier to just point to the specs list on the back of a disc's packaging to make conclusive statements about matters of quality? In the forum on this site, a number of readers have made proclamations such as, "Compressed audio is just not acceptable these days" and "Whether you can tell the difference or not is irrelevant."
The disc's audio being indistinguishable from its studio master is "irrelevant"? Even with just a Dolby Digital Plus track, the 'Transformers' disc rated the highest score for audio quality that we can give. What more could we demand from it? It's absolutely terrific, but it's just not absolutely terrific enough if the packaging doesn't have a listing for TrueHD or PCM, even when it's likely impossible for human ears to tell the difference? What kind of argument is that?
The lossy compressed audio formats offered by Dolby and DTS use perceptual encoding techniques to filter out data from the studio masters in order to conserve disc space. The intent of perceptual encoding is that the data removed should consist mainly of either frequencies beyond the range of human hearing or frequencies that would normally be masked by other frequencies in the track anyway. With the most heavily compressed formats, including basic Dolby Digital and DTS (the standards on regular DVD), often additional frequencies within the range of hearing are affected, and this has resulted in much variability in sound quality. However, Dolby Digital Plus, especially the 1509 kb/s variety found on a disc like the 'Transformers' HD DVD, uses much more efficient encoding techniques at a very high bit rate. The people who actually make these movie soundtracks have found it pretty impressive, and yet average home listeners seem to believe with absolute certainty that the home theater speakers in their living rooms would be capable of resolving with precision the mathematical difference between a high bit rate Dolby Digital Plus track and a lossless one, and that their golden audiophile ears would also be capable of discerning it. Personally, I would like to put these people to a properly-controlled blind test, where all of the audio levels have been carefully matched to the same volume, and then see how well their hearing fares.
I would not claim that all DD+ tracks are flawless or transparent to their masters; it does take some effort to encode them properly. But to dismiss the format out of hand simply because the soundtrack isn't labeled as lossless or uncompressed demonstrates an ignorance of the technology being used. If the audio codec alone were the only important criteria in sound quality, how could it be that a disc like 'Dinosaur' with a 48 kHz / 24-bit PCM 5.1 track would sound so underwhelming? With specs like those, why isn't that disc a spectacular audio showcase? Somehow I doubt you'll find too many critical listeners who would ever claim that 'Dinosaur' sounds better than 'Transformers', but based on the specs, shouldn't it? Perhaps it's time we all realize that there's more to quality than the specs can tell us.
Yet we see the same thinking applied to matters of video. How many more arguments must there be about the different video compression codecs? Proponents on one side proclaim the infallible superiority of VC-1 above all other options, while those opposed insist that VC-1 is garbage and only AVC MPEG-4 is any good. Both camps attempt to prove their point by capturing screen shots on their computers, which they run through Photoshop to crop, zoom, filter, and distort in all manner of convoluted ways in order to locate individual errant pixels, completely invisible to the naked eye in the normal course of movie watching, and heartily declare their victory in the debate.
The truth of the matter is that all video compression codecs have the same purpose, to accurately represent the source using a fraction of the storage space. In the hands of a good operator, both VC-1 and AVC are more than capable of achieving this goal. Even the dated MPEG-2 codec has been known to deliver excellent results (owners of the now-defunct D-Theater tape format sure didn't seem to have any problem with it). There are plenty of examples of "reference quality" transfers using any of the above, from 'King Kong' (VC-1) to 'Final Fantasy' (AVC) to 'Kingdom of Heaven' (MPEG-2). In all cases, the skill of the compressionist and the quality of the work is more important than the codec used to get there.
It's also more important than the bit rate. As far as I'm concerned, Sony's decision to incorporate a bit rate meter in their PS3 Blu-ray player is one of the worst things to have ever happened to the home theater hobby. Because of that one seemingly-innocuous and frequently-inaccurate data display, now just about anyone, no matter how technologically ignorant, can believe themselves to be experts in the field of video reproduction, based on nothing more than whether their bit rate meters read a high number or a low one -- as if that number were even relevant. The whole point of video compression is to squeeze a High Definition picture into as little space as possible. A compressionist who's maintained a high-quality picture with a low bit rate has done an excellent job, but that's a point lost on most consumers, who assume that a good picture needs a high bit rate, regardless of what they actually see on their TV screens. The bit rate alone is a meaningless statistic and says nothing about the quality of the compression work. It is equally possible to create a lousy video image with a high bit rate, or a great image with a low bit rate, depending on the complexity of the content and how well the work is done. I found it extremely amusing to read complaints about the low bit rate used on 'TMNT', a disc with a razor sharp and amazingly detailed picture that some owners nonetheless decried as "soft" against the evidence their own eyes gave them, for no reason other than an ill-founded assumption that the picture would have been even sharper if the bit rate meter spiked a little higher. How would they know? Have they compared it against the studio master?
This misconception has reached such heights of absurdity that certain viewers have started petitions demanding that Warner Bros. stop using the same video encodes on HD DVD and Blu-ray, and instead "maximize" the bit rates on their Blu-ray releases if the extra disc space is available. But for what purpose? Video compression doesn't work on a linear scale. Using advanced codecs like VC-1 and AVC, there are diminishing returns above a certain point, and throwing more bits at a picture that doesn't require them accomplishes nothing more than to make the meter number go up. As time goes on, compression tools and techniques become more efficient, requiring even less space to achieve visual transparency to the original master. Warner Bros. has many times over demonstrated outstanding results within the 30 gb limit of HD DVD, even on very long films such as the 'Troy: Director's Cut', a movie that runs 3 1/2 hours and yet fits comfortably on a 30 gb disc with beautiful picture quality, despite also squeezing in a lossless Dolby TrueHD audio track and a bunch of supplements. So what if the Blu-ray edition has an extra 20 gb of space available? Are we watching the movie or watching the bit rate meter? If there were no bit rate meter, would anyone have a legitimate basis to complain?
Back when they were supporting both High-Def formats, Paramount actually did what these users are demanding. They authored every movie separately for HD DVD and Blu-ray, each maximized to its format's potential. And what were the results? The same movie looked visibly identical on the bit rate maximized Blu-ray as it did on the lower bit rate HD DVD. Once again, the quality of the compression trumped other considerations regarding tech specs or bit rate.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to imply that all HD DVDs and Blu-rays are perfect now. Video artifacts do occur, and the studios have been known to rest on their laurels and allow shoddy work to slip through. Sometimes disc space really does strain the limits of what a studio wants to include on a High-Def title. It's important to scrutinize their results, lest we return to a state where the original 'Fifth Element' Blu-ray is considered acceptable. But it's equally important to understand what we're actually looking at. Many times, the "artifacts" picked apart by viewers have nothing to do with video compression or encoding whatsoever, but rather are issues found in the source, such as natural film grain, which isn't a flaw at all. Yes, a soft picture can be the result of poor compression or excessive filtering, but it can also be the result of soft focus photography. A heavily-grainy image could be overcompressed, or it could be stylistically intentional. Not every movie is photographed to look exactly the same as every other, and even within a film certain shots or scenes may look different than others. We must understand what a movie is supposed to look like before we can judge how well a video disc reproduces it. Being moderately proficient at manipulating still images in Photoshop does not necessarily qualify someone as an expert in the art of filmmaking.
I'm not suggesting that viewers should relax their standards or accept substandard quality as "good enough" when it's really not, but the technical specs alone simply do not tell the whole story, and over-emphasizing them is a matter of misplaced priorities. We should judge these discs by the actual quality they deliver, not by misleading statistics like the bit rate or the specs listing on the packaging. Surely, that can't be too much to ask.

 

[Dveldh]

Well said!

One of the inevitable side effects of the High Definition revolution is that the advanced video and audio technology used in the Blu-ray and HD DVD formats tends to bring out the know-it-all tech geek in home theater fans. Sometimes this can be a great benefit, when knowledgeable users band together to analyze specific technical deficiencies that have occurred and share their feedback with the parties responsible, hopefully leading to improvements in the future.

Great post! Pardon me for cutting it down for my reply, and it reminds me of the saying, "A difference that makes no difference is no difference."

 

[allargon]

#1 -- their biggest box office title Transformers cannot eek them out a win for one week.

#2 -- their biggest selling point (low cost players) is being erroded by the BDA. There are BD players under $300 right now. How soon before they get to the sub $200 range?

#3 -- HDi was very nice dressing but BD-Java 1.1 is on its way in January and that is pretty much the equivalent of HDi without adding internet access -- the BDA is coming in the Summer with BD-Live. This is not that important because I have yet to read where a title was number one for the week because of the extras on the disc or internet access. I guess we will see if this is really important.

#4 -- the PS3 is really starting to sell -- and sell well. Every one an excellant BD player and a fine piece of electronics. What you guys failed to notice about the Trojan Horse theory is that the Trojan Horse wasn't sprung immediately -- it took patience and a little time to work right.

#5 -- by the time that BD-Live has been fleshed out players will be available that meet these specs and will be under $300 - many of them will be 1.1 spec'd under $200 -- most supporting all Java features. The last bastion of HD-DVD will fall. Just at the time J6p starts taking notice.

#6 -- Disney and Fox are far more important to this whole picture then everyone believes. If Fox can get their act together and stop worring about a few folks doing copies and just put their titles out on the market you might finally see that 3 to 1 BD over HD-DVD ratio sooner then later.

#7 -- there is no where else for Toshiba to go -- $98 players is just about as low as you can go without giving them away. Money is not going to buy them anymore exclusives - the BDA will not allow another coup like Paramont and Dreamworks.

#8 --If the Onkyo HD-DVD player really was a bust -- then what other CE would dare put out a HD-DVD player unless it was coupled with a BD player? And they still want over $800 for a combo!! I don't see this as saving HD-DVD.

#9 -- The cost of producing BD discs is going to drop greatly in the second full year of production. The more you make -- the lower the cost -- a simple rule of supply and demand economics. Everything gets cheaper with time.

#10 -- Toshiba shot themselves in the foot with dropping the cost of the players way too quickly. They virtually assured that they would be the only CE manufacturer of HD-DVD standalones and they dropped the price to where nobody -- including the retailers (especially specialty HD shops) could make money on selling their products. Contray to what others have said about being the only manufacturer, if your product is not vastly supperior you can not win the sales war. And HD-DVD is not supperior at all to BD in what really counts -- Picture Quality and Audio Quality. For the most part they are equal -- except where BD gives you PCM support. Sometimes a product can become too inexpensive and gives the impression that it is selling off product -- which is exactly what Toshiba did with the $98 sale. Most folks are suspect of a firesale -- some will still buy -- but most will be very skeptical. I am sure that Toshiba was not looking for the "Firesale" moniker -- not the best thing when you are the only CE trying to prop up a format.

Everything that I have stated is current market conditions. If someone can come up with something that Toshiba can do besides start buying studios to improve HD-DVD's foothold -- lets hear it. Numbers from around the world are not positive for HD-DVD -- and as I said -- we will all be in the fringe until there is only one.

Transformers is still the 2nd best selling high def disc ever behind 300. Only Harry Potter can knock it down.

Where are BD players regularly under $300? The worst BD player (That POS Sony standalone) is still $400-500 at Target and Wally.

Interactivity w/o the 'net isn't full interactivity. It's not just about PIP. We're doing community screenings, downloading wallpapers, etc. I guess you guys can use IBM's commercial dowloading technology when BD Live finally comes around.

PS3. I'll give you that. It's a damned gaming console. Problem is once games become available most PS3 owners will stop buying movies. That happened w/ the PSP and UMD.

Sorry. BD-Live is optional even when it's released. That's why 1.1 is called final standard.

Without Disney, Blu-Ray would fold like a house of cards. I'll give you that one.

The BDA didnt allow Paramount to leave. Paramount left. The same is true for Warner, Disney, Universal, Lionsgate, etc. How much is the BDA paying Lionsgate to stay?

Nope. They sold out of the Onkyo player in Europe. You guys took that BS story and ran with it. Eh?

About time. Yet Blu-ray discs are still sold cheaper than HD-DVD discs on average. Is it because the BDA subsidizes disc production and sales while accusing Toshiba of subsidizing hardware?

I will psuedo give you that. However, really, wtf is really buying Blu-Ray standalone machines? Philips already publicly complained that their sales are going nowhere. Sony shot the hardware mfgrs in the foot. Everyone is buying PS3's instead. Hell, I want to go neutral, but I won't buy an obsolete profile 1.0 machine for $1k or a loud hot gaming console for my HT setup. HD-DVD has PCM support, too. It's just that HD-DVD content produces would rather use space for extras and interactive content rather than PCM. Blu-Ray gets PCM because they have sh!tty Sony standalone players in the wild that can't even decode Dolby TrueHD. Only hardware Blu boys believe that Toshiba put out a firesale. BTW, the only encode where both got somewhat optimization was "Nature's Journey." No one was really able to qualify saying that the Blu version looked better. Some people appeared to say they thought it looked better but weren't really sure. I followed those threads on AVS and read the article on TVpredictions. It just didn't happen. That's proof that *BOTH* formats look and sound great.

#11) Both formats will coexist for another 2 years at least. Be purple or suck it up and deal!

 

[diogen]

The thing is - I believe that time is running out on HD-DVD.

The thing is - you ain't the first and some 2.5 years late (those were times when Warner was still HD exclusive)
My Two Cents - Archived Posts (5/17/05 - 5/2/05)

I'm going to go out in a limb right now and post something that some of you may consider a bit controversial.
But I think the writing is on the wall. I think the format war is over before it's even begun, and the Toshiba/HD-DVD camp is toast...
This thing is over. It's done. Toshiba and Warner Bros. just haven't figured it out yet.

And here the rhetoric started on forums 2 years ago
Is HD DVD essentially dead in the water at this point? - AVS Forum

Is HD DVD essentially dead in the water at this point?
...do you think its pretty much over for HD DVD, except for the shouting (by Toshiba and MS)?

"Writing on the wall", "Fat lady...", "Nail in the coffin" - how many times will we hear this before one of the formats does go the way of the dodo bird...

Diogen.

 

[tnale]

I'm officailly old this month ,65, and remember the Betamax/ VHS war. Sony was first out, had a great picture compared to VHS. But VHS could record a 2 hour program off of the TV and Sony could only tape 1 hour. So if you were going out of the house and wanted to record a movie, most of which are formatted for a 2 hour slot on OTA, you had a problem with the SOny. I bought a RCA VHS for $1000, the tapes were $10 each, from the old 47th St store in NYC, a lot of money in those days. Why, because the VHS taped for 2 hours, just as most Americans did. By the time Sony was able to bring out 2 hour tapes the war was over. THey had a superior technology but people did not care. More disk space, who cares as long as the picture is the same

I wonder what insignificantly seeming feature will decide this war! I bought a $150 A3 HD-DVD at Costco.com on Black Friday because it was below my target price of under $200. I do not have small children so the lack of Disney is not an issue for me. If I had grandkids I might have waited for Sony's price to drop below $200, but who knows what the wait maybe, I thought this Christmas selling season would have done it.

Right now I think the price point maybe the deciding factor, who knows, it will be interesting to watch. Best Buy has stopped selling analog Tv's in last few months. Before that decision, I was amazed to see how many people would be walking out of BB carrying an antiquated analog TV this past summer. Why? Price point, they were cheaper than the HD version, it was all they could afford, certainly not availability of HD signal. I get all the local channels in HD over a set of rabbit ears in Denver, so it not the fact that you have to have cable or satellite service or an expensive Radio Shack HD antenna at that extra expense.

Toshiba may have a good marketing idea, flood the market with cheap machines and people will buy their disks. Gillette has done this marketing ploy for more years than any of us has been alive, sell the Razor at cost and you lock the purchaser into buy your blades for life. All the inkjet machine makers have done the same, sell the printer at cost and make your money on the ink cartridges.

So will it be this scenario that determines the winner or will it be another? Let's see! But I wanted to see some movies in HD before I'm too old to see the dang TV because of bad eyesight, and I did not want to wait 2+ years.

 

[dfergie]

"Writing on the wall", "Fat lady...", "Nail in the coffin" - how many times will we hear this before one of the formats does go the way of the dodo bird...

Diogen.

We should support both format's and hope they survive as competition will keep the prices down... anyone remember the old $50 Atari game cartridges?

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Joe, what are you smoking?


I'd love a link to the sub-$300 BD players...

But I agree with Don. Support both formats, and urge dual-players. So we all win.

 

[diogen]

We should support both format's and hope they survive as competition will keep the prices down...

Good point, we should...
BTW, I just got my very own dual HD/BD LG GGC-H20L reader and so far it looks very good...

Diogen.

 

[vurbano]

Joe, what are you smoking?

It must be some good sh$t

 

[69Mustang]

Casualty of war

Stupid war.

All of the manufactures had an opportunity to come out with ONE all encompassing format. But NO.
Too much money and pride in the way.

Yes, I did buy a $98 A3 HD DVD player and am enjoying it. But can I play BD movies with it, NO.
Would I like to, YES.


No, the looser is the consumer. Because we can't get one universal format at a affordable price of entry ($100-$200). Would I like to play in the Blue Ray wonderland, sure. The brochure looks nice. So at this point I am only living as a casualty of war like many others.

Stupid war.

 

[JoeSp]

Until that universal player is at $200 or there is just one format I think we are all just going to be adopters of a dead end.

 

[haertig]

Here are the reasons why I don't care if HDDVD, or BluRay, or BOTH wins or loses:

#1 -- I only paid $98 for my HDDVD player. I pay more than that taking my family out to dinner.

#2 -- My HDDVD player does an great job upconverting SD DVDs.

#3 -- My HDDVD player was cheaper than the other upconvertor-only player I was considering, the Oppo. And it plays HDDVDs as an extra bonus.

#4 -- I mostly rent, not buy HDDVD media. So I will not have a large investment should HDDVD fail or my player break and be unreplaceable.

#5 -- See #1

IF I had could have found a BluRay player for that $98, I would have bought that just as readily as the HDDVD player. All my above points would still hold - just replace "HDDVD" with "BluRay".

And the more movies I watch, both HD and SD, the more comfortable I am with my above reasoning:

(a) As I watched the SD version of "Cars" the other night, I was blown away with the quality. Upconverted SD can be very very good on many movies. My set is 65" - no giant, but not so tiny that one can't tell good source material from bad. This SD DVD looked awesome, but even that wouldn't have helped if it were a bad movie (I thought it was a GREAT movie, BTW).

(b) As I watched "Serenity" on HDDVD, I was not wowed by it's HD presentation. I was more fixated on the fact that it was a pretty poor movie in the first place. HD couldn't save it. HD will never save a bad movie. There are more bad movies than good.

(c) I enjoyed "Shooter" on HDDVD. My honest guess is that I would have enjoyed it on SD DVD too. Given a choice I'll opt for the HD version of a movie. Given no choice, I won't cry about it.