It's BAAAAACK!

[Bobby H]

Replication costs for these hybrid BD/DVD discs are significantly higher than standard BD-50 replication. That alone would make the price of such movies in that hybrid format even higher than standard BD movie pricing.

Another deal breaker is the limit of only using a single BD-25 layer for Blu-ray content. Most movies need a dual layer BD-50 in order to deliver reasonably flawless looking HD video quality. The need for a BD-50 is even more vital if the studio chooses to include numerous extra features on the disc.

 

[navychop]

I wonder if a dual layer BD combo is in the works. There's not a depth conflict. Maybe the second Blu layer interferes with focus on the DVD layer?

 

[navychop]

Hmmmmm- An idea has struck. What if this technology isn't really quite what they say it is? What if that single 25GB track is actually just music, or a music video, following the pattern set by SACD & DVD-A? And the deeper track is used as a "normal" CD layer? Then we'd have a successor to the SACD & DVD-A, that would be similar to the SACD hybrids out there. One disk- high quality music for the home listening environment, and a CD layer for the car.

Seems this technology would at least allow for that. Now, will they see a market for it?

 

[vurbano]

They are hell bent on keeping prices high. The packages that are not combo discs will be kept high with the inclusion of a "digital" disc you can watch on your PC, many have them now. Its just ridiculous. Why cant I just buy a BluRay version of a movie?

 

[dlsnyder]

Those digital files are no good on many portable devices. Sure, if you have a newer iPod it will play Ok. For those of us who shun the iPod we are left with few choices for using those digital copies outside of a PC. For example they will not play on my Windows Mobile 6.1 Pocket PC phone (HTC Touch). Good thing they don't use Macrovision on Blu-ray discs. It is really easy to make a reasonable quality digital copy recorded from the composite video output on my Blu-ray player that WILL play on my phone.

 

[meStevo]

My wife was able to use Digital Copy of Supernatural Season 3 on her Creative Zen.

I wanted to start a thread about it, but dont think there's a good forum for it on the board (it's not a BD-only thing).

 

[BobMurdoch]

You know I've never accessed the Dvd versions on my Combo Red discs...

Couldn't disagree more.... The combo discs were used in my wife's SUV for the kiddies on several titles, on a laptop or portable DVD player on airplanes, and I was able to loan the discs to my Dad (he's only 20 years older than me so our tastes are pretty close) who doesn't have a BluRay/HD DVD player.... Now since most of my stuff is BluRay he is SOL.

The other major aggravation is my Samsung Duo maxes out at profile 1.1 as there is no way to boost the storage capacity with a flash drive (dumb, Samsung!)... but I don't want to pitch the player as I still watch several HD DVDs every now and then when company comes over.... Hell, I still have a laserdisc player in my stack.....

 

[dlsnyder]

My wife was able to use Digital Copy of Supernatural Season 3 on her Creative Zen.

I wanted to start a thread about it, but dont think there's a good forum for it on the board (it's not a BD-only thing).

Yes, it will play on the Creative Zen, the Archos players, and a few others. I don't think it will play on the Zune though. We need DRM-free digital copies! In the interim I am about to order one of these:

[ame=http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-SDMV1-R-V-Mate-Memory-Recorder/dp/B000IN72KK]Amazon.com: SanDisk SDMV1-R V-Mate Video Memory Card Recorder: Electronics[/ame] Sandisk V-Mate

It ignores Macrovision and has a VCR-like timer record mode. My PC just isn't up to the job of recording video and I am not ready to buy a new one yet. This seems like a pretty decent stand-alone solution. It can record directly to a Micro-SD card in a couple of different flavors of MPEG-4 and to H.263 for cellphones.

 

[navychop]

Composite input? And from the reviews, pretty poor PQ.

 

[BobMurdoch]

Yeah, but if you need to dub old VHS tapes it ain't a bad option.....

I've got every Star Blazers episode (including the third season that never aired here) on about 40tapes and I've been wondering when it will be time to transfer them and others to more durable media....

 

[dlsnyder]

On a cellphone screen VHS resolution looks pretty good. You don't need a whole lot more than that, especially since my phone is a Sprint HTC Touch with a QVGA display. Not the sharpest in the world but looks pretty good.