Blu-ray vs. HD DVD (2007) - Page 99

Oh yeah??

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=372

:P

So, when is V for Vendetta coming to Blu-Ray? Perhaps, when profile 1.1 Blu-Ray players are available?

It's been awhile since I watched my HD-DVD copy of V for Vendetta, but I believe it came with IME interactivity feature and IME feature on Blu-Ray maybe causing the delay on the Blu-Ray release? If Face Off HD-DVD isn't delivered tomorrow, then I'll probably give V4Vendetta an another viewing instead.

Its not ME its YOU..

Is this actually worth my time and effort to explain to someone who can never admit when they are wrong?

Probably not.

The term "Fire sale" has negative connotations, it implys desperation to get of the last remaining stock. You know this and continually use it in reference to BD hardware and software. Using the negative implication to subtly show your distaste for BD, so that you can make and score some kind of points in this thread, that at times is more outright argument than discussion.

You haven't used the term "Fire sale" in regard to HD-DVD because of its negative connotations as you don't want to admit to any possibility of the company behind HD-DVD showing any kind of weakness. you would rather promote Toshibas desperate price slashing as "planned"

THAT is why I seek to clarify what you consider a "Fire sale" on the HD-DVD side of things, its taken a while, but finally you have made statment that HD-DVD IS capable of having a "Fire sale"
you see, you CAN be honest and open when you try.

{I await your bile}

Flied lice you plick.

You made laugh out loud with the above. Good one.

Wow, this is pathetic. We have reached the lowest moment of this thread and we have you three clowns to thank for.

I sincerely hope your behaviors online do not reflect the real world behavior. In the case of such, I believe the symptoms of social misfits can be cured by medicine.

Well I can't speak for anyone else, but we arrive at this point with you as the genus.

ah, its insane that this thread is still alive and well. i guess its cuz the subject is alive and well.

i still say HD-DVD.

Yes there are a few excellent casestudy individuals for a DSM-TR4 mental illness classification roaming in this thread.

Hey bite, there's almost two months left in the year so I'm pretty sure can we sink lower in that amount of time, especially when sales figures come out in the post Thanksgiving to right before Christmas time period.

Right now the big question should be who's going to be first to sneak in the 2008 thread.

Haha... I guess you're right about this thread pointing further south for rest of 2007.

On the positive note, the HDM release list looks very fruitful(unlike this thread, fortunately) for rest of the year and it will be a great holiday season for all HDM supporters.

Actually, my ultimate question is whether Warner's decision to go exclusive toward one optical disc format will soon end this war?

It's hilarity like that, that keeps me coming back.

With the $100 HDDVD fire sale going on I've got a few questions for Murch about the HD A2. I was astounded to find them at my local Wal Mart, which so far has stocked no stand-alone players. I could use an HDDVD player at my office to show HD content created by us. However, the only thing capable of displaying higher than standard-def in my office is an older multimedia projector. Is it possible to get a VGA signal out of an HDMI or out of component out? Since I'll be creating the content myself there won't be any protected content issues.

What do you suggest?

I've been away for a few days, but had to comment on how silly this Bill Hunt article is.
That you would even cite it weakens Blu-Ray's case.

He starts off wondering how Toshiba will ever make money if they sell their hardware at a loss.

That's the most stupid thing I've ever heard from a Blu-Ray backer. Selling hardware at a loss has always been Sony's plan to win this war. They've even been quite upfront about it.

Both Sony and Toshiba plan to make money off the billions of dollars of royalties that will start coming in once a winner is declared. Nobody with a brain would think that Sony and Toshiba are fighting like this just to reap profits off their own players. They could make the same profits now supporting the other guy's standard.

I agree, I'm looking forward to the Novemeber-December releases. I'll be buying Ratatouille, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Ocean's 13, Live Free and Die Hard, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Blade Runner. I'll Netflix Independence Day and Pirates 3.

There's a lot of rumors floating around about Warner going one way or the other or even remaining neutral. I guess we'll have to wait and see which camp slings enough money their way. If it goes exclusive it'd be a set back for the other format but not fatally as it looks like we're going to be stuck with a dual format niche market until a superior replacement comes along in five or six years, one that will gain consumer acceptance.

bite, in an earlier post you mentioned you might buy a PS3 40GB if the price dropped to $199. I doubt that's going to happen, but who knows, given the format war silliness anything might happen. I'm guessing there might be a modest price drop but IMO the most likely thing will be the $399 price with a 5-disc free offer. But again, who knows.

Good point Frank777 and people always tend to forget that there's gotta be some backend funds coming to Toshiba when the burgeoning "web connect" features that are going to play a significant part of HD DVD. Eventually there will be paid features and Toshiba is going to reap some rewards. People often forget that the specifications for HD DVD allow for some intriquing potential regarding commerce.

Well, I went ahead and bought the A2 and Transformers on HDDVD. I don't even own an HDTV, but I took it out to my Dad's house and enjoyed a few minutes. I rationalized it to myself that if HDDVD does die, it's still a great upscaling DVD player. In the mean time I'll see if I can't tinker out a way for it to play nice with my projector.

I bought my player before getting a HDTV as well and it made everything look like a really good DVD (the HD stuff that is) so you can still get enjoyment out of the player. I like the fact that menus don't pause the movie so even if you're not hooked to HD you're going to like the navigation of HD DVDs better.

Congrats!...

I agree, $98 is well worth it as mere upconverting SD-DVD, HD-DVD playerback is a bonus feature.

In regards to the interconnect question above. The HDMI is all digital, unlike DVI-A/I, the analog video signal will not be available without having an external converter.

Also, your second solution of converting component to VGA may also be tricky. I've not looked into this in details, but I did try to use 20" Dell LCD with VGA port from a progressive DVD player in my kid's playroom, but the cable adapter does not seem to be fully compatible since only the red was available when using component to VGA adapter cable. I didn't want to mess with it too much, so I just ended up using S-Video instead. I was successful in using the VGA to component from a VGA port of video card to component on the display using the same VGA to component cable adapter.

In any rate, the analog (component) output on HD-A2 does output 480p/720p/1080i from HDM source. However, content protected SD-DVD upconversion is only allowed via HDMI to HDCP compliant display.

Hope this helps.

The HDM optical disc format war seems to be heating up more fiercely than I had imagined. I just can't see how much more beating both sides can take. At least, the competition is giving back something in return to many early adopters with lower pricing of both hardware and software. It's now a lot cheaper to join either of the HDM side than it was even 3 months ago. Most retails offer free 2-3 HDM movies on top of 5 MIR offers with all players on both sides. It's amazing how much of the entry price have been slashed in just few weeks. Anyway, there's rumor going around that the HDM sales and momentum swings of both formats will be monitored closely by Warner and will decide their immediate plans for 2008. All the fire sale/promotions will place a huge impact in supporting Q4, which will impact on Warner's decision to commit to an exclusive HDM format support from being neutral. Perhaps the rumor is true. This does explain why all the aggressive deals are available this early prior to the holidays.

In regards to purchasing a blu-ray player, I've decide to wait and get the Blu-Ray/combo drive for my HTPC. If I do go with a standalone/PS3 route, I will eventually need to get at least two units. But if I just get the drive for my pc, I should be able to eventually backup all the HDM's to a media server. I currently have Media PC set up at multiple locations and I can just stream HDM's from the server. I just need to find a drive with faster read speed, because it took about an hour to backup 30GB DL HD-DVD to a hard drive.

My goal is to get my self-produced HD content on to my projector so protected content is a non-issue. Unfortunately, my projector doesn't have component in. It's an all-around shitty projector though, so it might be time for an upgrade anyway.


How do I get my 5 freebies? I don't have my box handy, but I don't think there were any flashy coupons or anything in there.

edit: Nevermind, I found it. the form

Oops... I guess I'm little late.

There seems to be two different MIR forms available for download with difference being group of two movie titles.

This site also has some valuable info on the MIR titles that may help you with your choice.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=909110

It'd be a first in the video consumer market, sure. But there's all kind of formats that have managed to coexist on the market. DVD+ and - R? Sony memory sticks and Flash cards? The game consoles? Mac and PC? Don't some DVD players on the market today still play those VCD things? Doesn't QuickTime (and thusly apple's pro apps) support like 50 different video codecs?

We haven't had a real good format war since VHS and Beta, and the big difference this time is that 1.) video quality is exactly the same on both formats and 2.) there's no physical difference so a player that accepts both is as easy as supporting both DVD + and - R.


Hence why I said "35% - 45% (depending on the week)".


They're reasserted their commitment to format neutrality for the foreseeable future. But yes, if HD DVD sales diminish instead of increase this holiday season (what with their $98 - $199 players), then they really don't have a prayer. They seem to be off to a good start, though.

Now I'd have to disagree with you there, the focal length of both formats are different for a start.

No physical difference in size, Walter. It's not like VHS and Beta, where having a player that supported both would have meant having a player two entirely independent drive mechanisms. A player that supports both HD DVD and Blu-Ray can be entirely seamless for the consumer, and far more financially plausible as most of the player components are shared amongst both formats.

Isn't there already a dual format player out there?

Yes. LG has one, and Samsung's coming out with one that was delayed in order to assure it's 1.1 Blu-Ray ready. LG also has a PC drive that reads both formats, and also burns DVDs and Blu-Ray discs for only $300. That in mind, I would imagine that the $800-$1050 price tag on the set top combo players isn't so much because of the cost to manufacture, but rather to differentiate them from the $499-$799 players which only do Blu-Ray. The additional cost to play both formats must be small considering the PC drive's $299 price tag.

How many movies are released on DVD+R?

How many card readers have slots for Memory Stick, SD, Compact Flash etc? How many printers?


Ok, so you've just listed 5 codecs which is a hell of a lot more than 2 disc formats. More importantly, you've given us a great example of how the one player handles competing formats seamlessly for the end-user. We're just talking about software instead of hardware.

As I said earlier I just bought an HDDVD player for demoing my HD video work. I only got to spend about 20 minutes watching an HD movie on an HDTV, but I'm hooked. I'm psychologically ready to declare myself format-neutral and get Blu-ray and an HDTV as soon possible. Unfortunately I'm not financially ready for that.

Since combo players are obviously not such a huge technological hurdle, (see the above cheap PC drive) I'd imagine it's corporate politics keeping combo players off the market. It looks to me like a combo could be built and sold for no more than a $100 premium over a stand-alone Blu-ray counterpart. If that ever actually happens I think we just might see a format war that ends more like Korea than WW2. It may even happen anyway since right now you can have HDDVD and Blu-ray for only $100 more than Blu-ray alone.

$100 player? Sure I'll take one!

Unfortunately, there weren't any available in the pittsburgh area.
(No HD media for me this holiday season)

I missed the WalMart sale but if I run into a $100 HD-DVD player I'll likely buy one just because. Not too likely to get a bunch of movies though since I've been watching nothing but Pixar the last few months. At least my son is finally tired of Cars. Now its Bugs Life.

None, and yet support for it exists in every DVD burner on the market today. Eventually it became cheap and easy enough to just support both + and - discs, I believe the same will shake out with Blu-ray and HD DVD, considering a Blu-ray/DVD burner that also reads HD DVDs can already be had for $299.


A moot point. Blu-Ray/HD DVD combo players already exist on the market. Game consoles are proprietary systems to those manufacturers, next-gen High Definition formats are not.


And yet every Mac is capable of doing so if the user so desires. That's my point. The ability is just there, whether the user needs it or not. Playback support for both HD DVD and Blu-Ray could end up likewise in set top players. Just a standard, expected feature.



And yet support for these hardly-used codecs remains whether anyone needs them or not. Again, the point is formats don't necessarily have to be exterminated; support for them just becomes so easy and inexpensive it becomes standard.

ok... so I officially bit the HD bullet yesterday.

I purchased a 42" Panasonic plasma 1080p (42pz77u), my cousin's 60gb ps3 for $300, and over spent on a monster hdmi cable (it's going back for one that avsforum members recommend for 1/70th the price).

I purchased, The Last Samurai, The Corpse Bride, and Troy. I watched all of TLS, parts of TCB, and about 20 min of Troy. I didn't want to watch too much as I want to break in my Plasma and didn't want any letterboxing / etc getting Image Retention or Burn-in. I'm currently using a break-in DVD that changes the color every 30 seconds at full 720p.

Anyways... I gotta say... I'm not THAT impressed. There were some beautiful scenes in Troy and TLS. And there were some crappy ones. It seems when you have a blurred background and sharp foreground objects, the background is blurred... I'd say about 2/3 of the movie was gorgeous. So I blame how the film was mastered vs HD technology. Troy seemed to be a little better, but still had the same issues with certain scenes. These are rated almost perfect hd video quality via hidefdigest.com.

Again, I was impressed with some of the beautiful scenes on this set up. I'm still trying to optimize my settings on my tv, but I went with what was suggested on AVSforum.

I still want to get a 1080p hd-dvd player to see how movies compare. I spent enough money yesterday so it will be a while before I go down that road. I will say that while I was in Circuit City, I saw more movies that IIIII wanted to see. That is just my personal choice though. I'm sure people can say that about blu-ray as well.

Back to my original statement. I'm not THAT IMPRESSED with hd so far. It takes up to 100 hours to "break-in" my plasma (according to people at avsforum and circuit city and panasonic), the set was "expensive" for j6p, I got a good deal on the ps3 but it still was "expensive", and the HDMI cable retailed for $99 but I got an open box for $75. I knew I was getting ripped off on the HDMI cable... but at least I know it isn't the HDMI cable's fault for any bad quality video / sound.

With all of this in mind, I don't see the common consumer going HD any time soon. This was a lot to go through $$ and time wise. I know some of you will say, then go LCD. IMO from what I've seen and read, LCD isn't ready for primetime with fast action scenes. To each his own though.

I want to check out The Departed and Mission Impossible III. Soon as my TV is broke-in I'll form a final opinion.

I had no idea that you actually had to invest time and effort into "breaking-in" a Plasma TV.

That goes a long way toward showing why J6P isn't showing any interest in buying any of this newfangled HD nonsense.

This was a more common problem with the older plasmas. You'd have the letter boxes on the sides or top (depending on the format playing), or tickers on the bottom (like cnn), or bright logos in the bottom right (like a fox or discovery image), or gaming symbols... basically anything static on the screen for long periods of time, that would temporarily or permanently burn-in the screen and always have an opacity layer of that image over the tv. Supposedly they have new methods to preven this, but still recommend that a user break in the tv OR not use anything that will generate static images for long periods of time for the first 100 hours. I'm just glad I had people at avsforum, and friends let me know about this. I would have been pretty pissed to spend that much on a tv then always have to look at the cnn ticker bar at the bottom.

I was breaking in tv with the break-in dvd... and I figured I'd run it for 16 hours because that is how long it plays. My girlfriend joked around and asked "if i was sure this wasn't a prank and leaving it on at night, someone's ass would show up on the screen and permanently burn-in the screen"... makes you wonder ;p

Well jeez dude...at 42" there's usually no difference between 720 and 1080 at the common seating distances. At 9 feet they're going to look more or less the same. What does that imply?

You aren't getting the full impact of 1080. To get the full impact you need to sit at 5 or 6 feet. And then you feel like you're sitting too danged close to the screen.

As far as the blurry scenes I guess it all depends on if it was in the film itself. Its unlikely a transfer issue.

And yeah...Monoprice. Never pay inflated prices for cables again.

Yeah the kids and wife(who claims she doesn't watch tv) have taken over my HDTV. I think I've seen one football game this year in HD.\

By the time I get a chance to watch tv 4080p will be all the rage.

Were those movies blu ray? If so that's kinda worrisome to me. The movies(blu ray especially) are supposed to have the best picture quality. Wait till you see the pq in hd cable channels. I believe it's only 720p and quality can vary considerably. Some content I've seen on the discovery channel hd is good but otherwise pretty unimpressive as well.