FastMac announced the immediate availability of its 4x dual layer Blu-ray drive burner for Apple Mac Pro and PowerMac G5. The drive can write 50 GB of data to a disc at speeds of more than 1 GB/minute.
The new 5.25-inch, tray loading drive uses one of the fastest Mac-compatible Blu-ray mechanisms to provide up to 50 GB of storage on a dual or double layer disc, without sacrificing compatibility with standard DVD and CD recordable media. Using a SATA connection, the drive?s 4x BD-R DL mechanism allows professional Mac users to burn up to 50GB of data on 1 disc in less than 50 minutes.
The drive is also compatible with standard DVD and CD media and can write to DVD-R and DVD+R media at 12x speed in single layer and 8x speed in dual/double layer mode. It can rewrite to DVD+RW media at 8x speeds and DVD-RW media at 6x speeds. The drive also supports CD-R reading and writing at up to 40x speeds and CD-RW burning at up to 24x speeds.
The 4x Blu-ray optical drive upgrade requires Mac OS X 10.4.8. It is compatible with the Mac Pro and PowerMac G5. The PMG5 will require SATA to IDE/ATAPI converter cable. Native support for Finder burning is not yet available and requires third party software such as Adobe Premiere CS3 or Roxio?s Toast 8 Titanium.
The tray loading 4x Blu-ray drive is priced at a special introductory US$579.95. Each drive carries a 1-year warranty and a 30-day money back guarantee.
* Elton 60 - Live at Madison Square Garden (Universal Music)
* Masters of Horror: Season One - Vol. Four (Starz)
* Mr. & Mrs. Smith (Fox)
* Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (Buena Vista)
* Queen Rock Montreal & Live Aid (Eagle Rock)
* Superbad (Sony)
Uh, so? What's your point? Of those eight Blu-ray releases, only two made the top 10. Considering the rate at which the index dwindles, the other six movies had a negligable effect on the market share if they didn't even make the top 10. Do you think Elton or Queen sold even a fraction of what Ratatouille sold at an index of only 6.69? Face it, PotC: At World's End just demolished everything else, and Superbad helped. And it's not Blu-ray's fault that HD DVD can't manage decent releases. Is that going to be your excuse every week? "There weren't any good releases for HD DVD this week. There weren't any good releases for HD DVD this week. There weren't..."
Wow! Great for Blu-ray. This lead was quite a bit bigger than I expected to see. Come over any time Warner. Lets put this lame game to a rest, its obvious HD-DVD doesn't have what it takes to cut it.
I just saw a Wal-Mart commercial on cable. It was all about the hints a kid was dropping that he wanted a Blu-ray player for Christmas. Every few seconds, a Blu-ray card was on camera. Tell me again how Wal-Mart is carrying the Venturer unit and pushing HD DVD as their preferred HD format.
HD-DVD has some titles I would like to own, but it's not going to get me to buy one. Battlestar Galactica season one I would love to have, but I'm just not satisfied with owning a dead player.
I bought POTC At Worlds End, Dead Mans Chest, and The Fifth Element Remastered in that week. I think I'm going to buy the Harry Potter series this week. It's a lot of disks, but it's a good series. 300, and Troy are also on my list of movies soon to be mine. Still waiting for V for Vendetta, and Sin City damn it. I would buy those first.
HD-DVD has some titles I would like to own, but it's not going to get me to buy one. Battlestar Galactica season one I would love to have, but I'm just not satisfied with owning a dead player.
I bought POTC At Worlds End, Dead Mans Chest, and The Fifth Element Remastered in that week. I think I'm going to buy the Harry Potter series this week. It's a lot of disks, but it's a good series. 300, and Troy are also on my list of movies soon to be mine. Still waiting for V for Vendetta, and Sin City damn it. I would buy those first.
300 is STUNNING! the difference between it and SD-DVD is/was quite a shock for me, its the only direct comparison between the two formats I have managed so far, but for a new film the amount of compression visible on the SD-dvd was shocking after watching the BD!
There really IS a big difference even AT 10 feet! and there are SO MANY extras on that one disc as well including some in HD and that was like looking through a window!
I'm currently waiting on one of the HPs to arrive.
Didn't like it as much as Cars, or the Incredibles.
I've personally found that I take to Brad Bird's movies more on subsequent viewings, but that aside, it's the single best-looking HD disc on the market right now. Absolutely perfect transfer + Pixar's top-of-the-food-chain animation = prime demo material.
I've personally found that I take to Brad Bird's movies more on subsequent viewings, but that aside, it's the single best-looking HD disc on the market right now. Absolutely perfect transfer + Pixar's top-of-the-food-chain animation = prime demo material.
When I go neutral, the main driving reason for that would be because of the pixar/disney releases. Mostly for the reason to collect. however, most pixar movies also got great transfers on most SD-DVD releases. Tt looks merely like Hidef when scaled to 1080p using a decent video processor like reon vx, especially for most animation movies, even when using an entry level HD-DVD player.
My SD-DVD copy of Ratatouille looks just awesome along with all other Pixar Amimation releases.
Anyway, I do own several animation HDM's, but HiDef is more rewarding on greatly transfered non-animated films for me. Especially, when they're older releases. Don't get me wrong, I would love to double dip on all my pixar collections, but the great remaster/transfer on films/and classic films is where Hidef really makes me double dip.
BTW, what other animated films do you own on Blu-Ray?
Ratatouille is the only CG animated film I own thus far, but I also have 300, Casino Royale, Planet Earth, The Fountain, Paprika, and The Prestige.
I mean, the detail evident may vary depending on the TV you're viewing on, but I've got a 60" 1080p SXRD and as excellent as the Pixar DVD releases look (I own all of them, and the transfers on Cars and The Incredibles made me go 'How much better can HD be?'), Ratatouille is on another level entirely. There are moments where it feels like you could reach through the screen and touch the characters. Never any compression artifacting or unintended blurring resulting from an upsampled DVD image.
I've been trying to find comparable screencaps from DVD, but even with upsampling taken into account there's no comparison between 720x480 SD video and 1920x1080 HD video, especially when both transfers are taken directly from the digital source.
edit: Here we go. Close enough.
(as a comparison, here's a pretty-close-to-the-same image ripped from the DVD transfer)
I just saw a Wal-Mart commercial on cable. It was all about the hints a kid was dropping that he wanted a Blu-ray player for Christmas. Every few seconds, a Blu-ray card was on camera. Tell me again how Wal-Mart is carrying the Venturer unit and pushing HD DVD as their preferred HD format.
Over Thanksgiving I saw another ad in the same campaign, only instead of a Blu-Ray player every few seconds, it was Transformers on HD DVD.
Not until we hit 200 pages in this thread! Seriously, Marz already started it over a month ago, and it's since become buried. You can unearth it if you're itching to get a two-week jump on the new year.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cory Bauer
Over Thanksgiving I saw another ad in the same campaign, only instead of a Blu-Ray player every few seconds, it was Transformers on HD DVD.
Are you sure that was for the movie on HD DVD and not just for the movie in general? Wal-Mart was pushing it in October with their own special edition DVD. Besides, the point isn't that Wal-Mart loves Blu-ray. There were a few people here who were laughing that Wal-Mart will make all the difference because they're so into HD DVD, which their Blu-ray ad clearly disproves.
Excerpt: (most pertinent one I think unless you are a fanboy with a side picked)
PRICE IS KEY
But although Blu-ray discs are selling roughly twice as many copies as HD DVDs, they may not win in the end. The cheapest PS3 costs $399, giving HD DVD the definite edge on price -- which may be critical in achieving a long-term foothold in the market.
According to a recent study by the Dallas-based The Diffusion Group, close to one-third of non-HDTV households are interested in purchasing a new HDTV in the next six months. Out of those respondents, 43 percent of those who were likely to purchase an HD disc player preferred HD DVD, citing price as their main criteria, while 27 percent preferred Blu-ray (30 percent were undecided).
The fact that potential HD consumers are basing their decision primarily on price is a testament to the prevailing confusion about HD DVD and Blu-ray -- a confusion that, at least for the short term, seems destined to relegate both formats to niche status, a la laserdiscs in the 1990s.
''Many of the energies that would have gone into promoting the high-def format in general are instead being used to promote each side of the war,'' said Stephanie Prange, editor-in-chief of Home Media Magazine.
``A lot of the studies we're seeing show consumers are confused by HD and don't know why they need it. It would have been nice to see a concerted effort from the industry. But there are giant companies and money invested in these formats. I've never seen anything like it. If everything stays the same as it is right now, we're in for a long haul in this format war.''
I don't see this war ending soon. What a drag. For the record I'm still a holdout.
Plenty of blame to go around, including people like HMurchison. Go 50 or 60 pages back in this thread and you'll find him gleefully hoping the format war goes on and on and on. He knew even then HD DVD had very little chance of winning, but he outright wrote that he wanted enough of a stalemate that it could hold on until it was too entrenched to be abandoned like DIVX or CED were.
Comments
Nielsen/VideoScan Numbers ending December 9th
http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ques...1607/index.php
WE: BD-76% HDD-24% YTD: BD-65% HDD-35% SI: BD-62% HDD-38%
HD DVD just can't catch a break I tell ya. But that's good from a wanting to end the format war as quickly as possible perspective.
Once again, here is the missing release list:
HD DVD
* Arctic Tale (Paramount)
* Battlestar Galactica: Season One (Universal)
* Queen Rock Montreal & Live Aid (Eagle Rock)
BD
* 20 Million Miles to Earth (Sony)
* Cast Away (Fox)
* Elton 60 - Live at Madison Square Garden (Universal Music)
* Masters of Horror: Season One - Vol. Four (Starz)
* Mr. & Mrs. Smith (Fox)
* Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (Buena Vista)
* Queen Rock Montreal & Live Aid (Eagle Rock)
* Superbad (Sony)
FastMac Announces 4x Blu-ray Burner for Pro Macs
http://www.macobserver.com/article/2007/12/14.13.shtml
FastMac announced the immediate availability of its 4x dual layer Blu-ray drive burner for Apple Mac Pro and PowerMac G5. The drive can write 50 GB of data to a disc at speeds of more than 1 GB/minute.
The new 5.25-inch, tray loading drive uses one of the fastest Mac-compatible Blu-ray mechanisms to provide up to 50 GB of storage on a dual or double layer disc, without sacrificing compatibility with standard DVD and CD recordable media. Using a SATA connection, the drive?s 4x BD-R DL mechanism allows professional Mac users to burn up to 50GB of data on 1 disc in less than 50 minutes.
The drive is also compatible with standard DVD and CD media and can write to DVD-R and DVD+R media at 12x speed in single layer and 8x speed in dual/double layer mode. It can rewrite to DVD+RW media at 8x speeds and DVD-RW media at 6x speeds. The drive also supports CD-R reading and writing at up to 40x speeds and CD-RW burning at up to 24x speeds.
The 4x Blu-ray optical drive upgrade requires Mac OS X 10.4.8. It is compatible with the Mac Pro and PowerMac G5. The PMG5 will require SATA to IDE/ATAPI converter cable. Native support for Finder burning is not yet available and requires third party software such as Adobe Premiere CS3 or Roxio?s Toast 8 Titanium.
The tray loading 4x Blu-ray drive is priced at a special introductory US$579.95. Each drive carries a 1-year warranty and a 30-day money back guarantee.
Once again, here is the missing release list:
HD DVD
* Arctic Tale (Paramount)
* Battlestar Galactica: Season One (Universal)
* Queen Rock Montreal & Live Aid (Eagle Rock)
BD
* 20 Million Miles to Earth (Sony)
* Cast Away (Fox)
* Elton 60 - Live at Madison Square Garden (Universal Music)
* Masters of Horror: Season One - Vol. Four (Starz)
* Mr. & Mrs. Smith (Fox)
* Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (Buena Vista)
* Queen Rock Montreal & Live Aid (Eagle Rock)
* Superbad (Sony)
Uh, so? What's your point? Of those eight Blu-ray releases, only two made the top 10. Considering the rate at which the index dwindles, the other six movies had a negligable effect on the market share if they didn't even make the top 10. Do you think Elton or Queen sold even a fraction of what Ratatouille sold at an index of only 6.69? Face it, PotC: At World's End just demolished everything else, and Superbad helped. And it's not Blu-ray's fault that HD DVD can't manage decent releases. Is that going to be your excuse every week? "There weren't any good releases for HD DVD this week. There weren't any good releases for HD DVD this week. There weren't..."
I'm gonna take a peek at Blade Runner tomorrow on BD.
I bought POTC At Worlds End, Dead Mans Chest, and The Fifth Element Remastered in that week. I think I'm going to buy the Harry Potter series this week. It's a lot of disks, but it's a good series. 300, and Troy are also on my list of movies soon to be mine.
HD-DVD has some titles I would like to own, but it's not going to get me to buy one. Battlestar Galactica season one I would love to have, but I'm just not satisfied with owning a dead player.
I bought POTC At Worlds End, Dead Mans Chest, and The Fifth Element Remastered in that week. I think I'm going to buy the Harry Potter series this week. It's a lot of disks, but it's a good series. 300, and Troy are also on my list of movies soon to be mine.
300 is STUNNING! the difference between it and SD-DVD is/was quite a shock for me, its the only direct comparison between the two formats I have managed so far, but for a new film the amount of compression visible on the SD-dvd was shocking after watching the BD!
There really IS a big difference
I'm currently waiting on one of the HPs to arrive.
Buy more copies of Ratatouille. I demand it.
Didn't like it as much as Cars, or the Incredibles.
Didn't like it as much as Cars, or the Incredibles.
I've personally found that I take to Brad Bird's movies more on subsequent viewings, but that aside, it's the single best-looking HD disc on the market right now. Absolutely perfect transfer + Pixar's top-of-the-food-chain animation = prime demo material.
I've personally found that I take to Brad Bird's movies more on subsequent viewings, but that aside, it's the single best-looking HD disc on the market right now. Absolutely perfect transfer + Pixar's top-of-the-food-chain animation = prime demo material.
When I go neutral, the main driving reason for that would be because of the pixar/disney releases. Mostly for the reason to collect. however, most pixar movies also got great transfers on most SD-DVD releases. Tt looks merely like Hidef when scaled to 1080p using a decent video processor like reon vx, especially for most animation movies, even when using an entry level HD-DVD player.
My SD-DVD copy of Ratatouille looks just awesome along with all other Pixar Amimation releases.
Anyway, I do own several animation HDM's, but HiDef is more rewarding on greatly transfered non-animated films for me. Especially, when they're older releases. Don't get me wrong, I would love to double dip on all my pixar collections, but the great remaster/transfer on films/and classic films is where Hidef really makes me double dip.
BTW, what other animated films do you own on Blu-Ray?
I mean, the detail evident may vary depending on the TV you're viewing on, but I've got a 60" 1080p SXRD and as excellent as the Pixar DVD releases look (I own all of them, and the transfers on Cars and The Incredibles made me go 'How much better can HD be?'), Ratatouille is on another level entirely. There are moments where it feels like you could reach through the screen and touch the characters. Never any compression artifacting or unintended blurring resulting from an upsampled DVD image.
I've been trying to find comparable screencaps from DVD, but even with upsampling taken into account there's no comparison between 720x480 SD video and 1920x1080 HD video, especially when both transfers are taken directly from the digital source.
edit: Here we go. Close enough.
(as a comparison, here's a pretty-close-to-the-same image ripped from the DVD transfer)
I just saw a Wal-Mart commercial on cable. It was all about the hints a kid was dropping that he wanted a Blu-ray player for Christmas. Every few seconds, a Blu-ray card was on camera. Tell me again how Wal-Mart is carrying the Venturer unit and pushing HD DVD as their preferred HD format.
Over Thanksgiving I saw another ad in the same campaign, only instead of a Blu-Ray player every few seconds, it was Transformers on HD DVD.
I'm gonna HAVE to buy Rat now!
time to open 2008 thread no?
Not until we hit 200 pages in this thread! Seriously, Marz already started it over a month ago, and it's since become buried. You can unearth it if you're itching to get a two-week jump on the new year.
Over Thanksgiving I saw another ad in the same campaign, only instead of a Blu-Ray player every few seconds, it was Transformers on HD DVD.
Are you sure that was for the movie on HD DVD and not just for the movie in general? Wal-Mart was pushing it in October with their own special edition DVD. Besides, the point isn't that Wal-Mart loves Blu-ray. There were a few people here who were laughing that Wal-Mart will make all the difference because they're so into HD DVD, which their Blu-ray ad clearly disproves.
HD-DVDs and Blu-rays fail to dominate market
Excerpt: (most pertinent one I think unless you are a fanboy with a side picked)
PRICE IS KEY
But although Blu-ray discs are selling roughly twice as many copies as HD DVDs, they may not win in the end. The cheapest PS3 costs $399, giving HD DVD the definite edge on price -- which may be critical in achieving a long-term foothold in the market.
According to a recent study by the Dallas-based The Diffusion Group, close to one-third of non-HDTV households are interested in purchasing a new HDTV in the next six months. Out of those respondents, 43 percent of those who were likely to purchase an HD disc player preferred HD DVD, citing price as their main criteria, while 27 percent preferred Blu-ray (30 percent were undecided).
The fact that potential HD consumers are basing their decision primarily on price is a testament to the prevailing confusion about HD DVD and Blu-ray -- a confusion that, at least for the short term, seems destined to relegate both formats to niche status, a la laserdiscs in the 1990s.
''Many of the energies that would have gone into promoting the high-def format in general are instead being used to promote each side of the war,'' said Stephanie Prange, editor-in-chief of Home Media Magazine.
``A lot of the studies we're seeing show consumers are confused by HD and don't know why they need it. It would have been nice to see a concerted effort from the industry. But there are giant companies and money invested in these formats. I've never seen anything like it. If everything stays the same as it is right now, we're in for a long haul in this format war.''
I don't see this war ending soon. What a drag. For the record I'm still a holdout.