The pinged subjects will be those of HDTV technology, satellite/cable HD, OTA (over the air with various roof top and indoor antennas) HD reception. Broadcast specials, Blu-ray/HD-DVD, and any and all subjects relating to HD.
Las Vegas Dave
Are there any disc players that can playback both formats? I tired of waiting for the loser to be officially announced.
I looked last weekend for any HD disk players available on store shelves. I went to large Sears, Wal-Mart, Target, BJ’s — all of which have extensive space devoted to large screen TVs.
I found only one player, hiding on a back shelf, unpriced, at Sears. I think the price of the players, plus the incompatibility issue, is hurting sales of the TVs. Retailers would rather sell on the basis of cable and satellite signals. Mostly sports.
I’m rather interested in its 50GB capacity to replace DVD-RW for PCs.
He’s also reflecting on the Betamax/VHS war.
Beta was ‘betta’, but VHS was ‘cheapa’...and won.
Today Blueray players are marginally ‘better’ but more expensive than HD-DVD.
If I were a Sony exec I’d cut the cost of the Blueray players to increase the odds of winning the battle.
I will not get Blu-Ray. My video collection is way to big to start over.
These guys try to hide that vaunted (what, now fourth iteration of) anti-feature, DRM, has been shown to be a total waste of time, money and energy, as was predicted many years ago, and as history has shown (see numerous web articles by or about Cory Doctorow). But no, the rightholders insisted, and adopters of their limited-incremental value material is presumed to pay their bills, despite the fact that it was never part of the consumers' demand.
I think it's silly and misleading that their portrayal is a "stalemate." It should be called what it is: a failure for both of them; a self-inflicted pox on both their houses.
This is not the battle of industry titans bringing forth great new things. This is the battle of two greedy communist dictators out to take rights away from consumers as they're being taxed for their manacles.
There have been hundreds of millions of dollars spent on a business model that 1) was consumer-adversarial, 2) implied customers would not only have to buy expensive players, but 3) would often re-buy media for their favorite movies, and then 4) those customers would have to face stringent restrictions into the future as to where movies they "bought" could be played.
The purveyors of these new containers (BD, HD-DVD) really have brought very little in the way of new technology "to the table." High quality video and audio was already possible without blue-laser or large polycarbonate discs. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD consortia simply built expensive toll-booths around boxes that would play higher resolution, higher data rate incarnations of the same kind of material that has been available for a dozen years, this iteration under AACS lock-and-key, however.
With crippling litigiousness we've seen rightsholders literally attack dealers acting on their behalf and their customers. Kaleidescape, a movie-industry-licensed maker of an expensive media server product was sued by the DVD-CCA, after the latter after-the-fact figured out they'd left a back-door open in their agreement with the former. That oversight threatened their hegemonistic, monopolistic control over DRM. The DVD-CCA lost round one in court, but that hasn't kept them from forcing Kaleidescape to spend more millions in their defense as the DVD-CCA mounts its appeal.
Customers have been slow to adopt for a host of reasons, but it all boils down to these greedy alliances' attempts to renegotiate one-sidedly a transaction for video movies where, in exchange for premium prices for players and media, the user gets a video that on some tvs/displays looks nicer than their standard DVD counter-parts. Many consumers don't have the equipment to be able to appreciate the full-monty of difference between standard and high-definition.
Thankfully, the laundry detergent Tide never garnered the chutzpah of these Hollywood titans, to force all who would like a little increased whiteness in our laundry to buy new washing machines, and in HP-style, using only proprietary little tubs for color and black-and-white. We know that wouldn't fly, because the makers of Tide don't hold a monopoly on the market. Not-to-worry! Though there used to be competition in Hollywood, they've all been banding together to act like a monopoly around this useless blue-laser.
Even if consumers have the equipment, their lack of knowledge keeps them from being able to take full advantage of HD benefits. I know a guy who set himself up with a nice LCD display, DirecTV with HD package, then connected his set-top box using composite video. Six months later he was saying HD wasn't worth it, until I went to his house to look at what he had put together. We fixed it in short order, but he really felt stupid for wasting his money for those six months of subscription.
A record proportion of consumers (not being hand-held by CEDIA members) have returned HD equipment to the place of purchase. Those Best Buy's, and especially the smaller mom-and-pop video and electronics stores have had to absorb a great deal of the brunt of these rightsholders' forays into HD.
In that sense, these HD-DVD and Blu-Ray forays have much in common with Communist economies. The planners-on-high conceived of a scheme to make themselves rich while foisting their products on the little people, all in the wrappings of a business model where, as it became clear, consumers who shared their videos and audio with their friends and family--as they had for decades in the past--were going to be sued and be brought to financial ruin.
Granny, who benevolently had been watching her granddaughter so her daughter could exercise her bread-winning strengths, gets notice that the RIAA, MPEG-LA or some other rightsholders have filed suit against granny for her granddaughters' computer-based recreation. Granny is forced to spend most of her dear departed husband's retirement nest-egg just responding to court procedures, and is prematurely forced into a settlement that seems a victory for the rightholders, but saps granny of much joy and freedom in her twilight years.
In the past, superbit-type schemes at least did not force users to buy new equipment to get an improved picture. But the glorious 16:9 (1.78), though nowhere previous to be found as a film or video format, was introduced to playback 1.85, 2.35, and 1.33. "What are these black bars, other than wasted image?" people asked? "Well,... we'll sort that out later" (for a little extra money--ten thousand dollars per PJ, for example).
Couldn't HD have used DVD-9 disks? Well, yes, they could, and in combination with MPEG-4, and AVC, no one would've been forced to pay for the studios' R&D dabblings in areas they knew nothing about. That's just one of the anti-efficiencies of Communist central planning.
The Chinese now have CH-DVD and AVS, but after years of leaving a festering wound open, Hollywood has settled with the Chinese, vis-a-vis DVD-type royalties, so long as the Chinese don't bring that less-expensive, superior hardware, codec and non-DRM lock-box products onto US shores. Yes, our home-grown central planners are really looking out for our interests, aren't they?
There's plenty of self-inflicted, counter-productive ugly behvior by rightsholders in this so-called stalemate, but it's by no means the direct result of there being two camps. We needn't be any more up in arms about that than we are that Count Chocula and Frankenberry still haven't resolved their competition. I wish they would call a truce...with consumers, dealers, retailers, distributors, and related manufacturers. They need to re-deploy along the lines of where customers' demands are. They need to stop trying to foist their endless succession of DRM schemes and related enforcement mechanisms onto customers who don't want them.
There's plenty of money to be made if they would employ the kind of creative willingness toward change that let open the floodgates of video rental stores twenty-five years ago. Let them get more money by virtue of their properties' ubiquity, rather than its shackles and consumer-adversarial, lawyerly litigiousness. (What an untold financial waste, stifler of innovation, and poisoning of the marketplace that's been!)
They need to find some new money somewhere to end the writers' strike anyway. Let it be in the slivers of new money to be found as innovators distribute many more authorized copies of their products!
HF
I think Walmart just made the case for the HD version by underselling Bluray big time, you can get an HD DVD player for under a $100. Bye Bye Bluray!
In the future, please post these threads in chat.
Thanks.
LOL! So after all the months that Sony was arrogantly braying, “We won! We won! HD DVD is already dead!” - you could pick up the trades and see these pronunciamentos almost daily - Sony is NOW claiming stalemate. Let me see if I can offer a translation: When Sony says, “We won!” it means that the two formats are wildly tussling for supremacy. But when Sony says “It’s a stalemate!” it really means that HD DVD has just delivered a flurry of punches that Sony can neither meet nor fend off.
Whether the knockout blow will be Warner going HD DVD exclusive, or the demonstrated cracking of Blu encryption, or some other death stomp, Sony is without doubt seeing the writing on the wall. Bye-bye spyware (every Blu player is loaded to the gills with nasty bits of code), bye-bye anti-consumer levels of DRM, bye-bye older players that won’t be able to play special features and advanced content, bye-bye overly expensive players, bye-bye vicious viral marketers and Sony-paid shills who spout lies on every forum, bye-bye Blue-Tooth remote that won’t play with other equipment...bye-bye Blu-Ray.
Of possible interest to the HDTV ping list.
(See text below or click on this link; http://www.tvpredictions.com/hddvd110807.htm )
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HD DVD Players Near 500,000 Mark?
Recent $99 promotional push drives sales.
Washington, D.C. (November 8, 2007) — HD DVD supporters say their favorite high-def format will sell 500,000 players by month’s end.
That’s according to an article by Home Media Magazine.
The publication reports that the recent price cut for the Toshiba HD-A2 HD DVD player has triggered sales of more than 100,000 units over the last week.
Several retailers, including Wal-Mart and Best Buy, last Friday (November 2) dropped the price of the Toshiba HD-A2 to $99 as a special pre-Black Friday offer.
The player has a suggested retail price of $299, but normally now sells for around $199 in most stores.
Home Media writes that roughly 320,000 Toshiba HD DVD players were sold prior to last weekend’s promotional push. With the 100,000 units added to that figure, HD DVD supporters say the 500,000 mark should be reached by the end of November.
While the 500,000 mark would be impressive, it would still fall far short of Blu-ray’s overall home penetration total.
Although standalone HD DVD players are outselling standalone Blu-ray players, Sony’s Play Station 3, which has a Blu-ray player inside, has sold millions of units.
HD DVD and Blu-ray are rival formats competing for the new high-def disc audience.
History has shown that the company that sells license to more company to manufacture with the lower price faster wins.
All I want to know is which one will be next year’s Betamax?
I hope Blu-Ray wins, simply because it would cripple this community it Sony fails again.
Thanks, Dave! Which format’s gonna win? .............................. FRegards