Posted on 01/04/2008 1:20:53 PM PST by Yossarian
Another nice side effect - the Chinese standardized on a variant of HD DVD, so they get hurt as well. (Mind you, it was a modified version of HD DVD, to keep their mainland citizensprisoners free from the corrupting influence of freedom of speech....)
Actually, it's high time for the format war to end. I almost bought an HD DVD player this Christmas, since it came in under $200. (It would at least make a good upconverting DVD player.) Maybe by next year Blu-Ray will reach that point too.
That should just about do it for HD-DVD. This would seem to be a tipping point for Blu-Ray.
I think that will be too late. I don't think BLU-Ray is going to win out.
I won’t buy either for now. For me, the picture quality doesn’t justify the $10 extra in price.
My upconverting DVD player to 1080i does a pretty nice job on my HDTV.
I wonder what kind of coin Sony gave them to do this? This simply puts moves HD on disc another year further away from consumers as the bluRay players are 3-4 times more expensive than HD-DVD players.
Honestly, I don’t have a dog in this fight, I would just like one to win out, and for a player to be prices < $100. That was the tipping point for EVERYONE to switch over to DVD.
Blu-Ray better lower its prices. I just bought a HD-DVD player, and I really don’t feel like forking out another wad of cash for a Blu-Ray player.
HD-DVD was DOA before the battle began.. MS through its weight behind it at the last minute to revive it in an attempt to harm Sony who they are direct competition with in the gaming market.
Sony’s won the war... the only good news for HD-DVD in the last year plus was when they got a studio to move to their exclusive format, but turns out they only did so after getting a bribe from Toshiba of over $100 million dollars.
Sony’s strategy to put a BD in ever PS3 did drive up the price and harm them in the first year of release of their new gaming system, but it also ensured them victory in the larger more lucrative war on HD format.
Now, the PS3 is beginning to hit its stride, and BD is clearly the victor in the format war... It will take a while for HD-DVD to completely die, but buying an HD-DVD player now is guaranteeing you a doorstop in 1-2 years tops.
I have the HD-DVD add on for the Xbox 360, so this is disappointing.
A ping for your HD list....
I have a Sony HDR-CX7 HD camcorder and do some video editing with Sony's Vegas 8.0. It turns out to be time consuming but otherwise quite easy to generate 1080i video that looks great on a PS3. Right now it is the only practical way that I know of to generate HD "home movies".
Actually, I think the crown for the “Easiest HD delivery system” goes to HD DVD, since you can burn a regular DVD that has the HD DVD file system.
The player has to spin the disk twice (? 3X ?) as fast as normal to get the needed bandwidth off the disk, but there is no such requirement on the DVD writer.
Are you familiar with any similar system for Blu-Ray? That would be convenient.
Just waiting now for the Blue Ray prices to drop a bit more.
Well look at it this way, you are only out the price of that add on.. which generally has been far less than the price folks have paid for stand alone players.
HD-DVD never stood a chance, MS being MS just had to try to breath life back into it to hurt Sony, it was an incredibly stupid move that harmed Toshiba to no end, but what does MS care?
Right now, Best Buy has get 10 Blu-Ray disks with purchase of certain players (computers and dual format players are excluded).
I almost bought an HD DVD player this Christmas, since it came in under $200. (It would at least make a good upconverting DVD player.) Maybe by next year Blu-Ray will reach that point too.
It's above $200, but you can buy a PS3 for $400 and get Blu-Ray, an upsampling DVD player and a media center that plays music and video files from the hard drive, an attached hard drive, flash card, USB stick, or from your computer over the wireless network.
Oh, and you get a kick-ass game console too.
LLS
Go Blu-Ray.
The main reason is that HD-DVD technology is really “DVD-plus.” It’s an incremental improvement to the basic DVD meant to make it cheap to produce HD-DVDs with minimal alteration to the current DVD production technology.
Blu-Ray was designed to be truly next-generation. It’s more expensive to implement, but it’s just superior technology.
Damn, I only got five when I bought my PS3. Blazing Saddles in HD, even funnier.
Oh, and you get a kick-ass game console too.
$400 is way, WAY to much. I just want a movie player, thanks. Cost is a big reason - maybe the sole reason - why Blu-Ray didn't wipe out HD-DVD from the beginning.
I already have a little intel core duo Mac Mini plugged in to provide the rest of those functions (I'm not a hard-core game player).
There's another think I'll miss about HD-DVD: No concept of region-limiting disks. I can see where this helps for piracy concerns, but as someone who likes to learn other languages, it can be great to watch a, say, German DVD, but with English subtitles. It really helps scrape the rust off my German, and inspires me to study more.
The player has to spin the disk twice (? 3X ?) as fast as normal to get the needed bandwidth off the disk, but there is no such requirement on the DVD writer.
Are you familiar with any similar system for Blu-Ray? That would be convenient.
Yes you can do that with Blu-Ray.
I do it two ways. The easiest way is to burn to Blu-Ray format directly from Vegas 8.0 to a standard DVD. This will give you the file structure of a Blu-Ray disk but will not play directly in a Blu-Ray player. It will play in a PS3 via the file that is in the Stream Folder. That works great because you can copy the file to the PS3 and it will play just fine.
The second way is to render the file out of Vegas and then use the latest Nero software to burn a real Blu-Ray disk with menus if you like to an old fashioned DVD. This will play in a PS3 and I believe that it will play in standard Blu-Players - but don't hold me to that.
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