Do the BD profiles prohibit 1080i?

[ilsiu]

I looked at the sticky about BD profiles, but it doesn't mention 1080i vs 1080p. Would it be possible for one of the Chinese manufacturers to come out with a super cheap 1080i player?

[CptGreedle]

I am not sure there are specs for that or not. I thought it was a requirement for BD players to handle 1080p but I could be wrong.
Either way, there is really little point to it since the BD players are dropping fast as is without 1080i players (unlike the A2 and A3).

[amillians]

Profiles don't mandate 1080pXX output.

[richteer]

Originally Posted by ilsiu

I looked at the sticky about BD profiles, but it doesn't mention 1080i vs 1080p. Would it be possible for one of the Chinese manufacturers to come out with a super cheap 1080i player?

The part cost difference is negligible, so there would be no point. Besides, 1080i players are a HD DVD thing, let's not emulate that!

[Luis_A51]

im pretty sure those 1080i HDDVD werent "super cheap" because of the lesser technology. They were cheaper because they were heavily subsidized to get people interested in HDDVD. The 1080p models were more expensive because they were the "premium" HDDVD players.

[tron3]

The support electronics to go from 1080i to 1080p is a few dollars difference just for the hardware. Though design differences could drive that price up.

1080p is no secret, the research is done. You pay a premium for the FUNCTION and not so much for the hardware. Hardware is cheap to make, but supply and demand keep prices pretty high.

[ilsiu]

Originally Posted by richteer

The part cost difference is negligible, so there would be no point. Besides, 1080i players are a HD DVD thing, let's not emulate that!

I seem to recall that when I got my first DVD player* in 2001, the progressive scan models carried quite a price premium over the regular 480i models, so I assumed the same would be true for HDM players as well. So that's not the case anymore?

At any rate, I'm trying to hold out for a standalone player for less than $150. The recent announcements of the new Philips and Funai players are encouraging, but I'm wondering if the quickest path to my price point is for some lower-tier manufactorer (e.g. Apex) to release a stripped-down, bare-bones model. Since I only have a budget system (32" 720p LCD TV and cheap HTIB), I really wouldn't miss things like 1080P or all the advanced audio capabilities. As long as it played the movie, I'd be perfectly satisfied with a "Walmart special."

* Ironically, it was a Toshiba and I still use it to this day!

[JadedRaverLA]

Originally Posted by tron3

The support electronics to go from 1080i to 1080p is a few dollars difference just for the hardware. Though design differences could drive that price up.

1080p is no secret, the research is done. You pay a premium for the FUNCTION and not so much for the hardware. Hardware is cheap to make, but supply and demand keep prices pretty high.

I think the "design differences," if that's what we want to call it, are somewhat more costly. The cheapest way to get 1080p24 to 1080p60 is to convert to 1080i30 and then deinterlace. All Toshiba HD DVD players do this, and at least some BD players do as well. Given that, you can at least save the cost of a decent deinterlacing chip by outputting 1080i instead of 1080p60.

That said, more than anything it was a gimmick by Toshiba to release below-cost players to a market that shouldn't have been involved in a "format war," prior to a format going mainstream. You are seeing the reprucussions of that decision around the net right now as people who weren't really early adopter-types angry as hell that their format (HD DVD) is now dead. Toshiba tried to use the mainstream consumer to win the format war among early adopters... but instead of Toshiba paying the price, their customers are. Too bad, really.