The one good thing about a format war!

[phil]

After visitng BestBuy and buying yet another LCd, a Samsung this time (46 inches) and 2 chairs, that are leather and designed for watching flicks at home. I've come to the realization that this format war does have some good things. And its' not just the price of blu rays disks coming down. It's the idea that they want an HD player of some sort in every home right? But it goes further then that.

HAve you seen the prices of LCD's these days? With 2,000 dollars, not even that 1500 you can buy yourself a REALLY NICE HDTV. I mean the prices of these TV's are coming down drastically. Basically yeah I think the market wants an LCD or HDTV in every home, and then an HD player in every home to go with that HDTV. I'm inclinded to think that the idea of getting all of this stuff in every home is a great thing for the consumer and I suggest buying some LCD's to stick around the house, lol.

Everyone i know has an HDTV of some sort in their home now, and that's a step forward. Now if we can get an HD player in every home, lol.

[EricJ]

Originally Posted by phil

After visitng BestBuy and buying yet another LCd, a Samsung this time (46 inches) and 2 chairs, that are leather and designed for watching flicks at home. I've come to the realization that this format war does have some good things. And its' not just the price of blu rays disks coming down. It's the idea that they want an HD player of some sort in every home right? But it goes further then that.

HAve you seen the prices of LCD's these days? With 2,000 dollars, not even that 1500 you can buy yourself a REALLY NICE HDTV. I mean the prices of these TV's are coming down drastically. Basically yeah I think the market wants an LCD or HDTV in every home, and then an HD player in every home to go with that HDTV. I'm inclinded to think that the idea of getting all of this stuff in every home is a great thing for the consumer and I suggest buying some LCD's to stick around the house, lol.

Until getting that 32" LCD at BestBuy last week (for $750, but it was on sale), I don't think I ever watched TV for the last two years. Thanks to my cable people never showing up until six months after I moved to the new apartment, I'd evolved a TV-free existence over that time, and learned to love my Netflix.
I intended the new TV as the first step in a current DVD monitor-slash-future Blu-Ray monitor, and since I'd spend most of my prime-time on the computer, I still couldn't tell you what shows are airing on network TV. (Are they still showing "Smarter Than a Fifth-Grader"? )

I just found the local network HD channels, and I'm watching TV again.
It's like some jolt to the system--I am no couch potato, but I'm actually looking up channel listings again, and getting excited if I see "Oh, Nature's showing widescreen on PBS-HD!--Eight o'clock, I'm there...No, wait, they're repeating it at 11, I'll watch it then!"
And if it can do that to me...just think what a dose of 1080p--or even 768--can do to those average tech newbies, who timidly bought their first set because one of the fear-signs posted in Best Buy told them their regular old TV's would become "obsolete" in '09.

You don't see it as much on Best Buy, where all the prices are posted, but invite a friend over to see your HD in your living room, and then tell me that this is going to be some "niche" market that will die in obscurity--
We literally haven't seen a good contagious spreadable epidemic in the making since the birth of DVD.

[phil]

I don't know I have about 45 HD Channels and I watch alot of things, but I even enjoy browsinig through my XBOX 360 dashboard to just go through things and read about things. I have it hooked up to my PC so I can stream videos and music, and with my Setup, or small Cinema, lol. I'm really enjoying just sitting there and testing out my Sound System. It's really great coming home from a hard day at work to just sit in my leather chair and enjoy myself.

[tron3]

Lots of reasons why prices come down. One being they have recouped the R&D costs and can now level off the prices. Most of this stuff is made overseas in state of the art facilities by highly skilled, low income labor. The more they can produce in a single day, the lower the cost per unit because you can subtract the manual labor cost.

Face it, most of this stuff is plastic. Plastic resin is made from oil and the price of oil is finally coming down along with gas prices. That has probably been the biggest price factor. Why do you think they recycle your old plastic bottles? It has real value!

If the cost of crude oil ever reaches critical levels, a 100 years from now things made from plastic could become prized possessions. Impossible? Nothing is impossible. Perhaps improbable, but not impossible.