AVS closes HDM forums because of BS

[Skyhawk]

Originally Posted by PrinceLH

That is the sham of AVS, a website that I had been a member of since the year 2000.

Nice to see another from AVS in early on in 2000, when the debate was about how silly we were to use those $5,000 cheap "data projectors" with movies instead of investing in a CRT front projector with 9" guns

It's funny to see how thing have changed so much... and so little there

[PrinceLH]

Originally Posted by Skyhawk

Nice to see another from AVS in early on in 2000, when the debate was about how silly we were to use those $5,000 cheap "data projectors" with movies instead of investing in a CRT front projector with 9" guns

It's funny to see how thing have changed so much... and so little there

Your right. It was all about the new CRT HDTV's, Directv, Dishnetwork, Dolby 5.1 and DTS back then. Now it's HDM, satellite radio and 7.1 lossless audio. It never ends but gets more advanced and more expensive.

[Skyhawk]

Originally Posted by PrinceLH

Your right. It was all about the new CRT HDTV's, Directv, Dishnetwork, Dolby 5.1 and DTS back then. Now it's HDM, satellite radio and 7.1 lossless audio. It never ends but gets more advanced and more expensive.

More expensive? You have to be kidding. You don't want to know how much my first DVD player cost!

My first XGA projector, Infocus LP350 cost me more than $5,000 Canadian. You can look up the specs

My last purchase, a 1080p Optoma HD80 cost me about $2,300 Canadian. And the PS3 is a fraction of the price of my first DVD player. And this is being an "Early Adopter" today? GOD I LOVE IT!

[PrinceLH]

Originally Posted by Skyhawk

More expensive? You have to be kidding. You don't want to know how much my first DVD player cost!

My first XGA projector, Infocus LP350 cost me more than $5,000 Canadian. You can look up the specs

My last purchase, a 1080p Optoma HD80 cost me about $2,300 Canadian. And the PS3 is a fraction of the price of my first DVD player. And this is being an "Early Adopter" today? GOD I LOVE IT!

It's cumulitive. My first DVD player, a Toshiba, cost me $1000.00 from Majestic Electronics, in Toronto. It had no DTS or progressive scan. My first HDTV was a 34" Toshiba CRT, $3,800.00, at Leon's, after a negotiation session. I also had a grey market DTV Hughes E86, using my U.S. P.O. Box, with two great channels, ESPN and HBO. It was glorious! That cost me over $600.00US, when it was one U.S. Dollar costing 1.56 Canadian dollars. Wow, have times changed! It just costs more to upgrade now, since technology is changing at an ever increasing rate. It's almost time for a new Blu Ray player, once profile 2.0 arrives!

[Skyhawk]

Originally Posted by PrinceLH

It's cumulitive.

Please don't say the word "cumulative" here. My wife might see your post and decide to take out a calculator and add up the last 15 years worth of my AV related purchases. That would be a Bad Thing

Just agree that everything new is sooo much cheaper now, and that I've got to upgrade again soon!

[ottscay]

As someone who was slowly becoming an AVS refugee (and to be honest, my posts on AVS the last few weeks were getting less...patient) I want to throw whatever weight my opinion carries ( ) behind Darin's statements. Most of the mods and the ownership of AVS (as shown by how the rest of the boards are run...I have not personally communicated to them) want to run a fair an open board. They have failed in the HDM section, but hopefully this will get better now.

And in the mean time these boards are a breath of fresh air

[Icemage]

Originally Posted by ottscay

As someone who was slowly becoming an AVS refugee (and to be honest, my posts on AVS the last few weeks were getting less...patient) I want to throw whatever weight my opinion carries ( ) behind Darin's statements. Most of the mods and the ownership of AVS (as shown by how the rest of the boards are run...I have not personally communicated to them) want to run a fair an open board. They have failed in the HDM section, but hopefully this will get better now.

And in the mean time these boards are a breath of fresh air

+1

I agree with most of what Darinp2 and ottscay are saying, and as a member on both boards, it's clear to me that the moderation at AVS was mostly neutral. I do still think there was some bias creeping in from time to time, but I know I've reported a number of offensive threads over there and seen them deleted (though perhaps it's because I also report over-the-top and inappropriate pro-Blu posts which makes the moderators feel that I don't just report stuff because it doesn't fit my agenda).

Part of the problem over there is that AVS is an early adopter forum; in part, it's blu-ray.com that's responsible for the downhill slide. More and more of the pro-Blu membership over there have migrated over here, either forcibly (banned), or voluntarily. When the insiders (paidgeek and Penton-Man) came here permanently, I saw an acceleration of this, as the Blu-ray supporters had even more reason to prefer this site over AVS.

This has left a huge imbalance in the AVS membership. With a site that was already slanted slightly toward HD DVD even before the ascension of Blu-ray.com, this diaspora of the minority vote has turned the place into a de facto HD DVD stronghold, no matter what the moderation team may do, because the Blu-ray people just don't like going there.

Taking a look at polls conducted last year, seems that the ratio was about 3:1 red over blue at AVS at the time. If you look around January and February of this year, before many of us had heard of Blu-ray.com's forums, you could see a visible shift toward parity - both camps were almost even in number and post prolification by that time.

Enter this site's popularity, which seemed to kick in about four or five months ago. Lots of people moving over naturally, plus heavier bannings on the part of the AVS moderation team, pushed a lot of people over to this site.

The AVS moderation team may wonder why their forums are considered an HD DVD stronghold, but this is the situation as I see it today. They have become the mirror of this site by default because there simply isn't a better place for HD DVD zealots to gather.

I am sure this is why the webmaster over at Michael Bay's site picked their forums to represent HD DVD, and if the owners of AVS can not see this, then they're blind.