When enthusiast sites fail to show any enthusiasm...

[dialog_gvf]

Originally Posted by Canada

I have never understood the argument that Blu Ray players are too expensive. People who have HDTV's probably dropped a pretty pennie to get them. I would think most people who have an HDTV now are thinking about buying a Blu Ray player. Yeah the disks are expensive I agree, but they are way less expensive than buying a new DVD and then buying the same movie in Blu Ray two years down the road!

Funny, I see NEITHER as being expensive.

I paid $700-$1000 for an LD player and $75-$100 for discs until the introduction of DVD. Blu-ray is an absolute bargain, TODAY.

The great restorations to come, where so many classic movies of the past have a chance to be brought back to life and presented as most of us have NEVER seen them needs to be paid for by those willing to pay the premium.

Now, a common blockbuster new release definitely should come down. It will sell so many discs and the economies of scale and ease of authoring should be passed on. But what about a work of art, lovingly restored?

Gary

[Teazle]

Originally Posted by dialog_gvf

The great restorations to come, where so many classic movies of the past have a chance to be brought back to life and presented as most of us have NEVER seen them needs to be paid for by those willing to pay the premium.

Here's an idea. Why don't the studios cancel all those stupid fluffy special features produced just for home video, and sink the money they save into film restoration?

It would appear that the home video departments of the studios don't have their priorities straight. It's almost as though the studios themselves are not 100% committed to the restoration and preservation of their own properties. Instead fluff comes first.

In view of this, it's understandable why the consumer might resist paying a _massive_ premium just because a film has been restored.

The makers of the BDs of A Passage to India, Blade Runner, Battle of the Bulge, The Searchers et al have got it right on those titles. Great work at a price which makes it likely people may actually buy the movies.

Heck, Blade Runner even includes 4 extra discs of fluff on top of the meticulous refurbishment.

[Blu Titan]

The PS3 is an excellent, COMPLETE Blu-ray player. It's omission from the recent HMM editorial is foolish. Currently the PS3 is by far the best option for anyone wishing to purchase a BD player. Thus, the sale of standalone players will suffer. For $399 you can buy a 2.0 profile PS3 console that is future proof and plays HD games. On the other hand, you could can buy a $399 BD standalone player made by Sony, Samsung, and Sharp. However, the $399 standalone player will NEVER have PIP or interactivity. In addition, the $399 players have much longer load times, and cannot play games . What would be your purchase be given the choices: PS3 or similarly priced standalone? Dosen't take a genius to fugure that one out.

[Grubert]

Forum member Spankey has brought this thread to my attention, where the owner of Home Theater Forum advocates Toshiba's Super Resolution Technology (aka SUC) as a rival for Blu-ray:

Is the format war about to resurface? Does Toshiba have the Blu-ray killer?

For the past few months I have been hearing about software
technology that Toshiba claims will take an ordinary DVD and
upscale it to the exact standards of a Blu-ray disc.

Now what I just posted above is basically the way it was
described to me. My first thoughts were that with the limited
bandwidth of a standard DVD there is no way you can upscale
it to the point where you will get the sharpness, film-like quality
and (most important) color depth that you get with Blu-ray.

Well, today one of our readers sent me this article which pretty
much resurfaces the rumor that Toshiba is introducing a "Blu-ray killer."

Here's a bit of the article....

Anytime a company claims something like this it can only mean
another format war...that is, if their claim is true.

The question is, how comparable? It seems that it is being suggested
that video quality will be equal to that of Blu-ray.

My thoughts are this....

If Toshiba can do the seemingly impossible and come out with a
cheap player whose software can upconvert a standard DVD to the
precise picture quality of a Blu-ray disc, then I can see this possibly
being a "Blu-ray" killer......except for one important issue....

The one thing this article doesn't talk about is audio specs. Is this hardware
going to provide the type of lossless audio found on Blu-ray discs? Not from
a standard DVD it won't! Will this matter to a general public who seem to prefer
MP3 downloads over CD quality? Perhaps not.

This is something we will be keeping a close eye on.

And a bit later...

I think this Toshiba player is more dangerous than you may think.

The general public is still not sold on Blu-ray. If you introduce
a player that can produce picture quality that rivals BD, at a
cheaper price, it could be a "Blu-ray killer" of sorts.

The general public is not going to readily embrace Blu-ray if
they can buy a cheaper player that takes the DVDs they already
own and bring it up to new extraordinary quality levels.

Heck, I'll run out and buy Toshiba's player for that purpose. DAY ONE!

The public doesn't care about the audio as much as we do.
As I have mentioned, people are happier downloading 128 bitrate
MP3s rather than buying better quality audio on CD. The audio
that DVDs provide is pretty damn good for the common viewer.

At this point, with Blu-ray being as expensive as it is, the
public isn't looking to replace the large libraries of DVDs in their
homes. They would probably rush to stores if a cheaper
alternative allowed them to further upconvert their libraries
to HD quality.

We already hear the common people say, "Why do I need Blu-ray
when I have a player that upconverts my DVDs?" Can you imagine
what this new player is going to do for those individuals?

On the plus side, this new Toshiba entry will force Blu-ray to
lower their prices on hardware and software which at this point,
they are in no hurry to do.

I really don't blame Toshiba for doing what they are doing. They
have technology that will make standard DVDs look remarkably
comparable to Blu-ray. Why would anyone not want something like
this in their home?

Toshiba can do this alone because, unlike HD-DVD, they need no
studio support nor that of any hardware manufacturers. Simply put,
they will have technology that takes a standard DVD and makes it
look comparable to HD.

Listen, none of us have seen this technology in action. We hope to
see it for ourselves in September or sooner. However, rumor of this
technology has been out there for at least a year. I have been hearing
about this Toshiba player for quite some time. Yes, it's hard to believe,
but apparently Toshiba is confident enough about it to keep touting that
it will make a significant impact in the market.

Until any of us actually sees this product nobody has a valid argument
about how much it will affect the Blu-ray format.

A disgrace, really.

[Elandyll]

Two things.

First, even with the best upscaling technology in the world (wether it's based on Fractals or Vectorisation), you can't create details that aren't there to start with. And 300k pixels aren't 2millions.

Second, to perform said upscale, the components wouldn't be cheap.
And the audio would be the same good ol Dolby Digital or DTS, an easy target for any article/ TV ad from the BDA.
So if You got to include a state of the art upconverter (derived from the Cell apparently), a NIC/Chip/Storage to implement some sort of interactivity, and maybe some top end DACs to give the illusion of better audio.. how exaclty are you going to sell this "cheap"?
Just more dumping prices?

Imo, Toshiba is just being a glouton for punishment, and I am surprised that a Japanese company would be so ego driven, deluded and honor-less in their dealings...

In any case, I do not see anything that might be called a threat to Blu Ray.

[jkwest]

Wow, Grubert!!! I just read through this whole thread...thank you for making such a wonderful article!

Now to comment on that HTF article...if you read through some of the responses to his post, you will notice that many if not all of the moderators and staff members who posted on that thread, are completely in disagreement with him....at least that counts for something...right?

Makes you wonder if the article in Home Media Magazine wasn't written by the "staff", but, solely by Mr. Epstein...hmmm..

[Spankey]

Makes you wonder if the article in Home Media Magazine wasn't written by the "staff", but, solely by Mr. Epstein...hmmm..

When the ownership takes a position it is up to the staff to echo that position. Remember the article also sang the praises of HD downloads. This is nothing more than Ron Epstein trying to grab onto something that might (everything has potential, I guess) take off. They were anti-blu-ray and wound up on the losing side. HTF can not take credit for championing Blu-ray the way they did DVD.

[desmond]

retort from one of our insiders:


https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...&postcount=229

[WickyWoo]

HTF shilling for Toshiba....what a shocker

[jkwest]

Originally Posted by Spankey

When the ownership takes a position it is up to the staff to echo that position. Remember the article also sang the praises of HD downloads. This is nothing more than Ron Epstein trying to grab onto something that might (everything has potential, I guess) take off. They were anti-blu-ray and wound up on the losing side. HTF can not take credit for championing Blu-ray the way they did DVD.

Oh, don't worry, Spanky...I wasn't trying to defend that site in any way.....trust me.

[Anthony P]

My first thoughts were that with the limited
bandwidth of a standard DVD there is no way you can upscale
it to the point where you will get the sharpness, film-like quality
and (most important) color depth that you get with Blu-ray.

what does BW have to do with up scaling?

If Toshiba can do the seemingly impossible and come out with a
cheap player whose software can upconvert a standard DVD to the
precise picture quality of a Blu-ray disc, then I can see this possibly
being a "Blu-ray" killer

wasn't that what he and others where saying about HD DVD.

Toshiba can do this alone because, unlike HD-DVD, they need no
studio support nor that of any hardware manufacturers. Simply put,
they will have technology that takes a standard DVD and makes it
look comparable to HD.

does the guy have a reading comprehension

Originally Posted by original article

The company is working on "an extension to the DVD format" which will offer video quality comparable to that produced by Blu-ray and the now defunt HD DVD discs

this is HD DVD 2 (actually from the looks of it, more like HD DVD 0.1-my guess is that it Is mostly BS meant to con some people into waiting, but if true this looks more like Toshibas original plan, DVDs with newer data – codecs, menus…), not DVD upscale. So they would need studio support, or like with HD DVD all you have is a mediocre up scaling player.

But I find it funny that he also says

We already hear the common people say, "Why do I need Blu-ray
when I have a player that upconverts my DVDs?" Can you imagine
what this new player is going to do for those individuals?

so the guy thinks that people can't be sold on a new format that looks and sounds much much better, but can easily be sold (from he says) on a device that does exactly what their device already does (i.e. watch DVDs)

[Anthony P]

Imo, Toshiba is just being a glouton for punishment, and I am surprised that a Japanese company would be so ego driven, deluded and honor-less in their dealings...

my guess it is mostly BS. Highly publicized Vapourware of the next best thing that will be mainstream can help slow adoption of what is there. In the end hasn't that been what they where doing all this time , don't buy BD because HD DVD is growing, so don't buy BD because HD DVD will be around for a long, don't buy BD because soon you will see something that makes BD useless.

[Anthony P]

This is nothing more than Ron Epstein trying to grab onto something that might (everything has potential, I guess) take off. They were anti-blu-ray and wound up on the losing side.

agree, sometimes people are wrong and sometimes sh!t happens and it makes what they said wrong. In the end how dumb must someone be as to think buy saying ever more dumber things when they are proven wrong that they will be vindicated?