More uninformed people spewing crap

[theknub]

as i said earlier... the new tosh player is priced at $1k, am i wrong? given that, price is no longer an issue between BR and HDDVD

[JTK]

Originally Posted by theknub

as i said earlier... the new tosh player is priced at $1k, am i wrong? given that, price is no longer an issue between BR and HDDVD

No issue whatsoever, especially since Toshiba is hellbent on sticking with this poor man's HTPC concept.

What are we getting in the A2 and Xa2? Left over refuse from Intel's crap heap from 2003 vs. the crapheap of 2002 that runs the A1 and Xa1 beta players?

Unreal.

Originally Posted by CobaltBlue

Originally Posted by CobaltBlue View Post
I still maintain that for Joe Sixpack, price and available titles will be more important. If he's standing in Bestbuy looking at the HD-A1 for $499/360 add-on for $140-200 vs bdp-1000/bdp-s1 for $999.

You couldn't be more wrong and out of touch with reality.

Joe Six Pack and average customers are YEARS away from ANY of this stuff.

You gotta get them to buy HDTVs and care about that FIRST!

And then you've got to get them to splurge that extra $9-$10 a month for the HD tier from their cable or satellite service. Or at the very least have some kind of antenna for OTA HD.

Are you kidding? These folks thing they've hit the big time when they bought their $100 DVD player a while back. They're finished. They're out.

They're not going to buy $1000 HD players. They're not going to buy $500 HD players. They're not going to buy ANY of it. NONE. ZERO.






My God, I believe I'm seeing this crap coming up here now.


HD-DVD fanboys and Sony bashers and anti-BD people have been using this lame BS about "Cheap Chinese players and Joe Six Pack are going to carry HD-DVD to the finish line!!!! HD-DVD has already won, yay!!!" since January.


It's complete and utter GARBAGE and I'm loathe to see it here.

[BTBuck1]

Originally Posted by phloyd

Why are people so down on Minidisc... I love my Minidisc HiMD (1GB discs!)...!

I also love my PSP with UMD movies.

Call me crazy but people who travel a lot get a lot of use out of these things...

Nobody is "down on minidisc" it's just their (HDDVD tools)one weak thing they try and point to when trying to predict the "format war"

[Rob Tomlin]

Originally Posted by CobaltBlue

As a huge Audio/Videophile, I hate to agree with the naysayers but Sony has a notoriously bad track record on developing their innovative technologies. This is just a quick reminder to put the fanboys in check. I'm not crticizing technical capabilities, merely implementation...

*Betamax- *cough cough* how'd that last big format battle go again?
*MiniDisc- I kept waiting for this to, rightfully, replace cd as a realistic and durable solution. Yup, still waiting.
*Memory Stick-"few other manufacturers are also making use of this technology"
*HiFD- yeah, I never heard of it either. It's competitor Zip did pretty well though.
*SDDS (Sony Dynamic Digital Sound)- "Ultimately, SDDS has been vastly overshadowed by the preferred DTS (Digital Theatre System) and Dolby Digital standards"
*ATRAC- do people own ATRAC or MP3 players?
*Elcaset- another dead proprietary audio format.
*SACD- Relevant as a recent Hi-def format war and my favorite example as an audiophile. Sony develops a superior audio technology (yes, even in comparison to vinyl) and then releases a handful (I'm being generous) of albums per year and advertises... wait, that's right I never saw any. Thank god for third party releases. DVD-Audio seems to have kind-of? won this format war. The end result being a public largely ignorant that either exists at all. Thanks to bad implentation and the rise of crappy but compressed MP3's, the music we listen to is at the same or worse quality(media-wise) it was in the 80's.
Lastly,
*MultiMedia Compact Disc (MMCD)- never had one of these did you? That's because Philips and Sony abandoned their MMCD format and agreed upon Toshiba's SD format. This became the DVD we know and love.

Sony has never been what I would call consumer friendly (2005 rootkit debacle anyone?). Though my love of games and movies has me eager to have HD and Blu-ray, my response (and others) might be to hold off until these idiots consider their customers, go back to the drawing board and come back with a unified format. One way or another we'll get one and not everyone is clamoring for a PS3... so that doesn't guarantee success other than in use as another proprietary Sony format for their products(a'la UMD). So far it looks like HD has the edge of releases, and if the price is reasonable for the Xbox360 add-on drive, there's a difficult decision coming for budget concious movie watching gamers. If the choices are HD drive and Halo3(that's right, I dropped the H-bomb) vs. a new PS3...
Also, I'd like to pose a question to those more knowledgable...
According to tomshardware.com and other tech savy sources, decoding encryption on new Hi-def media is going to give even recent dual core processors in pc's a hard time. Upon Sony's insistence, Blu-ray has stronger encryption from what I've read. Will HD-dvd's cause less of a performance hit on a pc than Blu-ray? If so, I think that is a pretty important consideration as well.

CobaltBlue

*Most info taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony#Proprietary_formats

Yes. Sony has not been successful in some of their previous formats. So?

Some of those formats were better than the format that won (ie, Beta).

I just don't understand what your point is. I think Sony deserves credit for being a leading company when it comes to R&D. If nothing else, it motivates the competing format/companies to improve their format/products in order to compete.

How is this a bad thing?

[Deciazulado]

Actually, if I remember correctly, the Beta II Hi-Fi's spec vs the SP VHS Hi-Fi's spec was just 5% better or different. (or was it the SuperBeta II Hi-Fi's spec that was 5% better? Can't remember, they were trying to leapfrog each other all the time!). So the Beta superiority wasn't really there on practice tho the "mystique" lingered on. When Super-VHS Hi-Fi came to the scene it was 33% better than even the super rare SuperBeta II Hi-Fi and that was the nail in the coffin for Beta. (Sony tried to counter with the $$$ metal tape ED Beta which was 25% better than Super-VHS but by then it was too late).
So IMO in that war actually the best format won! VHS having the equivalent or better quality, features, more options, more variety in content and manufacturers, etc, that last being Sony's fault because they were practically the only ones doing Beta decks (Sanyo had a cool portable Beta Hi-Fi unit you could use for sound recordings but that was the only interesting option then!).

Right now the difference between single layer BD and double layer HD DVD is 20% in favor of HD in storage capacity (but not on maximum bit rate) but that's temporary, a drop in the years of format history, since when double layer BDs arrive on the scene shortly they'll have both the 66% advantage of storage capacity AND the maximum bitrate, so they'll be able to store more content, and that content can be cleaner and sharper, and have more variety in releases and equipment. Kind of the scenario JVC, Panasonic, etc. had when Super-VHS arrived on the scene and Beta faded from consumers electronics forever.

Beta I arrived first and was superior for a while. But the VHS camp followed with an unified front and format upgrades that made it equal or better in the long run. Looks like history repeating itself to me!

[JTK]

Originally Posted by Deciazulado

Beta I arrived first and was superior for a while. But the VHS camp followed with an unified front and format upgrades that made it equal or better in the long run. Looks like history repeating itself to me!

Exactly right.

[GTP]

Cobalt....dd+ is not the real deal DD tru -hd would be the real deal if it were 24 bit....but the only four titles available are 16bit.
This means that BD has indeed had the superior audio from launch over hd dvd via linear PCM 5.1.
HD DVD, will now be playing catch up again when Fox titles are released with 24 bit DTS Master audio....and some soon to be released 24 bit pcm 5.1 titles.

There are no announcements for any more DDTHD movies that I am aware of.

These are the pesky facts....and no amount of FUD can change them

[hmurchison]

Originally Posted by Deciazulado

Right now the difference between single layer BD and double layer HD DVD is 20% in favor of HD in storage capacity (but not on maximum bit rate) but that's temporary, a drop in the years of format history, since when double layer BDs arrive on the scene shortly they'll have both the 66% advantage of storage capacity AND the maximum bitrate, so they'll be able to store more content, and that content can be cleaner and sharper, and have more variety in releases and equipment. Kind of the scenario JVC, Panasonic, etc. had when Super-VHS arrived on the scene and Beta faded from consumers electronics forever.

This is incorrect. Since HD DVD supports double sided dual-layer discs the current maximum is 60GB BD50 will still be 10GB shy.

The assumption that you can just crank up the bitrate and achieve a better clarity and cleaner content is a fallacy. Each codec must be expertly optimized by the compressionist and every movie requires slightly different setting depending on the Master. Frankly whether you're a Blu-Ray or HD DVD fan attempting to draw a correlation between bitrate and quality is something you'll never be able to prove unless you can view the Master.

The format battle really is far more simplistic than we make it. The BDA is on one side with more studio support and CE vendors. The HD DVD group is on the other side. Both have stellar HD movies available to them so it basically comes down to

Price
Movie/Player availability
Aesthetics/Brand Preference

The technical merit or demerits of both platforms has been beaten dead. Both look phenomenal at their best. No amount of storage advantage is going to change this.

I'm buying both because I like options.

[Rob Tomlin]

Originally Posted by hmurchison

...

The format battle really is far more simplistic than we make it. The BDA is on one side with more studio support and CE vendors. The HD DVD group is on the other side. Both have stellar HD movies available to them so it basically comes down to

Price
Movie/Player availability
Aesthetics/Brand Preference

The technical merit or demerits of both platforms has been beaten dead. Both look phenomenal at their best. No amount of storage advantage is going to change this.

I'm buying both because I like options.

Could I possibly agree more?

I don't think so.

[CobaltBlue]

"Yes, but several million PS3s could factor"

It definitely could. Has anyone seen any concrete figures on how many units Sony will ship for holiday sales season? It's taken MS this long to ship approximately 5 million, without having a new format as part of assembly.

"Joe Sixpack isn't going to pay $500 or $1000 "

That's kind of my point. It's more believable to drop from 500 to Joe Sixpack range in the near future. Even in the now with rebate offers.

"Then you hold onto this HDDVD add on thing like thats the savior for HDDVD...dude, are you serious?"

I didn't say anything of the kind. That said, noone would reasonably think price won't play a huge part in the equation of what consumers buy. There will be somewhere between 5-10 million 360 owners by Christmas. Does anyone think it impossible for deep pockets MS to sell the unit bundled, at cost, or even a loss(like they have the systems themselves) to try and push the format. They know they'll make the money on the software side as they have in the past. Savior no, but definitely an unknown that can't be ignored. If the 3 million xbox live subscribers(a likely market) alone decided to go with a bargain drive, that would exceed Blu-ray/PS3 owners by a large number at launch. Just saying it could be something to watch.

"first off, you'd already have to own a 360"

Aprox. 5 million do.

"then you still have to buy a wifi adaptor for $99"

Not to run the hd drive.

"and at the end of the day your still inferior to the competing ps3 but paying more for less? no HDMI...40gb's less"

Definitely not arguing with that. But then I haven't been playing Need for Speed, Oblivion, etc for the past year on a PS3 either. If you really want to argue price/value... to build a similar gaming pc at the 360's launch would have cost you thousands, If you could have gotten a comparable CPU and GPU to begin with. If we really want to get into that debate I could just wait a few months and build a quad core system with quad SLI (and soon more GPU's than that) with a physics processor. And then I'd have an upgradable game platform that also TIVOs my shows. If you're striving for superiority, you're in the wrong market to begin with. It's about the games and sitting next to a buddy playing them. If the PS3 can offer enough unique titles, as the shared ones won't noticably differ, then we'll have a success story and possibly a blu-ray dominant market. If not, then probly not.

"clouded by anti sony sentiment"

Didn't I just say I own a $3000 Sony laptop. You're right, I must hate the company with a burning fan-boys passion.

"All you see is the Bad in Blu "

Not what I've been saying at all.

"If i still wanted DVD's why would I bother with HDDVD? "

Um, easy enough.
A. Broader appeal.
B. Because your kids won't have a blu-ray player in the car for a while. Probably not in their room either unless they're getting a PS3. But then there's limited availability this Christmas and that pesky 360 the parents just paid out the nose for last year.
C. Rental stores won't have to stock dual formats. They did just get rid of VHS. I know Blockbuster is planning to stock both... but as a cost saving measure, a hybrid disc would get more consideration from me when ordering. And I've managed one before.
D. It allows consumers to buy a movie they want now and know they can enjoy it later in HD when players are affordable.
E. Your friends might not have a $1000 player or a PS3 when you drop by with a movie to watch.

Only after going hybrid on SACD's has Sony had much success... because people don't want to have to buy music twice to hear it in their car too. The Bob Dylan SACD stuff Sony has released is damn good by the way (and hybrid).
It won't be needed 5+ years down the road when in-dash hi-def is affordable. But for now, it might not be such a dumb strategy, you think?

"oh, yeah right ...."here's to hoping" Ni**a please"

Always funny to see how personally people take this crap. I've seen the upcoming releases for both formats and I don't think it'll kill anyone to wait a bit for prices to be more reasonable and for selection to fill out some. Is Hitch really that much more appealing now in beautiful Blu-ray? Early adopters always get hosed.

"jump on board the sinking ship"

You already own both and I'm hopping on the sinking ship when I'm being a cautious buyer? Obviously the ship isn't sinking within the next few years and neither is an established standard yet by any stretch.

[Rob Tomlin]

Originally Posted by CobaltBlue

Always funny to see how personally people take this crap. I've seen the upcoming releases for both formats and I don't think it'll kill anyone to wait a bit for prices to be more reasonable and for selection to fill out some. Is Hitch really that much more appealing now in beautiful Blu-ray? Early adopters always get hosed.

I agree. No need for people to take it so personally, regardless of which format you support or want to win.

This forum seems to avoid that for the most part, but some of it was starting to show up in this thread. I think that is unfortunate.

[Josh]

Cobalt Blue - I'm not sure what you're goal here is? I mean, you do realize that you can't just ramble off negative facts about Sony and Blu-Ray at a site called "Blu-Ray.com" without someone pointing out the fallacy, don't you?

[BTBuck1]

Originally Posted by CobaltBlue

"clouded by anti sony sentiment"

Didn't I just say I own a $3000 Sony laptop. You're right, I must hate the company with a burning fan-boys passion.

I've heard this type of B.S. before;
your not kidding anyone here.

Um, easy enough.
A. Broader appeal.
B. Because your kids won't have a blu-ray player in the car for a while. Probably not in their room either unless they're getting a PS3. But then there's limited availability this Christmas and that pesky 360 the parents just paid out the nose for last year.
C. Rental stores won't have to stock dual formats. They did just get rid of VHS. I know Blockbuster is planning to stock both... but as a cost saving measure, a hybrid disc would get more consideration from me when ordering. And I've managed one before.
D. It allows consumers to buy a movie they want now and know they can enjoy it later in HD when players are affordable.
E. Your friends might not have a $1000 player or a PS3 when you drop by with a movie to watch.

All thats great, but why should i have to pay extra for that honor to host the SD version? HDDVD is charging approx $5 more for the combo versions of movies vs. the BD version without...also, theres no way in hell my kids getting his grimey little paws on my BD's or HDDVD's at the cost of these things! I know nobody with a worthy enough setup to play host to my discs so they stay here at home, in my collection where they belong.
If I want the SD version, i'll netflix it and record it and then watch it in my portable dvd player on the road.

"oh, yeah right ...."here's to hoping" Ni**a please"

Always funny to see how personally people take this crap. I've seen the upcoming releases for both formats and I don't think it'll kill anyone to wait a bit for prices to be more reasonable and for selection to fill out some. Is Hitch really that much more appealing now in beautiful Blu-ray? Early adopters always get hosed.

Taking it personally?, Far from it pal.. Try the old spin routine to make it seem like your the victim again... are you that desperate for attention? do you need a hug?

Hitch isn't more appealing, nor is any comedy really...however if I can own the BEST version of any movie, thats what i'm gonna do...it's called being an enthusiast, something an acclaimed "audio/videophile" should know all about.

You have a handful of posts here so far and aren't neccessarily bringing much to the table yet, I think you should re-evaluate your position here, start bringing facts not fud and you may begin to earn respect.

"jump on board the sinking ship"

You already own both and I'm hopping on the sinking ship when I'm being a cautious buyer? Obviously the ship isn't sinking within the next few years and neither is an established standard yet by any stretch.

I own the HD-A1, some HDDVD's and a small collection of BD's(but no player) You nor I know what will happen but all signals seem to point to there being little to no reason to own HDDVD aside from Universal titles.
I agree neither is an established standard, but to live in denial that BD doesn't have the better chance at it, is well naive to say the least.
As happy as I am, NYG is...and JTK was.. with HDDVD we also seem to get that.

[Deciazulado]

Well this thread has become a little "red" in temperature but I wanted to reply to the things hmurchison said, which are valid! So hope nobody takes it personally I just want the best way to watch movies like I was used to, but in my home. I love movies.

Originally Posted by hmurchison

This is incorrect. Since HD DVD supports double sided dual-layer discs the current maximum is 60GB BD50 will still be 10GB shy.

Good point. Although my preference is still single sided discs or separate discs to double sided glued media like Laserdisc or DualDisc. But I could live with that.

Originally Posted by hmurchison

The assumption that you can just crank up the bitrate and achieve a better clarity and cleaner content is a fallacy. Each codec must be expertly optimized by the compressionist and every movie requires slightly different setting depending on the Master. Frankly whether you're a Blu-Ray or HD DVD fan attempting to draw a correlation between bitrate and quality is something you'll never be able to prove unless you can view the Master.

Agree with that too. As Hoffmanites are wont to say "It's in the mastering!"
But all else being equal, a difficult movie, expertly optimized by the compressionist, ends up better at the higher bit rate. 2dBs is 2 dBs. And I expect to watch these High Def "Videos" at movie house fields of view, the way I saw their "Master", the theatrical 35mm print, so in a sense, I am able to compare it to the "Master". They better be clean enough As long as the "lower" HD DVD bit rate is clean enough for that, I will then agree that anything more is superfluous.

My Master is very tasking


so it basically comes down to

Price: $1000 HD-XA2 vs Blu-ray players $1000 ~$1300
Movie/Player availability: 65% of movies vs 80%/ One Toshiba vs several from different manufacturers
Aesthetics/Brand Preference: Player aesthetics? mmm no care that much for that/ No real brand preference but only Toshiba to chose for in HD DVD


You know, your arguments about the technical merits are valid and may make my evaluation about the differences be discarded as reasons to chose one over the other since looking at them that way they become practically nil. But the Toshiba vs the world situation makes it look to be in a Beta-like position at the moment.

So right now I could buy D U N E in HD DVD and it'll probably look better than in the gloomy empty seated theater I saw it once. But what do I play it in? The single choice current Toshiba? The slightly better future 1080p Toshiba? I have to wait for that one the same way I have to wait for several Blu-ray choices coming soon. And it really worries me that the HD DVD format will shrink and disappear against the Blu-ray "Goliath" leaving me with "orphan" Universal discs that would surely be released and re-released again with the Directors Cut SE in a few cycles from now in Blu one day.

How simple things would be if they had made an unified format like DVD...

[JTK]

Originally Posted by Brian@BBY

Key word you point to is FACTS...negative opinion seems to be his strong suit.

Facts are something of an opportunity for him.

Facts are pesky things...

And they seem to be in VERY short supply as far as he's concerned.


You can look at his post history here since he joined and you can see clearly that he's not letting pesky things like facts get in his way.

People have written small phone books of factual ownage in just this thread alone and it's like they may as well have never bothered. Completely useless effort.

I didn't think we'd have someone come in here and try to fulfill the title of this thread literally, as some kind of object lesson, but I guess I was mistaken.

[ethan]

Originally Posted by hmurchison

This is incorrect. Since HD DVD supports double sided dual-layer discs the current maximum is 60GB BD50 will still be 10GB shy.

Any Bluray hardware supports double sided 100g discs, it's just that no media manufaturer have been stupid enough to make something that ridiculous just to boost numbers artificially. Same reason there aren't any DVD18.

Originally Posted by hmurchison

The assumption that you can just crank up the bitrate and achieve a better clarity and cleaner content is a fallacy. Each codec must be expertly optimized by the compressionist and every movie requires slightly different setting depending on the Master. Frankly whether you're a Blu-Ray or HD DVD fan attempting to draw a correlation between bitrate and quality is something you'll never be able to prove unless you can view the Master.

There is a very clear corellation between bitrate and perceived image quality with each codec, within the usable range. This is the basis of every codec development. There are numerous studies supporting this.

[BTBuck1]

As far as I'm concerned if i have to get my fatass up to flip a disc over, it might as well be on a seperate disc at that point.
which IMO makes Dual Sided discs vs. Single Sided discs a moot point.

[JTK]

Originally Posted by Brian@BBY

As far as I'm concerned if i have to get my fatass up to flip a disc over, it might as well be on a seperate disc at that point.
which IMO makes Dual Sided discs vs. Single Sided discs a moot point.

Or at least put all the special features and what not on a second disc.

It just isn't any big deal IMO, short term.

[CobaltBlue]

"Any Bluray hardware supports double sided 100g discs, it's just that no media manufaturer have been stupid enough to make something that ridiculous just to boost numbers artificially."

I thought it was already stated on here that current spec blu-ray players only support up to 50gb, not 100. Just like current spec hd won't support triple layer discs. I know I "don't car about the facts" and all, but which is it?

Also, someone mentioned having to flip disks. As I don't have one yet, I have no idea. Do you have to flip double side 30gb hd-dvds or does it read both sides? If it reads both sides, is there a delay like laserdiscs? Same questions for double sided Blu-ray.

[CobaltBlue]

I was looking to answer my own question about how many PS3's are expected at launch. I found some -facts- that might be of interest as PS3 success greatly influences blu-ray market share, being the most economonical path to blu-ray available for a while. In no particular order...

"HD dvd drive for 360 ships in Nov. for around $170. Core system prices dropped to around $250.

Wii launches Nov.-Dec. at $213-250.

Sony also said it will equip 20-GB PS3 consoles with High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI).

Sony expects to ship 2 million units by years end instead of 4 million as plaanned.

In Japan, PS3 w/20 (GB) hard disk drive for 49,980 yen ($430). US will still pay $499 (+100 for 60gb version)."
AP Article- http://www.topix.net/content/ap/4237...31072051339357

"We want Sony to beat our expectations of 1 million console sales by year-end and 4 million by March,"
Reuters- http://www.topix.net/content/reuters...16772954127671

"Nintendo could beat Sony in console race, experts say"
http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/09...endo/index.php

"Sony borrows $700 million. Plans to cut 10,000 jobs over 3 years. This is the first time that the maker has borrowed money in a decade. Sony borrowed more than originally planned. "
http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/sony/st...ney-185089.php

"As a result of problems related to the mass production of a key component of its Blu-ray DVD player, Sony (SNE) will delay the European launch of its next generation video game console, the PlayStation 3 (PS3). Sony will also reduce the number of PS3 units immediately available in both the U.S. and Japan."

"In the U.S., the PS3 will launch on November 17th, with approximately 400,000 consoles available for sale."
"100,000 units to launch in Japan "

So, best case scenario (not figuring any competitor impact) estimates are from under a million to 2 mil. PS3's/new blu-ray users worldwide for the holiday shopping season.