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Posted by Tim Smith on 07/07/06 05:15
In article <8fOdnaLQ9sMoRjDZnZ2dnUVZ_sidnZ2d@comcast.com>, Joshua Zyber
wrote:
><kari.li@rimlife.com> wrote in message
>news:1152241310.800328.69750@75g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
>> Yawn. Old story. Toshiba=Dead.
>
> What bubble are you living in? Blu-ray's launch has been nothing short of
> a disaster.
There seems to be some confusion over both. At my local BestBuy, there are
posters promoting HD-DVD at the end of each aisle of DVDs, but the racks
next to those posters contain Blu-Ray discs, not HD-DVD discs.
They have one Blu-Ray player hooked up to a nice LCD TV running a Blu-Ray
demo disc. It looks nice, but it is not near any other set, so there is no
chance of a side-by-side comparision with a regular DVD and a good player.
Reviews of the initial movies for both are decidedly favoring HD-DVD. There
doesn't seem to be any *technical* advantage to HD-DVD itself, but for some
baffling reason, the transfers of a lot of the Blu-Ray movies are lousy.
For many of the HD-DVD movies, they appear to have taken the best print they
could find, and taken a lot of care with the transfer. One of the guests on
"This Week in Tech" this week was using terms like "the best HD experience
he'd ever seen". Some of the blockbusters on Blu-Ray, on the other hand,
appear to have been transferred from poor, scratchy, prints, and thanks to
the great resolution of Blu-Ray, you can see all those scratches! :-)
HD-DVD players are selling out in many places.
The situation is interesting for people who pick media formats based on OS
or language advoacy.
1. Blu-Ray players include Java, so some Java cheerleaders will support
Blu-Ray for that reason alone.
2. Microsoft likes HD-DVD, which will be a big negative for some Linux
advocates.
3. The Toshiba player runs Linux. This will make some Linux advocates pick
it.
4. Apple likes Blu-Ray.
5. HD-DVD has better protection of consumers, although supposedly Blu-Ray
will be matching that.
Another potential problem for Blu-Ray is the Sony PS3, which includes a
Blu-Ray drive. It is possible that a lot of people who would otherwise be
interested in Blu-Ray now will put off buying, prefering to wait for the
PS3, which will cost less than the stand-alone Blu-Ray players. People
interested in HD-DVD, on the other hand, have no particular reason to wait.
This could result in a significant initial lead in sales for HD-DVD, which
could swing more people toward HD-DVD.
--
--Tim Smith
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