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Posted by Temsonic on 03/22/07 11:20
"RCE Defiant" <peterfcukthespimstones@hotcoldmail.co.uk> wrote in message
news:56evjaF280u9hU1@mid.individual.net...
>I initially thought HD due to the monster that is MS being behind it but
>now it's looking more and more like Blu-Ray film media sales are
>outstripping HD by 3:1 whihc don't look good for the HD camp. I'm holding
>off buying any next gen media reader until HDMI 1.3 is out and the dust
>settles on the format scuffle. What are your thoughts on who's going to
>win? I've seen a few drives come out that will play both formats so it
>looks like manufacturers are edging their bets.
>
The real problem right now is that the non-AV enthusiast public (i.e.
probably more than 90%) have never heard of or don't care about HD-DVD or
Blu-ray, and it seems the majority of the rest of us are taking a
wait-and-see approach, firstly because of the format war and secondly
because of stupidly high pricing. Naturally the war will be decided by who
sells the most units, and to sell large numbers the product needs mass
market appeal.
Joe public only really got to grips with DVD and widescreen CRT TV's a few
years ago and they're already being told it's all out of date, and from what
I gather most of them can't see any particular benefit from HD other than
the associated bigger screen sizes. I firmly believe that the main driving
factor behind the public's willingness to jump from VHS to DVD wasn't solely
about picture and sound quality. Yes, they were part of it, but it was
mainly the move from tape to disc - which suddenly enabled menus, chapters,
optional subtitles, different audio tracks, angles, non-linear extras, etc -
which caught their imagination.
To the AV enthusiast, improved picture (including anamorphic widescreen) and
sound (DD5.1 and DTS as standard) are the best features of DVD over VHS, and
those features are improved again with the HD formats, but we're talking
about mass market appeal here, not what the enthusiasts think. How many
posts do you remember on this and other forums along the lines of "How do I
get rid of the black bars?", and even now I know very few people with a 5.1
system to actually take advantage of what's available to them on the discs.
Most people still don't appear to have learnt how to set up their widescreen
TV's properly, HD is the least of their worries.
There's also the costs involved. It's only recently that the prices on HD
panels have started to come down to more sensible levels. Even so you're
still looking at almost 1000 for a really decent one and that's before you
shell out another thousand for a Blu-ray player... Most people would _never_
pay a grand for a media player no matter how all-singing and dancing it is,
they live in the real world where even 100 is a lot of money to justify
spending on a new toy, let alone one where they might struggle to appreciate
the difference between that and something they can pick up for 20 in Tesco.
Of course, the PS3 is now on the scene which could change things, though at
present it's lacking in features I would consider essential in a HD player,
e.g. it can't upscale standard DVD's to 720/1080 and it can only output HD
at 1080p, not 720p, meaning you have to rely on your 720p screen accepting a
1080i signal and downscaling well if you want anything more than standard
def progressive output.
In the case of the early adopter AV enthusiast, there's also a different
issue that isn't considered so often. As you say, some companies see dual
format drives as the answer right now. The problem here is that we might buy
a dual format player, set about collecting a mix of HD-DVD and Blu-ray
discs, then at some point in the future one format wins out, and before you
know it we need to replace our players but can only buy hardware for the
format that won, rendering half our collections obsolete.
I've just realised what a stupidly long answer I've written, so I'd just
like to add my favourite two points as to why I think HD-DVD will win and
then be done with it: Blu-ray has region coding and has banned porn.
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