Posted by Uncopyrightable on 03/22/07 13:39

Temsonic wrote:
> "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 years ago and they're already being told it's all out of date, and from what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.
>
>
OK, i think you lost the argument when you said 'Blu-ray has banned porn'
I really think one major factor in VHS sales was porn, from the movies
to home, DVD just increased this faster and further, I firmly believe
the driving force behind the format war will be porn.
Long live porn!!

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