Comments on: R.I.P. HD DVD: Toshiba reportedly ends the war
Toshiba plans to withdraw from HD DVD production, according to a report on Japan's NHK. This follows announcements by Netflix, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart to favor Blu-ray Disc format.
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why can't we do what we do with games? walmart should not decide to stop selling wii or psp or any format it deems inferior, they should let the customer decide -The consumers say, "hey i like halo so i will buy and xbox 360 - and i like a magic wand so i will save and buy a wii next and i want to watch pirates in hd so i will buy a ps3 when i can." that's the way it works with games why not hd movies - many movies, like games are on both systmes - the exclusives have great exclusive content like transformers hddvd and the really cool internet downloads - and ratatouille bluray with it's cool 2-3 munite load times and cinexplore in-movie experience (little stab), i have no regrets about adopting both formats except i should have bought a ps3 instead of the wretched stand alone player that makes me watch a rat hula hoop for 1-2 munites everytime i hit a button on my remote!
oh and you cannot compare a ps3 as a bluray player to a toshiba stand alone player - the ps3 is WAY more powerful with a 7core processor, ram, and hard drive it loads faster. you should compare a bdp300 to and hda20 and tell me which one you like. hint sony bdp300 is like asking your mother in law to get you a beer - it takes forever and gives you heartache all the way. my hda20 loads anything in about 40 seconds. no pause with speacial features etc..
so what to do!?
my plans - buy another hd dvd player to use when my hda20 breaks - cost 100 bucks and 7 free movies
buy a ps3 and a remote for it - cost 400 plus remote, and plan on upgrading it to 2.0 when i can.
i figure if i do this in the next month i can load up on great and inexpensive hd dvds with profile 2.0 like content and enjoy them for years! (beowulf and 300 exclusive in movie content!) and i can buy the blu rays that are worth keeping for my kids like rat.
then when in the next year the competing movie studios throw in the towel and agree to split profit with sony on every disc they sell i will be prepared!
until then i will keep making my cheap friends green with envy when they come over and i play transformers in hd with my customized menu and picture in picture. thank you hd dvd. you were the movie buffs short lived friend. i will never look at 300 the same again as you have given me a reason to watch it a hundred times. thank you as my friends are still trying to pull up the pip on thier version of the movie. and thank you for showing blu ray what the people who don't mind paying more than 30 bucks for a favorite movie expect to get more than just a flick.
blu ray - i hope you pull it off in the long run - give us what we want - don't be an EA Sports and slack off on improving stuff just because you got exclusive.
thanks for reading. let's pray walmart isn't going to make any other decisions for us. next thing you know there going to stop selling wii because it doesn't play any discs.
I think they will be laughing at you for backing up the losing format.
And everything else you said: Painfully annyoing and stupid. It's ok to be angry but keep your ideas in your head because there useless anywhere else
*** would anyone buy a bluray player anyway? There are no true 1080p movies available, only "enhanced" product. There are 0 1080p TV / Satellite stations to record shows from. Hell, I don't even think there are any 1080p cameras out there in use yet. Add to that if you have a TV that is older then about a year you won't be able to watch movies in HD anyway because of the copy protection requirements of bluray are not supported on any but the newest TV's, so enjoy watching your HD movies in 480p greatness on your $600 player. LMAO And what's even worse IMO is the fact that Bluray STILL does not have a finished standard, so the player you buy today, will most likely not work with the movies of tomorrow!
What's wrong with HD DVD anyway? HD DVD looks great! There are TONS of 1080i cameras out there recording content! It is a FINISHED format! There is plenty of room for the movie and extras on the disk. Do you really need games and hours of interactive junk on there? HD DVD will play on ANY HD TV! HD Players are AFFORDABLE for the average consumer!
I'm sorry, but Sony and the other bluray supporters can screw themselves if they think that average consumers are going to buy a $500 player and a $2000 TV today only to have to buy new ones in a year or so when they finally finalize the format! Hell, buy the time the finally record a show or movie in 1080p and get it out to disk, there will probably be a new standard ready to release that will make 1080p look like analog cable. I'm sorry, but I have no intention on buying Bluray. If HD DVD is truly dead, I will continue to buy HD DVD moives till they are no longer available and then I will go back to DVD and upconvert them on my HD player. I hope that Toshiba and the rest would be working hard on a 2160p Super HD type format and have it available before 1080p films ever hit the shelves. I figue they have about 4 years to make an impact as I am sure that the price will not fall till then and I'm sure that not much content will be recored till at least 4 or 5 years from now.
Btw, If you want to make the switch to bluray, you better do it now, because as soon as Toshiba makes this official (if in fact they do) Sony will be jacking the price of their players up and I'm sure they will be looking for other ways to screw customers over, much like they did to the millions who have older HD sets. I would not be surprised if they keep the format in limbo for a few years as they continue to rape customers on the price of their stuff and then tell everyone that the format is finalized and anyone with an old bluray player will need to buy a new one if they want to view any new movies...
HD DVD was too little too late. It piggybacked on standards that were OK, but what needed to happen was for it to move forward to better standards. There was the growing spectre of the possibility that a single HD DVD couldn't hold all the contents that consumers have come to expect, the fact that new video codecs would increase the quality of the video itself beyond what HD DVD could handle... These are the issues you rarely hear about. The format that is HD DVD is fine as it stands, but it's simply not enough to make your average viewer say, "I want that". Just look at all the people complaining here and saying they'll go back to watching up converted DVDs. Are they kidding? If they could really tell the difference they wouldn't say that. Just as I couldn't go back to watching regular dvds on a regular television set, they shouldn't be able to settle for second best either.
The average person hasn't been able to see the difference between DVD and HD DVD (or DVD and Blueray for that matter). They still have old 480i televisions, and when they see an HD television in a store they look at the price and say, "why do I need that?" HD DVD was not going to help make that shift for them. Blueray might not be able to either, but at least the industry has settled on a format they can work with.
Now, the REAL problem is going to be content. Can the industry make content that can utilize the new standards? Or will we see the same drivel, year after year? Only time will tell. But HD DVD was not going to help in that area either.
You can **** and moan all you want but the fact is that Bluray movie sales are higher than HDDVD movie sales and thats means more people wanted them.
End of Story
I wish HD-DVD would have done better marketing during the war. That's where they fell short. Wal-Mart and Best Buy not letting the consumers decide was a let down. Blu-Ray players are still overpriced. They need to either lower their prices or the HD-DVD camp will not cross. BR is far from winning the HD-DVD camp. With prices that, they will not cross.
I never cared for all the extra content. I just want a movie that will output 1080p. I think HD-DVD had no choice as Net-Flix, Wal-Mart and Best Buy abandoned their formats. Sony better drop their prices.
I never bought either format but was hoping that HD-DVD would win. Players are better priced. Sony is such a terrible company. PS3 lost money for a long time. It was an overrated player and lost big to Ninetendo's Wii. After all that hype they continued to lose money.
I'm glad the war is over but Sony needs to drop their prices or they will lose out in the end. A new format or better technology will come around and Sony will lose if they continue with their prices.
summary: You've read all the articles, you've done your homework, and you're still on the fence or holding out for lower prices right? You are smart, I just want to reiterate the fact that a full HD picture will not look much better than an upconverted DVD if you have a smaller TV (15"-42"). The pixelation is almost impossible to see unless you're watching burned DVDs with 50% resolution. In that case do yourself a favor and rip the movie only(no menus or extras) and you'll see your backed up DVD is higher quality.
If you can afford a 50"-73" tv bravo, and you probably already have a blu ray player so stop reading. For you consumers on the fence don't get a blu ray player because the format is still new and buggy, the picture isn't that much more amazing(I'm not buying all my old movies on BR) and after watching Blu-Ray Discs rented from NetFlix, I have to say it's not worth it. Movies are movies, they'll have the same camera angles, they won't jump out of the screen and immerse you any more than a normal DVD not to mention you'll be pissed that you wasted your money.
conclusion: If you find a sweet deal, grab a br player and try it for a week, look critically at the picture. better yet, rent a blu ray disc of a movie you have on DVD and watch them side by side(or one after another), then decide whether the difference is worth the cost. I don't own any blu ray discs(besides Speed which I bought for $5) lol I don't even own any PS3 games, so that goes to show you how wonderful the whole HD format craze has wasted my money. (but I got my ps3 for $300 8 months ago :P)
On the movie aisles, Blu-ray titles out numbered HD DVD titles by 3 to 1 and the prices were identical.
Soon, Wal-Mart is going to want to sell those Blu-ray titles and they are going to start negotiating for Blu-ray players to sell. The size and power of Wal-Mart is going to drive down the price of Blu-ray players across the board and nobody is going to care about 'fire sale' pricing on obsolete formats.
"...and regards to Captain Dunsell.
McCoy: "Dunsell? Who is Captain Dunsell?"
Spock: "Dunsell, doctor, is a midshipman's term used at StarFleet Academy. It refers to a part that no longer serves any function."
Read this article:
http://www.ipracine.org/state/state.html
Here's some food for thought:
1. High Quality Source (Most Important)
2. Contrast Ratio
3. Color Saturation
4. Color Accuracy
5. Resolution (Least Important).
So when you all spew all this regurgitated Sony and Marketing hype over the comments/forums, keep this in mind.
Don't believe the hype people. Unless you sit directly in front of your tv, you won't see a difference in resolution. What you are seeing is the 'TV's'ability to produce contrast and color accuracy and saturation, NOT resolution.
Just my 2 cents.
To me (and yes I am into electronics)there was no difference between the two except for price. The difference of who won was not decided by the consumer, but by the studios. Beta was better than VH-S, but lost because of the price. If both formats would have been allowed to produce all of the movies, the HD-DVD player would have won because of price.
Anybody that works in an electronics store can tell you that 95-99% of the people that come in the store have no clue about the storage capacity of one format to the other.....they're not geeks. That's the reason you see so many people buying $100 cameras thinking it will do just as good as the $500 camera because it says it's 8MP.
Congratulations are in store to blu-ray, and I might end up getting one. I want to make sure it won't turn into the Laserdisc and leave because very few people would buy it. Instead of saying that one is better than the other, people should just say that Sony had a better strategy....not a better format.
Done.
- Your "downright" silly yourself
- by kalel33 February 17, 2008 5:02 PM PST
- the ideal viewing distance for a 42" 720p display, for example, is 7.7 feet. If you view it closer than 7.7 feet, most people will be able to see individual pixels, but at distances further than 7.7 feet, you can't see them. In the case of a 42" 1080p display, the ideal viewing distance is only 5.5 feet--beyond that, you can't see the pixels and you can't really appreciate the full resolution of the display. In other words, it would be virtually impossible to distinguish between a 42" 720p display and 42" 1080p at distances of about six feet or more. Given that many people view their televisions from 8-10 feet away (if not even more), you would have to have a 65" or larger screen to really notice the difference between 720p and 1080p.
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- It was brandonh33 not 'donwright' who posted
- by donwright February 17, 2008 5:30 PM PST
- I didn't post the 37 inch tv jibberish. The guy is clearly misinformed or just totally ignorant on a voluntary basis.
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- Ya that was me
- by brandonh33 February 18, 2008 7:47 AM PST
- Ya I posted the 1080p one that you are commenting about. Everyones argument against 1080p seems to be that if you sit farther than 6 ft away you cant see the pixels. Its not about seeing pixels, because if you can you are sitting too close. Let me put it this way. I still have my old standard def 60 inch downstairs and when you sit more than 10 ft away from it you cant see any dots. By your logic that tv looks just as good as my hd set. Umm, no! On a 37 inch sitting more than 6 feet away it DOES look much clearer. Here is a little do at home test for you. Go watch some standard def tv on your hd set. you cant see the pixels, does it look hd?
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Showing 2 of 4 pages (111 Comments)That was not from me, but from a videophile website. So no you can't see the difference on a 37" TV. Also, there will be no content, other than the blu-ray and games that will even be able to do 1080p. The communications industry stated that they would not be able to transmit that much data over existing networks/satellites so they are not going to redo the entire system for people with very large TVs like me.....Samsung 1080p 56".
But thanks for proving my point about 1080p though =)