Well, ultimately it is up to you. A lot of people these days are trying to keep their entertainment setups open and minimal. Comparing the older gargantuan entertainment centers which take up almost an entire wall as opposed to the newer glass combined with metal/wood TV stands suggest that minimal is in demand. Being an owner of one of those stands (which is larger than most) I want to minimize how many boxes I have on it or else it looks ugly and cluttered. That plus it is just another port being taken up.
I don't know if the jump from DVD to an HD format is as big as VHS to DVD or not, but I can tell you that a lot of that jump depends on the TV these days. A lot of TVs out there are not taking full advantage of the Blu-Ray potential. If you get yourself a really nice one then the difference in quality as opposed to the upscaled DVDs is noticeable. It may not be worth the price for those TVs to a lot of people yet but that is changing quickly too.
I also do not see too many players which play both DVDs and Blu-Ray disks in our future. It will happen for a little while just like the DVD/VHS combo players did, but it will just be a short transition. That is assuming the prices and reliability of the Blu-Ray players change fast enough.
mooncancook
Platinum Member
- May 28, 2003
- 2,874
- 50
- 91
hmm it's rather hard to believe. maybe a lot of the survey goes to the 12 yr olds whose parents own a PS3? Regardless, 40% of all PS3 is still a large number. I'm one of those who looted for HDDVD (for cheaper players and not too fond of Sony) but didn't want to participate early in the format war, but ended up with a PS3 anyway, and ended up buying a couple BD movies. Little things add up.
Backward compatibility with DVDs will always be there for the life of Blu-Ray. There are no significant hardware changes needed to do this. As a matter of fact many of the early blu-ray releases were just high bitrate mpeg2 transfers which is the very same compression scheme used in dvds. We can safely assume that the chip that decodes blu-ray content already has the ability to decode dvds built into the same chip.
No it didn't. DVD was being broadly adopted as pricing went down. It was only coincidence that consoles came out at that time. Gotta love revisionist history.
Red Dawn
Elite Member
- Jun 4, 2001
- 57,529
- 3
- 0
It is hard to believe, but we're geeks. You've got to think about Joe Average here.
I bought my first PS3 exclusively for playing BD so it really is unbelievable to me.
Not buying the PS3 as a player is more out of principle.
Why do I need to buy a gaming machine as a dedicated blu-ray player? Why can't I pay 300 for a good machine, upconverts well, and is at least profile 1.1? I suppose if the PS3 is dropped to 300, I'd buy one...but even then, I have no place to put it. My rack is full. I can fit another regular sized player, but not the odd shape of the PS3. I just want a dedicated player. The only one that comes to mind is the Panasonic BD50. But that isn't out.
Yes, I own an HDDVD player. I also own 7 HDDVD's...5 of which came with the player, the other two were a buy one get one free deal. I honestly didn't care that HDDVD lost, I bought the player because at the time it was a good upconverter and was cheaper than an OPPO.
HDDVD didn't have the size, but at least the players were more mature. For christ sake, what would it have taken to create 2.0 players in the begining? I know, I know, PS3.
Why do I need to buy a gaming machine as a dedicated blu-ray player? Why can't I pay 300 for a good machine, upconverts well, and is at least profile 1.1? I suppose if the PS3 is dropped to 300, I'd buy one...but even then, I have no place to put it. My rack is full. I can fit another regular sized player, but not the odd shape of the PS3. I just want a dedicated player. The only one that comes to mind is the Panasonic BD50. But that isn't out.
Yes, I own an HDDVD player. I also own 7 HDDVD's...5 of which came with the player, the other two were a buy one get one free deal. I honestly didn't care that HDDVD lost, I bought the player because at the time it was a good upconverter and was cheaper than an OPPO.
HDDVD didn't have the size, but at least the players were more mature. For christ sake, what would it have taken to create 2.0 players in the begining? I know, I know, PS3.
lupi
Lifer
- Apr 8, 2001
- 32,539
- 260
- 126
I only bought 3 HD movies, (transformers, 300, and whichever of clint's iwo movies weren't released on BR) with the rest being the free bees, so not really concerned with with $150 I invested in the HD market. My previous DVD player was over 10 years old so even keeping my A2 as a regular dvd player with component/hdmi/upscaling isn't bad for me.
dainthomas
Lifer
- Dec 7, 2004
- 14,952
- 3,941
- 136
It's a moot point, now, but the HD DVD forum had approved a 51GB spec and work was being done on preparing the first discs to be pressed on it. Again, that's neither here nor there.
3rd party BD manufacturers weren't likely waiting on HD DVD to release their players, so I don't think the end to the other format will directly mean more competition. As far as consumers "upgrading" - I think that's a small minority and basically limited to the serious enthusiast market. Considering HDM players all upconvert, most people aren't going to double dip on most catalog titles available in BD, save for the "favorites". And BD player support for SD DVD will not disappear anytime soon. Certainly not a "short transition".
Besides, DVD dwarfs the breadth of software on BD and will for the forseeable future. It's fairly likely if you've got anything more than major studio titiles, you may not even have an opportunity to replace all those versions in HD.
I thought the HD DVD specs were finalized at 2 layers whereas BD was higher than that. Not to say a higher number of layers wouldn't be possible, but they weren't guaranteed to be backwards-compatible like they would be for BD.
A triple layer spec was approved in November. Insider reports suggested it was compatible with players dating back to first-gen.
dainthomas
Lifer
- Dec 7, 2004
- 14,952
- 3,941
- 136
There might be a few advantages bluray has over HD, but backward compatibility is most definitely not one of them.
ultimatebob
Lifer
- Jul 1, 2001
- 25,134
- 2,450
- 126
Originally posted by: DisgruntledVirus
Finally 2 years and it's over. Now we move into the phase of HD-DVD fan boys saying how HD-DVD was the better format and should have won for the next 6+ months.
At least I can buy a Blu-ray player and not have to worry about it being abandoned in 6 months
Only six months? Hell... people today still think that Beta should have won over VHS
I do feel vindicated, though... I remember someone bragging about getting an XBox 360 HD-DVD player on this forum for "only" $150 a few months ago, and then getting really pissed off when I told them that it would be a $10 yard sale item 2 years from now. Hmm... Called that one right!
ultimatebob
Lifer
- Jul 1, 2001
- 25,134
- 2,450
- 126
TehMac
Diamond Member
- Aug 18, 2006
- 9,976
- 3
- 71
While some competition is good, I have sense this was bad, because it was just a drag to see which company could outlast the other. Now that Sony has won, I think they want to consolidate their gain and make a profit...so while I don't have a crystal ball, I think, depending on the demand for their product (which is usually an elastic factor, but isn't so much, given people who will want to buy a Blu-ray) will make the prices lower, because they can afford to, and increase the avidity for their product with low prices.
One of the big examples for me was with J.P. Morgan and oil: it was expected that a monopoly would drive oil prices sky high--when in fact it did the exact opposite. It's all vague to me now, but I remember there was a recent study on it, and the price of oil in the late 19th century went down.
Interesting stuff, and I think it can work out to be counter intuitive.
HeroOfPellinor
Lifer
- Dec 27, 2001
- 11,272
- 1
- 0
Maybe not such a victory yet. They've lost a LOT of money promoting Blu Ray. Between losing money on the players to offering cash or "incentives" to the exclusive studios and frequent television commercials, they aren't going to recoup even a fraction of those losses until the Hi Def market is significantly larger than it is today.
I'm guessing that's why Toshiba and Microsoft never really put that kind of money into promoting the HD-DVD format. It's a risk. Will the Hi Def market grow to a large enough percentage of DVD sales to make it profitable before online delivery, which is undoubtedly the future, comes to fruition. It's really close right now with Comcast and the satellite providers offering On Demand HD movies. Combine that with a DVR device and you have a pure digital movie collection that plays seemlessly on your living room television.
Some of the reactions by the early adopters are insane. I saw one posting on CL for a Toshiba HD-A35 (flagship player) + 8 movies for $125. I would've picked it up but was too late.
So, this might be a stupid question. But say I finally get around to getting a HDTV in the next month or so, would it really be stupid to buy a HD-DVD player cheap and then getting some deals on the movies?
Well I understand that, but I'm guessing you could get a sizable collection for a good price. I guess if I could get one at about $60-70 it would be worth it. Always nice to have a spare upconverting dvd player anyhow.
Besides, it'll probably be awhile before I want to get a blue ray player. That and so far Serenity is only out on HD
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