Blockbuster to decide Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD?

krabby5

Toxis wrote: »

Everyone keeps talking about the A2 but no one mentions it doesn't even do 1080p on HD DVDs.

I've done the Denon 2910 vs. Toshiba XA-1 comparison and everyone picked the Denon in a blind taste challenge.

let me get this straight..you played a sd dvd in the Denon and compared the same movie in HD dvd, and they picked the Denon?

that's rediculous

Gaara

Gotta love fan boys. Not sure where all the numbers are coming from like $4500 bluray player?

Demiurge

No ****, wonder when their fearless leader will weigh in.

RuSsMaN

**** will decide, period.

PhantomOG

its my secret desire that china mass produces some 3rd really cheap HD format that catches on because its cheap

F Sony and F Toshiba for not getting their $h!1 together years and years ago.

AndyGwis

Wasn't **** heading down the HD-DVD road?

Also, Silverti, were you talking about comparing the two players upconverting SD to 1080i? Maybe that would be close, but SD on Denon compared to HD-DVD on the XA1 shouldn't be close at all.

Sami

Toxis wrote: »

Everyone keeps talking about the A2 but no one mentions it doesn't even do 1080p on HD DVDs.

1080i is the same thing with a good scaler. Even with an imperfect scaler it's very close.

Toxis wrote: »

I've done the Denon 2910 vs. Toshiba XA-1 comparison and everyone picked the Denon in a blind taste challenge.

I'm assuming you're talking about upconverted SD-DVD material and frankly I don't see why that's even an issue. Comparing two SD-DVD players is like comparing do I want a Camry or an Accord, the difference isn't that great, while the HD player is a Porsche.

MikeC78

RuSsMaN wrote: »

**** will decide, period.

In that case, HD DVD is the clear winner!

MikeC78

I currently own a Toshiba XA1 and PS3, while it's good at upconverting SD DVD's, I can't even bare to watch them anymore compared to HD DVD's or BR's. I haven't seen an SD movie in about 6 months, and don't plan to either.

IMO, there is NO comparison in PQ.

MSALLA

I was talking to the owner of a high end audio store in our area last week. He was telling me that Blue-Ray is looking to be the future of DVD's. He sold both so he had no real reson to B.S. me and he knew I was not going to buy one.

MikeC78

MSALLA wrote: »

I was talking to the owner of a high end audio store in our area last week. He was telling me that Blue-Ray is looking to be the future of DVD's. He sold both so he had no real reson to B.S. me and he knew I was not going to buy one.

Ok? And his opinion means...

wingnut4772

Is the audio on any Blue Ray on par with HD DVD?

krabby5

AndyGwis wrote: »

Wasn't **** heading down the HD-DVD road?

Also, Krabby, were you talking about comparing the two players upconverting SD to 1080i? Maybe that would be close, but SD on Denon compared to HD-DVD on the XA1 shouldn't be close at all.

I was the one who responded to his message...I agree with you..

MSALLA

MikeC78 wrote: »

Ok? And his opinion means...

It's the guys living. I would think he would be following the industry to see what companies are supporting which format. I don't think he wants to have money sitting still in the form of inventory on his shelf that's not going to sell.
He may not be right, but I'll bet he knows more then you or I.

MikeC78

I don't think he can predict the future with both formats, but ok.

Maybe he should email toshiba and the studios, so they will stop wasting money on HD DVD.;)

PolkThug

AndyGwis wrote: »

Wasn't **** heading down the HD-DVD road?

Yep! http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25740

Systems

Gaara wrote: »

Gotta love fan boys. Not sure where all the numbers are coming from like $4500 bluray player?

Maybe it was a mistype with an extra "0".

Fanboy? Come on. Anyone who uses that term must be a hypocrate.

MSALLA

MikeC78 wrote: »

I don't think he can predict the future with both formats, but ok.

Maybe he should email toshiba and the studios, so they will stop wasting money on HD DVD.;)

I konw it's impossible to watch something and make a guess about whats coming. No one ever makes predictions on sports games or stocks or the future of anything:rolleyes:
I'm not saying he's right or wrong, just making a statement. I'll let the guy know he should keep his opinion to himself.

cheddar

Demiurge wrote: »

No ****, wonder when their fearless leader will weigh in.

Nice. You carry imagined grudges like a woman. I've never attacked you or been anything but calm and reasoned in my discussions with you. But you always seem to make your petty comments which eventually end in a hissy fit and a tirade against me. Can't wait for your next one. They're actually getting quite entertaining. I don't have to even join a thread before you try and flame bait me. Lol.

I believe that it's pretty excessive saying that the ps3 is worth over $1000. The next Christmas buying season will see a continued collapse in the price of players as blu-ray is finally dropping retail prices within striking distance of hd-dvd. HD-DVD has always had an advantage on player price. If you like the movies released on the format,

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=766588

I highly recommend buying an hd-dvd player now as Toshiba's losing war with Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, etc. has seen prices drop to $199 at some low priced internet dealers. And you can get up to 7 free disks at places like amazon that make the player almost free. As the only maker of an hd-dvd stand alone (other makers are either combo or a rebrand), toshiba can't keep this up for long. Maybe through the next christmas season. And if their fortunes don't turn around by then, I would expect toshiba to lose its advantage on price altogether after that. But with the current deals that can be had, what's the real risk? Until it breaks, you've got a nice HD player to play Universal movies with (the only exclusive hd-dvd studio, studios like Sony, Disney, and Fox are blu-ray exclusive) and a good secondary dvd player.

I predicted that hd-dvd was having trouble way back when the after christmas numbers came out. Although the quality of individual players might have slight differences in PQ or AQ, the formats have always been pretty much equal in those areas. The biggest difference in quality is the actual movies themselves. All movies, even the recent ones, need to be mastered properly to take advantage of the extra PQ and AQ detail. Some of the early blu-rays were real stinkers in this department like 5th element from sony. It was horrible. But now as universal is rushing to try and save hd-dvd, they're starting to release pretty poor quality movies as well (look at the video quality section):

http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/liarliar.html

So it's really a matter of software, not hardware as prices continue to collapse toward each other. And here, the advantage is clearly with blu-ray as BB found. Fox and Disney are both very skittish about releasing movies which are easily pirated. This is why these studios will remain blu-ray exclusive with Fox waiting on blu-ray's BD+ java environment to come together this October before releasing a larger number of movies. And with Blu-ray now leading in since inception numbers of sales and continually posting a 60+% advantage in sales each month since Christmas, they will not jump ship. This leaves titles like Pirates, Casino Royale, and Spiderman Blu-ray exclusive for the forseable future. Universal is releasing like crazy trying to counter this, but they just don't have the box office receipts lately to put a dent in the sales disparity. BB knows it. And after looking at their own internal numbers, they decided that they'd rather put up the capital to stock blu-ray than hd-dvd. Are they losing out on sales, sure. But they don't have to buy identical warner or paramount titles and use valuable shelf space displaying a 30% format. And they will still rent hd-dvd online and at their 250 test locations. Even after all their sales promotions, Toshiba had to revise their estimated player sales downward by 44%:

http://news.com.com/Toshiba+drops+sales+target+for+HD+DVD+players/2100-1041_3-6190361.html

wingnut4772 wrote: »

Is the audio on any Blue Ray on par with HD DVD?

Also a note about sound quality. Toshiba players are far from perfect soundwise:

http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/Toshiba/Hardware/Firmware_Upgrades/Workaround_Found_for_Toshiba_HD-XA2_Low_Bass_Issues/688

But, again, I don't think that differences between players should be used to bash one format or the other. Until recent firmware updates, the ps3 couldn't upconvert sd-dvds and Sony's high end player couldn't decode trueHD. But none of these issues were a limitation of the format.

Formatwise, there are only three codecs offered for lossless audio. Standard DD and DTS compress the signal and when uncompressed, the audio is less qualitywise than the original source material. With DD TrueHD, DTS Master Audio, and LPCM, we finally get lossless audio renderings of the original masters. TrueHD and DTS-MA are compressed but uncompress to high resolution audio. LPCM is audio that was never compressed in the first place. Both formats support all these resolutions but only the most recent receivers from the likes of Onkyo and planned by Denon will decode DTS-MA. But you need hdmi 1.3 compatible players to pass the signal to the receiver for decoding like many of us do over optical or coax for DD and DTS now. Players on each side will decode TrueHD internally but you often have to get the firmware update. And no fancy decoder is necessary for LPCM except it takes up more space on the disk. For blu-ray, that hasn't presented a problem because of the increased space available in the first place.

So it's up to the individual studios to decide to include or not include a high definition track in the first place. That's where the variability comes in. But all formats are more or less equivalent in terms of quality and wow factor. Paramount (produces for both formats) continues to release HD content without lossless audio tracks. Warner (produces for both formats) releases great TrueHD tracks on both formats. The upcoming release of 300 should be an identical presentation PQ or AQ wise in either blu-ray or hd-dvd. Sony uses LPCM but is also including TrueHD tracks going forward, again taking advantage of the extra disk space on blu-ray. Disney uses LPCM and has done some reference quality mastering with it on the recent Pirates releases. And Fox uses DTS-MA much as it uses DTS on its standard SD-DVD releases. But remember, all these formats produce great quality sound. So for the top tier releases in either format, you get reference quality PQ and AQ.

My position has always been that software selection will be the key. Hardware prices are important, but as can be seen by the diminishing fortunes of HD-DVD, hardware prices by themselves just can't win a war. They've kept HD-DVD in the running, but with hardware prices collapsing to just a few hundred dollars for either format by Christmas, mass adoption seems to be heading toward blu-ray. I've been saying this since last Christmas hoping to help people on this forum in their buying decisions. It got Demi all bent out of shape. But I hope people can see now that all I was doing was provide some truth to counter the disinformation that gets circulated by people trying to save their formats. I apologize for the long post, but if this kind of information helps a fellow polkie, I'll put up with the hissy fits from Demi.

AndyGwis

Besides the first paragraph, I read your whole post and found it to have some great information and insight. I own two HD-DVD players, but bought the first to replace my PE 59avi I sold since SD player prices were dropping like crazy. Cheaper to get the XA1 with 5 free HD-DVDs than anything BR had out.

I bought my second because I was looking for a new bedroom DVD player and found an awesome deal on local CL.

So, I guess I won't buy any new HD-DVDs for the time being. If / when they lose the war, their disc prices should drop drastically, then I can stock up having already purchased two players. Till then, I guess I should get a netflix membership to get some HD-DVD rentals.

cheddar

AndyGwis wrote: »

Besides the first paragraph, I read your whole post and found it to have some great information and insight. I own two HD-DVD players, but bought the first to replace my PE 59avi I sold since SD player prices were dropping like crazy. Cheaper to get the XA1 with 5 free HD-DVDs than anything BR had out.

I bought my second because I was looking for a new bedroom DVD player and found an awesome deal on local CL.

So, I guess I won't buy any new HD-DVDs for the time being. If / when they lose the war, their disc prices should drop drastically, then I can stock up having already purchased two players. Till then, I guess I should get a netflix membership to get some HD-DVD rentals.

I apologize to you for the first paragraph. My main interest is always to have good discussions about HD. Things have gotten so cheap that I toyed with the idea of buying an hd-dvd player when the matrix came out. But I think I'll just wait for it to come out on blu-ray, maybe in time for the holidays. No doubt about it, this format split makes it hard on all of us who just want to enjoy great quality HD. Blu-ray movie selection with hd-dvd hardware prices would be perfect. But of course, we get the split instead.

Demiurge

Just giving you ****, cheese curd, but I'm tickled pink to know that I got under your skin.

When is Speak & Spell Scotty going to give his sarcastic laden bowl of **** flakes?

cheddar

Demiurge wrote: »

Just giving you ****, cheese curd, but I'm tickled pink to know that I got under your skin.

When is Speak & Spell Scotty going to give his sarcastic laden bowl of **** flakes?

A woman's hissy fit...to the last. But I think your comments annoy other forum members more just trying to have a discussion here than me. Like I said, you've become entertaining in your predictable little hot and bothered moments. :rolleyes:

jdhdiggs

Eh, you both need to STFU about it.

cheddar

jdhdiggs wrote: »

Eh, you both need to STFU about it.

Point taken, I'll go back to ignoring the comments as usual.

sucks2beme

I wonder if Blockbuster is going to do another mass exodus from a format?
I remember one day they just blew out all the VHS tapes and a week later, it was DVD or nothing.
If they do the same with DVD's, it will really hurt many consumers.
I stopped dealing with them long ago. They seemed to go out of their way to piss me off.

cheddar

sucks2beme wrote: »

I wonder if Blockbuster is going to do another mass exodus from a format?
I remember one day they just blew out all the VHS tapes and a week later, it was DVD or nothing.
If they do the same with DVD's, it will really hurt many consumers.
I stopped dealing with them long ago. They seemed to go out of their way to piss me off.

You mean just pull out of DVD entirely? That seems a bit premature unless an HD format has a couple of blowout holiday seasons hardware wise...but I know what you mean. I went with hollywood video, then netflix and the local BBs started closing.

Bill Ayotte

RuSsMaN wrote: »

**** will decide, period.

I found out something interesting last night....**** has been released in BOTH formats now....There are currently 9 titles available in HD-DVD, and 2 on BR....Vivid is dual releasing everything now...I think this format war has divided even the mighty **** industry...

dudeinaroom

I'll wait until my Sony dies before I get my feet wet. Same with the TV. For you people like me who still have a SD-TV, OTA transmission of analog signal will end 2/19/09, the government is supposed to be giving out $40 checks for Set Top Boxes that will convert the signal to analog. I'm not sure if the government is forcing cable to do the same, but my guess is they will not be to far behind that if not before.

PolkThug

Will this deadline stick, or just pass by like the others?