official: Blu-Ray Wins. Toshiba throws in towel.

AsSiMiLaTeD

That adapter is just a USB thing that plugs into one of the USB ports on the front of the console, it's basically an IR receiver. Then you can programs the IR codes into your Harmony or whatever and you're good to go.

The the exclusion of the PS button on the remote - you won't be able to turn the PS3 off and on without that button.

There's another alternative that someone posted a while back that also gets you the power button, for a bit more money.

AsSiMiLaTeD

Ah, found the thread - this may be a better alternative if you want to power control as well...

http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?t=61618&highlight=Playstation+remote

polksda

I read the discussion over at AVS, and it seemed a bit convoluted and expensive to me, but then again manually powering up/down the PS3 is no big deal for me... it might be a big deal for some.

aaharvel

just read that H/K is coming out with a Blu-Ray player in a couple of months. Think I'll hold off purchasing until then. Maybe...

dkg999

When I can buy a BD player for under $600 that has full audio decoding to 7.1analog outs, and is of decent build quality, I'll bite. Until then I have a Cambridge Audio upconverting DVD player that has as good or better upconversion quality as anything I've seen or compared it to.

Ron-P

polksda wrote: »

1. Turn off PS3.

2. Put dongle in one of the available USB ports.

3. Power on PS3.

4. Point remote and click.



(Seriously, it's that easy.)

So, I plug this dongle thing into the front of my PS3 and then turn it on. I then point my Harmony at it and hit the play, stop, ff, rw...etc buttons on the harmony and it will be good to go? Do I have that right?

I'm not concerned with the power button I turn everything on manually.

avelanchefan

Ron I think thats right. It would be cool if you can use the ps2 program with the Harmony remote for this , then you would not have to manually program the IR's, all you would have to do is tell the harmony to use the ps2 remote.

cheddar

Here's the press release Toshiba released today. Looks like they will be completely out of everything except limited PC and notebook production by March.

http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/ir/en/news/20080219_03.htm

TOKYO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has undertaken a thorough review of its overall strategy for HD DVD and has decided it will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders. This decision has been made following recent major changes in the market. Toshiba will continue, however, to provide full product support and after-sales service for all owners of Toshiba HD DVD products.

HD DVD was developed to offer consumers access at an affordable price to high-quality, high definition content and prepare them for the digital convergence of tomorrow where the fusion of consumer electronics and IT will continue to progress.

“We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called 'next-generation format war' and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop,” said Atsutoshi Nishida, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation. "While we are disappointed for the company and more importantly, for the consumer, the real mass market opportunity for high definition content remains untapped and Toshiba is both able and determined to use our talent, technology and intellectual property to make digital convergence a reality.”

Toshiba will continue to lead innovation, in a wide range of technologies that will drive mass market access to high definition content. These include high capacity NAND flash memory, small form factor hard disk drives, next generation CPUs, visual processing, and wireless and encryption technologies. The company expects to make forthcoming announcements around strategic progress in these convergence technologies.

Toshiba will begin to reduce shipments of HD DVD players and recorders to retail channels, aiming for cessation of these businesses by the end of March 2008. Toshiba also plans to end volume production of HD DVD disk drives for such applications as PCs and games in the same timeframe, yet will continue to make efforts to meet customer requirements. The company will continue to assess the position of notebook PCs with integrated HD DVD drives within the overall PC business relative to future market demand.

This decision will not impact on Toshiba’s commitment to standard DVD, and the company will continue to market conventional DVD players and recorders. Toshiba intends to continue to contribute to the development of the DVD industry, as a member of the DVD Forum, an international organization with some 200 member companies, committed to the discussion and defining of optimum optical disc formats for the consumer and the related industries.

Toshiba also intends to maintain collaborative relations with the companies who joined with Toshiba in working to build up the HD DVD market, including Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures, and DreamWorks Animation and major Japanese and European content providers on the entertainment side, as well as leaders in the IT industry, including Microsoft, Intel, and HP. Toshiba will study possible collaboration with these companies for future business opportunities, utilizing the many assets generated through the development of HD DVD.

AsSiMiLaTeD

It's a sad day for those of us who don't want to pay $30 a pop for HD movies. There are two sides to the "competition is good for consumers and price" debate and everyone know where I stand - ultimately only time will tell who is right, but think about this for a minute:

2007, we saw sale after sale on Blu Ray discs, lots of half off and BOGO sales. Hell, I didn't pay more than $15 for anything in my Blu Ray collection of about 75 movies. Two days after the Warner announcement, all the sales mysteriously dissapeared, and have not returned since. I've not seen a single sale even remotely comparable in the last two months to what we saw before the announcement.

And don't give me that "Those were Christmas sales and they're over" crap, those were going on last year WAY before Christmas shopping began.

I have nothing against Blu Ray, and my BR collection outnumbers my HD DVD collection easily 2 to 1, maybe more. I'd be making the same statements if the tables were reversed and HD DVD was winning...

cheddar

I know what you're saying, but I think the $30 a pop figure is a bit high. Amazon.com always has almost all titles for like 30% off. And add that to promotions like the 3 for 2 sale on over a hundred titles that just ended this week, and you can get even more off.

http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/High-Def_Retailing/Amazon/Amazon_Offers_New_3-For-2_Deal_on_Blu-ray,_HD_DVD_Discs_/1459

The real competition is from DVD anyways. While the crazy price drops inspired by Toshiba basically giving their players and bundled hd-dvd movies away may be over. I'd say there will continue to be sales just like in any market where competition exists between hardware manufacturers, software distributers, and retailers.

Kris Siegel

Retail on BluRay was typically $30 but you rarely paid quite that much I believe.

Sucks for all early adopters. Thankfully I only paid about $150 for my HD-DVD player as it was an add-on for my XBox 360. Unfortunately I will most likely have to buy a PS3 for my HD movies. Oh well.

venomclan

cheddar wrote: »

The real competition is from DVD anyways. While the crazy price drops inspired by Toshiba basically giving their players and bundled hd-dvd movies away may be over. I'd say there will continue to be sales just like in any market where competition exists between hardware manufacturers, software distributers, and retailers.

This is correct, the real competition for Blu has just begun, in a market where they have less than 1% share. To be competitive, they must lower their prices, and they will in order to survive, they must convince J6P to go Blu as well.
Venom

PhantomOG

The competition for media prices doesn't come from having multiple formats, it comes from having large studio support with lots of titles and having a large installed user base to buy the media. Both of which will be IMPROVED now that HD-DVD is dead and people/studios/manufacturers will jump in. High prices for players was because smaller manufacturers didn't want to build a player for a dead format. Now we should see more manufacturers with lower prices. More players at lower prices means more people will buy. Having more players in the market means studios will release more titles. More titles and studio support will mean lower prices on the media.

Is this really that hard to understand???

We have one *format*. We don't have a monopoly. There is a huge difference. Maybe that's what people are confused about. If anything, it was closer to a monopoly before because there were so few hardware manufacturers to choose from.

AsSiMiLaTeD

I understand that point of view, I just don't agree with it. Like I said above, only time will tell. I'll come back in a year and look at this thread and see who was right. I genuinely hope I'm missing the boat on this one, as I have as much of a stake in the price of HD media as anyone...

cheddar

Manufacturing/Studio/Retailer competition and economy of scale worked pretty well to drive down prices in the SINGLE format DVD scenario. Why are you so convinced that it will play out differently now that volume sales should improve for blu-ray? Just look at how fast HDTV (also a single compatible format) prices have collapsed.

PhantomOG

Exactly. And as amazed as everyone here is with HD versus SD DVD, I'm betting the transition away from SD DVD will be much harder than it was from VHS. Competing formats only would have made that transition slower or even doomed it completely.

cheddar

Of course there is still the wildcard of TVs actually being different. In the transition between vhs and dvd, a tv was still a tv. But with analog broadcasts ending next year, people are getting the message loud and clear that hdtvs are different. I think we'll see a lot of blu-ray bundling with hdtvs in the coming year now that there is a clear format choice.

AsSiMiLaTeD

I hope you guys are right

reberly

Should the Gov't step in to help the poor souls that just had to buy that HD DVD before the HD media war picked a clear winner? Of course not... Nor should they help the homeowner who did no homework and overbought a house with zero money down on an negative ammortized loan that can not pay their mortgage. Ooops sorry to bring politics into the discussion.

cheddar

Here's the real short term win, of course.

Universal goes blu:

http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/Universal/Breaking:_Universal__Studios_Goes_Blu/1483

With all the studios releasing on one growing format, I can only hope that the floodgates start to open wide for great catalog and new releases in blu-ray from all the studios. Charge me amazon prices if you must, but let's get back to watching great movies in stellar quality already!!! .

Bill Ayotte

reberly wrote: »

Should the Gov't step in to help the poor souls that just had to buy that HD DVD before the HD media war picked a clear winner? Of course not... Nor should they help the homeowner who did no homework and overbought a house with zero money down on an negative ammortized loan that can not pay their mortgage. Ooops sorry to bring politics into the discussion.

Reported.

Grimster74

Well that didn't take long. Just checked Crutchfield's website and they have yanked all HD-DVD players off the website.

billbillw

cheddar wrote: »

Here's the real short term win, of course.

Universal goes blu:

http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/Universal/Breaking:_Universal__Studios_Goes_Blu/1483

With all the studios releasing on one growing format, I can only hope that the floodgates start to open wide for great catalog and new releases in blu-ray from all the studios. Charge me amazon prices if you must, but let's get back to watching great movies in stellar quality already!!! .

My favorite part of that press release...
"Universal will continue its aggressive efforts to broaden awareness for hi-def’s unparalleled offerings in interactivity and connectivity, at an increasingly affordable price."

I think this is key for any HD movie format to succeed, and hopefully Universal understands this. Nobody wants to pay $35 for a movie, regardless of image quality. I personally have never paid more than about $15 for an HD movie (thank goodness for BOGO sales) and probably never will.

I think the price, more than the format war, is what has kept sales from taking off. Price these movies at $20 or less for new releases and $10-$15 for older releases and sales will skyrocket.

venomclan

billbillw wrote: »

My favorite part of that press release...
"Universal will continue its aggressive efforts to broaden awareness for hi-def’s unparalleled offerings in interactivity and connectivity, at an increasingly affordable price."

I think this is key for any HD movie format to succeed, and hopefully Universal understands this. Nobody wants to pay $35 for a movie, regardless of image quality. I personally have never paid more than about $15 for an HD movie (thank goodness for BOGO sales) and probably never will.

I think the price, more than the format war, is what has kept sales from taking off. Price these movies at $20 or less for new releases and $10-$15 for older releases and sales will skyrocket.

I agree, and I think that we will see price drops now that the war is over. On both hardware and software.
Venom

jakelm

I still like the otion to watch HD on one side and SD on the other. To let friends and family borrow my DVD, is great in my book.

HD = 1 disk, all players...

Besisdes the options you get right out of the box with HD, unlike BR, that you have to upgrade, upgrade, upgrade, upgrade.....

Also, my XA1 has the best upconvert I have seen.


I'm am sorry to see them go.

cheddar

jakelm wrote: »

I still like the otion to watch HD on one side and SD on the other. To let friends and family borrow my DVD, is great in my book.

Of course when they price it 5 bucks more, it sort of loses its luster. I'd be quite happy if blu-ray maintains the no combo format with the 5 buck discount. .

AsSiMiLaTeD

cheddar wrote: »

Of course when they price it 5 bucks more, it sort of loses its luster. I'd be quite happy if blu-ray maintains the no combo format with the 5 buck discount. .

Eh, nevermind...

jakelm

cheddar wrote: »

Of course when they price it 5 bucks more, it sort of loses its luster. I'd be quite happy if blu-ray maintains the no combo format with the 5 buck discount. .

Not if you rent it out for $2.:eek:

cheddar

Meh, when they buy a blu-ray player, hand them the blu-ray instead...:p.

Texas42

Now if they would just make a decent (affordable) Blu-Ray player with component outputs (not just HDMI outputs). The PS3 is nice but no component outs....