Re: Blu-Ray or HD, who's gonna win the format war

"Sean Black" <sean@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:nxwcaHeg$nAGFw0G@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In article <QDtMh.15618$267.8500@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Temsonic
<dim.sp@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes

"RCE Defiant" <peterfcukthespimstones@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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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years ago and they're already being told it's all out of date, and from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.


All valid points, but to be fair you can get a UK Blu Ray player for under
£500 now, I believe some places are doing the Samsung for £450, even less
if you don't mind importing.

By all accounts the PS3 is a pretty good Blu Ray player too, even if it
does have it's limitations.

There's an assumption here that people only require a single player. A
typical home these days would already have two or three DVD players (not
counting a PC) in different rooms and it is usually expected that a disc can
be played back on any one of them. I have a friend in Brooklyn who owns a
HD-DVD, a Blu-Ray and a multi-standard DVD player. I could make copies of
BBC programmes and send them to him on a PAL DVD but he insists I convert
them to NTSC first so he can play them back on _any_ DVD player in his
apartment. He also likes to pass the discs on to his brother and parents who
live in different apartments and do not have the fancy technology he owns.
In theory I could make a HD-DVD compatible disc of 'Torchwood' and send that
to him but I think he prefers a standard resolution DVD for the reasons
mentioned above.

(kim)


.

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