Format war over. Checkmate HD-DVD

[Conquest10]

That's it. HD-DVD has won.

HD-DVD players are now under $100.

http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9809165-1.html

[rhegedus]

It will be interesting to see how many people can actually buy one.

[jman98]

Do note, as I posted in another similar thread today, that the player that WalMart and apparently BestBuy are selling for under $100 only has 1080i output. Some people might care about that. I'll be interested once players that can do 1080p come down in price.

[tmelo38]

I don't believe it'll be over because of that.
Alot of the major brands like Pioneer, Sharp, Samsung, Panasonic, Philips and Sony and maybe alot more are backing up Blue Ray, while HD only has, I think, Microsoft and Toshiba for major brands.

Not that I'm voting for either one, but it does make you think, right?

T.

[Heywould3]

black friday will produce sub 100 1080P players ill bet. thats what im waiting for, i already have a 1080p upcoverting dvd player and the tv also upconverts and i dont have any 1080I dvds so waist of money i think.

[MOVIEGEEK]

It looks like Toshiba is going for BD's throat:massive advertising this fall/winter,KMart/Sears is only selling HD DVD players and steep discounts on HD DVD players at all the major retailers in the US.
I should point out that this sale is only for the A2 which is discontinued.

[yoda313]

I just got the xbox 360 hddvd addon drive for 110.00 plus shipping on ebay. It came tonight. I bought superman returns and transformers on hd-dvd.

I definitely like the high def. This is great news if they're pushing standalone players to that price. Keep it coming!!!!

I'd actually buy a bluray player if I could get one for 200.00 or better yet 150.00. I want to have access to all movies in high def.

[Conquest10]

I'd actually buy a bluray player if I could get one for 200.00 or better yet 150.00. I want to have access to all movies in high def.

I doubt that will happen anytime this or next year. Probably next Christmas at the earliest.

[Nelson37]

Crystal-ball gazing is a complete waste of time, unless you are planning to invest.

The market, meaning millions on consumers, is what will decide this issue, and absolutely nothing else. The market has not yet decided what it wants. The market does not think, it just acts. It is not rational, it is just all that matters.

It ain't over till its over.

[thecoalman]

The market, meaning millions on consumers, is what will decide this issue, and absolutely nothing else. The market has not yet decided what it wants. The market does not think, it just acts.

The masses buy what they can afford, If Joe six-pack walks into a Wal-Mart to purcahse a DVD player and sees a Hi-Def player sub $100 he's walking out of Wal-Mart with a Hi-Def player. I wouldn't go as far declaring BR dead but if they can put millions of cheap units on the shelves before Christmas the future of BD is looking pretty bleak.

[SatStorm]

IMO, this is not a Checkmate for HDDVD, but more of a move that shall give balance to the two camps once again.

I mean, BluRay has more sales if you count PS3. And maybe more disc sales because of this (if you count the sales in a very specific way, which personally I doubt...).

IMO HD DVD now has the opportunity to boost the sales and became even with blue ray on playback units. A lead that because of PS3 was lost during 2007. Eventually what end up on houses by massive amounts, "wins", but today what end up on our PCs also "wins".

And the way I "smell" it, those older predictions may turn true after all: BluRay for Data, HD DVD for Video.

Indeed some may wait for players that output 1080p at 24fps. But in the meanwhile, for 100$ (~77 euros) a substitute of 1080i won't be bad for those too. After all, you can always use this player later, on the second TV you have on the bedroom or on your kids room.

Oh, let me also mention that those prices won't be worldwide available by XMass. But the USA market is always a good indication on those things (there are exceptions of course...)

[Marvingj]

Whatever Format that easier to copy won the war......

[deejay.2001]

THIS PLAYER IS FOR NOTHING
IT IS NOT FULL HD IT CAN HANDLE 1080i ONLY....
SO IT IS SOMETHING LIKE BETTER DVD PLAYER..WAR IS NOT OVER YET

[SatStorm]

It is Full HD - 1080 lines.
And if you don't like it, don't buy it.
BTW, it is 1080i and this is exactly what the Sky Digital HD channels (and all the current HD DVB S / S2 Channels) are broadcasting.

And why you shout? We can read you...

[RLT69]

...Except Joe Six Pack has a freakin' DVD collection and is not about to replace that with a HD-DVD or Blu-ray collection. DVDs are just fine for Joe Six Pack! He's not about to get suckered into another format war, not after what he went through with Beta vs VHS. Not too mention, Joe Six pack doesn't own an HD TV.

Thanks for playing.

[RLT69]

1080i is not FULL HD. 1080p is FULL HD. Would you go read an article. Hate break it to you, movies on HD optical media are 1080p not 1080i.

Thanks for playing.

[SatStorm]

The 1080 lines are Full HD. There are 2 flavors: Interlace / progressive.
There is no 1080p broadcast in Europe. There are some 1080i channels.
Those called and are Full HD channels.
You mean something else: That movies mostly are 1080 progressive frames on 24p. Some of them are stored on optical discs that way.
Few TV sets at the time being handle 24p. They don't playback that framerate correct. Definitely not the ones before May 2007.
Go read an article yourself.
I don't play in my age.

[Des]

Personally I can wait. The component output of my Toshiba looks really good to me on my 37" HD TV. Of course beauty is in the eye of the beholder...

That said, what I am waiting for is more dual format units to hit the market. Units that will play both HD and BD disks seem to be the logical outcome in the future. LG has had one out for nearly a year now, Samsung has just thrown their resources in that direction too:
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-entertainment/samsung-adds-eagerly-awaited-bd-profile-...yer-314480.php

As a consumer that will be a win/win situation. I don't have to have 2 machines in case my favorite movie comes out in only one format and not the other or if it has better extras in one frmat but not the other (of course I rarely indulge in the extras).

And, of course, more units sold and made and more competition means lower pricing

I think that from a manufacturing point of view it would be a better move to do a dual format machine as well, don't need to run two production lines, save money on unit cases, graphics, boxes, instruction sheets, etc. Why produce two similar products when you can produce just one.

My 2 cents.

--dES

[deejay.2001]

==>There is no 1080p broadcast in Europe. There are some 1080i channels.

o do not care about what broadcast is anywhere
if you buy HD DVD movie it is 1080p not 1080i.....

1080i is something like 720p....resolution will be less and you will see it on FULL hd 1080p lcd TV as i can see it...

it is useless to but this player now

[RLT69]

'1080p is sometimes referred to in marketing materials as "Full High-Definition".'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1080p

"To compare 1080i and 1080p, it is important to compare framerates. Due to interlacing, 1080i has twice the frame-rate but half the resolution of a 1080p signal using the same bandwidth, although, also due to interlacing, 1080i looks to be the same resolution, although with more flicker."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1080i


This is what I mean when people don't read. You don't want 1080i. Hell you don't want 480i but most TVs are 480i so you live with it when watching DVDs. But why on earth you would you spend money on a new technology that doesn't even fullfill it's true nature??? Why would you buy a TV that's only capable of 1080i? Why would you buy a HD player that's only capable of 1080i. Why would you call that Full HD when it is not? Why would you settle? Just because BROADCAST TV isn't in 1080p yet???

I can get movies now in 1080p. I can play games in 1080p. TV will catch up.

Christ if I'm going plunk down a couple grand on an HD TV it better damn well handle 1080p!

[Nilfennasion]

Ah yes, the usual assumptions on what Joe Six-Pack thinks and wild leaps of logic are accounted for again.

First of all, the price that players sell for in the first few years of a technology's lifespan are pretty meaningless. HD-DVD/Blu-Ray players could still sell at $1000 a piece and they would be a loss to the manufacturer due to the cost of the components. That is why there are consortiums for both formats that work together as a group. The manufacturers of each technology (Sony or Toshiba, aka the Evil Empire) subsidise the cost of the player manufacturers and make that back on their patents for disc structures. $100 for a HD-DVD player is not a good sign for HD-DVD. It is saying that Toshiba is taking a massive hit in the wallet every time someone buys a HD-DVD player. That, coupled with lack of studio support in terms of software, is the disastrous business model that was spoken of by Bill Hunt. Or to put it more bluntly, cheaper might win you a battle, but it is not going to win the war if every other aspect of what you are doing is a blunder.

Second, Joe Six-Pack is irrelevant to the studios at this juncture. Just like he was irrelevant at this stage of DVD-Video's lifetime. Joe Six-Pack does not buy films on DVD in an obsessive, focused manner. Joe Cinemaphile does. Joe Cinemaphile might look at his downscaling plasma TV, for instance, and say "I might upgrade when I get the cash because I want progressive". In order to understand why, you must watch the atrocious transfers Lucas gave the first two Star Wars prequels on DVD-Video. Even on all but the best deinterlacers, these two discs alias enough to make one's eyes bleed. I cannot emphasise this enough: *Progressive Formatting Gets Rid Of That Aliasing!* And there is only one place you can get a truly progressive home video signal: Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. And trust me, if my sister's boyfriend can notice when the picture shimmers unnatural because some dickheads in the 1950s thought it would be a good idea to display pictures by halves instead of one at a time, then HD has plenty to appeal to Joe Six-Pack. Joe Six-Pack twenty years from now will regard 720P as an absolute minimum, in fact.

I have a DVD here of A Walk On The Moon, a film in which Anna Paquin plays the 13-year-old daughter (hence my buying the disc). I will gladly give it to anyone who thinks they can watch it zoomed to fit a 40" plasma or LCD display and tell me that DVD is "fine". 480I/576I has not been "fine" since Joe Six-Pack looked at home videos and noticed they do not present the film they like the way it was presented in the cinema. I can name plenty of John Wayne or Sam Peckinpah fans who would kill to see those old "classics" in 1080P. When you see two halves of the picture moving independently of each other (thanks, interlacing bastards!) as on the aforementioned DVD, you do not need to be a rocket scientist to understand why.

Making the formats progressive was really the only smart move to come out of this format war.

[Nilfennasion]

1080i looks to be the same resolution, although with more flicker."

This is the worst misinformation about the difference, and it drives me nuts to see even the format websites repeating it. 1080 is the same resolution as 1080, that's it.

Interlacing means interlacing artefacts. That's why, when you watch 480I/576I broadcasts of such things as football games, the lines marking positions on the field appear to flicker violently either as the camera moves or even sometimes when it is standing perfectly still. Motion is always a problem for an interlaced video system, and the only reason people are only aware of it now is because VHS lacked the resolution to make it apparent.

Progressive is one whole picture at a time. Means there are no interlacing artefacts. No flicker. No bad transfers where the picture appears to be a mess of lines that move independently of each other. The difference between the two has nothing to do with the resolution of the signal.

Yeesh the internet sucks in terms of keeping things factual.

[MOVIEGEEK]

Yeesh the internet sucks in terms of keeping things factual.

Amen,most HDTV's do a better job deinterlacing than the players so you don't gain much using a 1080p signal...especially if the TV has a resolution of 1366x768.
I have a A20(outputing 1080i) hooked up to a 42" HDTV and I let the TV deinterlace.

[Nilfennasion]

Amen,most HDTV's do a better job deinterlacing than the players so you don't gain much using a 1080p signal...especially if the TV has a resolution of 1366x768.

No need to deinterlace with HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. Assuming the disc has natively 1080P material encoded to it (which is the case with most major-studio releases so far), then the player just outputs the signal as 1080P (assuming you use HDMI of course) and lets the TV take it from there.

If the TV has a resolution of anything other than 1920 x 1080P, then 720P is the better option anyway.

Even in such cases, P looks so beautiful after being raised through the aliasing-prone 1980s that I tend to weep and proclaim to the salesmen that it is more beautiful than I dared to hope.

[DVWannaB]

My comments are more geared toward the so-called what Joe Six-Pack wants, doesnt want or even cares about. Nilfennasion is very very wrong. Joe Six-Pack does not give a rats rear about interlaced or progressive and can barely tell if there is shimmy/jerkiness/unnatrural movement/artifacts in a movie. That is all video-phile chatter. So 20 years from now Joe will not be able to articulate what progressive or interlace is. All Joe wants is a way to watch his movies and do so without breaking the bank, no matter what the format is.

I read all of the comments above and unfortunately many miss the point particularly with what the everyday man on the street will or will not buy or even what he wants or cares about. Lets not mistake what the Videohelp.com regulars see or want with the masses. The 2 are polar opposites. I got a 1080i Plasma about 2 years ago and my wife had the gall to say she couldnt see the difference between the stunning HD content and the SD broadcasts. She finally came around about 2 months ago and admitted she can now tell the difference. Took her almost 2 years to come around. So you think that Joe Six-Pack who looks and thinks like my wife cares about format wars or even know what the fight is all about? They dont care and will wait to see which one is on the market, economically affordable and equally affordable matching technology. I may be a little more advanced than Joe Six-Pack, but I am with him on this one.

PS. Let me add that the latest development does not mean or indicate that HD-DV has won the format war. As a high-functioning Joe Six-Pack, seems that all the commercials on TV of recent movie releases seem to offer the movies in DVD and Blu-Ray only. May be reality or just my assumption.

[RLT69]

@MOVIEGEEK - was Nilfennasion agreeing with you? I think he was making a point that 1080i v 1080p were the same resolution but the quality difference was due to an interlaced picture versus progress scan picture

I can name plenty of John Wayne or Sam Peckinpah fans who would kill to see those old "classics" in 1080P. When you see two halves of the picture moving independently of each other (thanks, interlacing bastards!) as on the aforementioned DVD, you do not need to be a rocket scientist to understand why.

Thus I would say Nilfennasion is in favor of 1080p because of the better picture quality. Obviously Nilfennasion can speak for himself but that is the conclusion I would draw from his statements.

It was the point I was trying to make: 1080p provides a better quality picture than 1080i. Progressive scan look better than interlaced.

[videopoo]

My comments are more geared toward the so-called what Joe Six-Pack wants, doesnt want or even cares about. Nilfennasion is very very wrong. Joe Six-Pack does not give a rats rear about interlaced or progressive and can barely tell if there is shimmy/jerkiness/unnatrural movement/artifacts in a movie. That is all video-phile chatter. So 20 years from now Joe will not be able to articulate what progressive or interlace is. All Joe wants is a way to watch his movies and do so without breaking the bank, no matter what the format is.

I read all of the comments above and unfortunately many miss the point particularly with what the everyday man on the street will or will not buy or even what he wants or cares about. Lets not mistake what the Videohelp.com regulars see or want with the masses. The 2 are polar opposites. I got a 1080i Plasma about 2 years ago and my wife had the gall to say she couldnt see the difference between the stunning HD content and the SD broadcasts. She finally came around about 2 months ago and admitted she can now tell the difference. Took her almost 2 years to come around. So you think that Joe Six-Pack who looks and thinks like my wife cares about format wars or even know what the fight is all about? They dont care and will wait to see which one is on the market, economically affordable and equally affordable matching technology. I may be a little more advanced than Joe Six-Pack, but I am with him on this one.

Well Said!

My Walmart was sold out at 7:45AM...the sale was supposed to start at 8.

[Nilfennasion]

No, DVWannaB, you are presuming to speak for literally hundreds of millions of people in the developed world and assume their prejudices reflect your own. You are only correct in so far as you do not give a rat's about HD. There are generally two kinds of people who do not give a rat's about HD. Those who have never seen it (a shrinking minority) or those who have only seen bad demonstrations of it.

The real world, however, sees all the legacy issues from the 1950s that have stuck with SD television like an appendix or body hair, and a much larger group than you are willing to admit says to themselves "I want these things gone". As I said, if you are so certain that people don't care, then I invite you to come watch this disc I own that my 70-year-old grandmother asked me to turn off because of how bad the picture was primarily due to interlacing.

RLT69 is correct, I am saying that progressive basically jabs interlaced in the butt and then some. It takes a lot of thinking about to comprehend the difference between a moving picture that updates one whole image at a time compared to one half at a time. And as I said, anyone who believes otherwise is invited to have a good look at the Miramax DVD of A Walk On The Moon on any decent-sized screen and kiss my art. So to speak.

[SatStorm]

RLT69 I don't disagree with you, but as you pointed out: '1080p is sometimes referred to in marketing materials as "Full High-Definition".'

There is the word "sometimes" there. And let me inform you that this marketing doesn't exist here in Europe. For us here, when they say "Full HD" they mean 1080 lines. Neither i neither p. Here they talk about lines and only!

Television broadcasts are what the mainstream people compare with. So, if the 1080i players look as good as the 1080i broadcasts, that's it: It's OK.
And on panels less that 46", you won't see a difference on a TV Screen between 1080i to 1080p. Personally I can't see a difference between 720p and 1080i/p on 42" sets!

IMO the problem today is not on i/p but on the framerate: Only few expensive panels support correct this 24fps BD/HDDVD offers. All the models up to May 2007 have motion problems with 24fps.

Now, let me point that Half Europeans - or more - already have LCD/Plasma Screens. Most of them are 32". So, for the most of them, 1080i is OK, and probably even more than enough!
mainstream people don't buy TVs every 6 months, but every 4 - 5 years or even more. So, for all those already with a LCD/Plasma screen, this 1080p/24fps is something for the far future.

You are an enthusiast. Enthusiasts are a small minority of the market. For you, those players are unacceptable. Don't buy them. But for those with LCD/plasma sets already, those players are a perfect choice to see on their screens what they already have.

Yes, 1080i is a bad choice, but this is what they determined for the broadcasts (IMO 720p sometimes look better 1080i). The Broadcasts is what mainly TVs are about, not the DVDs neither the Games. You point of view is limited by needs far away the mainstream ones.

deejay.2001, you don't care about the HDTV Broadcasts in Europe. So?
The biggest current HDTV market in Europe is the HDTV satellite subscription services. That won't change for the follow 5 years.

[Nilfennasion]

So, for all those already with a LCD/Plasma screen, this 1080p/24fps is something for the far future.

True. But as the saying goes, there is a new consumer born every day. By this time in 2009, it will be more difficult to buy a 40" or larger TV that does not support 1080P/24FPS.

To steer it back on topic, however, I seem to recall that the Sega Dreamcast cut its price down to $300 (Australian) a lot faster after being launched than the Sony PlayStation 2. Funny how races work in the electronics market...