Jason
AVForum

Toshiba backed out!!! Looks like this war is OVER!!! Of course Bill Gates is still behind HD DVD, but thats not going to be enough this time. I went to Fry’s this weekend, just to look at the current Bluray title releases, and man, I turned around, and, BAMMM, HD DVD “On Clearance”!!!!!!! Asked a rep what that meant and was told “Fry’s will no longer be stocking HD DVD titles as these sell out, sorry for the trouble”………………………

Of all Sony’s previous “yans” attempts (Beta, Vaio laptops, Clie PDAs, Playstation movies, Sony’s rootkit DVD copy protection scheme, and now Blu-ray), the only tangible benefits gained were in Sony’s favor, and all at the expense and detriment of consumers.

Sony - Learn from the past and stop trying to screw us!!!

I see a lot of arguments based on wishful thinking and preference here, instead of logic.

The only logical response to the format wars is to wait it out, unless you’re in Mark Goldberg’s shoes and your livelihood demands that you do something with HD *now*. If you’re just going to use HD video for entertainment, the only sensible choice is to wait. Any other choice runs a 50/50 chance of being a waste of money.

The answer for me was quite simple, and existed before I even purchased HDV production gear. Windows Media Video. It was the way I first saw a video brochure for my camera, and it played well in 720 on my 3.5 year old Gateway computer. I discovered that my old copy of Vegas Video 4 would render results in WMV, so I was immediately able to offer photo montages for reception projection in HD.

The trick is to use a good notebook or desktop PC for playback. In addition to being available right now, it offers the following strong advantages over these two elusive disc formats:

* shows can be accessed quickly, without loading a disc
* shows can be distributed on the existing Data DVD format with no need of new media or special hardware
* technology is proven and out there now with no need to wait for the format war to play out
* the iPod generation is comfortable with hard drive playback and not thrilled about going back to discs
* software in HD-DVD and Blu Ray is sparse and players are expensive
* acceptable computer for playback is much less money than these limited use disc players
* computer playback can adapt to a wide variety of formats and codecs, such as Quicktime, DiVX, H.262, m2t, etc.
* no need to wait for price drops of these expensive players
* no need to deal with the high priced Blu-Ray and HD-DVD burnable discs

I have been successful in releasing WMV-HD to my event clients, and they have been able to play then now, without waiting for the format war to play out sometime in the future. I have also found that menu technology exists in these formats, and I do not thing the success of either Blu Ray or HD-DVD is assured.

_________________
Mark Goldberg
Spectrum Productions
HD Video & Digital Photography

pnorth says: It’s a very nice list you have…. however, how many of those mfg’s actually have put thier money where there mouth is and have actually developed devices or technology to support the blu-ray format? Take that into consideration and the list isn’t nearly that long.

All of them have either brought Blu-ray products to the market, or anounced Blu-ray products. Search on the net if you have time.

Um, ya - I just saw the LG recorder at the store LOL, and the hitachi bluray player is um, an HD DVD Player? what’s up with that? Sharp had a player at CES but where are their plans to mass produce it? Why don’t you go out and buy a sony in june, oh yah, wait its been pushed back yet again to october… so yet again - my comment of putting their money where their mouth is a directed at a deeper commitment and if the commitment where there we would see release dates for products for each of those companies, thus far hardware wise Samsung (crappy player and all - do a search on the internet), Sony, and Pioneer are really the only ones in the HT market with players. (yes I know the PC market is somewhat different)… So Bluray fanboy - start a campaign to get these companies on the stick and start releasing real products - I would start with t-shirts - blu-ray players apparently are a lot harder to build (ask Sony) oh ya, and add me to the list I’m announcing that I’m going to make a blu-ray player too. I’ll charge $500 bucks it will only play HD DVD’s though I”ve just got to find me some blu-ray stickers ROFL… “Announced blu-ray products” announcements don’t mean sh*t…

Announcements don’t mean sh*t?

So Hitachi wont release a Blu-ray recorder? Pioneer, LG, Sharp etc. wont release Blu-ray players? Is that what you are saying?

And Hitachi supports both formats, so it is normal if they have HD-DVD players, haven’t crossed one on the net yet though.

Guest says: And speaking of announcements - sony announced that all of the initial bluray disks they produced would take full capability of the 50 gig dual layer discs. Thus far disks have only been single layer 25 gig disks (5 gig less than all of the current HD disks - ALL of thier disks are dual layer). Funny that they didn’t announce that they were axing extra material from current dvds to put onto those huge 25 gig mpeg2 bluray disks (let’s not even talk about the lack of audio options). And to continue the sony bashing - ps3? aren’t you pissed that all of the super cool options they talked about are GONE! Toned down thier announcements I guess, welcome back to reality sony…

So again “announcements” don’t make me laugh bluray, especially sony has been a smoke and mirror show - let’s hope they can pull it together one of these days.

huh? lack of audio? They have PCM 5.1 uncompressed audio (gets good reviews). This is in the same line as DTS HD and Dolby trueHD. Lionsgate is going to release their second wave of BR movies with DTS HD.
Like what, 2 hdmi outputs? Oh my god, what a disaster!!! NOT. And, dont give up on dual-layer BR’s yet, it is only a matter of time and you know it. No reason denying it.

So again “announcements” don’t make me laugh blu-ray, especially Sony has been a smoke and mirror show - let’s hope they can pull it together one of these days.

G says: All of them have either brought Blu-ray products to the market, or anounced Blu-ray products. Search on the net if you have time.

Um, ya - I just saw the LG recorder at the store LOL, and the hitachi bluray player is um, an HD DVD Player? what’s up with that? Sharp had a player at CES but where are their plans to mass produce it? Why don’t you go out and buy a sony in june, oh yah, wait its been pushed back yet again to october… so yet again - my comment of putting thier money where their mouth is a directed at a deeper commitment and if the commitment where there we would see release dates for products for each of those companies, thus far hardware wise samsung (crappy player and all - do a search on the internet), Sony, and Pioneer are really the only ones in the HT market with players. (yes I know the PC market is somewhat different)… So Bluray fanboy - start a campaign to get these companies on the stick and start releasing real products - I would start with t-shirts - bluray players apparently are a lot harder to build (ask sony) oh ya, and add me to the list I’m announcing that I’m going to make a bluray player too. I’ll charge $500 bucks it will only play HD DVD’s though I”ve just got to find me some bluray stickers ROFL… “Announced bluray products” announcements don’t mean sh*t…