Are there really no TVs which display at 24, 48, or 72Hz? It's my understanding that at least some of the upcoming players should output at 24fps, so that's one half of the equation taken care of...

Projectors can, but I'm not aware of any televisions that allow display at any framerate other than 60hz (or 50hz for PAL).

Not sure about the situation in the US but over here all HD TVs have to be able to handle both 50Hz and 60Hz display if they want to be labeled "HD ready". Doesn't seem so much of a stretch to bung 72Hz in there as well.

Here's something else:

The Pioneer BD player is being delayed until September supposedly.
That would be the one that's $1500-1800.
And it's not going to be able to play CD's.

Don't know if these have been posted here, but I found very interesting.
2 petitions, the first for Lionsgate, the second for Disney, regarding releasing in HD DVD
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takea...ltl=1148613674
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takea...ltl=1148613319

when will hd dvd players or blu-ray's be backwards compatible with regular dvds?

What do you mean? The current HD-DVD players play standard DVDs perfectly. In fact, there is a thread raving about the upscaling (and upsampling) of the Toshiba HD-DVD player with regular DVDs.

The initial Blu-Ray players will also play DVDs without problem (though most won't play CDs, oddly).

Disney said like a month ago that they would support both formats. And didn't Lion'sgate just say they would a couple of days ago?

Here's a great website for statistics re: amazon and whatknot:

http://www.thedvdwars.com/index.cfm

Disney said that they would probably wind up supporting both formats, but they haven't officially said that they're supporting HD DVD, and there's no time table in place as to when that might happen. It's been heavily rumored that Lionsgate and/or MGM will be releasing on HD DVD, but there haven't been any official announcements there yet either.

Thanks. For the record I've decided to stop stressing about this whole thing and just buy both. I'm just waiting for my locval Best Buy to get a Toshiba in so I can snatch it up. I figure I'm going to get a PS3 one way or the other anyway and this way I can dive into HD right away without having to sell a kidney to get the Samsung.

Besides, I just hate Samsung as a brand. I bought my first DVD player from them and it was a lemon. They gave me the run around on the phone for several weeks until they agreed to fix it, then when I got it back nothing had changed. I bought a 27" TV from them too and one day it just winked out. If I'm going to pay $1000.00 on a piece of equipment, it's not going to be from Samsung.

In my opinion, Toshiba makes the best DVD players in the world and I'm loving my Tosh 65" HDTV. I was also very impressed that they fixed their problem immediately with free firmware upgrades.

I don't see how anyone can consider it a waste to buy both because it's not like if one side loses your DVD player and all your software just dissapears.

Good read for negative info on both camps

http://www.audioholics.com/news/edit...DVDsfailed.php

Good read, indeed, and I agree with most everything they say. I do think they will end up (one or the other) becoming the standard, but I think that standard will take over on a very long process.

I think including the on-demand HD stuff as a viable contender to fight against either format is misleading. It will take decades to get the infrastructure in place to support mass downloads of HD feeds that have high enough bitrates to look as good as either HD or BD.

I've heard that nonsense for awhile. "No one will want HD disc formats because we will just get all our HD on demand or through downloads." That isn't viable and I don't see the bandwith issues in this country getting solved for decades.

Another thing no one seems to acknowledge is the fact these TV stations that are transmitting in HD prefer to just cram more channels on their bandwith instead of actually giving us higher quality video. HDnet is a rare exception.

HD discs are really going to be the best way for us to get HD content for a long time and neither format is dead on arrival.

HD
1920x1080x59.94-i, 50-i (16:9)
1920x1080x24-p, 23.976-p (16:9)
1440x1080x59.94-i, 50-i (16:9) MPEG-4 AVC / SMPTE VC-1 only
1440x1080x24-p, 23.976-p (16:9) MPEG-4 AVC / SMPTE VC-1 only
1280x720x59.94-p, 50-p (16:9)
1280x720x24-p, 23.976-p (16:9)


Am I reading this right? Does that mean 59.94 frames per second? Is there anything that is being shot or planning to be shot at that speed for normal playback? I've been wanting to see these specs emerge for a while. Goodbye motion blur.

It's 59.94 fields per second, or 29.97 frames.

Motion picture material shot on film at 24 frames per second is converted to 29.97 fps through 3:2 pulldown.

Damn. Got my hopes up for nothing.

Trying to keep the number of stickies from growing. De-sticking in favor of the FAQ thread. (I may merge these at some point.)

60 fps wouldn't get rid of motion blur. Ask a gamer.