Funny.

I don't know what you're talking about. My player doesn't have any of those problems.

And since I don't have an 1080p display, I honestly don't give a shit.

Man, "cupcake." I tell ya, there are enough guys around here with a hard-on for me to have an orgy. Thanks for the attention.

Good points lets look at them.

1) All HD DVD discs are 1080p, but I will grant you the Toshiba players are not so that is a plus for Blu-ray with the .1% of people in the US that have TVs that can accept a 1080p signal.

2) I agree about properly encoded discs. Using Mpeg2 is a major mistake by the Blu-ray camp and I'm betting many of the first Blu-ray releases will have to be double dipped on down the road when they start using better codecs and dual layered discs. Thankfully HD DVD is using VC1 and dual layered discs right out of the gate. Big plus for HD DVD.

3) Totally agree on the sound formats. DD+ decoding is a big plus for the Toshiba players. Why Blu-ray is neglecting full support of it I don't know but that is a big plus for HD DVD. Considering launch Blu-ray titles are cramming MPEG2 and possibly LPCM on a single layered disc they are just asking for video quality to suffer. Clear advantage to HD DVD.

4) Yeah, first generation hardware sucks. You are going to find headaches on the first gen HD DVD and Blu-ray machines, but at least Toshiba has upgradeable firmware that can help unlike the Sony machine. Second generation players for both will be what most consumers will want.

5) No etc, etc needed you made great points in favor of HD DVD. Good job.

Darkside, true.
Toshiba is already aware of all problems. At the moment, they're getting ready to release their first firmware upgrade. The Japanese already got it. to Toshiba. Wonder if BR customers will have the same attention paid to them.

I couldnt give a crap about you being a female, i just like to post stuff like that on your posts because you seem to love attention (and so often love to point out that you're female) and im just playing into it LOL.

Uhhh...i'm not female.

...unless I'm with those guys who prefer me that way.

Nor do I remember you ever claiming to be. The things people get accused of around here.

I thought dfn was a gay man.


Have the companies made any promises about how many HD-DVD's they expect to release this year?

Si.

No idea where he got that from.

I think they said 200...if i'm not mistaken?

I think with Futureproof in mind. A HD-DVD Player at this point and up until a while from now, is FAR from it. So its a failure hardware wise to me. Not to mention so many people having problems with films and hardware. Shame really.

The reason BR discs are in MPEG2 is because it has space to SPARE on the disc, vs HD-DVD which is cramming as much as possible into the tiny disc. With the MPEG2 encoding going up to 30megs, i forsee nothing but beautiful picture. Its not trying out untested formats just to rush to the market due to low disc space, its going to the proven method for 100% perfection at 1080p.

I was mentioning the Audio formats due to the tosh player not outputting the proper audio signal to the receiver on a lot of discs. Not the actual encoding themselves. I am not well versed on audio formats so i dont know the differences quality wise.

Whos to say the Sony machine also wont be upgradable through the ethernet connection? And has anyone in the US even gotten a actual firmware upgrade that has made a difference in anything? Im almost posotive i can answer that myself with a big fat no.


Must be nice to live in your world! LOL

DFN, you arent female? Ive read maybe 3-4 posts you've made stating you were. Perhaps you are just living out a fantasy online, but thats good that you've finally cleared it up.

You realize that every proper HD DVD release to date has been on dual-layer, 30 gig discs. The MPEG-2 launch titles on Blu-ray will be on 25 gig discs.

Look at the HD DVD picture on a well-calibrated display and tell me what your complaints are. I don't care if they're encoded with blueberry pie as long as they look this good.

Clearly.

Again, I don't look at this as an HD DVD vs. Blu-ray thing, and I am not a staunch supporter of either format. Still, it seems like you're blindly supporting Blu-ray despite only having a very cursory understanding of the facts involved.

Uhh...where? You're the only person who's ever made that mistake.

man, we need a killfile in this place in the worst way.

are there any review sites that post shots of the SDVD compared to the HD-DVD/BR?

There is no way to get screen shots of a HD-DVD. And Blu-Ray isn't out yet. So no.

When there are computer drives on the market, this will be possible. Until then, just no way to do it.

No -- without HD DVD PC drives and vid cap software, there's not really an accurate way to do this yet. Anything else would involve people snapping pictures of their TVs or projection screens with a digital camera, and that's not going to give a good representation of the differences.

The 1st generation Blu-Ray players are about as crippled as you can get when it comes to the new audio formats. They don't have any on-board decoders (at least not on the Samsung and Sony) and today's HDMI is useless for HD sound. So good luck getting HD sound from them.

And even then, you're going to have to have a video card that can take them, no?

We have vhs and beta. I bought beta because I sold both and had them set up side by side playing the same movie on the same tv sets (Sony XBR). Beta won for sure but vhs won the popular vote. So you see, it's not the picture, it's the hype.

So we have Tosh now, I got one and it is better than any movie I have ever seen. Even in the movie house. Sure it's grainy, it's film. You are now seeing film on your screen, not compressed tape or processed dvd, but film.

The thing is, the real thing is, there will be a difference in picture and sound from both camps but that diff will be too small for the average consumer to notice so to the victor will win on hype or price. You may like the beta but you will own a vhs.

By the way I still have my Sony Beta machine and there is an interesting aside to this chat. My twenty year old collection of tapes include beta and vhs and guess what, the beta are showing tracking problems and picture degradation, the vhs are still looking pretty good.

The tape degrading issue reminds me of my one big worry with the Blu-ray discs. How they are going to hold up over time. Problem with stuff like this is possible issues may not even start to show up until a few years down the road. Sony is banking on that durabis2 coating, but how do we know it will hold up over years of use? I really want to see some of these Blu-ray discs put through some torture tests to make sure we are not simply buying disposible discs.

Absolutely! This is the main reason for my reluctantance, to be an early adopter of the first generation HD-DVD Player. Typically, first generation A/V hardware, are subjected to major, or minor defects, and malfunctions.

What coating is HD DVD using? Will it hold up over time? I notice it looks a bit different than dvd.

Actually, I could see THROUGH the one HD DVD I have (Jarhead).

BR needs a much heavier coating because the data layer is much closer to the bottom of the disc than any of the other formats that have come out. That means it's MUCH easier to kill a disc if you get it scratched, etc. It's also the reason why they're having trouble with the dual-layer discs. The laser can't read through the coating.

The good news is that Toshiba is working on a firmware upgrade that will hopefully fix a lot of the problems. Plus, the early players are a PC and built in Japan. Future players won't be. This should be the "brick shithouse" of HD DVD players.

Yeah, a few forum members have questioned me about that lately.

It's no secret that I was a BR fan-boy up until the last month or so. I posted about my experience with the HD DVD demo a few months ago and I was really impressed. I also said that it was BR's war to lose and it definitely was. After HD came out, I started doing more research and realized that a lot of the advantages Sony claimed weren't founded. Sure, BR has a higher capacity but they're still having problems getting DL discs to work. Plus, they're using MPG2 instead of VC1. HD movies don't need 50g to run right. Plus, the price is right in every aspect.

I dunno. I have a laundry list of reasons why I dumped BR and I've gone over them on this board dozens of time. The only advantages BR has is it's support at the moment and support has nothing to do with the format itself being better. Plus, top it all of with sony's "mine is bigger than ANY of yours" attitude and I'll never buy another product of theirs after this fiasco. Bottom line: BR costs twice the money for no reason. Plus, I believe the public is dumb and cheap. They're going to want something with DVD in the name IF they decide to get a new player...and that new player is going to cost half of what the competition is putting out. And the prices will only go down from there.

BR has yet to prove itself. If and when it does, I'll have been enjoying HD movies for quite a while.

And I'm still waiting for the posts about my being female...

or did you just assume that because I was talking about "guys" that I was a woman?