Mod note: continued from round one:

That's not rumor. It's fact based on the specs as we know them. And have known them for months. None of these machines are worth anything on the audio side. Last I checked, the Pioneer couldn't even play CD, so that would make it a downgrade from the Samsung, in features at least. Sounds like a BD idiot wrote that.

They weren't really referring to audio. We don't know what any of these players are going to look like until they're out.

I assume you mean the video output rather than the actual looks? They'd have to screw up (like Samsung did on HDMI) for it to be bad. Video is the one thing I'm not worried about on either format. Well, not much. With 1080p24 as the baseline, I assume any company that has historically made decent video players will continue to do so. Sony, Pioneer, Denon, Panasonic, LG are a start. And any company that has sucked will continue to do so. Philips, Cyberhome, etc.

It's basically a non-issue compared to the audio. I find it hilarious that 99% of the discussion is on video. And most of the comments are "it looks awesome!" Duh, it's 1080, CBS football looks awesome, too. No logic at all.

Video is the big draw for next-gen discs. More people have HDTVs than 7.1 receivers or high-end ($1000+) speakers.

Have you read the BD reviews? That's NOT the reaction at the moment.

The digital bits has put up the hd-dvd news from today about the various studios. Curiously though, they say that Warner is going to release 35-50 hd-dvd titles and an unknown amount of BD titles. Of the articles that they cited, I didnt see ANYTHING about the BD titles. Funny that they added that blurb. :rolleyes:

I just went there (digital bits) for the first time in a while... why don't they have a SINGLE blu-ray review up yet? Seems little odd to me. I know that they have never been a very timely or prolific site for reviews, but to not have a single one yet? Seems like they have almost daily blu-ray announcements. But they apparently don't watch them. ;)

Anyone else read that Sony exec that said that there are "already 100 BD titles on the market" in an interview? Blatant, flat out lie.

I think that is accurate. Of course they are all of the same movie, and it took 500 discs to get enough that worked.

Ain't it time to close this for length?

it wasn't sony. it was pioneer.

No, it was Phil Harrison.

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/wee...835502,00.html

There were only 24 as of today.

Some interesting stuff from going to Best Buy and Magnolia today.

First, I finally got a chance to see the 2007 Mitsubishi 1080p TVs. They looked really awesome, but I'm waiting for the 732 series so I can get the dark detailer, because a lot of the shadows were losing detail.

Anyway, they had the Mits 57731 hooked up to the Toshiba HD DVD player. They actually took the demo player off the shelf and hooked it up for the first time since BD came out! Yay! And they let me mess around with the settings. They were playing the HD DVD demo disc, and we were flipping around on it. Batman Begins, King Kong, and Charlie And The Chocolate Factory all looked awesome. There were also some shots of various flowers that made my jaw drop. They let me mess around with the TV settings, which also helped. I spent about half an hour talking to one of the HT guys, who completely agreed with me that BD wasn't worth anything right now, but he was still interested in seeing what the PS3 could do.

What's really interesting is he told me that they have sold 12 HD DVD players since launch, and only 3 BD players. He said they would have sold more HD DVD players, but he can't get them fast enough. As for BD players, they still had some in stock, none were selling. The one bad thing is that he confirmed that they've been continuously getting discs a week late. Apparently the reason for this is that they aren't getting enough discs to go around to the various stores.

I then stopped over at Magnolia A/V. They had no HD DVD player hooked up that I could see. They did have the Samsung hooked up to the most beautiful Pioneer Elite plasma. The TV was only $10,000, so I thought what the hell, I'll buy it. Yeah, I wish. Anyway. They were playing the demo disc. Ultraviolet did look great, but as Josh said, it's hard not to when you have no details to ruin the image. Right after the Ultraviolet trailer, the Hitch trailer came on and it made me cringe. Artifacts everywhere, and the whole picture looked very harsh.

So, a definite improvement at Best Buy. Not so much at Magnolia.

The Gresham, OR BB hooked their Toshiba HD player back up to a crappy tv last time we were in. They were only playing a regular dvd on it and not a HD DVD.

The sad thing was, the upconverted DVD on the Tosh playing on the crappy tv looked twice as good as the new Blu Ray demo disc playing on the Sammy set up. :eek:

A couple of the local Best Buys seem to have HD DVD players in stock, however, they have them up in the rafters and not on the shelf. I asked if they had received any new HD DVD discs at one and was immediately taken to look at the Blu-ray demo. I informed him I wanted to know about HD DVD not Blu-ray and he informed me this was HD DVD. Great, Best Buy continues to be on the ball.

However, I went to a second one and the guy knew all about HD DVD and was very knowledgable. I asked when they would put HD DVD back on display and he said Magnolia was it since Blu-ray is paying for the endcap space. He agreed HD DVD was the better deal right now and seemed to know a lot about both formats. Nice that at least one guy working there has a clue about HD video.

I went to Circuit City yesterday and asked if they had any new HD-DVDs in stock. The guy walked over and checked the racks for me (since I'm incapable of doing that myself -rolleyes-) and then was like, "Oh, we have a display here" and showed me the Blu-Ray titles.

I know these are teenagers working for $9/hr but would it be hard for stores to tell people what they are selling?

Looks like you got one of those lazy bastards.

A "real" CC Associate will actually check some type of "inventory binder" that they normally have on hand.

Yeah, they did, and it didn't list any HD-DVDs. I had one guy one time actually go to circuitcity.com and check the SKU from there. Still didn't fix the fact they don't put out the titles on release. The Circuit City is about 15 minutes closer to me (than BB) and usually has the correct slightly-discounted MSRP.

As it turns out, the Amazon shipping center is literally down the road from me so I get HD-DVDs the next day, usually (although processing takes time).

The closest retailer is Wal-Mart but that one doesn't stock any HD-DVD stuff (plus it has sales tax), so it looks like B&M retailers are out for me.

It shouldn't be, it just doesn't make sense. HDTV has been out for over half a decade. All the discs do is make it stable and portable. It's barely evolutionary, certainly not revolutionary. That came in 1999 or whenever exactly the first HD transmissions started.

And you don't need a high-end system to appreciate good audio. Although a decent one may be necessary. Discounting my sub, none of my speakers were over $400 MSRP. And almost everything on the market right now is a 7.1 receiver.

Maybe he meant "discs".

As a niche product.

By that logic, DVD was a nothing product, since it didn't provide anything that LD hadn't already. Or even VHS, since all that did was make TV "stable and portable".

Is that $400 each? I think that qualifies for over an over $1000 speaker set. I bet the majority of home theater owners paid $400 total for their setup.
Everything on the market right now. There's plenty of people with 5.1 systems (myself included) that aren't going to be upgrading their HT setup anytime soon. Some may even have 6.1 systems that they use with existing DVDs.

Honestly, to me, the step up from 5.1 to 7.1 seems incrimental, especially compared the to 500% increase in resolution from SD to HD. 6.1 to 7.1 is even less of a jump. I undertand that the audio codecs have improved in qulaity as well, but that's again a subtle difference that can be affacted more by speaker quality than the discs themselves.

I have to agree. I can't wait until I can afford a big 1080p set, but I'm not at all anxious to upgrade my cheap 5.1 system. (A sony receiver, and a sony speaker bundle--speakers weren't packaged with receiver). But I'm also not an audiophile, and not much of a videophile either. I just want a big TV mainly, and want to wait until I can afford a 1080p one to be "futureproofed" as much as possible.

Some food for thought...
 

http://www.fantasticdamage.com/blog/hdchart3.gif

I haven't gotten a chance to look at the top software sales daily. Unfortunately, the data may be nonexistent at times. I may at some point switch to simply reporting the same software data The DVD Wars does.

<hr>

Reporting on HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray always seems really lopsided in support, along the lines of "Every studio supports Blu-Ray, only Universal Studios supports HD-DVD" (more or less). But how does that translate into the demand for consumers for those movies? Surely, the support of Lions Gate counts less than the support of Disney/Buena Vista, but by what margin?

What I did was count up the box office grosses of the top 40 movies of each year (2000 - Aug 6, 2006) and then divide them up by studio. The reasoning is that studios with huge theatrical hits will be studios with home video releases that matter to more folks. Not perfect, but it's an idea.

My findings are below:

http://www.fantasticdamage.com/blog/hdchartb.gif

Hey, I have a theory about that "100 Blu-Ray titles available today" comment.

Maybe what he really was talking about was the titles available to authoring houses and replicators. As in, there are 100 titles completed and/or available to be authored and manufactured on Blu-Ray discs. Sure, many of them are not available to consumers for purchase yet, but he didn't say "available to consumers" now did he? :)

I have a theory, too:

He was blowing smoke.

While we're at it...why don't we just say "there are 100 Blu-Ray titles sold to the people who still have a player."

It's my understanding that Dreamworks will actually be releasing for HD-DVD...is this incorrect?

You know, I didn't even know Dreamworks didn't support Blu-Ray. The Bits says they don't support Blu-Ray but are "expected" to support HD-DVD. The Blu-Ray site and L&S of Perfect don't show Dreamworks at all.

The more I read on it it seems they are really in neither camp. They've co-distributed with Columbia (Sony), WB, Fox, and Universal... Interesting.

I can't really blame him. CC are touting both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray as "next generation DVD."

If he's not the type to read up on things and know the facts, it's easy to see where there would be confusion.

So are HDDVD and BD. Will be for years. What's the point? HDTV will gain more acceptance faster than either disc format.

DVD was a vast step up from VHS and broadcast TV. It actually used all the capabilities of the NTSC system, whereas the others did not. It was around a 4x resolution upgrade or more, about the same as DVD->HD. Ok, it wasn't much better than LD technically, but the price and eventual acceptance made it a huge step up to consumers. LD was a niche because of price and physical size. HDTV to HDDVD is nothing in comparison to VHS->DVD. Getting rid of bad reception from antenna/satellite is the greatest step up in video features for HDTV->HDDVD. (we'll just ignore BD for the moment, maybe someday it will be worth discussing, too)

Gimme a break. He used the singular, not system. Whatever, maybe he meant system, doesn't matter. Because, this agrees exactly with what I am saying. People here are J6Ps who don't care about audio, and that's stupid. $400 for the complete system? What's the point next to the $2000 TV and $500 HD player? Doesn't sound like a theater to me, sounds like measuring dicks, which has always bored me.

When people come to my house, the TV wows them, but the sound is what makes the experience and puts you in the show. This is audio nuts, videophiles, 5 year olds, grandparents, whatever. For $1000, you could get a speaker system that would blow you away more than a 50" TV. High-end starts at around $10K, if you ask me.

Make up your mind. Is it a niche so far, so we have to worry about the future? Or does everyone already have a 5.1 system and are all set? Lots of people are yet to buy a surround setup. Even the <$500 setups are starting to be 7.1, and are getting HDMI. Which, theoretically, will be compatible with HDDVD/BD by the end of this year or next. Certainly by the time the prices come down on these players and become more attractive to more people. They better have this fixed by then.

They have it (lossless 7.1 codecs), I want them to use it. What is the problem with me wanting that, exactly? Lossless is more important than the last 2 channels, I suppose; it's just stupid that they haven't bothered with the other channels. And the lossless upgrade is not subtle, you just don't seem to care enough to make it a priority. I have the SACD by Norah Jones, it's like she's whispering in your ear. (and this isn't even my best high-rez audio disc) I am dying to get that quality for movies.

So, enjoy the video and nothing else if that's what pleases you. Party on. Don't see why I should be run down since I want more.

High-end is completely subjective. To some people, high-end is $500 because that is more than what they would pay for a TV. For others, $5000 is the type of TV you can get at any store and the high-end starts with Runco projectors worth more than most people's cars.

I realize this is not the thread for this, but if you can point me in a direction where $1000 gets a good speaker system, that would be grand.

(Pun intended).

Reviews on Memento are coming in. Compression artifacts abound, and all the amazing extras from the SE DVD are gone.

Man, that Sony train just keeps on running over their own format. Somebody should tell them to stop putting film masters on the train tracks.

I'm sorry, I should've said that HDTV has existed without a viable pre-recorded playback format. This seems of little concern to you, but for those who want to be able to own and playback movies of their choice in HD, it's important. And I'm not sure why you assume the video quality will be fine, while not assuming the same about the audio.

Which was the crux of your argument, that technically speaking the HD disc formats don't offer much. So obviously other features come into play, just as it did with DVD.

There's a problem there. You have three apples and one orange.

Well, there's the possiblity of better compression algorithms and quality. But really, people are getting a HD disc player for reasons other than video quality. However, when comparing disc formats, video quality can and should come into play.

Well, that's your opinion. However, if others want to argue about video quality, that's there preogative. And if they're aguing about which format will "win," taking into account J6P makes sense.

I never said anything about HT being a nich product or not.

Nothing's wrong with you wanting it. Your post wasn't about what you wanted, but rather about you wondering why other people weren't wanting what you did. My post was an attempt to give you an answer, not an attack of your personal preferences.

The studios are releasing titles they've already had trensfers for, perhaps for years. the HD video master is already on hand, since it was made for the last DVD release, and so was the 5.1 mix. For 7.1, they'd have to sit down and make a new mix exclusively for the new formats. I'm not saying they won't eventually do it, I'm guessing though that it's probably not a priority at the moment.

I can't afford to. I don't own either of the HD disc formats yet either, because of cost. I do own a HDTV, but only because I got an extremely good deal, and at 26", it's bigger than my last TV.

But it's not about me, it's about you not understanding why is everyone going on about video quality and not audio. The blunt answer is because you're in the minority when it comes to concern about audio over video.

Hary Potter 4 has been announced for HD DVD with artwork and specs (no official date yet). Link here.

According to the specs we have a 157 minute movie which has:

• Lossless TrueHD 5.1 soundtrack
• 3 DD+ 5.1 soundtracks
• In-Movie-Experience (IME) feature

Additional Features: Additional scenes, Conversations with the cast, Preparing for the Yule Ball, Reflections on the fourth film, Meet the Champions, Harry vs. the Horntail: the first task, In Too Deep: the second task, The Maze: the third task, He who must not be named, Harry Potter timeline, Theatrical trailer.

So much for HD DVDs space issue...

No details on the BD version yet, but you can certainly scratch ALL of the Additional Features and the Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track. Add some noise and artifacts and you may fit the whole movie on one BD disc.

I can't wait for this disc to hit!

Eventually prices will go down and they will probably be throwing the extras on a second disc anyway, leaving more space on the movie disc. Remember they want to migrate to HD extras after awhile.

BTW, it was hinted that VC1 is already down to 12 mbps, achieving transparency to the master.

Widescreen Review just sent out their e-mail newsletter containing a conversation with Joe Kane and others about HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray. Interesting reading that is not kind to Sony and Blu-ray. Some of their observations include the following:

Blu-ray’s problem with picture quality comes from using the now-outdated MPEG-2 codec.

The firmware update for the Samsung player to fix the “filter” problem on the Genesis chip will not be available until September via a download you will burn to a CD, but this update fix will not solve the image problems created by MPEG-2.

Don’t expect 50-GB Blu-ray releases anytime soon.

Part of the delay in the release of other Blu-ray players is that they don’t support the VC-1 codec, which Blu-ray will need to fix its PQ problems. Disney is pushing to release Blu-ray discs using VC-1.

Blu-ray players do not support the newer audio codecs (Dolby Digital Plus, DTS-HD, TrueHD and DTS HD).

Blu-ray is currently only using PCM at 16 bit, 48 kHz. Warner Bros. Blu-ray discs have DD+ but there is not yet a player that will decode it.

The Toshiba outputs the incorrect color space for the HDMI connection (ITU-R BT. 609 (SD) vs. 709 (HD)) while the Samsung does it right.

Overall, Sony has thus far promised too much and delivered too little.

That's not true, if I recall the Industry Insider thread on AVS. Blu-Ray players do support the VC-1 codec. If Warner ported over an HD-DVD movie into Blu-Ray, it would be AOK with the VC-1.

The players support it.

For whatever, reason, the studios/Sony doesn't want to support the use of VC-1 on software titles. If a VC-1 movie existed today, you could play it on your Blu-Ray player.

Actually...that's not entirely accurate. Apparently there's speculation about the Panasonic. They've already addressed it on AVS and specifically mentioned by Joe in this article.

First bit of advice: Don't look at Runco projectors. They are not necessarily better than others, and have many repairs.

SVS makes a 5.1 system that would surprise anyone. I've considered selling my speakers and buying theirs just to save some space and money.

Ascend Acoustics is very popular. You can get a system for under a grand. They are resellers for the excellent HSU subs, one of the few that can compete with SVS.

AV123/Rocket is another company that makes incredible speakers for the price.

Thanks! :up: :up:

"Also today, Disney CEO Bob Iger let it be known that his studio has no plans to release major A-list titles like Cars and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest on Blu-ray Disc format this year. They're apparently waiting for greater market penetration for the format down the line to release their bigger titles. We think that's a bit of a mistake. If either of these formats is going to take off, someone is going to have to start releasing some really serious eye-candy, box-office powerhouse and critically acclaimed titles. Dinosaur and Eight Below are all fine and dandy, but I can't think of many early adopters who are just dying to watch either of them, even in HD. How about Kill Bill? Armageddon? An Oscar flick like The English Patient? Something with a little more appeal to the folks who are actually BUYING these discs right now. Anyway, just our take."

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/#mytwocents

I completely disagree with TDB. I DONT want BD releasing anything big right now. Their releases are lackluster due to improper encoding and space limitations.