Most of you guys aren't hearing what I'm saying, the fanboy shit has gone to your heads.

Just imagine how much better HD-DVD would be if they have TL. That would be a nail in the coffin for BD. Like I said, if this is true and not a rumor than it is a negative. What if the TL discs come out much sooner. Like December, wouldn't you be frustrated at the fact you couldn't play the TL discs? I can't imagine that none of you wouldn't be irked by it. If not, then I know fanboyism is in full effect here.

I would be irked if I had to buy a $1,000 player to play TL discs if they came out before Christmas. However, considering they haven't actually been approved yet, it would be a hell of a feat for the DVD Forum to approve it in October, than have a studio make content for, produce, and release a TL disc by December.

And it seems like you aren't hearing what they're saying either.

The likelihood of a TL discs coming out by Christmas is virtually nil. Most likely, next summer at the earliest, possibly next Christmas. Given that, people are willing to spend $500 now and maybe another $500 (or less) later to buy a G2+ machine.

The people who bought the machines now are early adopters anyway: people who are willing to spend more money than the average Joe.

Agreed on all points, namja.

By the way, jigga, where have you been watching Batman Begins in HD? I hope you're not referring to the cropped, artifact-ridden HBO-HD broadcast.

No its you who just cant seem to get it through your head. I posted a link that had an interview with one of the people directly working on TL discs. again, and say it with me Jigg, A guy at Toshiba that is working on the TL discs as we speak. As he himself said, they are literally months and months away from finalizing the hardware and software to properly separate the signal from the noise. He estimated another 6 months before anything could be finalized. Once finalized it has to go in front of the DVD forum for proper specification and such. Once that is done it would then be passed onto the studio's as a viable option for future releases.

If you think for a second that TL is coming out before next Christmas at the earliest your in dreamland. Even then how many titles are going to be on TL? By next christmas we could have as many as 500-600 titles, maybe more with a bunch more in production. Will they use TL if its available to them, absolutely yes, especially as HD extras become more and more prevalent but its still a long ways off.

As I stated in my previous thread to you which you obviously ignored, your posts stink of not trying to convince us but yourself. The way you worded your original post is proof to that fact. My advice to you is to stop trying to convince anyone including yourself and to just buy one already. Only then will you even begin to understand how unimportant this so called TL support is to us.

Whats so funny about this entire argument is your in here trying to convince us, and yourself, that something is bad when ultimately its just another improvement to HD-DVD overall and brings them on par with Sony for storage space. Its actually pretty comical.

PS...

I really don't think we'll see TL discs (if ever) until a certain trilogy from New Line comes out, and that would be next fall at the very earliest (yeah, I know they said 2008, but I think they just said that because they wanted people to buy the new DVDs).

No, it's not Blade, Austin Powers, Final Destination, or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

The three Nightmare On Elm St. movies that Craven actually worked on?

If they master the TL process and its basically as cheap as dual layer we will definitly see studios move to the TL when the time comes. The fact that more and more studio's are shooting with HD Digital cameras when making the movie, like MIami Vice for instance, is only more reason why they would. They will have the option of including more and more HD extras which will definitly strain the format size as it is or make them move back to 2 disc releases which wouldn't bother me at all. Mission Impossible 3 is a perfect example as it has HD extras and had to go to a 2 disc release to be able to include them. Some release today have as much as 8 hours of extras. If you had anywhere near that number and they were in HD you would have serious size restraints when dealing with a single disc release.

So basically it just depends on wether they want to fall back to a 2 disc release system or move to a TL disc to help offset that. Even with TL we might see some films have to release a 2 disc set given the amount of HD extras included. It just depends on how many extras and wether or not they are in HD, which more and more will be.

As for LOTR being released. I fully 100% believe them when they say 2008 at the earliest. These are Peter Jackson's babies and his obvious crowing achievement. He will oversee the entire making of the trilogy in HD and will put serious time into making those releases the best HD releases to come out up until that point. With the amount of film and extras to port over from all of the releases, its a monumental effort that would take a normal size crew a few years to finish up. He wont release these until the sparkle.


PS...

The thing is, this whole TL is moot, and not only because of what has been mentioned about the timing of G3+ players.

For the last ten years, a doulbe DVD set has meant value to consumers. It is entirely likely that someone without a strong sense of analysis would prefer a two-disc set over a one-disc set because they may believe the two-disc set to be "better" --- this is what they've been conditioned to for ten years.

From the release of Spartacus, we know that 30GB of space can hold at least a three hour VC-1 encoded movie. Extrapolating, that means that a 45GB or 50GB disc can hold 4.5-5.5 hours of HD content. Guess what? The extended editions of the Lord of the Rings trilogy still won't fit on one disc if all the extras are ported to HD (which may be likely). If TL-45 never arrives, Return of the King might be two discs on HD DVD and one disc in BD. But the extras won't be on that disc.

So we've got a few situations:
#1: Movie + extras are less than three hours: HD DVD and BD are fine. (Advantage: Even).
#2: Long movie, a good amount of extras: HD DVD has a disc for movie, a disc for extras. BD has movie and extras on one disc. (Advantage: Slight for BD).
#3: Long movie, a very large amount of extras: HD has a disc for movie, a disc for extras. BD has a disc for the movie and a disc for extras. (Advantage: Even).
#4: Very long movie, huge amount of extras: HD has two discs for the movie, a disc for extras. BD has one disc for the movie, a disc for extas. (Advantage: BD).

Of all these possibilities, #4 is the rarest. I just don't see BD's 50GB size advantage being that much of an advantage in the real-world marketplace. It hasn't stopped DVD from releasing 4 and 5-disc sets, and it won't stop HD DVD from having 2-disc sets. And my argument is that, in most cases, multiple discs are perceived value to the consumer. In the DVD world, we know the better release is (usually) the one with more discs. If everything can fit on one disc, there's no shorthand way to see that value. When that value isn't easily perceived, the studios lose sales (if they don't start marketing a total time of extras as a "standard" on the back). I wonder if Paramount could release M:i-3 on BD-50, if they even would.

Don't get me wrong, 50GB is better than 30GB. In the data world, it's a huge difference; with TV on DVD, it's going to make retailers very happy as shelf space is cut down. But it's not as big of an advantage as some might think.

True. Extreme example: the European DVD release of Corpse Bride is 2-disc... and they're both single-layer.

That's an interesting point, and very true. The typical consumers buy the two-disc version over the one-disc version because they will assume that it's better. Then they will NEVER watch the second disc. I'm willing to bet that 80% of all people who bought two-disc DVDs (where Disc 1 was the movie and Disc 2 was extras) never watched the second disc (or watched <15 minutes).

Who said it's fanboyism? I just think of it as being the nature of technology. Improvements are constantly being made, despite how good your current solution may be. Heck, my first DVD player couldn't even play CD-Rs or DVD+/-Rs. Nowadays they can play just about any kind of disc. The new computer I got upon high school graduation was top of the line when I got it, but it became obsolete the next month. The new HDTV I got in May was a great deal, but now there are even better deals for even bigger HDTVs. Again, it's the nature of technology, and I'm quite confident it will never stop. And if you can't accept that, and you hold back because of it, you'll never be satisfied.

This happens with US releases as well. They wanted to overcharge for half a season of Family Guy and used single layered discs to make it seem like a better value.

The issue comes with the HD DVD players in the marketplace which are incapable of playing TL discs. If HD DVD becomes a success and they sell a large number then any significant delay to making these 45Gb discs work will leave many players incompatible with the new tech. Studios may be less interested in producing movies on discs which aren't able to be played in a large percentage of players.

I would be very happy with a good A/V quality, barebones release of LOTR. I already have 9 discs of extras on this movie, hardly need another.

Especially if TL-45 doesn't show up until 2007 or 2008. TL-45, if it exists and can be done, needs to be out the door in the next few months (if a firmware won't fix it on the A1). With each passing month, the number of people who have players incompatible with TL-45 discs will keep growing.

If they do introduce it in 2007 or 2008 the studios would have to wait until HD DVD players are in the $50 range before releasing it. Early adopters might not mind switching for the latest and greatest, but someone who paid $299 in 2007 for a player is not going to like paying $199 for a new one in 2008.

So it's true that current HD-A1 machines can't do TL? Source?

There's been conflicting information, each coming from a very reputable source. Until it is formally announced or demo'd, I wouldn't come to any conclusion.

Didn't this same thing basically happen with regular dvd players and some Disney movies?

On the other hand, there are many people who want HD DVD and BD titles to completely replace their respective DVD versions, with all the extras ported over.

Any problems that certain DVD players have had with specific DVDs have all been about the authoring. The actual physical structure for DVD discs haven't changed since the spec was finalized. Theoretically Toshiba could develop TL for DVDs, and it's possible that the TL HD DVD production process could be backwards compatable, but nobody is going to introduce TL DVDs because it's too far into the lifespan of the technology for non-backwards compatible tech. HD DVD still is young enough that TL could be introduced, but if it's not backwards compatible with existing HD DVD players, that's going to be a negative any way you slice it.

Good point. However I would see it as a positive, regardless of compatability - though I can understand that others would not.

It would be a negative, but only for early adopters. It isn't very likely that HD DVD will achieve significant market penetration by next summer. If TL-45 gets approved by early '07, it could be included in any players released by next summer. That would mean that those of us who own players now would need to upgrade, but I would wager that most current HD-A1 owners are already planning to upgrade within two years anyway (I know I will be).

I view TL-45 as more analogous to the addition of DTS to the DVD spec. I realize it isn't a perfect analogy, since adding DTS didn't change the physical structure of the discs, and steps were taken to ensure some measure of backward compatibility, but realistically, it did change the format. On many (especially early) DTS DVDs, the "backward compatible" audio was limited to 2-channel Pro Logic, which meant that if you didn't upgrade, you weren't able to take full advantage of the discs.

Maybe one way to ease into a TL-45 spec change would be to have "bare bones" releases on DL-30, and special editions on TL-45, until such time as most people have had time to upgrade.

So far, I think all HD DVD titles have done that. Even with the hard to find OOP 2-disc Universal dvds.

Exactly...thats my philosophy...ive been selling off my old sd dvds to pay partially for the new versions.