Official CES HD/BD News & Discussion Thread
 

Figured I'd start one of these already as news starts to pour in. From what I'm hearing, this is going to be a pretty big deal from both sides of the fence. How many of the rumors will come to pass? I guess we'll see.

If anyone hears news...feel free to post it here.

Toshiba's press conference is in the morning on Sunday and the HD DVD promotions group press event is scheduled for 8:30 PM. We'll find out a lot more from the HD side then.

I don't know when the BD press conference will be (if there is one) but again, feel free to post it here. Rumor has it they'll be announcing a $400 player.

I hope that turns out to be true. That's the biggest negative for Blu-ray right now, expensive hardware. My understanding is that the HD DVD guys are doing their announcements on the first day of CES and the BD guys will do there's the following day. IMO this gives the BDA a chance to lower their pricing on new models at the last minute if need be.

I'll be waiting with bated breath...

The biggest thing for BR is definately the hardware. Being the Price and the possibility of 2nd gen. If they are able to give some firm info on these and retain all of their exclusive studios then BR will be in pretty good shape. Especially if they tack on some dates of a few big titles.

For HD it's all about the titles right now. They were steam rolling right along up till a month ago. Then everything dried up on the movie front. The release of their 2nd gen hardware is great but they have slim pickings right now in the software front. HD needs to announce a bunch of titles, it doesn't even have to be BIG titles but they need to get some street dates out there. If HD comes through with a bunch of titles and either announces a BIG exclusive or gets a studio to go neutral then they will solidify their position.

Either way the weekend can't come soon enough. Especially since i joined the HD clan this past week.

you can say that again, my friend and I are a tad annoyed that we jumped onto the HD-DVD bandwagon, and then... a lull. Sunday couldn't come any faster.

I think by the end of next week, our preorder queues will be flush once again with HD-DVD goodness.

The one nice thing is that its allowed me the chance to pick up a bunch of titles that were further down on my want list. One of the downsides to this "lull" is that i see these imports being listed everywhere and its driving me nuts. I can't bring myself to spend $50 on one movie but it sure is tempting with some of them.

Especially when a majority of those "imports" are Lion's Gate movies...

But then again, there's no guarantee that the quality of the LG HD DVD versions will be better or even the same quality as the imports. From what I've heard, they blow away the BD versions...and chances are, we might just get the same transfers when (if) everything is brought to HD DVD.

and it adds insult to injury when stories like this one pops up on imdb:


Sony Encounters New Blu-ray Glitches

The Sony Blu-ray high-definition version of Lionsgate's horror flick The Descent plays fine on Sony's new PlayStation3 game device, but those who attempt to watch it on an ordinary Sony Blu-ray player will see only a blank screen, according to reports that have emerged over the past few days on several websites devoted to high-definition video formats. A similar problem was reported with Pioneer Blu-ray players. The Descent disc features numerous "extras" produced exclusively for the Blu-ray format, including a picture-in-picture video commentary. And therein lies the problem, according to the HD websites. Lionsgate used BD-Java technology for the extras, which is not compatible with the Sony BDP-S1 and Pioneer Elite Blu-ray players. Sony says it is aware of the problem and is working to provide an update to the operating system of its players by early this year.

if this was a HD-DVD release I don't think a problem like this would have happened.

Few "notable" things I just saw:

Vizio 47" 1080p set - $1800

Samsung 2nd Gen. BlueRay player - ~$800

What on earth makes you think that? A bad disc is a bad disc is it not?

This isn't just a bad disc. It's a compatibility issue.

It's not a bad disk - it was authored with one of the BD features that is not supported on older BD players.

If the BD team would have held off on releasing their drives until they were all ready for BD-J usage, this would not be a problem.

The Descent plays fine on my Samsung. :)

Another thing that will help BD is announcing that Cars, Pirates 1 & 2, Spiderman 1 & 2, All Bond films, Die Hard Trilogy, and Alien Quadrilogy will arrive this year.

I hope you are right...I just blew $100 bucks at BB with only one title :D

You paid $100 for one title?

If it were The Sopranos...

It wasn't.

Fantasticvsdoom doesn't understand the concept of price-matching at Best Buy. I reprimand him for it all the time. ;)

The only other set I can think of is MI.

Which can be found almost too easily for $60.

lol...guys i talked to him on the phone right after he went to Best Buy. He bought Dune. I think it was a joke.

I can't believe he spent $100 for Dune!! Did it come with a square translucent suit of armor? Like a special edition or something?

Toshiba HD dvd burner, SD-H903A, should be out in Jan-Feb.

Thank GOD. Price? I'm all over that one. (I'm assuming this is a PC drive).

Best Buy convinced him to buy a Protection Plan for his disc.