http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=8267Quote:
HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players are dropping below the $500 mark, and Taiwan manufacturers reckon the number of sub-$500 players is set to rise as we head towards the second half of this year.
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http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=8267Quote:
HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players are dropping below the $500 mark, and Taiwan manufacturers reckon the number of sub-$500 players is set to rise as we head towards the second half of this year.
At todays exchange rate $469.99 = £237.44, so for me to even consider HD (either blueray or hd-dvd) it would have to be well below £500.
It is good that the price war seems to have finally started, poss nudged by the release of the ps3 bundled blueray, this has got to be good for the consumer.
Of course to enjoy all this goodness, I'll have to buy a wide screen HD lcd (and the HD movies to watch), maybe a sub to sky (can't get cable) and a few more hours in the day:)
P.S. Navin, if you're reading this, where's your 'Content Around The Web' bit gone to? Are you asleep? The last one was on 21/03/07. I want it back, I want it back now:)
I do believe that Navin's back later in the week. As for content around the web... you'll have to ask him :)
I guess I could do a 'steve special' if you really, really wanted.
Oh, and my sub £500 comment was a cynical dig at the UK/US price divide; something that's a bit of a hot topic around these parts at the moment.
The format war hasn't even started yet and it may not even start.
For a war you need a couple of 'armies' to duke it out, what we have at the moment are a few nerds gesticulating at each other.....
Maybe if decent, low cost, dual format players released we could move forward and a large number of new releases would come out in HD and help push this whole thing forward. With the cost of these laser diodes though, this isn't going to happen any time soon. I have a feeling that whatever new format that comes in the next 5 years with 100GB+ capacity will be the new format, both BR and HD-DVD are starting to look like the new LaserDisc.
And I own both....US Toshiba HD-XA1 and a UK PS3.
Thanks for the offer Steve, but you may not be up to Navins standard, and I'd end up being dissappointed:pQuote:
Originally Posted by Steve
With HD-DVD players available in the UK at circa £265 now it looks that by Christmas we may see our first sub-£200 player priced to sell.
Remember how DVD took off when Tesco started selling the Wharfedale 750 at £179?
:oQuote:
Originally Posted by vinnyT
I think you'll find I'm the pioneer of HEXUS's forum-based web round-up, but these days my responsibilities (and available time) are somewhat different, which is why Navin's a legend.
That's a fairly drastic thought, but I can't help but feel that with the speed at which technology advances you might have something there...Quote:
Originally Posted by shaithis
Is there space in the market for both to co-exist? Debatable because of corporate greed and it's need to grab every last cent/penny etc...
Wonder when we will start to see PC HD and Blu-ray units at an affordable level?
Only if dual-format players become the norm. If that happens then blu-ray Vs HDDVD could end up just like DVD+ Vs DVD-, no clear winner and almost every player can play both interchangably.Quote:
Originally Posted by moby_matt
Otherwise I think we will see a reincarnation of VHS/Betamax. People are going to want HD content for all their pseudo HD screens that people own (I say pseudo as so many don't support all the HD resolutions or do HD content justice) and most of them won't be able to afford both players, which you would need if you wanted to see movies from different studios..One will win out in the end, but we're going to have to wait a bit longer to find out which..my guess is whichever can hit a $99 US pricepoint first.
I'm still not convinced that the mass market cares about HiDef.
Sure they have been sold it for TVs, but it's getting hard to get non-HiDef screens in the high street anyway.
The mass market seems happy with heavily compressed MP3s and portable audio. Even going as far as usning these players in the home hooked to over priced PC speakers in the form of a 'dock'
DVD gives them menus, special features, good quality static free picrute, surround sound, instant/random access and a convenient sized package. DVD is also very reliable.
Yes HD disks improve on all these features, but there isn't anything new, there isn't the step change like there was from VHS.
Until you watch an episode of 24 in HD...
So you can fall asleep while your better half gets all excited over kiefer sutherland =)Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve
That is the other issue - there is so little HD content at the moment..maybe when Sky start to offer more HD channels things will change..
It it any more interesting in 4x the resolution? I doubt it :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve
Answered yourself there. The only TV people can buy now is HD. SD on a big set looks terrible fullstop. You need HD sources for 32"+ sets so one of the new formats will become standard. The idea that 100+GB formats will replace them soon is wrong on another count. BR/HD DVD will be the last hard format. By the time it's out of date we will stream everything by Wi-Fi either direct to our displays etc or to a hard drive within a media centre, either some sort of PC or console.Quote:
Originally Posted by Funkstar
People will not accept streaming as easily as you seem to think. Plus broadband is not developing fast enough and cheap enough to have VOD in homes for HD content anytime soon, at least not on a mass scale and most definatly not globally.
Holographic discs are on the horizon and will almost certainly replace HD-DVD and BluRay in the next 5-10 years unless Sony and Toshiba get their acts together.
No it wont! You not heard of the hologram format disks which are in development?Quote:
Originally Posted by LazyGit
No way could you stream the 'ultra high-def' (NHK a japanese TV company 7680x4320) there just siimply isnt enough bandwidth to stream enough information for something lke that. You couldnt even have that running from a regular disk. Even a HD-DVD doesnt have the bandwidth allowences for such high resolutions. I know im talking way in the future here (if this format makes it out of the cinema) but even in the meantime there are always going to be people that will want to have a 'disc' and a 'player'
The problem with TV is that companies prefer to have quantity than quality so we may not EVER see HD broadcast on UK terrestrial as the bandwidth will be taken up by 15 different quiz and shopping channels. Because of this i predict that home theatre sales will reamain there
We already have terrestrial HD........at least if you live close to the transmitter at Crystal Palace and have HD DVB hardware.
Its being trialled and hopefully should be with us soon.
The thing is, the longer they hold on with analogue TV the more bullcrap channels appear. HD DVB takes a lot more bandwidth than regular DVB and the only way it can appear around the country is if analogue is switched off. The longer they leave it the more crappy channels & mobile phone companies try to get a hold on the soon to be available bandwidth. Personally i think we will end up with 1 or 2 HD terrestrial channels at the most. Obviously i hope for more but until all the old fogeys buy themselfs freeview sets we are stuck at 576i
EDIT - one other thing worth mentioning; did you know HD was around in the 80s? they trialed it in some small town (i forget where) but it used CRT technology so as u can imagine the TVs where mahooosive. There where 3 formats for HD back then but none of them succceeded in going mainstream mainly because of bandwidth allowences.
In response to my previous post some of you have said that streaming will not be readily accepted by users and that the next level of HD requires too much bandwidth.
I'm talking about streaming happening in 5-10 years time, people area already using On-Demand without knowing what it means, if they can get all media that way they will love it. Bandwidth? You talk about it as if it's much more feasible to put all that data on a piece of plastic rather than throw it through the air. Not only is Wi-Fi much more able to transmit all the media we need but it's much much cheaper for distributors to use compared to paying money to companies to stamp out incredibly complex media formats.
I didnt say people will not widely accept it i was just saying that media on a hard format wont be made redundant.
Bandwidth is still limited through the air, if two things transmit at the same frequency then you just get a scrambled mess. Thus making bandwidth very expensive. Do some research find out how much it cost to get radio bandwidth, i promise you disks are a lot cheaper.
When i was talking about streaming the ultra hd i was talking about the stream from a disk, there isnt enough bitrate for it to tranfer from a regular dvd or hddvd (im pretty sure of this) so the likely hood of that traveling through a copper cable is very unlikely.
Wifi is hardly a long range concept though and i cant see that being used on large scale.
Real VOD is many many years away, especially for HD content.
It would basically require a minimum of a 100mb UN-CONTENDED connection to every home...
We are so far away from that, it isn't even worth thinking about. In fact I would say 10 years is being overly optimistic due to the vast work that would need to be done to the entire UKs communication infrastructure. Work no one will want to fit the bill for.
You haven't heard about 21CN then.Quote:
Originally Posted by shaithis
http://www.btplc.com/21CN/
Thanks for that. (and no, I hadn't heard of that and TBH, I'm stunned that BT are laying out that kind of cash....)
You still have many other hurdles to overcome though.....100mb PER home of dedicated bandwidth is just not going to happen, somewhere upstream its going to hit a rather large bottleneck and those bottlenecks will hit others.
Contention ratios will exist even under that 21CN project by the looks of things and you can't have true HD VOD until all contention is gone, something I can never see happening due to the sheer size of the scaling we are talking about. You would need to have the technology out-pace you, which could mean several generations of technology before its viable.