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Blu Ray/HD-DVD - so...who's thinking of buying (eventually)?

Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2005 3:09 pm
by MK
They kept saying it was coming "next year" (i.e. 2006). Well, that's just about here. I doubt it'll be affordable until, say, 2008. Anybody think the home video market in HD will happen? If it becomes the video equivalent of SACD, forget it, but if it's more like Laserdisc back in its heyday, I'd still consider it.

Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2005 5:55 pm
by Rspaight
Right now, I'm not planning on buying either anytime soon because:

1) I'm waiting to see which format wins (or at least for universal players).

and

2) From everything I've heard, HD-DVD will definitely output HD only over a DVI or HDMI (HDCP-compatible) connection, and Blu-Ray may well be the same. That makes it useless to me, since my HD set only has component inputs.

Because of the intense bandwidth requirements, I don't see over-the-net/on demand HD being practical any time soon, so I definitely think one of these formats will find a home with home theater fanatics. (Unless the muttering about boycotting them over the HDCP idiocy holds. I'm not betting on that since home theater nuts lose all resolve when confronted with shiny new toys.) Whether it expands beyond that niche to the general public as DVD did is somewhat more iffy. I have a feeling they might be seduced by VOD convenience rather than HD picture quality.

Ryan

Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2005 7:57 pm
by MK
Yeah, waiting is definitely wise. I'm feeling conflicted about it. When I first heard about it, I felt the same as a I did with SACD. "Yeah, I like having the superior quality, but it's not going to catch on." To Sony's credit, the idea of a hybrid disc was cool and to the average consumer, SACD players were essentially DVD and CD players with SACD compatibility. But in the end, people didn't go out of their way to buy SACD related products. When CD came out, it was a huge upgrade in convenience - small disc, no flipping, easy shuttling, and less worries about cleaning and skips or pops from scratches (of course, a lot of people proceeded to take that too far by treating their CD's like shit).

With SACD, you're paying for better quality, and most people don't give a shit about that. If they did, mp3's would never have caught on. And mp3's succeeded where MiniDisc failed because it was twenty times more convenient. Like Ray Kroc said, people are more than willing to sacrifice quality for something cheap and fast (and familiar, but that doesn't apply here).

I totally dig the idea of Blu Ray, moreso than HD DVD, but regardless of which format winning, I thought we'd be dealing with the same thing. The difference? SACD didn't have an industry switching over to DSD en masse. When you look at TV broadcasting and the slow but gradual push to make everything HD compatible, it gives me second thoughts when I pick up a Criterion DVD.

Kind of funny, but on the Simpsons Season 1 DVD package, Groening writes that "hopefully you'll be able to get every season on DVD before the next format change!" In some ways, this would suck, but then again VHS was only popular for, what, ten years? (My God, I can't believe VHS rental stores are a thing of the past...) Then I look at my brothers' video game habits, where he has to buy the latest $x00.00 system every few years, I guess it could be worse.

Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2005 9:58 pm
by lukpac
MK wrote:And mp3's succeeded where MiniDisc failed because it was twenty times more convenient.


Screw you, I love my MD.

:P

Posted: Tue Dec 27, 2005 10:32 pm
by Xenu
I hate the copy protection schemes I've heard floated for Blu-ray. I also was shocked to learn that Sony's first authored Bluray disc used Mpeg2 (MPEG. FUCKING. 2) for its video scheme. Ummm.

While everyone's been harping on the video specs of the next-gen DVD replacements, I've been wondering what the audio specs are going to be like. Is some of that nifty extra space going to be used for, say, non-Dolby surround? Or does Dolby have too much clout to let people go to lossless?