And the BR HD War continues

[azsouthendzone]

Yeah, I found the A30 in several places near me for just under $200 which is well within the realm of what I was looking to pay. I'll probably pick one up this week and put the old DVD Player on my CRT in the bedroom. The A30 looks pretty sweet.

Don't do it. You can grab a Blu stand alone for under $200 on craigslist or one brand new at Costco for about $275. There is also a rumored PS3 price drop coming. HD DVD will have no new content by Christmas, Just sack up and buy the machine that will be around for the long haul.

 

[Darth Llama]

Don't do it. You can grab a Blu stand alone for under $200 on craigslist or one brand new at Costco for about $275. There is also a rumored PS3 price drop coming. HD DVD will have no new content by Christmas, Just sack up and buy the machine that will be around for the long haul.

I have never seen a Blu Ray player for less then twice that. I must just suck at shopping or something, but I haven't seen anywhere where you can touch Blu Ray for under $400. Whatever I get, I'm only looking at new. I don't personally like buying electronics used, just my personal preference. I do appreciate the tip though, thank you.

 

[azsouthendzone]

I have never seen a Blu Ray player for less then twice that. I must just suck at shopping or something, but I haven't seen anywhere where you can touch Blu Ray for under $400.

Shop around. my parents bought a Sony Blu Ray player at Costco for $279 with a free HDMI cable and 5 free by mail. The biggest problem you will have with HD DVD is content. You'll go buy this player and you'll watch a few movies. Then you'll want to watch more. Blockbuster doesn't carry HD DVD and other retailers are dropping the format. Pretty soon your selection to buy will dwindle and you'll have nothing more than a tease for Blu Ray, and a bad upconverter. You can buy an upconverter for $40, you don't need an HD DVD player. My PS3 upconverts about 1000x better than my A2 (God rest its soul). Then you will see commercials for kick ass Blu Ray movies and you'll wish the $100 you spent on the hD DVD player would have just went towards your Blu Ray player. Seriously, HD DVD movies will start to be a hard to find item. If you can plunk down $100 on a shorty term thrill, I suggest saving a couple hundred more and investing $300 in the winning next-gen format.

A good example to comapare this to is the Dreamcast. Its a cool machine, but once there are no more games to buy its just a piece of plastic. And when retailers pull the plug, the content becomes scarce.

Read hidefdigest.com it will give you a lot of info on deals, reviews, and news regarding both formats to help you make a decision.

 

[dreamcastrocks]

Shop around. my parents bought a Sony Blu Ray player at Costco for $279 with a free HDMI cable and 5 free by mail. The biggest problem you will have with HD DVD is content. You'll go buy this player and you'll watch a few movies. Then you'll want to watch more. Blockbuster doesn't carry HD DVD and other retailers are dropping the format. Pretty soon your selection to buy will dwindle and you'll have nothing more than a tease for Blu Ray, and a bad upconverter. You can buy an upconverter for $40, you don't need an HD DVD player. My PS3 upconverts about 1000x better than my A2 (God rest its soul). Then you will see commercials for kick ass Blu Ray movies and you'll wish the $100 you spent on the hD DVD player would have just went towards your Blu Ray player. Seriously, HD DVD movies will start to be a hard to find item. If you can plunk down $100 on a shorty term thrill, I suggest saving a couple hundred more and investing $300 in the winning next-gen format.

A good example to comapare this to is the Dreamcast. Its a cool machine, but once there are no more games to buy its just a piece of plastic. And when retailers pull the plug, the content becomes scarce.

Read hidefdigest.com it will give you a lot of info on deals, reviews, and news regarding both formats to help you make a decision.

Completely disagree. You complain about the lack of content, when HDDVD right now has just as many movies out, as Bluray. Well over 500 titles. You will be able to finnd these titles discounted as well.

You were one of the biggest HDDVD supporters, and switched sides as soon as you got a PS3. If you can get an HDDVD player with 7 free movies for around $100 or even $150, there is nothing wrong with that.

 

[JS22]

The format was had been very tight coming into this holiday season. So Bluray decided to focus on software sales, and had a TON of B1G1 free sales. This allowed them to manipulate numbers and show that they have sold a lot more titles than HDDVD. Once Warner saw how many Blu discs were moving, they decided to go Blu exclusive.



If you have a 1080p TV, yes. Linder can tell the difference. If you can tell the difference between 480p DVDs and HD broadcasts, you will be able to tell the difference in the HD discs. The HD discs are better quality than the TV broadcasts.


As of right now, the PS3 does not support DTS:MA, which is one of the new HD audio formats. There has been speculation that a firmware patch can fix this, but we have been waiting a year for it. Other than that, I see no reason to get a stand alone player, vs. the PS3 that allows you to play the games.


Bluray will win the war now, before the end of the year most likely. DVD isn't going anywhere in the next 5 years. If you want to get the most of your 1080p system, get a PS3. If not, spend $100 on a HDDVD player.

Yes, I know that HDDVD will lose the war, but players can be had for $100 with 300 and Bourne Identity in the box, as well as 5 in the mail. Throw in the fact that it is one of, if not the best upconverting DVD player on the market, and you can't lose. Besides, you'd spend $60-$70 on an upconverting DVD player anyway. You'd might as well get the HDDVD player. You will be able to find HDDVD discs cheap pretty soon I'd wager, and are just as good, if not better than Bluray.

I don't think it's wise to tell anyone to get a HDDVD player at this point for obvious reasons. And when it's all said and done you'll still be spending nearly $250 if you want to grab some movies. Why waste your money buying into a basically dead format when a PS3 can be had for $399 - and even less if you look around online? It's like telling someone to buy a betamax player even though you know the format is basically dead, just to save some money. Makes absolutely NO sense at all.

Edit: Looking around on Amazon I've already found 5 BR players for well under $300.

 

[JS22]

First, let me thank you for taking the time to answer my questions, that was most helpful. When thinking about it, even though Blu Ray will no doubt win, I think I'll be best served buying a much cheaper HD-DVD Player and keeping that for a few years till I need to go Blu Ray. By that time, Blu Ray players will be much better then they are now and probably cost about $100.

With that in mind, is there a particular HDDVD Player that you recommend? I'm sure they are mostly all the same save a few extra features and movie bundles, just curious if you know of one that's a particularly good value?

Thank you again for the help, you rock dude.

Grab a cheap $40 upconverting player from walmart to hold you over for a year or two until the prices go down a bit. I'd be doing the same thing if I didn't have a PS3. (Which has a fantastic upscaler.) I really can't see the point of recommending a HDDVD player if all you want is to upconvert your current DVD's anyways.

 

[dreamcastrocks]

I don't think it's wise to tell anyone to get a HDDVD player at this point for obvious reasons. And when it's all said and done you'll still be spending nearly $250 if you want to grab some movies. Why waste your money buying into a basically dead format when a PS3 can be had for $399 - and even less if you look around online? It's like telling someone to buy a betamax player even though you know the format is basically dead, just to save some money. Makes absolutely NO sense at all.

Who said anything about spending $250? I said that he should spend $100 and get the A3 player that comes with 7 movies. A decent upconverting player costs at least that much (actually the Oppos are $150), although they can be found for $50. So for an extra $50 bucks, he can have a much better HDDVD player, and 7 free HDDVDs. You can't say that it makes no sense, because I just showed why it could make sense to some.

You say the format is dead, but as of right now, there are 404 Bluray titles available, vs. 386 HDDVD titles available. So if someone wants to enjoy HD discs for as cheap as possible right now, while waiting for Bluray hardware prices to go down, whats the harm in that?

You guys need to get rid of this eliteist, front running attitude. There are still advantages on both sides of this format war. Cheap hardware on the HDDVD side is still one.

 

[dreamcastrocks]

Grab a cheap $40 upconverting player from walmart to hold you over for a year or two until the prices go down a bit. I'd be doing the same thing if I didn't have a PS3. (Which has a fantastic upscaler.) I really can't see the point of recommending a HDDVD player if all you want is to upconvert your current DVD's anyways.

First of all, $40 upconverting players are garbage. They introduce more artifacts, than reduce them. That is a whole 'nother topic though. There are people that spend $150 on Oppo upconverting DVD players, as they have been regarded as the best in the market for years now. If you are going to spend $150 on a great upcoverting player, there should be nothing wrong with spending $100 on an HDDVD player that will do the same job as the Oppo, but allow you to watch HDDVDs. Even if you only buy HDDVDs for the next year, spending $100 on an above average HDDVD player is not crazy.

Just because you can't see the point in recommending a HDDVD player if all you want is to upconvert your current DVD's, doesn't mean others can't. He is going to be doing more than that anyway.

 

[Sandan]

War is officially over.

Toshiba threw in the towel today

 

[Shane]

War is officially over.

Toshiba threw in the towel today

http://www.arizonasportsfans.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1626686&postcount=314

 

[JS22]

Now there is, in my opinion, absolutely no reason to recommend an HD-DVD player to anyone.

 

[Sandan]

I have neither yet and I never did understand why some people pimped HD DVD ?

Yes it was cheaper but that would change as volumes increased and it was clearly the inferior technology, at least it seemed so to me. Much less data storage

 

[Darth Llama]

Now there is, in my opinion, absolutely no reason to recommend an HD-DVD player to anyone.

Agreed, but until Blu Ray players come down in price, I'm not buying anything. $400-$500 is highway robbery.

 

[dreamcastrocks]

I have neither yet and I never did understand why some people pimped HD DVD ?

Yes it was cheaper but that would change as volumes increased and it was clearly the inferior technology, at least it seemed so to me. Much less data storage

How was HDDVD clearly the inferior technology?

You brought up disc storage, but HDDVD triple layer discs were due to come out in March that would have allowed 51GB of space, to Bluray's 50GB. Besides that, 90% of the Bluray releases were released on Bluray 25GB. Compare that to 85% of the HDDVD releases were done on the HDDVD 30GB discs, and their wasn't much of a storage difference.

Also, for nearly the first year of Bluray's existance, they were using the old MPEG video compression that they use on standard DVD. They needed the extra space, because they were using "last gen" compression. They are now using VC-1 compression for most of their releases, developed mostly by you guessed it. Microsoft.

Bluray was clearly not the superior technology. They had the disc storage to potentially be better, but there isn't a release out there, that you can't put next to a HDDVD disc for comparison purposes.

 

[Sandan]

Don't you think that Blu Ray will be coming out with multilayer disks ?

Fundamentally BluRay ca store more data, that was what I was referring to.

Now I heard about things like Ethernet connects on HDD DVD being touted as better than BLu Ray. I was thinking why on earth would I want an networked DVD player ? Next gen Bluray will have them as well I think but why would I care.

 

[Covert Rain]

How was HDDVD clearly the inferior technology?

You brought up disc storage, but HDDVD triple layer discs were due to come out in March that would have allowed 51GB of space, to Bluray's 50GB. Besides that, 90% of the Bluray releases were released on Bluray 25GB. Compare that to 85% of the HDDVD releases were done on the HDDVD 30GB discs, and their wasn't much of a storage difference.

Also, for nearly the first year of Bluray's existance, they were using the old MPEG video compression that they use on standard DVD. They needed the extra space, because they were using "last gen" compression. They are now using VC-1 compression for most of their releases, developed mostly by you guessed it. Microsoft.

Bluray was clearly not the superior technology. They had the disc storage to potentially be better, but there isn't a release out there, that you can't put next to a HDDVD disc for comparison purposes.

I agree if any tech was superior it was HD DVD. Look at even the entire debate around the interactive features. Many in the industry felt that the HD DVD camp had a superior approach to interactive features as well.

Blu Ray's win wasn't about which tech was better. It was about the almighty dollar. The Sony camp shelled out anywhere from a half a billion to a billion dollars to buy allegiances from retailers and studios. That's what got them the win.

 

[Sandan]

I'm just looking in as an outsider here. I haven't bought either option yet.

Was just saying it as it appeared to me, I didn't realize this was such as religious issue.

 

[KloD]

I'm just looking in as an outsider here. I haven't bought either option yet.

Was just saying it as it appeared to me, I didn't realize this was such as religious issue.

Only to those who made the wrong call. It was just a few months ago I was told here to burn my blu-ray collection because it was gonna be worthless after the holidays.

 

[dreamcastrocks]

I'm just looking in as an outsider here. I haven't bought either option yet.

Was just saying it as it appeared to me, I didn't realize this was such as religious issue.

It's like the liberal/conservative issue for techs.

 

[dreamcastrocks]

Only to those who made the wrong call. It was just a few months ago I was told here to burn my blu-ray collection because it was gonna be worthless after the holidays.

Not me specifically. I argue for both sides. I have been a stronger voice for HDDVD, but I proudly own them both.

 

[KloD]

It's like the liberal/conservative issue for techs.

Good analogy. IMO Beta won this time, but we got opinions...

 

[dreamcastrocks]

Good analogy. IMO Beta won this time, but we got opinions...

That is another good analogy, since Beta was a Sony technology.

 

[KloD]

Not me specifically. I argue for both sides. I have been a stronger voice for HDDVD, but I proudly own them both.

I bought a LG drive that plays both formats and put it in my HTPC. For $200 I was set to wait it out.

 

[Sandan]

I want my Phillips 2000 tapes !! waaaaaaaaaa

Was better than Betamax

 

[SECTION 11]

Our $40 dvd player is hooked up to a 15" tv (color).
Yeah baby!