Funny thing is I thought DVD players came out
a few years ago cause of the perfection of the
blue laser diode. Wrong! It was a development
of existing technology. But I thought the
green laser had too long a wavelength... ah
what the heck! Must find a place for these
big laserdiscs I got 20 years ago. And stop
laughing I will agree with Rita Rudner, we
want something in writing its the last thing
they are gonna invent!

Blue Ray...funny but I was looking up a book
title on google recently. My first day in the
school library 40 something years ago and I
was trying to choose. "Come on you" was the
cry, period is almost over. Then a book loomed
called The Blue Ray looking like science
fiction. Written by some military person it
seems. A device to pacify the natives! Yes!

Exactly who made Walmart king of the galaxy? I certainly didn't vote for 'em, and I don't see any waterlogged women lobbing utensils about.

Walmart picked a side. So what. When HD is unavailable because they folded, then the issue will be closed. Until then: long live multi-format hardware; long live the free-to-choose consumer.

__________________
And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling [faces] lyin' to ye' everywhere ye' go
Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.

You're pinning this on WalMart? Granted, WalMart's decision to go strictly with Blu-Ray is important, but more as a sign of the end of the format war than as a cause of it. NetFlix, Blockbuster, and Target all dropped HD-DVD before WalMart did.

Rumors are that Toshiba's going to pull the plug on HD-DVD, and soon.

__________________
SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2009 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

All the sources I've seen indicate that Toshiba has stopped production, and will be making an official announcement sometime very soon (as in this week). It's pretty much over.

__________________
WANTED:

Schroedinger's Cat

Dead And Alive

and Sony wins again.


didn't they win the CD battle 20 years ago?


of course they lost the battle over BETA and memorystick. But Sony has a lot of power in the industry.

__________________
"I will do my best to understand and explain the universe from big to small without invoking miracles, unrepeatable events, or divine intervention. In place of those things I will use observations, mathematics, and science."


-Cross
My travel blog

Some of my Astrophotography


Those that lack education have a hard time understanding its value. - Cross

True enough, but nobody was heralding the immediate end of HD-DVD back then, and HD was getting some backers of their own. Now that Walmart picked a side, everybody's looking to throw HD-DVD onto the cart with the old guy?

El Reg (I think) reported that "the porn industry" picked a side a while back. For the life of me, though, I can't remember which.

I will say, however, that it's moments like this I kinda wish we were having this discussion on Fark or something. You guys are missing out on a bunch of puns that I must not utter here. (PM me if you want 'em. Or not. They're pretty obvious.)

Wake me when that happens.

__________________
And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling [faces] lyin' to ye' everywhere ye' go
Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.

Nope. The battle just became irrelevant. Everybody and their dog is making multi-format CD-Rs and drives now, and you can get either kind of blanks just about anywhere, even Walmart.

__________________
And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling [faces] lyin' to ye' everywhere ye' go
Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.

Along as whatever side still plays current dvds as well I do not care.

__________________
If it's just us, it seems like an awful waste of space.
Contact Carl Sagan

http://davidsuniverse.wordpress.com/

I don't have either. I'm one of those consumers who is waiting for the whole thing to sort itself out. Can't really afford a new player right now, anyway. Heck, my first DVD player cost me about $80 and was the cheapest in Olympia; my current one cost about $35.

__________________
Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I've been waiting for the format wars to end before spending any money on either type of hardware. For those Blu-Ray early adopters out there, well, it appears some of you might not be very happy for long according to this article:

Blu-ray may have taken a commanding lead in the next-generation format war, but the group has a big problem looming: early supporters of the format will be left out in the cold when the Blu-ray Disc Association introduces BD Profile 2.0

Unlike HD DVD, which mandated features such as local storage, a second video and audio decoder for picture-in-picture, and a network connection from the very beginning, the companies behind Blu-ray took a different approach. Initial hardware players lacked these capabilities in order to keep costs down.

None of the Profile 1.0 players can be upgraded to Profile 1.1, which was finalized recently, with the exception of the PlayStation 3 -- whose update arrived in mid-December. Likewise, Profile 2.0 is expected to arrive in October bringing Internet connectivity that Profile 1.1 players lack.

...
In addition, the BD-J interactivity layer, based on Java, has continued to evolve since the introduction of Blu-ray Profile 1.0. This means that early players may have a buggy implementation and perhaps more importantly, they are not powerful enough to play the latest films properly.

When BetaNews asked developers of BD Live whether they were concerned about a backlash from early adopters who supported the format from the beginning, we were told: "They knew what they were getting into."

BDA President Andy Parsons echoed that sentiment at the Blu-ray press conference Monday, telling BetaNews that it's normal for new technology to change and older hardware to become obsolete. He added that early Blu-ray owners can continue to do everything they could in the beginning: watch movies in high-definition.

I don't know if these changes are important or not, but I find the attitude that "they knew what they were getting into" to be rather harsh. This article was the first time I'd heard of these changes. If I'd bought one of those early players, I'd probably be quite upset.

I still have a large cache of videotapes and have a dual vcr/dvd player. Most of the videos have are dvds and I do not want to buy a second version of something I or someone in my family already have.

__________________
If it's just us, it seems like an awful waste of space.
Contact Carl Sagan

http://davidsuniverse.wordpress.com/

I have blu-ray, by virtue of having a PS3.

I think that for HD DVD the Fat Lady was warming up in her dressing room for a while, and is now standing in the wings awaiting her entrance.

__________________
I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, was in no way fair comment and was motivated purely by malice. I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.

I don't think it's to do with Walmart. Most of the big film studios are now firmly in the blu-ray camp. If there's no or limited releases, then the availability of players will reflect that in the market. Walmart are following here, not leading.

Here's the BBC article about it.

__________________
I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, was in no way fair comment and was motivated purely by malice. I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.

Well, seeing as I don't have an HD television, I'm not worried about HD or Blue Ray DVDs. I'll pick a side once one of those sides agrees to buy me a new television. Until then, I'm happy with my standard DVD's.

__________________

I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.
"In order to increase awareness of the homeless, security have been given binoculars."

I said WalMart dropping HD-DVD was important. It's big news. But it's big news as a sign that the war is over. They're not ending it, they're responding to its end.

And it's not like the others dropped out a long time ago. Warner just dropped HD-DVD last month, and NetFlix only about a week ago. I'm not sure when Target dropped out. And the rumors that Toshiba was going to drop HD-DVD started before the WalMart announcement, too.

You'll be the first person I tell when I hear it.

__________________
SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2009 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

I'm waiting until they get all the way up to X-Ray disks.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

I have separate players, largely because--with the exception of my stereo--I don't like having a machine that does two majorly different things. I've never wanted a TV/VCR combo, and I don't want a VCR/DVD combo, either. But other than that, I'm with you. I will, slowly, start replacing the movies I have on VHS; I've pretty much started with my favourites, in no small part because the tapes of some of them are starting to fail from overuse. (My poor copy of MST3K's I Accuse My Parents!) And Fargo came with a trivia track, and I'm a sucker for those. However, replacing them all will be an expensive proposition.

For those with the fancy-schmancy players--do they still play regular old boring DVDs?

__________________
Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

As far as I know, they do.

__________________
Quaeso quousque humi defixa tua mens erit? Nonne aspicis, quae in templa veneris?

I do, yes. Apart from anything else, DVD's don't look that great on my HD TV (1080p) when played on my DVD player due to their resolution - the PS3 upscales them, so they look much better.

As for buying blu-ray films - I'm not about to try to replace my existing DVD library. If my kids are likely to want to be able to watch a new film in their rooms, then I'll get it on DVD so they can watch it (PS3 is only blu-ray in the house). When deciding between the formats for a new film that I want to buy, I'll consider whether I think there's a benefit to be gained from watching that particular title at the higher resolution and quality of blu-ray, plus the usual considerations about whether there's any interesting extras, etc.

__________________
I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, was in no way fair comment and was motivated purely by malice. I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.

pretty soon you'll find yourself wanting a new tv.


2009 is coming.

My recommendation? Buy one during the father's day sales. This way you get the benefits of all the deals and don't have to face every other jerk* in the country going out to get one at the same time.




*and by jerk I mean in the Steve Martin sense.

__________________
"I will do my best to understand and explain the universe from big to small without invoking miracles, unrepeatable events, or divine intervention. In place of those things I will use observations, mathematics, and science."


-Cross
My travel blog

Some of my Astrophotography


Those that lack education have a hard time understanding its value. - Cross

Are you planning to buy me one? I'm one of the many people who will be using converters because we cannot afford new TVs.

__________________
Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Crap. Anything that's good for Sony is bad. Most companies out there are just companies, not something to measure on the good/evil spectrum, but Sony is just evil. Part of the proof that the world is just not right is the fact that a company can do things like trying to take over their own customers' computers with a hacker stunt and still EXIST later, nevermind actually succeeding and excelling in big ways like this.

(PS: haven't past "format wars" been decided more by actual consumer buying patterns, instead of just by random arbitrary alignments of companies making these decisions for us?)

you're barking up the wrong tree. I was just offering sound advice since I sold TVs for a while.

__________________
"I will do my best to understand and explain the universe from big to small without invoking miracles, unrepeatable events, or divine intervention. In place of those things I will use observations, mathematics, and science."


-Cross
My travel blog

Some of my Astrophotography


Those that lack education have a hard time understanding its value. - Cross

Backwards compatibility is good. That way it doesn't render previous formats obsolete. No more repeat of the VHS problems.

If Blu-Ray can store 6 times the information as a DVD, does that mean BSG will be released on a single disc per season? That would be cool and efficient.

Walmart claim to be resonding to buying patterns in phasing out HD DVD from their stores.

__________________
I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, was in no way fair comment and was motivated purely by malice. I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.

Well, it's over.

__________________
And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling [faces] lyin' to ye' everywhere ye' go
Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.

What I find truly annoying is that the BluRay players, drives, and media have been consistently more expensive than the HD-DVD equivalents. I don't see any reason why that should improve now that the competition is dead.

In this format war, it's the consumers who lost.

__________________
Relight the Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

remember the movie Demolition man where Taco Bell won the restaurant wars?


Can you imagine a life like that?

__________________
"I will do my best to understand and explain the universe from big to small without invoking miracles, unrepeatable events, or divine intervention. In place of those things I will use observations, mathematics, and science."


-Cross
My travel blog

Some of my Astrophotography


Those that lack education have a hard time understanding its value. - Cross

No, no, no, no, no. That's not how it works. It's not like Sony now has licence to constrain supply to drive up prices. There will still be a variety of home entertainment manufacturers making BluRay players and competing with each other for the market. The fact that they are now all making the same type of machine is not really important.

Nope. Hi-def video takes up more information per second than standard def.

More info per disc / more info per episode = same episodes per disc.

Generally speaking.



"Claim to be"? Do you think they're not?

Awww, I didn't get to wake you up.

__________________
SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2009 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF