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Retail Leaks of HD-DVD Players, Discs Reported
An anonymous reader writes "Though the market launch of the first HD-DVD players and discs does not officially begin until tomorrow (Tuesday), the online DVD community is already buzzing with fan reports of early street date violations at some retail outlets."
From the article, I think the most key point is: Attentions will now be turning to how well these first-gen HD-DVD products meet expectations.
Considering I've still not been able to show my parents how to use their system easily, I'm wondering how much backlash there will be with the new DVDs. My prediction? (who cares?): I think HD DVDs will have moderate success but really run the risk of suffering the same fate as SACD (Super Audio CD). Good and interesting technology but not better enough to offset:
I'm not even considering introducing my parents to this technology. They're impressed when they see HDTV, but they're not inclined to jump through the hoops to get it up and running at their place. I'm also not recommending this to friends... I started out optimistic, but when they asked for advice (they always do), and I start laying out the logistical minefield to traverse to get all of the right pieces in the right places, their eyes quickly glaze... and for me, until this all settles and is easier, cheaper, more assured, and unencumbered, I'm just not going to push this stuff on others. And, you know what? They're not pressing to get it!
(Yeah, the slashdot demographic probably statistically will be high in adoption of this, but that demographic is going to be the exception for a while.)
Apparently some people are bit too enthusiastic about a product which may or may not end up like Laser Disc or BetaMax.
I'd least wait till Blue Ray comes out before getting one or the other...
Well if you've got the money to blow, the more power to you.
Although, I can't berate them too much, I used to own a Laser Disc player (but it was mostly for Anime imports back in the 90's).
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Am I the only one who thinks HD-DVD is a bit premature? Existing DVD products fail to add compelling extra features in most cases with well done bonus features being few and far between. What do they hope to accomplish with all that freakin SPACE!? (saddled along with all that extra COST no less)
I agree. After reading the story, its amazing that stores report that they are going to have to delay the release because they had not recieved shipments, while at the same time the same stores are leaking the movies and hardware early. But are they? Truthfully, the release date was March 28th. It was postponed at the last moment. Perhaps these retailers did not get the updated memo about the delay, and simply thought that they got a late shipment.
I am about to go check out the AVS forums. I want to know if the players will do High Def without HDMI
These HD-DVD players being released right now do not support 1080p, only 720p for the time being. The Toshiba DVD players do not support the dual-link HDMI-B specification required for true 1080p output. At best, for all your money you'd be putting out you're only getting 4/9 or 44% of the resolution offerd by true 1080p. That's GARGBAGE!
Save you money. I watch 720p shows on the HD movie channels already, and its not -that- much better than a DVD. You can see the difference, but knowing that real -1080p- players are right around the corner, no way I'm being duped into HD-DVD.
We're all better off waiting until TVs widely support the HDMI-B specification for 1080p and the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray players support that output resolution as well.
The HD-DVD discs are encoded in 1080p however, and if watched on (for instance) a capable computer monitor the movies should show in true 1080p. Blu-Ray players, though non-existent, support 1080p output natively.
I disagree, most guys here know this stuff is crapola and won't be shelling out for it. The people who have, have found out that their bigscreen TVs won't play a lot of the new hd-dvd, because it is incompatable. And we don't know yet how blue ray will affect all of this either, just more crap.
DVDs are good enough, and we still can't play a lot of them legally in large areas of the planet on the computer. THAT isn't even sorted out yet well enough.
In other words, additional hoop jumping, huge expense, for the chance of getting something just marginally better to re-buy the same crappy hollywood movies at triple the cost they are now is a no brainer-most hip geeks won't be adopting this right off the bat, it is *stupidity* that they want to charge thousands for. Oh look, a bigfat expensive disk that will hold as much as a few really cheap DVDs....
Just not worth it...
Regular HDMI type A (you know, like the kind used by the PS3) can carry 1080p. Since movies are stored in 1080p24 on the disc, the player converts this to 1080i60 (which causes no loss of data), and then the TV performs a trivial inverse telecine to recover the original 1080p24.
The article fails to mention the where the AVS forums and reviews of the new players are at. They are here
I say, after reading this comment, I do heartily welcome every single crap player sold.
It will hopefully mean that the early adopters will see that they're being ripped off, and that they'll hopefully be pissed enough about it to avoid buying the final generation. And without early adopters, those HDDVD-players that won't support BluRay will sell as well as a calendar of 2005.
Yes, that means a few people are going to lose a lot of their hard earned money. Call it collateral damage in the war against DRM.
(Did I just write that? I should cut back on my CNN intake)
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Their HD-XA1 player (the more expensive player) has this, but the HD-A1 (the cheaper player) does not. Does anyone know what it's for? At first I thought it was for key revocation (in case it gets cracked, like DVD did) but since it's not on the cheaper player, I'm guessing that's not it.
Why would my DVD player need to be hooked up to a network? Are they planning on letting me stream movies between the boxes in my house? Or is this just to set the clock with NTP (a rather stupid reason to put the thing on there).
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
It's to download lists of revoked HDCP keys and report your movie watching habits to the movie studios, of course.
Everyone is born right-handed; only the greatest overcome it
At AVSforum pictures of the motherboard were shown and it has an Intel Mobile ICH4 southbridge. The CPU is under a heatsink but I'd bet it has a Celeron M CPU. Also it has an ATA HDDVD-ROM drive. Anyone up for a linux port?
Nice to see I'm not alone in my thoughts.
The argument I've always made is the leap in quality from VHS to DVD was huge. It was analog to digital etc... But the jump from DVD to HD isn't as big. I've seen uncompressed screenshots of DVD and HD next to each other from Lord of the Rings, and to be honest, in some cases, I felt DVD looked better. Most cases the difference was negligible. And that was on still images. When it's moving, I would challenge all but the most anally retentive videophile to tell the difference.
Throw in the increase in copy protection and playback restrictions, and you can shove the whole thing. The only interest I, and a lot of my friends, have in HD/BluRay is the storage capacity. For movies, we just don't care.
Let's not forget the format war either. VHS vs Beta proved that the superior format does NOT always win the battle.
Anyone who gets into HD right now is a mug.
I'm pretty sure that my DVI connection is capable of carrying a signal at 1920x1080 at 60Hz (go check wikipedia if you don't believe me, 1920x1200@60Hz is in single-link specs). So if they want me to change my equipment just for some content protection they can go to hell.
I'll wait to see which comes out on top, then get a drive for my HTPC which will then be "liberated."
In the early days of stereo, recording companies made, and in some cases sold at bargain prices, demo disks that would show off the capabilities of the new medium.
These disks usually had a mixture of material on them, some quite gimmicky (marching bands marching across the soundstage, jet planes, steam engines, popular music arranged with extreme separation between left and right channels), but always recorded with truly high fidelity and often genuinely impressive.
Under the right circumstances... the difference between a high-fidelity mono recording of a symphony orchestra belting out something like the 1812 Overture and a stereo recording of the same material... was extremely dramatic. And wallet-loosening. Alas, the average classical stereo LP was not as well recorded as the demo disks...
Similarly, the early presentations of Cinerama, which represented very roughly the same improvement factor over traditional 35 mm as HD does over NTSC, were anthology-travelogues that just plain grabbed you by the eyeballs and thrilled you. OK, after an hour or so it was hard to maintain a constant "wow!" level, but just about the time you were starting to yawn at the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, boom! they'd stick you in a plane flying over the Grand Canyon.
So, where are the $3.95 demo HD-DVDs with, I don't know, slo-mo shots where you can count the stitches in the seam of the spinning pitched baseball, the glorious aerial shots of America from sea to shining sea, the shuttle launches in full surround sound.... what the heck, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir... or, if you prefer, Fifty Cent... something to show you instantly why you need this gadget NOW?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
When can I expect to see a torrent of these HD-DVD movies?
...given that I watch DVDs through my computer anyway.
Now if a nice HD-DVD-ROM drive comes out in a year or so that can play both Blu and HD, and the price drops to something economical, that I could see getting...
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
the TV (which people already have)
Not if your TV wasn't manufactured with HDCP support.
Sure, there are details videophiles will worry about like are you getting 1080i or 1080p
Try 540p. Each disc in the HD-DVD or Blu-ray Disc video format can have an Image Constraint Token that forces the player to blur anything being sent over an analog connection.
So buy a player, get a netflix rental account and watch high def movies.
And a new TV.
Why deprive yourself of something
Because you can't afford to replace your HDTV with one that supports HDCP.
I want to know if the players will do High Def without HDMI
If your TV has DVI+HDCP, yes. If not, you'll have to look at each disc's packaging to see whether it uses the Image Constraint Token.
Are *new* users.
As the price drops, kids will be getting their own TVs and players and disk collections. They will NOT opt for the old "No-Definition" TVs/NDTV(tm), or ND-DVD(tm) formats. Gradually, HD-DVD will replace DVD just by aging demographics.
When was the last time any kid got a VHS player for graduation? DVDs came out when, 1996? Just ten years later and look what has happened at the local Blockbuster. Once they were filled with VHS tapes and one or two racks of Betamax.
Today kids are getting "Home Theater in a Box". Next Spring, HD-HTiaB will be available and affordable for all those kids moving out of their bedrooms and into dorms or apartments. Throw in Christmas, birthdays, etc. and soon, much less than ten years, no one will be buying ND-DVD players anymore.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO