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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."
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
HD signals are nice but they're not nice enough to get people to rush out and spend $5,000 on new AV equipment. The fact is that less than 25% of new TVs that are purchased are HDTVs, and the disturbing thing is that most of them are bought because of their size or because they can be hung on the wall; just ask any sales clerk whether they get asked about wall brackets or HDTV compatibility more when someone is buying a LCD/Plasma TV. The fact is that 'High Definition' is only a buzzword at the moment and, until someone produces a reason for people to want HD, will remain a buzzword.
I also don't agree with your list of 'issues':
complex setups
Ummm, you plug the HDMI connector into the back of the HD-DVD player and the other end into your TV. There is no step 2. Audio and everything is taken care of.
additional expense beyond new DVD players
True I guess if you do not have any HDMI based equipment. Around Seattle, there are a _lot_ of people with Plasma displays and all the recent ones have HDMI. The number of those sets are going to be increasing in the future. And the people that already own HDMI equipment are the same kind of people who want better quality and will go for HD-DVD.
compatibility issues (real or perceived)
I predict that no one will have any compatibility issues. Old DVDs will play fine (and maybe look better because of the HDMI link, as a lot of older DVD players are using Component or worse) and new HD-DVDs will look great.
DRM
In summary, HD-DVD is set for a good run if you ask me. The new players will integrate nicely into newer home-theaters and are going to look stunning. Sure a lot of people who don't spend a ton of money on this stuff are going to be left out in the cold for a while, but remember how expensive DVD players were when they first came out. The price is going to drop.
Also, people who have to view a scaled down image because they don't have compliant equipment are probably not going to notice the difference. Believe it or not, some people watch DVDs on crappy 27" tubes from 1985 through the composite interfaces.
Sure, I agree that many people won't care about the difference between DVD and HD-DVD. I do, because:
- I own an HDTV,
- I paid many times more for it than I did for my DVD player, and
- I can clearly see the difference in quality between broadcast HD and DVDs, even though I have a relatively small screen (34").
I think comparing HD-DVD (or Bluray) to SACD is mostly bogus. Consider equipment: to get what you pay for from an SACD, you need at least the player, a "high-end" receiver, "high-end" speakers, and "high-end" cables. "High-end" isn't well defined because we're not dealing with video resolutions. And I think to most people the end result isn't tangible because they can't SEE the difference.
With HD video you need the player, the TV (which people already have) plus cables. Sure, there are details videophiles will worry about like are you getting 1080i or 1080p, but I'd think only a small slice of a small slice will care. And when you have your HD movies playing on your giant HDTV, you can SEE the results immediately: instead of looking at scaled up blotches, you're looking at sharp detail.
The fact is TV screen sizes will keep going up, people will keep buying bigger TVs for the "wow" factor, and bigger screens need more pixels.
Sure a lot of people who don't spend a ton of money on this stuff are going to be left out in the cold for a while, but remember how expensive DVD players were when they first came out. The price is going to drop.
The price will drop quickly as these fail to find any sort of market at any price. Only a small group of uber-consumerists will buy players for this needless format.
Believe it or not, some people watch DVDs on crappy 27" tubes from 1985 through the composite interfaces.
"Some people" is well over 50%. Most people actually watch DVDs for the sole purpose of being entertained, not to nitpick the difference between video resolutions, or to try to see how HDMI looks different from component video. Those crappy 27" tubes render the same plot, characters, and action as the widescreen, hi-def plasmas.
That's just one more hint that those things are not expected to work like an appliance, but more like software - they'll crash here and there, have unexpected "features" and will probably require updates to even support most of the features advertised on the box, disabling others or introducing new annoyances in the process.
It's about 3/4's of the way down in a different thread.
Toshiba HD-A1 HD DVD - First End User Reports!
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/printthread.php?t=
If you poke around earlier/later in the thread, there are pictures of the systems with their innards exposed & a pic or two of the DVD-player menu when you connect it to the LAN. On page 15, there's a shot of the HDMI chip.
Apparently you can stream subtitles off your computer & onto/into the DVD player. That tidbit is on page 20.
(Just so you know, I didn't actually read any of the posts, I skimmed through it all looking for pictures. Works great in Fark Flame Wars
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
You will be able to access on-line content from the HD player,
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?
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