Slashdot Mirror
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.)
This will be very useful for all movies filmed at more than 24 FPS, like ______ and of course ____________. Clearly 1080p movies are a showstopper.
"My God, this must be a truly remarkable corn chip, to be so widely and confidently touted."
You are correct in theory, however, most, 1080p tv's only accept a 1080i HDMI signal, even though HDMI and the TV supports 1080p (I think the HP dlp is the only tv that can). I think the reason for this is that the engineers know that 1080i60 can be converted to 1080p24 without loss. So you can get upset about it and deprive yourself of something cool, or you can realize that it really doesn't make any difference anyway.
For further examples, TV shows are 30 interlaced frames a second which in HD world would be 1080i60. Movies are progressive 24 frames a second. If you want to do this as cheap as possible, you would realize that 1080i60 can do both television (30fps, interlaced) and movies (24fps, progressive), while if they only supported 1080p24, they couldn't support TV shows without loss. So at some point they must have decided not to support 1080p24 because it would cost more to provide support for both. And they knew that it would not be distiguishable anyway.
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