Slashdot Mirror
Kmart Drops Blu-Ray Players
Lord Byron II writes "K-mart has decided to stop selling Blu-Ray players in their stores, primarily because of the high cost of Blu-Ray compared to HD-DVD (now under $200). They will continue to sell the PS3 for the time being. Will lower prices speed the adoption of HD-DVD in the upcoming holiday shopping season?"
... on a Blu-Ray player?
Darn...
Until the pirate community has made a decision, I'm waiting before I commit.
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
No. There's no content available, and the improvement over DVD isn't nearly enough to make people rush out and buy any kind of HD DVD any time soon.
Ray: Kmart sucks.
The Schwartz space ain't from Spaceballs.
Who the hell buys electronics at Kmart, anyway?
blu-ray at kmart? that's like trying to sell benz's in the ghetto at retail prices.
K-Mart is still around?
the PS3... I mean, their price drop was good, but if they want to win this war, they should have lowered more and kept PS2 compatibility with the PS3 instead of gimping it. I'm waiting until after x-mas to see which is the winner... looking like its going to be HD-DVD... i've already seen TV ads, and thats half the battle right there
Get out the tinfoil hats but I wonder if the HD-DVD group "persuaded" K-Mart with a wack of cash to dump BR ala Paramount?
I Like Pie...
Rumor has it walmart will have the toshiba A2 hd-dvd for $98 on black friday
http://www.cnbc.com/id/21581845
It makes sense, in a twisted kinda way. If you were the average joe who had no clue, which would you want? Something with an unfamiliar name, or something named with HD and DVD right in the title? What if that second one was around half the price?
No, quoting RedvsBlue: "Bad marketing. not enough repeated letters to be catchy, so it's being replaced with HHDDVVDDBVDs"
then again Bluray is already obsolete er I mean red-ray
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/575487/red_vs_blue_go_go_gadget_video/
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I wonder if this means anything for Sears, since Kmart is owned by Sears Holdings (ticker symbol SHLD).
You realize that it's been years now, right? And that there hasn't been a winner yet. A PS3 is like $400. A HDDVD player is like $200. If you buy either and the associated media format fades into obscurity it's not that big a deal - especially compared to the nice HDTV you'd have to get to make it matter at all.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Just a little bias in the article post: "They will continue to sell the PS3 for the time being".
1.) The PS3 is a Blu-Ray player, arguably the best, that's what I bought mine for.
2.) "Time Being" meaning to imply Kmart may drop the PS3 also? And not sell all 3 of the current generation game players? Not likely.
HD-DVD could win, but in general people are not buying quality 1080P HDTVs at Kmart, they are buying cut rate 720P stuff that doesn't look that much better with HD-DVD than upscaled DVD.
Don't get me wrong, this isn't good for Blu-Ray, but it isn't the sky falling either.
Letter To Iran
WalMart has the Toshiba HD A2 for $98.87 as of 8am on November 2nd 2007.
http://holiday.ri-walmart.com/?u1=433093-2-0-ARTICLE-0§ion=secret&utm_source=Walmartcom
I believe they may include the free 5 HD DVDs deal, which alone is worth $100.
I'd say that is breaking the price barrier holding back acceptance!!
(I know I'm buying two, one for us, and one for my inlaws for Christmas)
Kmart to drop Blue Ray sales and Wal-Mart to sell a sub-$100 HD DVD player. http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/34650/97/ See the pattern here? Both Kmart and Walmart are among the top leading names in budget department stores.
Video-on-demand, both on cable and via internet, will make blu-ray / HD-DVD irrevelant ...
... and with ever increasing affordable, even free (ie. YouTube / Wifi, etc), bandwidth, VoD is well on the way to drive the newer physical HD formats to a premature extinction.
Sure some people will buy / use such players, but most people are skipping right to utilizing video-on-demand instead
Ron
One of these things is just like the others.
All of these things plainly belong.
Can you tell what point that I am making,
by the time I finish my song?
Three of these things belong together
Three of these things are kind of the same
Can you guess what point I am making?
Now it's time to play our game
Your supposition is that there are millions of people that have been on the fence the last year and a half just waiting for this moment and will now pounce. A high percentage of these players will go to Blu-Ray owners who just want to hedge their bets and play a few must have titles they can't get on Blu-Ray.
HD enthusiasts already have players and J6P often hooks his brand new HDTV up to a progressive scan player with a composite cable. Someone needs to build these players into a good HDTV so the lay public doesn't have to get the Wires and the Settings correct.
Letter To Iran
It's movie sales that count, so even if they sold a ton of cheap players unless that translates to dramatically higher media sales HD-DVD still has problems - and look at the lackluster release lineup the rest of the year!
The best week HD-DVD ever had was the recent Transformers release. In that week, Blu-Ray movies still managed to outsell HD-DVD! So what happens now that Spider Man 3 and other large hits are coming out Blu-Ray only?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Everybody always totes this statement out in regards to HD media, but in case you haven't noticed not everybody is hooked up to broadband, and those that are don't have uniformly high download rates. It will be a player sure, but not full high quality because bandwidth tempts you to scrimp on file size, and even those downloading these overly compressed HD files will only account for at most 10-20% of the HD market the next 3-5 years. And that assumes studios can control piracy, because if you condition people to download HD, I guarantee you will also see a rise in piracy. At least with Discs someone still has to burn or press them.
Letter To Iran
I'm not investing in another platform designed to remove my fair use rights. If the entertainment industry doesn't want to distribute their products in easy to use file formats without DRM, I'm not interested in their products. How many bad movies have I paid to see over the years and felt cheated at not being able to get my money back. There are better ways to entertain myself than watching my rights drain away. Sony is obviously doing Betamax II just so the next generation can enjoy a Sony bomb too.
So what? Bluray sucks.
It's the HDTV you have to hook the player up to that keeps a lot of people out of the market. With the price of a decent HDTV still out of the reach of so many, it will slow things down even more.
Great post, though. I hadn't realized just how cheap those HD players were getting... it's going to be a lot harder to talk the wife into an XBox 360 now... dang it...
People don't know anything about one format or the other, or even care, but they know HD is good and DVD sounds familiar and easy to use. HD-DVD was a great move because it leveraged the gajillions of dollars that have already been pumped into marketing "HD" and "DVD", and the familiarity that goes with both.
I'm not sure I'd call Betamax a failure, though VHS did eventually overtake and beat it. No format lasts forever. Beta lasted for like 20 years. You also fail to mention CDs, 3 1/2 floppy discs, or that Sony was co-founder of the original DVD spec. Toshiba was mostly to blame for the DVD forum not agreeing on a standard with Sony.
Letter To Iran
I think this development is very telling, but its just a symptom not just of BluRay's failure, but the whole market for higher definition optical media.
I'm an Aussie but I've lived nearly my whole life in Singapore where electronic gadgets are not just a nice thing to have, they're almost status symbols, like most parts of affluent Asia I assume. When DVDs came along everyone was scrambling to get the latest devices, televisions and movie releases on the new format, but here we are in 2007 and only a handful of retailers here even know what BluRay and HDDVD players are, let alone sell them. In SINGAGPORE, one of the high tech capitals of the world. It's mind boggling.
So this Kmart in the United States story doesn't really surprise me. What I'm interested to know though is the overall market for high definition optical media not just "us" versus "them" Betamax style. Do many of you in the States own such players? Do you have many movies? Have you really paid much attention to it? Is it as bleak in your part of the world as it is in ours?
I think price is just one of many factors relating to slow adoption, and it's not the primary one.
Cheers, ~ Ruben
Blu-Ray and HD don't have enough capacity to store really good HDTV without overcompression. Everything still blurs during motion and pans. Then, when motion stops, enough data comes in for the decompressor to catch up. Yuck. That's why the demo content in the stores is either near-static scenes without camera pans, or something with so much action that you can't see the artifacts. Long, slow pans still suck. They suck for 24FPS film, too, but we have the technology to do better now.
Right now, the displays are better than the storage medium. You can buy 1080p flat screens without any problem. Some of them can even do 60FPS. We need 4x to 8x as much data on the storage medium to feed those big, fast screens properly.
This will probably happen after the NFL figures out some way to transmit football at 60FPS.
Don't have a HDTV, so I don't need either. On top of that, the HD-DVD player has to be plugged into a network connection?!?! I don't think so. I should be able to watch something without having the player contact God knows who for some reason..
Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.
Not for the immediate futher, but don't rule them out yet... Sony has lost this kind of match before, back in the Beta vs VHS battle. Seems they forgot the lesson learned then.
Will lower prices speed the adoption of HD-DVD in the upcoming holiday shopping season?"It means the lower cost and wider availability of a player, either player, will determine the outcome. Sony charged high prices and licenced their Betamax technology in the 70's, thus we had VHS as the eventual winner. Not learning from their prior mistake? No deja fubar?*
*fubar spelt that way for you anal types.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Who cares about the price of the players? You are likely to spend much more on the media over its lifetime than the purchase price for the player. I'd like to see either HD DVDs or Blu-ray discs at least comparable to previous generation DVDs before committing to a technology.
Rumor has it walmart will have the toshiba A2 hd-dvd for $98 on this friday
http://holiday.ri-walmart.com/?section=secret
What's that joke, that the definition of "expert" is "someone who can read the manual?" Seriously, I don't feel the slightest bit of sorrow for people who are defeated by the requirement that they do a (very) small amount of one-time research to fully utilize their high-dollar equipment. The more expensive said equipment is, the more senseless it is to allow your own laziness to keep you from enjoying its full capabilities, and someone who experiences lower quality because of this simple principle is merely paying the Willful Helplessness Tax. "Garbage in, garbage out" doesn't just apply to computers. Please, stop portraying these people as victims of "defective" products; this world has become dumbed-down enough already.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
How about a Toshiba HD-A2 for UNDER $100?
http://holiday.ri-walmart.com/?u1=433093-2-0-ARTICLE-0§ion=secret&utm_source=Walmartcom
HD DVD = Toshiba
Blu-ray = Panasonic, Sony, Pioneer, Sharp, Hitachi, Samsung, Philips, Mitsubishi and LG.
For computer drives we have:
HD DVD = Toshiba
Blu-ray = Panasonic, Sony, Pioneer
For burner technology we have:
HD DVD = 1X single layer (15GB) HD DVD-R
Blu-ray = BD-R 4X (50GB) Dual layer & BD-RE (rewritable)
Camcorders
HD DVD = none
Blu-ray = 2 Hitachi blu-ray recording camcorder models.
HD DVD is the beta max of this generation except that it is not technically superior like beta was compared with VHS.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
-
SPACEBALLS! or Serenity. or Firefly, or Frasier. or Scrooged! or Terminator. or Bladerunner. or M*A*S*H
-
If that's not enough - here's a collection of 2 more words a piece: Groundhog Day, Battlestar Galactica, Blazing Saddles, True Lies. Total Recall. Office Space.
-
Or 3 - The Blues Brothers (the original, not the sequel), Dead Like Me, 50 First Dates, Last Action Hero. School of Rock, Weekend at Bernies'
Not everyone is going to agree with everything on the list, but I'm sure most of us have stuff we'd like to see over and over, like Harold and Kumar Go To Whitecastle, 2 White Chicks, most of the James Bond movies, pretty much anything with Sean Connery (The Rock, for example).I haven't seen a K-Mart in years. It's all WalMarts and Targets now.
"The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
I rip DVDs, copy them to my hard drive, and can watch whichever one I demand whenever I like.
.mp3s.
I'm looking forward to the day when my home video library has as many numbers of items in it as my home collection of
Being YOUR OWN library and serving yourself content, instead of being some restrictive corporation's streamed media bitches, is the real future.
Fanboys have been lamenting this "stupid" "pointless" format war from the beginning but this just proves it has been wonderful from the consumer point of view. Had there been only one format, chances are we'd still have to pay $400-$500 minimum for players. Thank you, competition.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
...who don't read Slashdot and know diddly squat about technology.
In other words, everyone else.
You realize that it's been years now, right?
Like... one. That's a lot of months!Today is red jello day - all workers must eat all of their red jello. Failure to comply will result in five demerits.
About 3 years ago I hooked up a friend's progressive DVD player to their HDTV. The SERVICE man from the store it was purchased from had hooked it up with a composite cable. I got them a component cable and hooked it up (that part was easy) but spent the better part of an hour getting the settings right on BOTH the TV and the DVD, which had to have both in progressive mode and inputting/outputting through the Component cable, and navigating to these settings was far from straight forward. If you didn't set the DVD correctly then whatever signal is was sending put only showed as B&W on the set. Maybe things have improved in the last 3 years, but in general things shouldn't be this obtuse. Since I am a programmer for a living I think if I have problems installing it then J6P shouldn't be expected to suffer with it. And for the record I have been homebrew HDTV since 2002 with a MyHD card so I am hardly a novice at these things.
In general things should be smart enough to just work when you plug them together, but this isn't always the case with HDTV. If J6P doesn't get an HDMI cable with his TV and HD player he likely will not know he needs one. But I see you would rather he just think HDTV is a scam.
It's because J6P is slow to adopt that the HDTV roll out has been slow. If you want HDTV you want it to be simple for J6P also.
Letter To Iran
It's hardly no surprise, since standalone Blu-ray player cost as much as a low-end PS3, which is also a gaming console and a media center. There is no reason for anyone to buy a standalone player, so there is virtually no market for the standalones.
Supporting Fair use means BUYING from artists that distribute on un-DRM'd media -- supporting fair use is not buying a media that has been cracked and is thus pirateable. The latter will only motivate them to try to lock it up even harder. Believe me they will not learn soon if you don't support first over the second.
Letter To Iran
Digital cinema systems for theaters, at 1080 x 2048 pixels ("2K") at 24FPS, use about 300GB to store a movie. A typical movie server stores 2TB of uncompressed video. "4K" systems, which have 4x as many pixels, are now being deployed.
4K cameras and data recorders are already available. 16 bits per color channel. "In one shot Origin can handle both the naked flame of a candle and the delicate, nuanced shadows on candlelit faces. It can handle the full glare of the sun reflected from a window and still resolve the subtleties of the shadows below." 402MB/s output, delivered over four fibre optic strands using Infiniband.
Now we have to deliver all, or at least most, of that data to the living room.
Then retrofit it to the surveillance cams.
Though they're specials, both Wal Mart and Best Buy are offering HD DVD players for $100.
Toshiba HD-A2 HD DVD player: $100, this Friday, Wal-Mart
http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/01/toshiba-hd-a2-hd-dvd-player-100-this-friday-wal-mart/
Best Buy offers Toshiba HD-A2 for $100
http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/01/best-buy-offers-the-toshiba-hd-a2-for-100-too-and-other-hd-dv/
Sunny
Be my Friend
1. I swear if I hear another stupid VHS/Betamax argument again I'm going to shoot someone (although it's not as bad to the stupid dumbasses who say, "The winner will be whoever the porn industry sides with!! Ignoring the fact that the porn industry played only a part in that war - it was NOT the deciding factor)
2. With everyone saying, "Oh man, a sub-100$ HD-DVD player, that's going to win the format war for sure!!" I think there is one thing that people are forgetting- HIGH-DEF is not yet for the masses. Less than half the people in the country have HDTV. That will change after Christmas, but it hasn't yet. It is a premium item. The people who do buy HDDVD/BLURAY are people who can afford the premium (typically). This HDDVD player is the "Coby"/knock-off brand of HDDVD player (Yes, I know Toshiba is not a knock-off brand..). This is a 1080i player, not 1080p. Many people can't tell the difference, but people who can afford HD typically care. Nobody spends 1000's of dollars on a system to add a 100$ player. Until HDTV's are cheaper and get near the 500-700 range for a 42" or above instead of around 1000-1400, then HD player prices will matter. This one player, (which is only going on sale for a few days, this is NOT a permanent price fix) is not going to win the format war. It will convince some people to get one and a few movies (despite that the 5 movies that come with it really suck donkey balls.) This will help the HDDVD camp for bragging rights for a few weeks, and their sales MIGHT top Bluray for a while, but this player will not "win" the format-war.
"Thank you for using Stop-n-Drop, America's favorite suicide booth since 2008"
Couldn't resist, stupid pedantic point follows.
The dollar sign "$" doesn't get used as a simple replacement for where you'd normally write the word "dollar" or "dollars" in a sentence, as much sense as that might make if it were true. 100 dollars is written as $100, not 100$.
Also, do you really need to save those couple of keystrokes by typing "1000's of dollars" instead of "thousands of dollars"? That first one reads like "one thousands of dollars", which not only looks and sounds weird, but doesn't even mean what you intended.
*fubar spelt that way for you anal types
For us anal types, next time you could explain what a futher is.
Amusing that your post is entitled "Wow, what an arrogant stance" and then proceeds to use your own capability as the yardstick by which the degree of difficulty should be measured. "I do X for a living" is not a line of reasoning. At best it's an appeal to authority (i.e. your own) and even then, that's only if your career path bears a direct relation to the subject. When you use a rather specialized skill like programming as one of your qualifications, and then proceed to talk about how bad it is that Joe Sixpack might not know he needs a cable, it doesn't work because you are effectively comparing a specialty to a matter of reading the manual. Put another way, Albert Einstein was an incredibly smart man with a high IQ who revolutionized physics, yet he often had problems dressing himself; it does not follow that therefore the average person has a difficult time putting on his shoes.
I never made that claim and in fact gave an entirely different reason for why I feel the way I do about this issue (that things are dumbed-down enough as it is). Due to this, I must conclude that either reading comprehension is not your strongest talent, or you feel a need to resort to making shit up to justify what you want to believe. Furthermore, I said that to spend a non-trivial amount of money on something and then not bother to inform yourself about the most basic aspects of how to use it is willful helplessness and I was clearly against this practice. I'll break down for you what that means -- if what I said there is listened to and understood, then Joe Sixpack won't think that HDTV is a scam due to a missing cable, because he would not have been ignorant enough to reach this false conclusion due to something so basic.
This really is a very basic thing; to treat it as though it's some unreasonably hard task, like I am expecting Joe Sixpack to be able to write the HD player's firmware in assembly, is ridiculous. If you were trying to make the point that manufacturers could do a better job of designing their products (which is an issue separate from whether the inability to do basic problem-solving is a personal flaw), this isn't the way to go about it.
Alternate explanation: HDTV is an incremental improvement over TV, not a revolutionary, must-have killer app that calls for overnight, universal adoption. Compounding this is the fact that there remains a very large volume of content in standard-definition and this will be the case for a little while yet. Considering these two observations, it should not come as a shock that HDTV rollout has been slow.
You could make a much more solid argument if you were more concerned with why you believe what you do and less concerned with how arrogant you think a complete stranger is because you dislike what he says. But if we are going to talk of arrogance, I have to say that it's really rather arrogant to argue that a product redesign is needed to assure the success of HDTV equipment because Joe Sixpack is so ignorant that the current situation exceeds his capabilities. Contrast that with what I am getting at, which is that I expect a bit better than that and I say that Joe Sixpack can make informed decisions that lead to better experiences if he really wants to. No one is preventing Joe Sixpack from doing this other than Joe Sixpack. On a deeper level, I personally believe that w
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
I wonder when this battle over formats is going to end so I can actually start buying HD movies. Seriously, it's very annoying. I certainly don't want to invest in a player until a winner emerges. I don't do TV, can't stand almost all of it, but I like my movies and SF shows (Mmmm, River Tam in HD..), I'd rather like to have more than three episodes per disc too, whole seasons even. For that I would happily re-buy much of my collection.
As for data storage? Well I'd love to get with that, but again, there's no way I'm getting a writer until two things happen
1: Someone wins this spat.
2: Whoever wins decides they've tapped out the 'adopt early and pay big coin' brigade, and prices for writers drop to something reasonable.
Rant warning
I know what you mean. I went to a large electronics outlet here in Sweden, wanting to buy one of two new games that had just been released. One was for Wii and one for PS3. Neither was available and when I looked through the games that were available I could just confirm what I already knew: the Wii and the PS3 aren't worth buying yet. In a year or so more, there will probably be one or two games worth buying for the PS3 and the Wii will have some big games available. Right now, they're both lame ducks compared to the 360.
And you must realize that I have both a Wii and a PS3 (for which I bought a 15.000kr (about $2400) television), so I'm not saying this because I'm a 360 fanboy but rather the opposite. I will never buy a 360 (simply because of its maker).
Regarding what you said about FPS, I agree. FPS should be handled with a mouse. Why there are no gaming mice with some sort of free-hand keyboard available (and supported) for all consoles I don't know. But then again, the PS3 doesn't even have friggin force feedback for their steering wheels (it boggles the mind, it's like not having a rumble-feature in the controller).
There appears to be one company, Splitfish, who have realised the need for mice for gaming consoles, unfortunately the quality of the device seems not to be okay, so I'm still waiting for a proper gaming mouse. However, Resistance Fall Of Man is actually playable with just the controller once you realise that you should adjust your aim not with the aiming stick but with your movement stick. Worked for me. :)
Well, I'm happy with my Wii purchase anyway, playing Super Mario Party 8 with four people is fun (mostly because I always win) and Big Brain Academy is also fun, plus playing FPS on Wii is actually OK (although a mouse would still have been preferable). The PS3 is for me just a glorified Media Center and DVD-player, a job of which it is not doing very well for some reason. I'm having trouble with my TV I think, because I can't imagine the picture should look this way.
Badgers, we don't need no stinking badgers! - UHF
1. Company releases cool technology.
2. Sony releases more restrictive, more expensive version of technology.
3. Short battle, Sony loses.
4. Repeat.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Also, I forgot to mention what PS3 games (and Wii games for that matter) cost here in Sweden. A fairly recent game will set you back 600kr, which is the equivalent of about $100. New games for PC are $50.
The scary part is that people seem to be paying these prices for these games. It's mad!
Badgers, we don't need no stinking badgers! - UHF
I'm not following your train of logic here. In general, the manuals for HDTVs recommend HDMI or component over all else if it's available, at least, that's what I saw in mine (with a whole set of "This is preferred, this is better, do this if you must, etc.) Three years ago, HDMI was practically non-existent, now it's in everything. It's the recommended way to hook things up. HDMI if there, component if no HDMI, S-Video if no component or HDMI, composite if no S-Video, Component, or HDMI, and (*snort*) antenna as a last resort.
I think it's great actually. Composite comprises of three cables which have to be plugged in correctly. Grandma does have a problem with that. HDMI is just one cable that does everything. Plug it in, it "just works". About the only way you could make it easier is if you removed the support for legacy standards (ie removed the component, S-Video, and composite sockets), and I think you'd be amongst the first to howl if that happened. So the idea that HDTVs and HD-DVD/Bluray players aren't "ready for the public" is as laughable as the old "GNU/Linux isn't ready for the desktop*" comments. Anyone who makes those kinds of comments has essentially made them based upon a brief assessment made three years ago based upon an incompetent install.
* Ubuntu 7.04 is unquestionably easier to use than Windows 9x, Me, XP and Vista. In some cases, it might be unsuitable for your desktop (in the same way that Windows may be unsuitable for many), or it may be that it doesn't support all your hardware properly (but let's not pretend Windows when not bundled with a computer doesn't have the same issue - and nobody claims Mac OS X isn't "ready for the desktop" and that barely supports anything...), but in a fair fight, Ubuntu is easier to use than Windows, more powerful than the latter, more reliable, less likely to be trojaned or infected by a virus (though that has a lot to do with the lack of users), and has equal application support albeit with strengths and weaknesses in different areas.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Most of the videophiles seem to be saying that Blu-Ray 'won' the format war already, but IMO that's due entirely to the:
- Blu Ray in the PS3 and the perceived 'bargain' of getting a blu-ray player and game console at the same time.
- early adopters are hobbyists, purists, and people on the bleeding edge; I don't know that they track particularly well with what the 'mass market' will eventually settle for.
-Styopa
Really, what's the source on this story? A Blog post on some unknown site by someone named "Technology Expert"? Hold a second while I create a blog, post that Walmart/Best Buy/Circuit City/etc decided to drop HDDVD then post it here for the editors to forward on.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
There is a rumour going around the mill that Walmart is going to also shortly announce it is going HD-DVD exclusive, for both players and titles (witht he exception of the PS3). It is all related to the lower price point of the players, and these discount retailers having to squeeze every dime or margin out of every product.
If Walmart goes HD-DVD exclusive, then Blu-Ray is as good as DOA.
Betamax was superior to VHS, but was defeated because of Sony's poor marketing strategy and higher cost. Will Blu-Ray be another Betamax?
George (gk4)
Sure, I know that Blu-Ray can physically hold more data, but most people in the general public aren't going to care about that. I think Sony could have done so much more with the standard, but have honestly fallen short of my expectations. I would have hoped that both "next-gen" formats would have delivered that "wow this is cool" feeling. HD-DVD does it somewhat, but Blu-Ray seems to think that HD content is enough.
What do other dual format owners think? Is there some cool Blu-Ray specific feature that I've not seen yet?
I agree with you. I want HD movies, but am not going to buy anything till a format is chosen. I am not buying DVD's right now, because I don't want to buy them then replace them with HD versions once we have a winner. Of course, the MPAA probably thinks sales are down because people are pirating everything
With your second point in mind... Not everyone is going to go out and drop "1000's of dollars" for an HDTV. In fact, the masses will probably go out this holiday season and buy TVs mostly using 720p instead of 1080p. Why? Price and marketing. These TVs fall into that 500-700 dollar category that seems to be the sweet spot for most buyers. Also, that 500-700 dollar set also has the magic letters HDTV on it, which most people will just look for that instead of 480p, 720p, 1080i, or 1080p. The people that will be looking for these players at KMart will fall into this category.
If you'd just do what we tell you and quit yer gripin' everything would be chocolate sprinkles and rainbows! -AC
Kreskin?
This is a 1080i player, not 1080p.
I'm really getting tired of people who don't know what they're talking about making a big issue of 1080i vs. 1080p when it comes to a source device. Obviously, 1080i and 1080p are very different when it comes to a display. However, Any 1080p display worth its purchase price is going to be able to convert from 1080i to 1080p effectively losslessly. From Wikipedia: "Due to interlacing, 1080i has twice the frame-rate but half the resolution of a 1080p signal using the same bandwidth." In short, a 1080i signal and a 1080p signal contain the same data, just formatted differently. To go from 1080i to 1080p (this is simplified and doesn't account for various framerate differences), you take every two 1080i frames (540 lines each), weave them, and you have a 1080p frame.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
The people have spoken. The bastards.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
I agree with the first point, your second point not so much.
The fact is people want something to buy. If people need a DVD player, they would rather get a HD-DVD player that played both. If they just want to get a present for someone, or want something new, they will get the HD-DVD player. You are trying to apply logic too much to the masses. They don't make decisions based on logic. They don't know what HD means, but that it is the latest thing, and they must have it.
Things like this can win the format war. The timing is right, people seem to want something new. The player is cheap. It is coming up to christmas. This can make a big difference. Probably wont though.
I haven't yet decided which format I'm going to choose for my upcoming home theater purchase, but reading reviews it is certainly evident that writers insert their own bias when reporting on the format war. This submitter is no exception.
For example the submitter writes: "K-mart has decided to stop selling Blu-Ray players in their stores ... They will continue to sell the PS3 for the time being". The last sentence implies that they may at any time stop selling the PS3 as well. The original article however states "Of course, Kmart will continue to sell the Playstation 3, which includes a Blu-ray player", with the 'of course' implying that it's obvious that dropping the PS3 would not even be a consideration. The difference in perspective is obvious.
Now lets say the the submitter was an actual journalist in a mainstream publication. You could then easily imagine other people picking up on that inference and stating 'K-Mart drops Blu-Ray - considers dropping PS3 as well" or something along those lines.
For all submitters, if you are going to post something, keep your own agenda out of it.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
I've been a part of this community for quite some time and I often contribute stories. Only rarely do they ever get accepted. I've noticed that the stories that make it to the front page tend to have two qualities - they are sensationalist and they ask rhetorical questions. I decided to try and see if adding those qualities to my submissions would work. Hence, I added the "they'll keep selling PS3s for now" bit for the melodrama and then I added the required rhetorical question. Sure enough, it got accepted.
On the plus side, format wars that make people afraid to buy DVDs are good for Netflix's business. I know I started using them when i got sick of the idea of buying an "obsolete" format.
(Especially when DVDs I had already bought started coming out in "super criterion extended bonus editions" 4-5 years later)
720p doesnt look much better than standard def??? Are you kidding me? Do you even own a HD set? 1080p is indistinguishable from 720p on screens 40" or under in size, which is (I am guessing here) probably 90 per cent of all flat panels sold. maybe you have a 50" set, in which case, enjoy watching the news look like a psychotic tetris game.
You may not agree with what I say, but you should fight to the death to allow me to say it, by modding me up.
I have to agree there. I was thinking of maybe taking the plunge on an HD system, but doing a quick check amazon.com I see movies I want exclusive in both formats, so I guess I'll stick with DVD until a clear winner emerges.
So this is a big guy beating up on a little guy. It wasn't funny when it happened to you when you were young (one assumes) so why is it funny now? Why perpetuate a shit behaviour pattern just becuase you can?
I swear if I hear another person say Blu-Ray is going to win the format war I am going to puke all over my screen.
This is not a rumor, but I can guarantee that by the time most people read this it will be too late.
I left for work early to get to the Wal-Mart near where I work. By 8:30 AM (the special prices started at 8 AM) the Wal-Mart near my work was out after getting a palette of 30. I also asked my wife to stop off at the local W-M after she dropped out daughter off at school because she could be there at 8 AM. (I could always return one if we each managed to buy one.)
She just called and said that she got one; however, she had to stand in a long line and she had to buy it in the electronics department. By the time she got up to the palette, three remained. So, if you didn't know about this yesterday, there's no reason to even think you'll get one. (Of course, as I write this it's 9:34 AM EDT, so those in Mountain and Pacific time might still have a chance.)
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
I want to know how many people who have HD capable TV sets regularly shop at Kmart for their electronics needs that aren't college kids. Seriously, the amount of people who fit in this category HAS to be low.
Even if HD-DVD players are cheaper, the HD DVD movies aren't available on blockbuster online, or the neighborhood stores. Netflix rents both, and from their stats:
Those who looked at Blu-ray titles outnumber those looking at HD-DVD by a factor of 1.8 to 1.
So even when both are available, Blu-ray is twice as popular. Blu-ray sales are also twice that of HD-DVD.
SearchIRC - Now with live chat directory!
Good job refuting
"Many people can't tell the difference, but people who can afford HD typically care"
but in fact it's already contrafactual on its face. Perhaps 1% of ppl in the market for these devices can tell the difference and care. The other 99% will buy what the salesperson at the big box store tells them is the best.
Which means that more will buy the more expensive 1080p stuff, but not for the reason GP states.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
What frame rate are you assuming the 1080p content is in? Standard formats have only one frame rate for 1080i (30 frames/sec, 60 fields/sec, plus the 1000/1001 ratio rates) but have 3 choices for 1080p (24, 30, and 60, plus the 1000/1001 ratio rates). For content originating in 24 fps motion picture film, or its digital equivalent, encoding it as 24 fps onto the disc is best.
If you are converting 1080i30/60 to 1080p60, that works fine. But the source material may not be in that format. It might be in 1080p24. Upconverting that to 1080i30/60 would add the motion judder artifact. That can be easily fixed if the upconversion were to any progressive frame rate. Fixing it after interlacing is next to impossible (the weaving together method doesn't fix judder).
What we really need is a player that either leaves the content unconverted (e.g. send it as 1080p24 to the display) or upconverts to something a multiple of the 24 fps (1080p48 or 1080p72 ... non-standards, unfortunately). More likely we'll see upconversion to 1080p60 from players in the future, and then TVs will have to have "judder correction" or "3:2 film correction". But it would be better to just pass the video from the player to the display in the 24 fps format. An LCD display can simply update pixels at that rate and you won't see flicker anyway. Other display technology would have to engage the conversion circuits.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Wow, I must be crazy then. I bought my BD because I watch movies & since BD has more studio support amd BD has better PQ/AQ options, it was an easy decision. I doubt many even watch the deleted scenes on a disc. I think its odd how everyone is predicting the death of BD when it enjoys a 2:1 media sales advantage.
1080i is 60 HALF frames per second. 1080p is 60 FULL frames, and output devices are now capable (see Sony Bravia XBR line) of producing 1080p in double rates, meaning 120 frames per second. 60 fields per second is not the same as 60 frames, and if you are stating that 1080p uses the same amount of data as a source, then you are assuming that the format uses the same data rates (possible, I have not researched), and further presuming that there is no discernible difference between 30, 60, and 120 frames per second. Subjectively, this is possible, but very unlikely. If the only difference in 1080p and 1080i were outputted frame rates, then some ingenius manufacturer would be selling 1080p sets at 1080i prices, within say $20 to cover electronics costs. If I am incorrect in my understanding, then please enlighten me in exactly how interlaced and progressive are the same quality/quantity of base data.
Same here. I have one right now that I got for $98. I showed up early (6:50am) and no one was there and they were going on sale at 8am so I went to IHOP and got some breakfast. Showed back up at 7:40 and I was 15th in line :(. At 8am, there were about 50 or so folks in line when they wheeled out a pallet of them (and those cheap laptops) and started handing them out. They didn't have enough to cover the number of people that were in line at the Walmart I was in. Every Walmart around here that I've heard about has been the same (there are at least 5 Super-Walmarts in easy driving range of me).
Despite reports to the contrary, Kmart says it has no plans to choose to sides in the high-def format war. In a statement released late Thursday, Kmart VP Jonathan Magasanik said the following: Quote: Originally Posted by K-Mart There have been numerous statements in the media today, attributed to Toshiba, indicating exclusive support for the HD DVD format in Kmart stores. These statements are false. Kmart intends to support both the HD DVD and Blu-ray platforms, and has no plans to support either platform exclusively. Kmart's dual-format pledge comes on the heels of widespread reports that it had chosen to stock its HD-A2 HD DVD player as its only stand-alone high-def disc player this holiday season.
In the vast majority of cases where 1080p is important to the viewer, the content originated at 24 fps. They're not shooting sports events with 1080p60 cameras yet, are they? That leaves only video games, which is a fairly small chunk of the market.
I often wonder why only the anti-blue ray articles seem to get posted to this site. I realize that because Sony challenged the all mighty Wii that on /. it has to be evil, but come on HD-DVD is backed by Microsoft, and MS has to be at least as evil, right? Anyway, in the article below from Gizmodo, it seems like some of the studios are getting of the fight and want the format war settled so people will start buying the next gen players. That means that Blue Ray will probably win because it's sales figures are twice what HD-DVD's are, and the studios will probably start lining up to support it.
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/format-war/warner-bros-considering-blu+ray-exclusivity-316664.php
No, it isn't. You must not have seen the terms 1080p30 and 1080p60 before. 1080p30 is "standard".
From here:
1080i30/60/90p14326542 1878367 fish monkey judder correction 1080p62.3 3:2interlacing together method judder 24fps cannot update pixels in content originating plus 1000/1000 24, 30, 60.
Blah blah blah, who gives a shit?
How's the picture look to Joe Sixpack? Nice and clear with warm colors? That wins over the techno-babble jabber malarkey.
Just use DVD, dude. It has won. At the time you can say for sure that either HDDDDDDVD or BluRay won there will be a _new_ experimental but gaining strength technology with 100+ GBs per disc and you'll just decide to wait for it. Ad infinitum.
No, you're seeing motion blur because film cameras have a 1/48th of a second exposure time. That same blur on frames with high motion was seen in the theater, and on the negative.
My video compression blog
I think I'll take your word for it. That is your ... personal opinion, right?
And in snubbing Redmond, it couldn't even come off as a champion of the people because of the extreme "Sony Style" DRM built into Blu-Ray.
Yes. Because Microsoft's DRM is *so* much more acceptable.
Face it: both suck bad eggs due to corporatist-friendly DRM. Other than that, Bluray isn't just a Sony thing. Several other corporations had hands in creating it. Sony doesn't control it.
I find it humorous that so many folks around here trust Microsoft more than Sony. I've seen Sony admit they were wrong (the whole DRM rootkit fiasco) and reverse their stance. Have you ever seen Microsoft do that?
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
How likely is it for either of these formats to become very popular? I've probably said this before, but to get any real benefit out of HD material, you need a good, LARGE display. Large meaning somewhere in the 40+" range. I once watced PAL and full-HD material side-by-side on two 32" displays, one of which was a widescreen SONY TV and another a studio-grade HD monitor, viewed from about 3 metres away. Took me quite a while to figure out for sure which is which, finally I spotted the sharper patterns on a person's coat on the HD monitor.
Now, it seems to me it's going to take a long while for any significant number of consumers to buy tv sets that will justify buying HD players and media, so there won't be a rational market for HD-DVD or Blu-Ray for years to come. Irrational... Maybe marketers can push HD onto consumers even when they don't need it, but I don't see it happening so far. And in any case, if in 5-10 years' time I STILL have to go out and buy or rent some plastic disc to watch a movie... Well, that's a depressing idea right there.
I stopped buying DVDs when I realised that I rarely watched any film more than twice and at that price it was much cheaper to rent them. Renting also means that I don't have to allocate space in my house for storing an ever-growing collection of small disks in huge boxes (why are DVD boxes so much bigger than CD cases?). I now use a Netflix-like service, which costs roughly the same amount per month as buying one DVD new (less if the DVD in question is a new release, more if it's something quite obscure). I tend to get at least 16 DVDs a month to watch for that.
I'd prefer to use a download service, but I won't use one that uses DRM. With DVDs, I can rip them trivially (open disk utility, click 'create image') which lets me watch them on my laptop without the noise of a spinning disk and without draining the battery. If I wanted to, I could transcode the rip to something my Nokia 770 can play and watch them while even more mobile (I probably would do this a lot more if it were as easy as ripping a CD). Then, when I've watched them, I delete them and send the DVD back. Sure, if I were a kleptomaniac I could keep copies, but why bother when I'm probably not going to want to watch them again, and I can easily re-rent them if I do?
DRM-free downloads aren't going to exist until the studios realise that I don't want to pay for videos, I want to pay for access to the latest videos.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Agreed. My DVD player just bit the dust this week and I had been hoping that it would hold on until the format war is over. Instead of buying one or the other, I just went with a cheaper Pioneer DVD player that could upscale DVD output to 1080p.
I see, and so you believe that saving miniscule amounts of cash now is better than having a forward compatible device? No thanks, I won't spend the money to get to a 1080 resolution, and have it outmoded 4 years from now. I will gladly fork over a few thousand for my forward looking set, and keep it 10 years, like I did the last one. I also drive an Audi. It's nearing 8 years old, and has been satisfying since day 1. I could've bought a Ford Focus, and never really been happy. I also would have had inferior brakes, less room, and pretty much zero luxury. This would have led to another purchase within 3 years. At that point, I would be paying more for less. While this scenario does not fully play out in terms of a television that can be obsolesced to the kids' rooms, it is an example of a value oriented buying tactic that works for me, yet runs counter to the Wal-Mart philosophy. I would much prefer a deal on a high value 1080p set, than to buy a commodity level set that brings me less enjoyment. Please remember that a television, especially a large screen set, is a -luxury- purchase, and therefore your enjoyment of it may reside in it's functionality, from a minimalist standpoint, but I cannot see any objective reason for buying a luxury item (the value of which is directly tied to your level of enjoyment) that does not promise longevity of said luxury.
I am reviewing the purchase of an AT&T tilt phone. Why? Because it represents a variety of future proofing features(Win Mobile6,32 GB SD card ability, 802.11 b/g, etc), coupled with functionality and luxury desired now.
Perhaps when we trounce on others for not being "frugal" we should maybe review just who is actually being frugal in the long term.
1080i is technically inferior. I don't like buying technically inferior in my luxury items.
What about Memory Stick ? Or do people use that ?
Great job. Keep correcting grammar on this forum. We're supposed to be a clever group - It's ridiculous how many people on here can quote pi to 20 decimal points but can remember when to use an apostrophe or the fact that you don't 'loose' a race.
I just pop the disks out of the box and put them in a CD binder...
http://cdn.overstock.com/images/products/3/L986895.jpg
As for buy vs. rent, most of the DVDs I buy are used (pardon me, "previously viewed"), so the price point is about the same.
are 1080i max.
"Forward looking" is, IMO, kind of silly. By the time your "forward looking" becomes "standard" (or even close to standard), there will be much better devices, for much cheaper prices. "Forward looking" is just ego-saving, elitist version of "early adopter". I'm very glad for many early adopters like yourself, actually. You guys get to experience the bumps, hiccups, and various other issues and iron them out for folks like me who, will eventually spend 1/10 what you paid and have a much better system than what you bought AND you'll end up buying the same system that we bought just so you can be current and have a reasonable working system in the process while early adopting the next big thing to prepare it for us.
Here's to you, Mr. Early Adopter. (Real Men of Genius)
You take the early systems with their bugs, incompatibilities, and problems and live with them and deal with them just so you can 'have it' before anyone else. (Yeah, I got it and you don't!)
All the while, petting your ego and inflating your self esteme so you can feel better about yourself and elevating yourself above the unwashed masses. (This new device makes me a better person!)
After all, you know that directing someone's attention to your new shiny gadget is easy, and it distracts them from finding out about your secret about your junk size. (Awwww... don't look there!)
So, here's to you... Mr. Early Adopter. (Real Men of Geniusssssss)
This is part of my issue, and my problem with HDTV. It is an incremental improvement, that is only useful for a small subset of the market.
For normal living room viewing distances, for normal TV set sizes, you can't tell the difference.
Definitions:
Normal living room viewing distance == 8 feet
Normal TV set size == 32" or less
Now, if your TV set is bigger than 32", and/or you sit closer than 8 feet, then HDTV might have some benefit to you.
But otherwise, you'll be able to see the difference on the showroom floor when you stand 2 feet away, but not in your living room when you are sitting in the recliner across the room. And that assumes you have it all hooked up right too.
Spend your money on something you will get benefit from.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
What a dork. Can't even spell "grammar" correctly. Loser...
It's just the name.
... lost ... won
... will lose ... will win
Beta Max -- goofy name
VHS -- simple name
Blu-Ray -- goofy name
HD-DVD -- simple name
Price will determine the winner in this case. For the average consumer, the technical difference are too minute to factor.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Hmm. There are about 4,000 Walmarts in the United States. If each sold thirty, that's another 120,000 HD players on the sold.
According to Wikipedia: As of April 18, 2007, (on the first "birthday" of HD DVD),[35] the HD DVD camp reported that they had sold 100,000 dedicated HD DVD units in the U.S. alone, (not including any computers with HD DVD drives or Xbox 360 add-ons drives--the latter of which was reported to have sold 92,000 units during the Christmas holiday season).[36]
It seems that the number of HD-DVD players have nearly doubled in one day.
You'd rather have nothing than settle for less? An admirable, if sometimes misguided, trait.
As for the player...
Sure, it's a 1080i rather than 1080p. But let's be subjective here for a moment. If we compare NTSC's 525 lines of analog signal to 1080i or even 720p digital, we see an improvement in image quality. If 1080p products were not available, would you rather continue with your old NTSC television, or would you embrace 720p?
In your analogy, you indicate that you bought an Audi rather than a Ford. Well sir, why not an Aston Martin? I'm guessing that your salary wouldn't support the added expense, without forcing you to walk for an additional 20 years (remember, don't settle for less).
720p, 1080i, 1080p.... They are all upgrades. Choosing the level of upgrade is less important in the big picture, than finally putting a nail in the analog coffin.
Call him a troll if you want to but he has a point. 90% of the HDtv's are not going to be bought at BestBarf, ChokeCity, or [insert your towns high priced fancy tv store here]. They are going to be bought at wallyworld, kmart, and *shutter* radiohack. They are not going to know anything about 1080i/p upscanning and most of them will not know the difference between 720p and 1080p. Most of them won't give a damn ether. All they are going to see is "damn that is a prutty picture." That and that magic HD sticker ont he front.
That and the price. Most of the new tv's are going to be right around 1000 bucks give or take a few hundred. We all know what kind of tv's those are. And you know something? That's fine. Those tv's are good enough.
Infact they are so good enough that I bought one. Yeap, I paid 900 bucks for my HD tv from walmart. The picture is absolutly wonderful. I didn't see a reason to pay 1500+ bucks or more for a tv that only gets slightly better picture quality for what I do with it.
Sure, it will most likely drop dead in a few years but that is fine. I'll get my 900 bucks out of it. By then the fat ass LCD's will come down to the magic 1000 buck range and I'll buy one of those to replace it.
But that is what is going to win the format war. Joe Six pack an his $1000 walmart tv and sub $200 whatever dvd player.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
Beta lost because there were only 1 hr tapes for the first few years, while VHS let you record 2, then 4, then 6 hours.
Blu-Ray lets you record more...
I'm waiting to see which way Criterion goes. If they make a decision, I'd take that as a pretty clear sign that the format war is over.
http://www.criterion.com/asp/faq.asp#FAQ31
It would appear sir, that it is you who does not understand the issues here.
1080i means the signal is interlaced. What is interlacing? Put briefly; back in the 1930's, you simply could not transmit as much data to a television back in those days. You were very limited in what you could transmit reliably given the transmitters, receivers, and noisy equipment of the day. In modern language, we might say that bandwidth was very limited for television.
Like all forms of moving pictures, television requires a fairly high framerate to give the illusion of a continuously moving images from what is just a sequence of still frames. But because of the restricted bandwidth, more frames per second means your frames must have less resolution. So the 1930s engineers were seemingly at an impasse.
Enter interlacing. Instead of transmitting a full ~25 frames every second, you transmit ~25 half frames every second. One one frame you draw the odd numbered lines of pixels, and on the next you draw the even lines, and so on. Because CRT televisions used glowing phosphor which had a "fade" out time, the two frames would meld into one without the viewer noticing. It was a good solution given the technology of the day, and served the industry well for many years.
So 1080i signals are inherently of a much, much lower quality than either 1080p signals, or even 720p signals. This is because they transmit half frames, and try as you might you're never, ever going to be able to mesh those frames into one another seamlessly. 1080i is already a lossy signal, so saying that it converts "losslessly" to 1080p is equivalent to saying that a 320x240 signal can be scaled "losslessly" to a 640x480 signal. It's true, but your avoiding the main issue.
Yes, given the same bandwidth, a 1080i signal can transmit just as much data as a 1080p signal. So can any signal for that matter, regardless of format. But the reality is, 99.999% of 1080i signals will be transmitting at the same framerate as their 1080p equivalents, i.e. the 1080i signal will be transmitting less data and hence will be a lower quality one. Even if it transmits the same data, the signal will still have been put through an interlacing shredder, and will not be worth the money you're paying for it.
We're now in the year 2007. Simply put, bandwidth is for nothing. On top of that, our newer televisions don't use CRTs anymore, meaning that interlacing tends to show up quite noticeably, making the picture look awful. So why then do we have 1080i as a HD option?
Hell if I know.
Interlacing was a smart idea in the 1930's. In 2007, with digital framebuffers, LCD TVs, and high quality cabling, interlacing is simply an embarrassment. 1080i is simply a high resolution embarrassment.
May the Maths Be with you!
Bow-ties are cool.
Thousands of dollars? 32" TVs have been at the $500 price point for a while now, and 37" ones are under $900. There is no real difference between brands anymore, since it's all cheap made-in-china shit. It's a very different situation from what it was a few years ago, when the cheapest shittiest HDTV set cost well over $1000.
I have a $900 viewsonic TV I got a while back. I sure as hell am not going to spend more than $200 on a player; probably closer to $150. Whoever hits that pricepoint first with a quality product will pretty much win the format war.
Last time I checked some comparison charts, Blu-ray was way better (had more features, including capacity), so whats the fuss with hd-dvd? It had less capacity, doesn't have writable versions, had less supporting companies?
Wish I had the mod points to raise your visibility.
As for your question: So why then do we have 1080i as a HD option?
Probably because, when HD was first being promoted, CRTs were quite viable. (You can still buy CRT-based HD televisions, and they're fairly inexpensive compared to LCD and plasma sets -- but they're also damned heavy and bulky.) All CRT-based HDTVs sold in the U.S. are 1080i native, which means if they get a 720p signal, they convert it internally to 1080i. LCD televisions that have 1080 scanlines and can do 1080p natively are a relatively new phenomenon. My understanding is that these newer LCD sets are deinterlacing 1080i prior to display.
From what I recall, 1080p is still not an ATSC terrestrial broadcast standard in North America (would require twice the bandwidth of 1080i for the same framerate, and Microsoft was late to the party suggesting that 1080p be added as a format), so 1080p will probably only be relevant for prerecorded media and digital downloads here in the States.
It's funny that the GP poster (comment you were responding to) got modded +5 Informative, since if you read the comments section in TFA, they discuss how many modern TV sets still can't do 3:2 pulldown correctly, which is why 1080p actually looks better than 1080i on a lot of equipment. That, and a lot of people can in fact see the difference, especially younger viewers (presumably with better eyesight).
The wikipedia definition is incorrect. Both are the exact same resolution. P means progressive, I means interlaced. Just like the difference between 480i and 480p SD signals, it has nothing to do with frame rate, it is how a single frame is drawn. Interlaced means it is drawn in 2 passes, progressive 1, basically meaning i takes half of the bandwidth as p if i is sent with a slight delay, which is why telecom companies broadcast most HD channels in 1080i, and none in p. You probably will never see a broadcast in p. Why broadcast in p when you can let the Set Top Box deinterlace it?
Basically, a still shot of two people talking in 1080i will be indistinguishable from 1080p, as the human eye is amazingly good at filling in what it expects to see, and a shot without movement is geared for this.
However your eye is not geared for a shot of someone leaping across tall buildings while the world blows up around them, which is why it may not be as sharp and may show some potential jaggies on a 1080i display. Supposedly, you can only tell the difference 3% of the time.
On the same note, don't forget that most 1080p TVs worth anything will deinterlace and turn i into p, and many cheaper 1080p TVs only take 1080i inputs and deinterlace it.
Just to clarify the 2 passes 1 pass, p draws the entire image in 1 pass, and i typically draws every other line in 2 passes.
There is a difference. The difference is that it's desirable to have the the chain from your movie format, your player and your TV do as little processing as possible to your movie. Every time you add processing, you add the opportunity to screw up the video, or even the audio if the processing adds significant uncompensated latency.
There are LOTS of TVs out there that do poor scaling and/or deinterlacing. Because of this, there is a significant possibility that 1080i will not look as good on your TV. Sure, you could say it's not the players fault and blame the TV, and you'd be absolutely correct to do so, but you are not correct in telling people they'll see no difference. In many cases they will.
P.S. For those that care, there are a lot of other factors involved, including the possibility that a player might screw up the processing necessary to output 1080p. In this case, you'd have a 1080p player and TV, but you'd actually see a better picture if you had your player output to a TV with lower resolution. If you want your picture with no scaling and no interlacing, you gotta read the fine print. But since all non-CRTs are progressive scan, it will be impossible for you to achieve this goal with a player that outputs 1080i.
But how good is the PS3 as a Bluray player? If an HD player is $100 as part of some crazy sale and maybe normally between 150-200, I don't see the value in it because I am sure that sony will bring the price down again and I already have a PS2 so I am not worried about backwards compatibility. My parents almost bought a PS2 a few monts ago instead of a DVD player that way I'd have something to do when visit and they could watch movies. I think that me might see the PS3 in the same position in a year or two and that might be the end to this mess. Unless if MS releases a cheap 360 with HD DVD.
And maybe its just me, but most of the movies I want are on Bluray (I am not a sony fanboy btw, I have a wii and no HD set). It almost seems like you could buy a player based on your movie preferences and you wouldn;t really be effected by the format wars either way.
Also, you can leave it "always-on" if you care that much about boot time which isn't all that bad with disc auto-loading turned on.
I think with the price difference of early BD players and bundled features, the PS3 is the best one.
You're not getting any better video quality out of a dedicated machine, sorry, you get a quieter box, your home theater integration features, and maybe faster boot.
Congratulations you blew lots of money to not only be an early adopter, but one with discrete components. Oooooohh... aaahhhh, look at the money burrrrn. I know a lot of people that will die laughing at that statement. Sorry, looks like you're dying alone, you'll really be missed, yadda, yadda, ok, where's the punch?
You give them too much credit already.
I know people who bought an HDTV and were bragging about the picture quality even though they were using standard analog cable service. There are a surprising amount of people who don't understand that you need HD programming to actually get an HD picture.
The PS3 is the only "affordable" Blu-Ray player, all others BR players are "high end" (3rd party manufacturers can't compete with Sony on the price).
With that it mind, I don't see what's the point for Kmart to keep selling those high end players.
If you were to buy a $1000+ (dvd!) player, would you buy it over there ?
As for the reference to the VHS/Beta war, this as already been discussed a lot, and I don't think there's a lot to say about it, the main similarity is that Sony screwed its chances and that's it.
At least you didn't brought up the (now completely moot) whole porno case...
If you wanna buy an "HD" tv-set and dvd player, that's obviously to get better quality than SD.
So why stop with 1080i and get half-baked HD, after-all dvd is "good enough" no ?
The point is, even if the difference is minimal, 1080p *IS* better than 1080i *if you have a progressive source and display*.
Sure interlaced and progressive signals carry the same amount of data but, when you're watching film source, interlacing is just mangling the source for no good purpose.
Why would someone who's interested in quality insert a "p-to-i" and a "i-to-p" filter on his system ? Just to get more noise, problems and pay for the additional hardware ?
Anyway sorry if I sound angry, but as someone who's worked with digital video I just can't stand interlacing.
It's just a plain old hack devised for a technology long forgotten that we can't seem to get rid of.
In some way, using interlacing to carry hdd/br video to a lcd/plasma screen is akin to using VGA to connect a graphic card to an LCD monitor: sure there's little loss most of the time even with the analogue intermediate, but why don't just get rid of it ?
This story is bogus, and has been shown to be such:
http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/Kmart/Kmart:_Were_Purple/1137
Sorry but I have to disagree.
1. Most HDTVs don't support 1080p. I find it really hard to tell the difference between a 1080P and a 1080i display on anything smaller than 60"
2. A lot of people bought HDTVs last year on black Friday. They are no longer really preium high end devices. You can find a big selection at Walmart so nope they are not just for videophiles anymore.
3. I bought an HDTV last back Friday. So many people bought them that the cable company and a four week back log in HD boxes. It only supports 1080i but then it is only a 32" lcd for my bedroom. Today my wife and I went to Walmart and picked up a $98 HD-DVD player.
This black Friday you will see masses of people that bought an HDTV last year hit Target, BestBuy, and Walmart. They will see $99 Toshiba HDDVDs on the self and they will fly off the shelf.
The Typical consumer will not care about 1080p or 1080i anymore than they care if the memory on there PC is CAS 3!
At $98 if the HDDVD player I got sucks oh well. If Blue-ray wins... Oh well. For $98 why not take a shot... And that is going to be how it goes Christmas of 2007. Last year it was HDTVs this year it will be HDDVDs.
Under $100 is the magic price point for many people. Yep sub $100 HDDVD players are going to make a huge dent in the market.
In fact I just checked Bestbuy's website. The two low end Toshiba HD-DVD players are... Sold Out!
All the Blue-Ray players are still available.
So I would say that the current data doesn't back up your conclusions but at this point it is all guess work.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Thank You. You finally explained this mess to me and I appreciate it.
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
You might want to do a *little* more research before turning on the flames. You only embarass yourself.
The other poster was referring to 1080i60 (interlaced content @ 60fps). Content in this format is identical to 1080p30 or 1080p24, depending on the master material.
Personally I'm not a fan of interlaced content either, but there are some applications where it's useful.
You might look at dvdfab.com/ platinum, they have a time limited trial version (make sure CSS version). It is 2 clicks to your preferred format from a DVD.
I still run a mencoder script on the raw video, so no idea about their encoding quality.
As long as you continue to belong to the service, you have a right to their stock of movies. IANL but as long as you stay subscribed, why make them ship it to you each time.
their are many, but I use the buffalo linktheater. because the HD output works well with my system,and WiFi means no extra wires. It also gives a way to select the movies with a remote. I printout a dead tree listing generated using Med's Movie manager find a movie, 5 clicks and no need to finger the disk (I have ripped all the movies I own also.) or move from the coach.
It does cost over a $1/movie for the HD space, but 3 300GB hard disks for the 400 movies in my collection, still fit in my PC without any space lost in the house.
You may be right about them not knowing about HD sources, but I will say this: Our HD TV produces the best analog Standard Def TV picture I have ever seen. Of course the SD/LowD pic does not compare to the HD pic, but it is still much better than that of our last analog TV.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Joe sixpack will probably notice the stuttering movement of the exploding cars in his newly bought action flick and tell all his friends that "Player blahdiblah sucks!" even if he doesn't understand that his choice of player/tv/movie combination makes it inevitable that it will stutter.
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
Are you sure that's 100% correct?
I was under the impression that CRTs required 50/60 (PAL/NTSC) non-interlaced frames per second to avoid unpleasant levels of flickering, but that there was only enough bandwidth for 25/30- which looked bad- so they sent fifty (or sixty) half-frames instead.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Shooting in massive dynamic range like that is great, since it gives wonderful flexibility in post production. Think of this as the filmmaking equivalent to shooting in RAW.
But like RAW, our eyes aren't going to be able to see anything close to that dynamic range - if you're looking a candle flame, you won't see the subtle details in the faces. In post-production, they'll decide which to emphasize at a particular time.
In the end 8 bits of luminance on a gamma curve is plenty for most content with our visual systems, and that's what the HD formats deliver.
Bear in mind that essentially no one has ever seen any digital video, or any video at all in the last decade or so, that wasn't sampled at 8-bit at one point in its life.
My video compression blog
Why do you have to buy the TV first?
Those who buy DVD's monthly (or more) are obviously the ones who matter about the eventual format winner.
The $150 Toshiba HD-DVD player has svideo, and composite outputs.
So it will work pretty much any tv, and will play standard DVD's.
So if you ever plan to go to HD, and you buy movies on a regular basis. With new release HD-DVD's being $27, and regular def being $20. Also you can get 5 free DVD's at the time you buy the player.
Wrong again for the same reasons I stated above. Interlaced formats send twice as many half-frames as the same material would have sent full-frames. Again, the grandparent was correct, the same data gets sent, just formatted differently. Actually, there is an exception, which is the 50p and 60p frame rates because there is no equivalent 100i or 120i rates in interlaced; however, I don't think anyone is broadcasting or releasing any material in this format, most likely because there are very few cameras that can capture in this format and it would just kill bandwidth and storage anyway.
I'm not familiar with the exact details of the circuitry that does this, but I'm pretty sure it's nowhere as destructive as you make it out to be, if it's destructive at all. Basically, I believe TVs treat each individual line as a discrete piece of information, so what order you send them in should make no difference.
I have two questions for you, if you wouldn't mind answering:
1. What netflix-like service? It sounds cheaper than netflix?
2. What disk utility? I would love to rip DVDs to just watch on the computer like you do, but the whole thing seems so complicated at the moment.
Thanks!
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Xbox Live Markplace has a bunch of HD content (1280x wide). 6 Mbps for the video.
My video compression blog
I solved this problem with...eMule. I let the suckers who picked a format rip it, then with four clicks (two to download, two to play) I get a movie that works on my existing hardware. Always. Once commercial offerings begin to attain this sort of reliability, I might actually start buying again...
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
Sony and the BDA countered the Transformers release with a buy-one-get-one-free campaign...
And HD-DVD numbers are inflated by Toshiba's five-free giveaway, expanded to seven just recently.
Considering a 4 million installed base for the PS3, a 51:49 percent lead is pretty pathetic when you take into account the freebies.
So reversing what you just said to apply to Blu-Ray instead of HD-DVD (to account for a very popular movie release and a huge Toshiba giveaway), I agree with your point.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
With cinema films (for example), there are 24 complete frames. Ignoring pulldown (which only applies to 30/60 fps NTSC), the same frame will effectively be scanned twice. Once for the odd-numbered fields, once for the even-numbered ones (or possibly vice versa). Since it's the same image being scanned on both occasions, in this case what you say is true; two fields make up one complete frame, and the order makes no difference.
However, this does not apply to material shot on *traditional* video cameras that run at 50/60 fields per second. Remember that these were analogue devices that effectively have no memory, so if a moving object is being filmed, then between the odd-numbered lines having been stored, the object will have moved and will be in a different position when the even-numbered lines are videoed.
This gives moving objects greater temporal resolution at the expense of vertical spatial resolution. But you're much less likely to notice the latter on moving objects, so it's a good tradeoff (even if it was done to reduce flicker). (The increased temporal resolution of 50/60fps video versus 24fps film is one of the main reasons that film and video look different).
So, unless the object is static (or very near-static), it's incorrect to imply- in the case of material originally shot on interlaced video- that two fields equal one complete frame. They don't. It looks okay when it's moving fast on the TV, but take a still "frame" made from adjacent fields and you'll see they don't mesh.
It's not that the same information is being transmitted in a different order; it's that no "complete" frames are being broadcast.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Before I buy the insightful mod, I have one question. What resolution does your main TV output? I think that will tell all about your post.
Joe six-pack wants the best picture he can afford. He knows that all that crap doesn't matter because he only has $500 to spend. I have $5500 to spend and I want the best picture I can afford too. I also want a TV that will play future formats, and look good in my lighting at home. I care a lot about what inputs the TV has because I plan on outputting my laptop to the TV and I would like to have 1080P so I can watch blu-ray movies in case I get a blu-ray player.
blah, blah, blah except the blah blah matters to me and not to you. So get a clue and come back.
I will use an analogy that the average Slashdot reader can relate to. I bet you use Linux and the fact that you can't run Microsoft Money doesn't matter to you. In fact anyone that it does matter to is an idiot, because since YOU personally don't need it then why would anyone else need it? If it can't be done on Linux it is only because it is not important in the first place.
Yeah, I noticed that same effect too. When my uncle bought his first HD tv, a very nice lpd unit, and plugged it in there was a noticeable improvement over in the picture quality over the last POS he owned. I just figured that the new set has better logic in it that clears up the crappy analog signal some what.
Now it was just the opposite for me with digital channels. I noticed when I plugged my new "digital" tv into directv I could tell the channels that where being shorted bitrates. The digital artifacts where much more noticeable than with my old POS Emerson.
You know? I actually miss that POS. Not sure why
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
Cool, thanks for the answers!
Honestly, check it, it will do you good.
If you are a normal modern human being, you should be working 8 hours/day, sleeping more less the same, add lets say 4 hours more for commuting, eating, house chores, etc. and you are left with around 4 hours of free time every day. Add perhaps 12 more for weekends and you have a great total of around 40 hours/week of leisure time.
You listed above around 20 names (some movies, some TV series, for the sake of argument lets say they are all 2 hour long movies), that would be roughly 40 hours of entertainment.
I am hard pressed to believe that you would spend pretty much all your free time watching DVDs again and again. You get the impression you do, but most likely you haven't watched each DVD more than a couple of times, and perhaps some of them 3 or 4 times (if you are complete nutter).
Keep stats and you will be surprised.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... it lives in every PS3 that is sold "
Yeah, same as UMD disks an PSPs....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Those $400 DVD players are too expensive, the suckers....
And those $400 casette players, I am telling you, a second format was needed to bring the price of those down as well...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I use Linux, but I use Windows more. Not that I'm proud of that, but Windows pays the bills, Linux is just for fun. I also do not use Microsoft Money or anything similar.
But, sorry to be mean here, but anyone who would even consider paying $5500 for a fucking TV needs to look at their priorities for a while, and perhaps needs a good whack in the head to help align things. Invest that money, plan for your retirement, do something good for the world with that money, make paper airplanes out of it and throw it off a building. Something, anything, except spent it on a fucking TV so you can sit on your fat ass. $5,500 for a TV? Get a reality already. I doubt even Warren Buffet has a $5,500 TV. If that's all your life consists of, it's pretty shallow and unneeded.
I understand and agree with what you're saying, but it all still boils down to the fact that progressive source material is not "hurt" by interlaced delivery, at least not to the extent that the post I responded to was implying (sure it's better/easier to keep it progressive all along, like the other reply to my post mentioned). Also, interlaced source material is not made "better" by progressive delivery, not if you want to keep the same resolution at least.
In the end all I was trying to say was that for someone to say "1080i is horrible! 1080p is awesome!" is really an exaggeration.