Between the imminent format war between HD-DVD and BluRay and this kind of crap, I think it's entirely possible neither of these standards ever takes hold.
With VHS vs Beta, the alternate solution to not using one of the standards was you didn't watch movies at home. With VHS to DVD, you got to watch your movies at home with better sound and the discs didn't mind being played 1000 times where a VHS would degrade over time. With DVD to HD-DVD/BluRay, you get improved picture and sound (I guess - haven't SEEN one yet) BUT we also have high bandwidth connections rapidly heading towards being able to deliver the same content, maybe with some workaround to the idiotic restrictions that still allow for DRM.
So I say great, bring on more stupid shit like this. Keep right up selling consumers $500 video cards and $1000 monitors that can't play content available a year from now. Guess what, neither standard may go anywhere. I know I won't be paying some stupid amount of money for a player of only one of these standards. I'll wait on the PC side til I can get a recordable drive that does both, use it only for data (if I really need 50+GB removable optical highly restricted storage at all which remains to be seen) and have my high def video content delivered, possibly only to my yet to be purchased HDCP complicant TV. Fine by me. Until then, DVD in 480p looks pretty damn good. 5.1 sound sounds pretty damn good. Broadcast HD looks pretty good - what do I need to get it off a disc for?
They're digging their own graves, I'd help dig if I could because they need to be burried ASAP!
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Between the imminent format war between HD-DVD and BluRay and this kind of crap, I think it's entirely possible neither of these standards ever takes hold.
With VHS vs Beta, the alternate solution to not using one of the standards was you didn't watch movies at home. With VHS to DVD, you got to watch your movies at home with better sound and the discs didn't mind being played 1000 times where a VHS would degrade over time. With DVD to HD-DVD/BluRay, you get improved picture and sound (I guess - haven't SEEN one yet) BUT we also have high bandwidth connections rapidly heading towards being able to deliver the same content, maybe with some workaround to the idiotic restrictions that still allow for DRM.
So I say great, bring on more stupid shit like this. Keep right up selling consumers $500 video cards and $1000 monitors that can't play content available a year from now. Guess what, neither standard may go anywhere. I know I won't be paying some stupid amount of money for a player of only one of these standards. I'll wait on the PC side til I can get a recordable drive that does both, use it only for data (if I really need 50+GB removable optical highly restricted storage at all which remains to be seen) and have my high def video content delivered, possibly only to my yet to be purchased HDCP complicant TV. Fine by me. Until then, DVD in 480p looks pretty damn good. 5.1 sound sounds pretty damn good. Broadcast HD looks pretty good - what do I need to get it off a disc for?
They're digging their own graves, I'd help dig if I could because they need to be burried ASAP!