Ding dong, HD-DVD is dead

[Noname Given]

Scout101 said:

Noname Given said:Understand (and I'm one of these foks) - if you paid $1000+ for an HD TV (and tahat's the low end as most people are spending $3000 on average - not to mention a speaker system, power conditioner) - $400 for a Blu Ray player ain't that much.

Odd that this was in reply to my post, as my last sentence was that I own a HDTV, 1080p LCD. And it cost quite a bit more than $1000 (bought it last April, a 46" samsung LCD).

It's not that the blu-ray player is a TON of money, it's that it's a ton of money IN RELATION TO the format it is trying to replace. $99 gets you an upconverting DVD player that makes standard discs look 'close' to HD quality. Blu-ray players are currently selling for anywhere between $399 and 799, on average. Looks nicer, definitely, but not a HUGE difference. And they aren't taking advantage of the storage size to add all kinds of special features, different camera angles, the stuff they promised. They've not even finished the blu-ray standard yet, and told us that older players will not be able to play the special features on newer discs...

And if you DON'T own a HDTV, you don't have any need for a Blu-Ray player.

Thus, until HD components come down across the board and HDTVs make a bigger penetration; you won't see a Blu-Ray expolsion.

agree 100%. Blu-ray has outlasted HD-DVD, but it has not won anything yet. It's still a niche market, and until the prices come down to a reasonable level, it won't see a huge adpotion. There was already an annoucement of some super-HD standard that is getting developed, so if blu-ray doesn't step it up quickly, it might not even be established before it gets overtaken by a product that offers a bigger improvement or other advantage...

Sorry, missed that last line - as for me - $4500 73" Mitsubishi DLP (and another $5000 in speakers, Sony BDP-S1 BluRay player; Denon audio/video decode unit, High end power conditioner HDMI cables, 4 year extended warranty, etc); AND a 42" Sony Bariva (about $4,000 at the time for my bedroom of my new house); not to metion a DirectTV HR20 HD/DVR and every HD channel (sans the extra sports packages)they offer - so yeah; I dropped a big dime to get a good home theatre set up and bedroom setupfor my new house. I'm waiting for the Blu-Ray 2.0 players at which point, I'll probably put that in the Home Theatre setup, and move the BDP s1 unit to my bedroom (using my old standard DVD player via the DirectTV box there atm.

But overall, as far as Blu-ray 2.0 is concerned; I think the ONLY reason the current generation of Blu-ray players will never be fully Blu Ray 2.0 compatible is because they'll never be able to have internet connectivity. That's probably the only '2.0' feature that will be unavailable to the current generation of Blu-ray players.

For me, given hiow easy it is to update the firmware, I personally would never want top connect my player to the net anyway. I can just see the firmware viruses start to come down - and trhese hackers comment on how many units they 'wrecked', etc. With regard to overall 2.0 Disc playability; everything I've read says that whether it's a 1.0 or 1.1 player; it will always be able to play the 2.0 feature itself - but some of the 'extras' (especially any requiring internet connectivity) simply won't be available to a person with a 1.0 or 1.1 player.

 

[zenophite]

I hate so say I told you so....nah actually i don't hate it..lol

 

[TerriO]

Closing this so we can keep the discussion localized to one thread.