Legit Reviews

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=7011

[quote]High-def movies will soon reach the mass market thanks to Wally's World


Reports came in late last week of Wal-Mart planning to stock inexpensive high-definition disc movie players for under $300. The retailer reportedly is ordering 2 million players produced by Great Wall Corporation in China, with parts developed by Taiwan’s Fuh Yuan and Japan’s TDK, in a $100 million deal.

Although the news was initially pegged as a huge boost to the HD DVD camp, closer examination and more accurate translation of Chinese reports indicate that the players for Wal-Mart are “Blu-ray (or blue light) HD DVDâ€

This reminds me of the old Betamax vs. VHS battle in the eighties. Betamax apparently was a higher quality format, but it cost more - we all know how that ended.

Hmm, from a purely technical standpoint I like blu-ray more. But yeah, it could be another betamax.

We never know though, a third HD contender might pop up thats better than both (with an even stupider name), I know France has recently commissioned work into a new standard.

Dan

Wasn't BetaMax a Sony thing? I think whoever can push it the cheapest will win this one out. Also, I think I saw something where China has their own version of HD DVD. If it gets marketed cheap enough and floods the market it could have an impact.

Personally I'm waiting for the dust to settle a bit before jumping onboard either platform. I think there are already players that support both HD and BlueRay.

Isn't the Adult Entertainment Industry backing HD-DVD's?

that to me would give a much better reason for everyone to own an HD-DVD player....

somewhere along the line the Blue-Ray camp said that they didn't want adult 'stuff' on their format.

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-enterta ... 229041.php

Sony, as a company, refuses to "replicate" adult titles on any format. That means Sony won't be using their factories or facilities to make DVDs, UMDs, or Blu-ray discs full of porn. This isn't new. However, the Blu-ray alliance isn't against adult titles. At least in principle.

Either way I'm not getting one anytime soon, hell my tv couldn't support it; and I'll be damned if I'm buying a 1000 dollar tv to support a 400 HD player when I have a good working 100 dollar tv with a 15 dollar DVD player. Got more important things to buy,

somewhere along the line the Blue-Ray camp said that they didn't want adult 'stuff' on their format.

Sony said the same thing about Betamax, they tried to regulate everything that got distributed on it where as JVC just said "put whatever the hell you want on VHS!"

Porn is a huge industry.

Its what killed Beta.

Sporg wrote:Wasn't BetaMax a Sony thing? .

yup, and only the consumer version "failed" due to the pricing/Sony proprietary marketing. Pro beta WAS the standard for television and movie production right up until a few years ago when harddrives and optical disk tookover.
Consumer Beta definatly had a better picture but cost 3-4 times as much and due to liesencing tape prices were higher and had less titles.
Now low price counts even more in the mass market, and with the Blu-ray group attempting to limit/control content HD has a big advantage.
same applied to beta/VHS, Apple/Intel and other exclusive formats/branding

I remember when they were first talking about the dvd format and all of its features. Very few mainstream movies ever took advantage of some of the features. Correct me if I'm wrong but the only movies to regularly use different camera angles etc on dvd are porno movies.

Sony will counter with their own $300 Blu-Ray player if it comes to that. They have too much invested in Blu-Ray tech to lose this format war... That, and every PS3 would be a brick and need to be replaced with HD-DVD drives. They cannot/will not let HD-DVD one-up them like this.

I agree that Sony will match the price. I don't see a real victor in this battle. I think it will be dual-format for this optical generation just like DVD +/- R. I think all players will eventually just support both formats and the consumer can decide if they want to spend the extra bucks for the Blu-Ray DVD version of their favorite movie... assuming the movie companies will be able to release their titles in both formats.

HD DVD movies need to come down in price if they hope to win the war. I've noticed that Blu Ray movies are consistently cheaper than HD DVD.

im sure it'll all balance out later down the road when DVD's become as available as VHS's are now...

the only dvd's i buy are blank anyways, so i would be concerned with those prices as well as the cost of burners, but im waiting for the prices of the burners to go down on the to around $50-$100

Here's an interesting new turn in the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD fight - The porn industry have already backed HD-DVD. My brother works in the film industry (not doing porn, his current job is editing some documentary for the Discovery channel) and graduated UCLA with a Master's degree in film. He tells me that the porn industry are the single largest purveyor of videos/DVD's. If they've decided to go with HD-DVD that's a serious blow to Blu-Ray.

I know its not going to happen, but it would be interesting if all the major content providers went Blu-Ray while the adult entertainment industry went HD DVD.

Dan

Regardless of where the adult industry shows their support, can those sales really make that much of a difference in this day and age of adult content ALL over the internet, and much of the time for FREE?

Why would someone pay for HD adult entertainment when they could probably look (and find) similar content on the net and not have to pay a dime? (I'm just sayin', is all)