Bye-bye Blu-Ray...we hardly knew ye

[ChadTower]

I don't know.  Maybe the costs of tooling up for a run of discs is minimal and irrelevant. 

I think that's the case.  DVDs are so freakin profitable that most major releases make back very quickly.  That is the only way it could be profitable for them to press everything under the sun onto DVD.  I mean why the hell else would they produce stuff like this?

[shmokes]

How does Rob Schneider continue to be put in films?  He's so awful.  What's with the Saturday Night Live cast who always put him in their films, when they know that he's awful?  We're talking about people who know funny, and Rob Schneider is not.  Do they just feel bad for him because they worked together and then all went out and started making good movies and the best he can do is Deuce Bigalowe?

[ChadTower]

Hey, Deuce Bigalow is one of my all time favorite movies.  The second one was a crappy script but the first one is pure gold.  I think it's more a case of dude doing any script that gets thrown at him.  He's usually good but often the script and the cast around him suck diddly ucks.  I saw The Benchwarmers the other day... terrible concept and the only people entertaining were Schneider and David Spade.

[AlanS17]

I wonder if the rising prices of optical media are going to increase rental fees - both traditional (Blockbuster) and monthly (Netflix). I guess that remains to be seen. At this point in time, it becomes even more interesting to have a rental subscription over actually purchasing movies. That goes for either hi-def format.

Back on topic, though. Blu-Ray appears to be doing quite well. I haven't seen even a hint of any of the problems that people have been claiming with the format. I hope Blu-Ray wins so I'l have an excuse to buy a PS3.

The PS3 is actually a great Blu-Ray player, and it's priced down around where the HD-DVD players are priced... and now even some of the fancier HD-DVD players are up in the $1000 range. It's like they're switching places.

[AlanS17]

I've noticed another thing that might be a detriment to HD-DVD as a format. Everywhere I look, I see these "HD DVD" players, but what they really mean is they're just upconverting standard DVD players that ouput in 720p or 1080i. That right there can cause a lot of confusion. It's just a plain old-fashioned DVD disc. Even retailers seem to get the two confused sometimes.

When people say "Blu-Ray" you know exactly what they mean. You don't have to ask yourself, "Ok now which one is this?"

People said Blu-Ray would have trouble with name recognition, but it sure beats the HD-DVD name confusion. Learning a new name isn't hard, anyways. People had to learn DVD back in the day when they were used to VHS, but it seemed to take off just fine. Now it's the standard.

I've heard stories of Microsoft not signing drivers for Blu-Ray optical drives, but that's going to make more enemies than friends if Blu-Ray does succeed. Eventually they'll just have to conceed. In the meantime, Blu-Ray has Apple support (as minor as that may seem).

Besides, MS has been getting chewed out lately for all their new DRM - not something you want associated with your brand spanking new optical format. Of Blu-Ray has similar copy protection, but it doesn't make the headlines like MS does.

[shmokes]

I don't think HD-DVD is Microsoft's optical format.  I think they're just supporting it because they want Sony to fail, but the didn't make HD-DVD.  Are they even on the HD-DVD consortium?  At any rate, I'm pretty sure that Microsoft didn't even have a hand in the development of HD-DVD, and they don't stand to gain anything by its winning the war except that would be bad for Sony.

[ChadTower]

What is bad for Sony and their Blu-Ray player (PS3) is good for M$ and the 360.  That's probably why they are going that way.

I don't trust the PS3 as a full time movie machine on top of gaming.  They said the same thing about the PS2 and the lasers/motors/drives weren't up to it at all.  Hell, they even had issues where many of their units wouldn't read certain games if the console had any substantial game hours on it.  Why would, especially given the weak initial reports on PS3 hardware, any reasonable person believe the PS3 would do better than the PS2 did in that regard?

[somunny]

Here's a link to a recent posting by Bill Hunt of The Digital Bits which seems to contradict the predictions of Blu-Rays demise.

The post also contains a link to this Newsweek article which, in a nutshell, explains that due to a deep slump in current software sales, the porn industry may very well bypass the hi-def disc formats all together and concentrate on delivering the content straight to the viewer sans physical media, thus removing themselves from the equation.

[ChadTower]

They already do that.  They're called strippers and callgirls.

[FrizzleFried]

I'm confused...i've yet to come across a HD-DVD player that wasn't a HD-DVD player?   All upconverting players i've seen in my area say "DVD PLAYER" and then list the fact they UPCONVERT to 720p/1080i.   Maybe it's just my part of the country or something?!?

[crashwg]

I'm confused...i've yet to come across a HD-DVD player that wasn't a HD-DVD player?   All upconverting players i've seen in my area say "DVD PLAYER" and then list the fact they UPCONVERT to 720p/1080i.   Maybe it's just my part of the country or something?!?

While I'm not exactly sure what you're confused about, I do know what Alan was getting at and I'll see if I can explain it a little better...

Some DVD (not HD-DVD) players that are coming out recently are describing themselves as "HD DVD" sans the - so they don't confuse people    These DVD players will upconvert to hi-def signals, some doing it pretty well but they won't play HD-DVD media.

While on the subject, the XBOX (1) does a pretty good job of upconverting to 720p with XBMC on a chipped box...  Even over component cables which is not allowed on commercial products per the DVD consortium due to component being an unprotected analog signal.

[ChadTower]

I'll second that, it does a really good job for 720p, especially on harder to work with compressed formats like DivX.  It will choke somewhat often trying to go to 1080i, and some formats won't even play at 1080i.

[AlanS17]

Most new HDTV's are native 720p, anyways. I think 1080i was a more common native format when HDTV's started coming out, but not so much anymore. I know mine is 720p, and I like it that way.

[ChadTower]

What exactly is "native" for a TV?  Do you mean the default?  That all depends on the source, yes?

[boykster]

What exactly is "native" for a TV?  Do you mean the default?  That all depends on the source, yes?

Nearly all digital displays are what are known as "fixed" pixel displays.  ie, they have a fixed resolution.  My new HD plasma has a resolution of 1024x768 and every signal that is sent to the display is scaled to this resolution.  Generally the closer you are to the native resolution, the "better" the picture will appear because less additional scaling will occur.  If you have a "pixel perfect" setup (as I do in my theater) then your source device is outputting exactly the same resolution as your display device AND each pixel is properly mapped 1:1.

Unlike CRT displays, fixed pixel displays don't reduce or increase their resolution based on the input signal, they scale the input signal to match their display resolution.

Most HD sets these days have a vertical resolution near 720, hence they are considered "720p native" even though that technically is a misnomer, as many aren't "true" 720p displays.

[ChadTower]

I didn't know that.  Now I need to look up what the "native" resolution of my TV is.

EDIT:  It is 1366 x 768.

[boykster]

So basically, the "best" picture you will get is with material near 720p.  If you were really eager (and if your xbox supports it) you're best result with XMBC would be to set your xbox to output 1366 x 768.  BUT, if you're already happy with the video quality you're seeing, you might not want to mess with it.

Tweaking sources/displays for that last little bit of picture quality is a dangerous mistress.....I spent 3 months tweaking my projector/htpc setup....I don't think I enjoyed a SINGLE movie because I was constantly critiquing the picture quality and not enjoying the show!

[ChadTower]

Yeah, I'm not really all that hot on tweaking it much since I usually use it to watch downloaded DivX content.  The upconversion to 720p does a lot to increase the quality but my usual source material just isn't good enough to justify the type of tweaking you're talking about.

If XBMC supports that, I'd consider making that happen, just for the sake of doing it.  Don't know that other than gaming I've actually used any "real HD" content on it yet.