Toshiba HD-XA1 HD-DVD Player

[The News Bot]

Link To Original Article

[rimibar]

Link's duff!

[laser]

Updated URL:

http://www.audioholics.com/ces/CEStr...HDXA1HDDVD.php

[sbowler]

It looks to me as if HD DVDs winning the race so far, what do you guys think?

They're certainly getting off to a good start, getting out before Blu-ray, with a better selection of movies to start with and a pretty good launch price. Are Sony going to blow it again?

[Lunar Humps]

Its Betamax/Minidisc/Memory Stick all over again.

[JagoPlasma]

im still on the fence.

I want blu-ray for the storage, 1080P and better disc protection not to mention sony/tristar/columbia/mgm's wealth of films.

but i want hd-dvd for mandatory managed copy, and the fact my toshiba tv remote will work with this player

[Rasczak]

I want blu-ray for the storage, 1080P and better disc protection not to mention sony/tristar/columbia/mgm's wealth of films.

Storage. This is a big bonus for BluRay but don't get carried away. For high def movies 15GB/30GB/45GB is perfectly adequate for movies of all lengths encoded in MPEG4. The 25/50GB capacity of BluRay is aimed at legacy encoding in MPEG2 - many of the BluRay companies have invested heavily in MPEG2 technology and thus intend to stick with it for the next few years. Hence the initial BluRay movie lineup all being encoded in this elderly format. Quad and greater BluRay discs are unlikely to ever emerge - there is no need for them even if you stick to MPEG2 - and will probably be incompatible anyway. For data useage though 50GB is better than the 30GB offered by HD DVD-R(W) though - even if the price per GB is likely to be significantly more.

1080P. This is player dependant not format dependant. Both BluRay and HD DVD players can output 1080P - it's just the first generation HD DVD ones do not. This is perfectly understandable IMHO as there are currently very few screens capable of taking such an input.

[JagoPlasma]

sorry should of said that it was for archive purposes. i.e at work we get 100 gig hard drives in and have to back them up. 2 blu-ray discs vs 40 standard dvds would save man hours even tho we have an automated dvd burning system now.

as for 1080P where did you hear about hd-dvd supporting it?

[Rasczak]

as for 1080P where did you hear about hd-dvd supporting it?

There have been several threads on the board that have discussed this at great length. Alternatively there are plenty of articles/interviews on the internet about the subject - here for example. To quote from that link:

When does HD DVD plan to release 1080p output players? All of what we saw at the show was 1080i.

The HD DVD players announced so far will not support 1080p outputs -- yet. This is in part because the latest version of HDMI (only one supporting 1080p output) is still being finalized. There are CE [consumer electronics] HD DVD players "in the works" that will ship later and are expected to have 1080p outputs, but nothing has yet been announced.

Also note that advanced 1080p displays can also do their own conversions from 1080i to progressive. There are no limitations in HD DVD as a format (i.e., both BD and HD DVD support the same native formats: 720p/60, 1080i/60, 1080p/30). It’s only a player or a display issue whether there’s a conversion to 1080p/60.

Finally, note that PC playback will always be progressive playback. Ditto the Toshiba laptop announced at CES; it will playback 1080p.

As you can see it's a total myth that HD DVD cannot support 1080p - it's just a question of what is supported by the player. Pioneer have opted to include this on their first generation players as they know even though it's of limited use people will get sucked into believeing it is a genuine advantage.

[niknik]

The all AACS "delay" just served SONY purposes to not have HD-DVDs on the market long before they could come out with Blueray.

I sincerely hope HD-DVDs win this war, which I think they can do by offering agressive price strategies. The only "factor" that will tip the balance in favor of Blueray is Sony PS3, but then again, if I can get a HD-DVD drive and media at a much lower cost... I think it's easy to do the math here...
And people will always prefer to have media they can control/burn in their PCs/Media PCs as well.

As for the size... well... Blueray offers more space but at a higher cost per Gb (at least for the next few years). And by using Mpeg4 h264, space is not a real issue for movies. In fact, you could have HD movies today in "plain" Dvd's, as you can squezze a high quality HD movie in 8gb with h264.

[ecc123]

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