[The News Bot]

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[Jonny1973]

Still cheaper then Sony's cheapest player which was announced in January with a price tag of $1800.

[Mark_a]

I think the 103" 1080p plasma screen mentioned sounds more interesting, myself.

Regards

Mark

[steve0]

How much will the ps3 be $1000

[AgentCool]

I think this is why Blu-Ray will fail in the same way that Betamax, LaserDiscs and Mini-Discs did. It may be technically better than HD-DVD (though many would argue otherwise) but it's simply too expensive to compete on a mass-market scale. When the technologies are essentially the same the consumer is always going to pick the cheaper one and, in this case, HD-DVD represents significantly better value than Blu-Ray.

Including a BD drive on the PS3 is realistically the only way the format can survive but even then, if a basic Panasonic player costs $1500 how much is the PS3 going to cost? And if it is a lot cheaper surely the quality of its output will be severely compromised.

I still tout HD-DVD to be the winner.

[David Mackenzie]

Originally Posted by Jonny1973

Still cheaper then Sony's cheapest player which was announced in January with a price tag of $1800.

Am I missing something?

Amazon.com have the BDP-S1 listed at $999.

[Mr.D]

Game Over

HD-DVD all the way.

[David Mackenzie]

Originally Posted by Mr.D

Game Over

HD-DVD all the way.

Why?

[Mr.D]

Cost .

No appreciable improvement in picture quality.

HD-DVD has established format association with the general public regardless of how relevant that is in practice. And Blu-ray sounds naff.

HD-DVD first to market.

Huge price of the ever later PS3 for features of little interest to the general public against the cheaper xbox360.

Marginally better initial lineup of hd-dvd titles.
No region coding on hd-dvd although 50Hz/60Hz format issues may apply.

Blu-ray has ...more space for dull extras that nobody watches and possibly a more expensive price tag. I predict 25quid for hd-dvd and 30quid for blu-ray. Blu-ray players might well be getting on for twice the price of hd-dvd players. I doubt we will see the PS3 below the 400quid mark when/if it arrives in this country even if its a lacklustre blu-ray player.

[AgentCool]

Mr. D - That's pretty much what I think. Even the PS3 can't save Blu-Ray, it's just too expensive and if the success of 'supermarket-special' DVD players are anything to go by, the public don't like expensive things.

[David Mackenzie]

Cost .

No appreciable improvement in picture quality.

No improvement? How can you tell? Do you own or have spent enough time with both?

I remember before DVD came out - "who's going to fill 8gb?" - but you only have to look at the standard releases that are over-filtered and frankly disappointing to see that we've quickly found the need for more. Who's to say it won't happen again?

I'd rather back the format that has the most space possible, however pricey - and wait for the prices to fall.

[Mr.D]

Both have been confirmed as 1080p native. Both have sufficient capacity to encode h264 to a high level. Distributors will not bother doing two encodes when its a significant cost for little percievable improvement. All you'll get on Blu-ray is additional fluff.

[David Mackenzie]

Good point, but do keep in mind also that more distributors are backing Blu-Ray to start with.

Also, additional fluff on Blu-Ray - there's a limited amount of extra material as it is.

Take from it what you will, but I head that MPEG-2 was being used mainly for Blu-Ray because it's supposedly of a higher standard at the kind of storage capacity BR offers. But h264 is required for HD-DVD's lower capacity. I wouldn't be so sure of there being no "percievable" difference (and do keep in mind that what isn't perceivable on today's screens could easily become percievable on future technologies).

[Mr.D]

Fluff is cheap they can add any old junk onto the discs. Deleted dull scenes , animatics .....junk.

Divx had a similar amount of divisive support from a lot of studios... I seem to remember Fox refusing to release anything on dvd for 2 years and sticking with Divx instead.

There is nothing stopping HD-DVD using mpeg2 and releasing on 2 discs.HD-DVD manufacture is cheap. 30Gb on a single dual layer disc is plenty for high quality mpeg2. H264 with that sort of capacity is going to lose very little if anything to mpeg2 ...it might even look better.

Blu-ray are being somewhat cagey as to the price of a dual layer disc and have even been somewhat reluctant to actually come up with a dual layer disc in the flesh.