It's not over yet

My current Samsung (cost UNDER £350 new) plays all the latest titles, with all the latest features, so why should I worry?

I'll eventually upgrade, some missing features are not an issue for me at this time.

We hear about A1 owners, 360 add-on owners etc. using current players for a year or two before planning an upgrade, why is Blu-Ray any different?

The point is the hd-dvd player are worth there money and can do everything it says on the tin. :)
 
The crucial point - I think the biggest message that came from this CES is that BluRay is no longer a CE format - it a PS3 format. The lack of hardware announced speaks volumes...


so Toshiba announce a couple of machines, and onkyo and meridian(who later say errrrr did we?)

sony announce 2 new models, Samsung show a new model, sharp announce Q2 player launch, LG's bluray/hd fluff

all stand alone stuff, then there are the pc drives...
 
The Onyko and meridian releases are still valid AFAIK, it was just one guy at meridian, who didn't know the score. Apartenly they are going to issue a press release on thier website soon to confirm this.

HD-DVD also announced the 3 major chinese manufacturers that are going to start mass producing affordable and cheap HD-DVD players. These guys make the supermarket special DVD players, that have flooded the market and put a DVD player in every home so this is very important news for HD in general and a good plus for HD-DVD.

The few BR players planned, still suffer the same problems of current BR players. They will still be over priced and unable to compete with the PS3. Because they just cannot compete with HD-DVD or the PS3, so IMO are not viable new BR hardware.

The PC drives seem to be pretty even, don't they? and a dual format PC drive looks promissing. How could we forget the Xbox HD-DVD addon can be used on a PC - £130 !!!

IMO HD-DVD has a massive hardware advantage.
 
Don't we have announcement of players coming by:

Onkyo, Meridian, China (4)

New Players announced

Toshiba, Samsung

Beta players showed from new people

Sharp, Hitachi (writer)

Prototypes

Sony

and the LG stuff which I am not too sure where it fits! and people showing players already out like Pioneer.

I think the big question to ask is who will buy a standalone BD player without HDMI 1.3?
 
It'll be interesting to see what 'budget' means from these Chinese boys.

If it's sub-£100 within the year then BD have had it, unless they do something similar.

If it's sub-£200, then It'll be a very good move for HD-DVD, but not an immediate killer blow.

If it's £300 per player, then that'll get lots of people on-board who are usually early adopters, but who don't want to be caught out by the format wars, but will just give HD-DVD an advantage.

Looking at Amazon in the US we have 4 HD-DVD players.

Tosh HD-A1 $500 reduced to $400
Tosh HD-A2 $700 reduced to $409
Tosh HD-XA1 $1,180 reduced to $460 (mistake in original price?)
RCA HDV5000 $500 (not yet released) presumably going to go at c.$400

For Bl;u-Ray we have:

Sammy $900 reduced to $590
Sony $1,000 - no reduction
Panny $1,300 - no reduction

It depends on how much money you can gamble, or rather how much you don't think will be a waste if your format 'loses'. But the lower it comes, the closer that gets for Joe Public.

But at sub-£100, the public will buy 'em as normal DVD players, forget about high definition. Imagine it. You've just bought a new LCD/Plasma - it's HD-Ready. You go to Tesco to look for a £50 player for little Amy's bedroom. You see a new DVD player for £99.99, that plays these new discs that'll make your telly look ace.

Do you move your SD DVD player upstairs, and spend £99.99? I think a lot of people will.

Steve W
 
I think the big question to ask is who will buy a standalone BD player without HDMI 1.3?
...but such a standalone must be priced at US$499 or less as the PS3 offers all this at that price point plus will have full support for BD Live (etc) when finally ratified. Anything else isn't worth half the PS3 price IMHO :rolleyes:
 
But at sub-£100, the public will buy 'em as normal DVD players, forget about high definition. Imagine it. You've just bought a new LCD/Plasma - it's HD-Ready. You go to Tesco to look for a £50 player for little Amy's bedroom. You see a new DVD player for £99.99, that plays these new discs that'll make your telly look ace.

Do you move your SD DVD player upstairs, and spend £99.99? I think a lot of people will.

Steve W

That's exactly why I always thought HD-DVD has the edge. This is an evolution not revolution :D and IMO the HD-DVD budget players will allow this evolution to happen. The Revolution required for BR is just not happening IMO.
 
Those Chinese HD-DVD players are why the Blu-ray side are currently trying to get a 'we've already won' bandwagon rolling.

More that anything else at CES it's these imminent players that are going to settle this in the mass-market.

Blu-ray is set to be a mostly PS3-only format
(and possibly a professional archiving format if they can get the huge capacity discs working and producible out of the lab).

.......and before too many people make too much of PS3's 'success' in cornering the Blu-ray market it might be worth waiting and seeing just what that means in reality.
Cos figure of units shipped are nothing like the same as numbers of units actually sold.
 
sega master system used cartridges... none cared that you couldnt put the cartridge into a nintendo, its a games machine ultimatley and i dont think it matters which format wins in this respect.
 

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