New Poll - Did you buy one of Toshiba's HD-DVD Players?

[Ian]

With the launch of Toshiba's HD-DVD players, I figured I would start a new poll. A simple one at that. Feel free to leave your comments as to why you did or did not buy one.

[Ian]

I'm not sure what sort of "launch" Toshiba was planning, but there was little fanfare at the local Best Buy. They had their $500 model out on shelf but there was little indication that it supported HD DVD. Needless to say, I wasn't surprised to hear that no one had bought the 3 units the store had received. The store also had 3 HD DVD titles hidden away in back. At $25-$30 a pop, these weren't selling either.

I did find out something interesting from one of the guys that worked in the AV department. They had the player hooked up in the demo area and Best Buy corporate got mad and made them disconnect it. I'm guessing they don't want an Xbox 360 fiasco where they were hooked up wrong and looked bad.

[burninfool]

I got a laugh from this article,it sums up my feelings toward HD-DVD/BR:
www.ehomeupgrade.com/entry/2419/don-t_believe_the

[Ian]

Wouldn't Toshiba be better off putting these in Best Buy stores? I can't imagine too many Walmart shoppers are going to spend $500 or $700 on an HD DVD player.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... technology

Meanwhile, elaborate kiosks with huge widescreen TVs, explanatory boards and a handful of players and movies are going into about 100 Wal-Mart stores during the next two weeks, an unusually aggressive move by a retailer focused on the masses. The discount chain didn't begin selling DVD players until spring 1999, two years after the DVD format was launched.

[Morpheus]

I got a laugh from this article,it sums up my feelings toward HD-DVD/BR:
www.ehomeupgrade.com/entry/2419/don-t_believe_the

Ha! I got a laugh out of that one. The guy complains that you can't watch HD-DVD at high-res through component because of the DRM, you have to use HDMI. Then he whines that he spent $500 on the HD-DVD player and he can't watch it on his plasma tv that he bought last year. Presumably, his plasma does not have HDMI or DVI, just component. Gee, whose fault is that? Why would someone spend $5,000 buying a tv set that didn't have DVI or HDMI on it?

I started looking into get a tv back in 2004, and it was a given that it had to have DVI and HDMI on it. I wanted the DVD player/recorder to be connected to the receiver using HDMI and from the receiver to the tv using HDMI. I also want to connect my computer to the tv or receiever using DVI or HDMI. Even last year, with all the talk about BlueRay and HD-DVD, I knew the best way to connect it was HDMI - most people know that. This guy bought the wrong tv and now it came back and bit him. I have no sympathy for him.

[Ian]

I'll take his TV if he doesn't want it.

[Dartman]

Well your kinda right about buying a HDTV with at least DVI but the problem is why do we keep having to jump through hoops. hdtv has been out quite a while now and anybody with a still working earlier set is now SOL Just because the movie studios keep trying to add even more crap to a perfectly good standard to protect their precious content. Some of those early sets were 10 grand and now they don't work?!
Sooner or later this is going to create a backlash they aren't prepared for...

[aviationwiz]

Well, I might buy one, but first I would need a 1080p HDTV, and if I could afford one of those, then I wouldn't really have a problem with the price of an HD-DVD player.

[Dartman]

I'll wait, the price will come down quickly and sooner or later dual format players will happen if this doesn't sort itself out soon.
Not paying 500 to 1000 for any player then 30 a pop for software, my dvd's look good enough on my 16x9 set now, and I can do what I want with them too.

[vinnie97]

I started looking into get a tv back in 2004, and it was a given that it had to have DVI and HDMI on it. I wanted the DVD player/recorder to be connected to the receiver using HDMI and from the receiver to the tv using HDMI. I also want to connect my computer to the tv or receiever using DVI or HDMI. Even last year, with all the talk about BlueRay and HD-DVD, I knew the best way to connect it was HDMI - most people know that. This guy bought the wrong tv and now it came back and bit him. I have no sympathy for him.

Methinx you bend over backwards too much for the content/movie industry. There is far too much for the average joe to think about when purchasing their first HDTV. It truly can be overwhelming and this effing DRM nonsense isn't making it any easier.

[dolphinius_rex]

The Penny Arcade podcast today has some good stuff on the HDDVD player. Looks like they went to BestBuy to watch a demo, and they didn't have any units left. Even more interesting is that this specific Bestbuy told them they had been selling the units EARLY even! (which is why they were sold out they claimed). Gabe and Tycho take it one step further, and critique what movies have been launched for HDDVD

[Alektron]

Do the Blu-ray or HD-DVD players output 1080p, or just 1080i? Second, when they play a Hollywood movie, will they be playing 60 frames or 30 frames per second? I am trying to get an idea of how it compares to currently broadcast 1080i content like HD-Discovery that is awesome.

[Ian]

I'm not sure about frames per second, but I know for a fact that Toshiba's new HD DVD player does 1080p with HD titles. I'm not sure what it does whenit upconverts normal DVD's though. That might be 1080i.

[dolphinius_rex]

I highly doubt it's 60fps...

[Alektron]

In the case it's 30 frames per second, the 1080p would be equivalent in quality to 1080i for all non-CRT HDTVs. CRT based HDTVs may have a slight reduction in flickering due to progressive scanning. However, I've never noticed any flickering on my projection HDTV CRT when watching 1080i material. DVDs are normally de-interlaced (480i at 24 fps), so the HD-DVD or Blu-ray movies would contain roughly 3 times as much data per movie minute than DVDs today (excluding sound). Quality-wise, the new generation should look at lot better. However, if the HD-DVD turns out to be compressed, it means it won't be a true 1080i of resolution because some of it will be averaged pixel values, right?

<Edit> I was just reading that the new 1080p TVs have 60 frames per second. I'm really still puzzled the output format of the new Blu-ray or HD-DVD players.

http://editorials.teamxbox.com/xbox/154 ... -1080p/p4/

</Edit>

The HD-DVD sounds like it will be cheaper to support by the disc manufacturing industry, but if Blu-ray can offer more features in the movie, it may be more attractive. I think the biggest factors are the big name movie availability and the player cost. One potential problem that we can imagine is if 50% of the consumers jump into one camp, but that camp loses a couple years later, it will be bad for them. Movie studies probably prefer not to support both, right? What we need to help decide the platform is a huge OEM willing to take the plunge into a very cost competitive high def disc player. This would begin the trend of early-adopting consumers into one camp, and things would trend that way. Eventually, the momentum for that camp would erode efforts for the other side. Let's hope it happens fairly quickly. It seems like most people polled in this forum prefer Blu-ray. I've only studied some superficial differences, but that's the format that I would bet on at this point.

[Pradeep]

I'm not sure about frames per second, but I know for a fact that Toshiba's new HD DVD player does 1080p with HD titles. I'm not sure what it does whenit upconverts normal DVD's though. That might be 1080i.

The content is stored at 1080p. However, the Toshiba can only output a max of 1080i.