HD-A2 HDDVD Player for $98.87 at Wal-Mart Black Friday

[dolphinius_rex]

AVS's HiDef forums are kinda infamous... they're very very biased towards HD DVD (kinda like Blu-Ray.com's forums are biased towards Blu-Ray, only you'd sorta expect that from a forum at www.blu-ray.com). Also, a number of their forums have been indeffinately shut down because of all the flame wars and such. People get really riled up about this format war!

[Dartman]

Yep, they do. They finally put up a discuss HD or BD only on each forum to keep the bickering down, I never went to either much myself, but now that I have a hd player I wanted to see what was around and what I could do with it.
Being able to put hd caps on regular media is a HUGE bonus, 25 cents to a dollar a disk compared to what? 30 bucks a disk and 400 or more for the burners.
I'd have preffered a dual format rig but at that price I just couldn't pass it up.
I think my collection of burners, media, and the hd card are going to get a workout now

[dolphinius_rex]

BD-Rs are $8-$10 if you look, and $20 if you pay crazy prices. The burners range from $200 to $500 generally (unless you pay insane prices).

Recording media is far too important to me... and I don't like what I've seen from HD DVD-R... what little there is of it to see!!

[Dartman]

Well I don't expect absolutely perfect results from this but so far my copies have looked great and play fine now that I have the proper steps down.
The machine says hd dvd when I put them in and the audio is 5.1 or 2.0 depending on what was originally there so I'm happy. I will get a hd/bd burner when they get down to the price the player was, tired of paying 3 to 4 hundred to be a early adopter, then having the thing be worth 50 bucks shortly after.
BD has to start dropping prices on players and burners if they want to stay in it, Betamax didn't survive and it was also a superior format, but missed the mark.

[dolphinius_rex]

Well I don't expect absolutely perfect results from this but so far my copies have looked great and play fine now that I have the proper steps down.
The machine says hd dvd when I put them in and the audio is 5.1 or 2.0 depending on what was originally there so I'm happy. I will get a hd/bd burner when they get down to the price the player was, tired of paying 3 to 4 hundred to be a early adopter, then having the thing be worth 50 bucks shortly after.
BD has to start dropping prices on players and burners if they want to stay in it, Betamax didn't survive and it was also a superior format, but missed the mark.

Betamax was supported by only one CE manufacturer, and had a lot of drawbacks, like recording capacity (no 2 hour tapes!). It's completely different from what we're looking at now with the HiDef battle.

As for burners, I suspect we'll see them at $100-$150 by the end of next year. Prices on that kind of hardware will drop very quickly because the computer does all the hard work. BD Players need to be mini-computers (same with HD DVD players), which is why they can't break the $250-$300 mark without being subsidized (read: losing money) by the manufacturer. This will of course change over time as componants are mass produced and the manufacturing process is refined.

[Dartman]

Yep, I'll be waiting, I have lotsa time I know about the beta max tape time issues but it was the first thing that popped to mind that was kinda similar, though both were stupid priced when they first came out as well. At least both formats have pretty much the same video quality at this point so main thing now is price and software. I got a early birthday present of Serenity on HD dvd so looking forward to watching it soon when we have some time. My friend played part of it for me on his hd-a1 when they first came out and it did look stunning.
I'll still get a dual format when somebody makes a affordable one, hate being stuck to one format till one or the other gives up or wins out. They should have buried their pride and did a single format with the best of both but the sides only see money and pride right now.

[dolphinius_rex]

Yep, I'll be waiting, I have lotsa time I know about the beta max tape time issues but it was the first thing that popped to mind that was kinda similar, though both were stupid priced when they first came out as well. At least both formats have pretty much the same video quality at this point so main thing now is price and software. I got a early birthday present of Serenity on HD dvd so looking forward to watching it soon when we have some time. My friend played part of it for me on his hd-a1 when they first came out and it did look stunning.
I'll still get a dual format when somebody makes a affordable one, hate being stuck to one format till one or the other gives up or wins out. They should have buried their pride and did a single format with the best of both but the sides only see money and pride right now.

For me, as a recordable media fan, I have to look at the two formats and say that they are very much not equal. HD DVD-R is far far inferior at this time.... it's not even in the running to be honest. HD DVD's closest thing to a recordable format that works is DVD+RDL!

But yeah, I wish that they would get over their pride and just agree on one format for the whole industry. Unfortunately, to me, this means going with the majority of the industry. Back with DVD, Philips and Sony swallowed their pride and followed the rest of the CE industry, who had chosen Toshiba's solution. So in my opinion, it was Toshiba's turn to swallow their pride and fall in line with the rest of the industry who had chosen Blu-Ray.... but it seems they just couldn't do that

Actually, what pisses me off the most about this is probably that I repeatedly find myself having to defend Sony, when I'd much rather be bashing them

[MediumRare]

Actually, what pisses me off the most about this is probably that I repeatedly find myself having to defend Sony, when I'd much rather be bashing them

I feel for you- I feel the same way.

G