And Then There Was One . . . [Blu-Ray - the new HDTV disk standard]

http://www.overclockers.com/tips01297/

Ed says "a movie doesn't have to come on a disk" but what else in the near future can hold tens of GBs per movie?

imho, he's probably right about prices, Sony is likely to use its monopoly like Apple and Microsoft did for their products.


As for Ed talking about taking the current champ, standard DVD, I'm reminded of an article in either New York Times or Washington Post the other day where someone was saying if High Definition DVD is a 10, then standard DVD is a 4 and upconverted standard DVD is a 6.

The difference is drastic enough on a quality HD TV set that we won't have a choice, just like most of us didn't have a real choice but to use Windows XP soon after it came out.


Either way, it's time to start thinking about Blu Ray players. We're on HDMI 1.3b now, anyone know anything about the upcoming HDMI 1.4?

Movies do need to come on disk because not everyone has a 10MB fiber line to their door and wont anytime soon the way the US at least is growing, or should i say, not growing, for broadband, sole digital distribution is not in the near future in north america at least, and now with more ISP capping bandwidth and throttling speeds, that just delays it even more.... and companies like Warner doing a t est run of basically pay per mb service... how many people want to pay for the movie + who knows what else to download it, vs running to the store and buying it and having it right there.

Also via downloading you not need some way to play it on your tv / tv's... so now you also need an htpc or something...

i dont want to wait 4 days to get a full 10-20G Bluray movie and i dont want some comperssed items either if i payed for it, i wanty the full items.

Many are saying though do not run out and buy a blu-ray player yet, new specs a features are to come out at years end that sony is making, that likely wont be able to be fiormware updated in current players.


there is a diff between HD and DVD , period, BUT, how many people own HD tv is another story, not as many as we think, so those who own old CRT tv wont see the diff in quality, so it doesnt matter much to them

My girlfriend noticed something the otherday, was playing the BBC planet earth series in 720 and she was watching it and i said, "that is HD quality" on my 43' samsung rear projection HD tv, and she said "that is why it is so crisp and the colors pop out"

it was a scene of a seal jumping out of water witha shark after it and the detail was so crisp and such.


As for price, i dont think it will be soley upto sony to deceide, even though sony has the most invested in Blu-ray, you have alot of other companies that Sony has to please, so if things arent selling.... prices will come down.

Mr.Guvernment said:

Many are saying though do not run out and buy a blu-ray player yet, new specs a features are to come out at years end that sony is making, that likely wont be able to be fiormware updated in current players.

Click to expand...

Really? Is that just for the dedicated players or the PS3 as well?

Yes, please post what new Blu Ray player specs other than HDMI 1.4.

And as far as that goes, although HDMI 1.3 did offer some improvements over HDMI 1.2, I'm not sure there will be a as big of a jump to HDMI 1.4 for our needs.

benbaked said:

Really? Is that just for the dedicated players or the PS3 as well?

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Yes PS3 can be upgraded to the latest BR standard via FW upgrades.

Now that people are looking into buying a Blu Ray player one way or another, the question they have is what, if any, major changes are expected in the generation following the current one?

I didn't spend any time doing research yet but I understand that HDMI version will be upgraded, (that version 1.4 is in the works) and that someone at a major tech show in September 2007 talked about it not being a major upgrade from version 1.3b.

1.1 Has Bonus view, afaik it looks like some sort of picture in picture where you can watch from different angle, listen to explanation etc, and BD live will be called 2.0 and the PS3 update to 2.0 is expected before summer.

glad i waited hehehe

I'm in no hurry, I dont care how much better Blu-Ray is than DVD.

When a DVD player is a 10th of the cost of a Blu-Ray player and media is 1/2 the cost, I'll happily stick with DVD.
I thinik a lot of people seem to have overlooked the fact that DVD is heavily entrenched and more than sufficient for most people.

Same here.

I have yet to buy a HD TV so anything the produces a HD signal is petty much pointless. I will expect it to take much longer for me to adapt to Blue Ray than it did to switch to DVD which I was a very late adapter (about 4 years in). DVD provided a convenience over VHS that was eventually worth the switch. I do not see the same for Blue Ray. Right now all I see is a huge bill for a HD TV, Player and new Media.

This would be the same for HD-DVD if they had won out, but I would have felt a little more confident in it.

only reason i got a HDTv is cause my old one broke, so had to get a new TV so why not an HD one

Although I agree that it's not completely practical, technology is one of my hobbies, second only to skiing. I find it fun to keep up to date with the latest stuff, selling my old hardware and media and moving on.

This is the overclocker's forums, not much we do here is entirely, or even partially practical.

I own almost 400 DVD's, the cost for me to transition over to Blu-ray is something that I would really rather not think about.

As it stands currently for me, I would need a new tv *1-2k usd depending on quality and size, realistically a new receiver(no HDMI input) 400usd, a blue ray player 200? usd, and roughly 10 grand just for DVD's (20usd x 400 and this doesnt include box sets, entire runs of shows or anything similar). All told with cables and such, I am looking at say 13k+ usd. Admittedly I wouldnt be buying all 400 dvd's at once but still its 13k+ once it is all said and done.

Sorry Ill be a very late adopter.

I have no compelling reason to buy into BD at this time. Sure, the picture might be better than DVD but since I haven't ever watched a HD show, I'm not missing a thing. And I'm perfectly satisfied with standard DVD quality as it stands, even on my 42" plasma. There won't be significant market penetration until the price on the players drops a lot from where it's at right now.

i can see no reason to replace my DVD collection (only about a 100 or so) with blu-ray, they look good to me and most are older movies so even if they got re-mastered i think it would take away from the original look of the movie (many from childhood kind of thing)

i could only see my self buying new movies in BR format if i got a BR player, or possibly movies that would look great in HD, like Band of Brothers, that is something i think would be worth it to watch in Hi-D

The unhappy idea of huge financial expenditures to replace your DVD collections has perhaps kept you'all from embracing the fact that finely tuned high definition Plasma airing High Definition content absolutely positively blows away standard material, there is no comparison.

I bought a commercial Plasma without a tuner and whoever said this was right: if true High Definition is a 10, then standard TV is a 4 and upconverted standard DVDs are a 6.

My plasma:

Many people that have huge VHS collections didn't necessarily repurchase all of their movies on DVD. It would make just as much sense to hold onto the normal DVD collection, and buy new movies on Blu-Ray. If there is a favorite DVD title that has been upgraded, those titles could be bought on a case by case basis. The story would have been the same with HD-DVD, no?

noxqzs said:

Many people that have huge VHS collections didn't necessarily repurchase all of their movies on DVD. It would make just as much sense to hold onto the normal DVD collection, and buy new movies on Blu-Ray. If there is a favorite DVD title that has been upgraded, those titles could be bought on a case by case basis. The story would have been the same with HD-DVD, no?

Click to expand...

I still have 3 VHS and 1 movie that was only released on VHS that I cant find a copy of to go. I converted ALL of my VHS to DVD as I found them on DVD.

Mega Force (only on VHS and hard to find)
CHUD (finally on DVD but limited availability)
Sick Of It All (VHS only AFAIK)
Robot Jox (again VHS only AFAIK)

Keep your eyes on Netflix and LG. Mid 2008 they are supposed to be streaming high def movies via download.

This pretty much is the only competition to BLU RAY. Which stinks as blu ray players are going up in price after HD-DVD folded.

Prices should come down toward the end of the year somewhat but probably not enough as Sony is likely to milk their monopoly status for all its worth.


A concern with streaming is storage. With multiple tens of GB per movie, that will add up fast.

A TB isn't enough. It doesn't look like we'll have huge leaps in storage in the next year or two at least.