blu ray plays hd discs

[nads]

i hope there is not. the ones that were made were not very good.

 

[audioidiot1]

i must disagree with you .they load quicker and the pic quality is just as good if not better than bd in my opinion

 

[Anonymous]

I have around 65 HD-DVD's and 2x Tosh EP30's. One of which is still in the box, waiting to be used somewhere in the house or just for back up in case the other one fails! I had an Xbox 360 + HD-DVD drive but got annoyed by the general noise from the 360 while watching movies, so sold the drive on ebay. Funny thing was, the day after the auction finished, Warner announce they were pulling out. Got £75 + postage for the drive too! LOL

I also have a PS3 and about 7 Blu-rays...

 

[nads]

audioidiot1:i must disagree with you .they load quicker and the pic quality is just as good if not better than bd in my opinion

what are you on about? i am talking about the LG BD and HD combo players. which were the only dual format players made.

and you were suggesting that denon should come into the Market with another Franken player.

 

[audioidiot1]

appologies nads.my wires got crossed

 

[FunkyMonkey]

woollyjoe:

If you have an Xbox 360, you can still pick up the HD DVD drives for bargain prices. Won't be as good as dedicated hi end, but it is a cheap solution if you have an xbox.


In fact, these drives can be connected via USB to any PC! And if your PC has DVI or HDMI our, then you are sorted!

 

[professorhat]

Funnily enough, I think one of the major touted benefits of the HD-DVD format for consumers was that it was region free. And this was possibly one of the major reasons for its downfall since movie studios like to be able to control their releases in different regions through the region lock...

Just a thought.

 

[bigboss]

Quite possible, prof, but if they could region lock plain DVDs, why not HD DVDs? Or is it the ease (or difficulty) with which you can unlock your player? It's very easy to unlock your player to play multiregion DVDs, but you'll need a hardware modification to unlock the player to play multizone blu-ray discs.

 

[Tonya]

IMHO, the kiss of death for HD-DVD was when the "adult industry" decided on Bluray.
As it did with VHS over BetaMax (which was a technically superior system).

 

[professorhat]

bigboss:Quite possible, prof, but if they could region lock plain DVDs, why not HD DVDs?

Could be the method of unlocking a player but, pure speculation on my part, I suspect the studios were worried if they introduced region locking on HD-DVDs there would have been consumer backlash against the move. Far easier just to support the technology which had region locking already in place and was accepted as part of the technology.

And although it could have been the adult industry which helped, the fact that Toshiba reported they would no longer produce HD-DVD players just a few days / weeks after Warner announced they were only supporting Blu-Ray shows in my opinion that it was the influence of studios and the availability of standard software titles (i.e. films) which decided the battle more than the adult industry on this occasion.

 

[Anonymous]

HD-DVD was a technology aimed at giving consumers the best viewing experience in terms of picture quality and sound and ease of use

Whilst Bluray also offers the same viewing quality in terms of PQ and sound, its primary goal is to protect the overall interests of the movie studios, which is why all players constantly need updates to play newer titles, as the BD+ encryption is changed/upgraded every so often....you can thank Fox for that.

Both formats use the same video codecs, VC1 & AVC, so a title could potentially be the same on both formats, but picture quality will vary from disc to disc depending on storage space available and the encoded bit rate. BluRay offers more storage space (up to 50gb on a dual layered disc) but it is quite common to find less than half of this is actually used to store the movie content.

 

[chudleighpaul]

There is absolutely no doubt that area coding was the reason for going with Blueray. The studios record speaks for itself with DVD. When it was launched there were 6 regions so that they could control the prices in those areas. We defeated them with region free players and they reacted with an enhanced system called RCE. Fortunately most players were immune to this and we continued to buy in the best markets.

Now with Blueray they see another chance to rip us off. Roll on the advent of easily hacked players from China which will defeat the rip-off studios.

 

[Andrew Everard]

Tonya:IMHO, the kiss of death for HD-DVD was when the "adult industry" decided on Bluray.
As it did with VHS over BetaMax (which was a technically superior system).

And of course the "adult industry' could still be the 'killer app' to make 3D TV a success...

 

[chudleighpaul]

I hate to think what would be coming out of the screen at us!!!!!

 

[Fisherking 145]

I'm loving the thinking.......

 

[Andrew Everard]

Fisherking 145:I'm loving the thinking.......

Not my thinking, but apparently something mentioned more than once at the recent CES.

Bit like the presentation I remember back before DVD was launched, when a very Senior Japanese Executive mentioned that DVD would be very popular with the adult film industry.

'Why/' someone asked, in response to which the SJE gave a huge smile and said 'A-B repeat'