Blu Ray delivers another blow to hd. (1 Viewer)

[Ryan-G]

Best Buy, Circuit City, Blockbuster, Electronics Boutique, Comp USA, Gamestop, Babbages, Suncoast...and many, many other stores.

All stocked DVD very early on, and combined have a much bigger market than Wallmart.

Again, I'll iterate. For the vast majority of people, Wallmart and Target are not where they go to buy high end equipment. Wallmart and Target cater to, and it's very well documented that they do, low income customers. No matter what you do, no matter how you market, no matter how good your product is, Wallmart and Target's target market will not adopt until the final stages.

Nor is it a very large market, nor a very influential one. In fact, as far as adoption goes, the target market does not count. As above, it's the last one to adopt because it's the one with the very least expendable income.

People who shop at Wallmart but are not the market targetted will adopt regardless of Wallmart's stock practices. But because they also shop at other stores, and are discerning enough to make purchases at stores geared towards the product. Most of Wallmart's daily customers are not actually in the market that Wallmart caters to, for their own reasons.

Your entire arguement falls flat. By virtue of your arguement, Computers should not be widely available because almost no Wallmarts carry them. Nor should 5.1 surround sound systems. Or many other common items.

Wallmart and Target are not deciding factors for anything. If they were, we'd all be watching Full-Screen Pan and Scan movies.

Finally, the only reason why Wallmart has been such a success is because of the way they do buisness. This is coming to a close, with litigation pending against them or targetted at them in many states, Wallmart's methods of doing buisness will change soon and dramatically. Wallmart is the Microsoft of the retail world, and it's starting to catch up to them quickly.

Heck, Wallmart's been trying to put a store in my area for a year now. Each and every township in my area have systematically denied them access.

Can't be too great of a influence if they can't even influence themselves into a building permit in a major metropolitan area.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Blu-ray (disc) pricing announced:

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htfo...82#post2929337

 

[FrancisP]

You've been listening to too much propaganda. Buying in large quantities and lowering prices are the way they have been doing business. Walmart is a target because you've got a bunch of greedy politicians and union affiliated thugs. Americans will pay if these people succeed because they will pay higher prices. For politicians this is a way to raise taxes on people without doing it directly.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Let's attempt to leave political comments
out of these discussions, please. I have
already received complaints.

Thanks!

 

[Greg T]

My kid has one of those psp's, and has never even showed any interest in buying any movies for it.
When we fly or go on a road trip, the kids want to watch on either our portable dual screen dvd player or a laptop on planes.
I don't know whos buying those psp umd movies, but a local grocery chain had a bunch of them for around 14.00 like they were clearing them out.

I was thinking that if the sales person at BB actually answered a potential customers questions on hd dvd, it would go something like this.

Well first you need a new 1080p hdtv with hdmi, and for audio, you will need a new receiver that decodes multi channel lossless codecs and they come out next year.
HD DVD players are around half price of any announced BD player, but will not play movies from MGM,Lions Gate, Disney, Columbia Tri Star, Buena Vista, Sony Pictures,Pixar, Touchstone,or Fox.

Of course there not going to give all this info, even if they knew about it, but can you imagine the amount of PO'ed customers that come back when they realise they can't get Disney/Pixar movies or Aliens, X men ect ect.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

I keep seeing this repeated and I want to yet again clarify that this is NOT THE CASE.

With either BD or HD DVD you will only need a new HDMI 1080P TV or receiver if you want the MAXIMUM POTENTIAL from the format.

Even on legacy gear (and even on 4x3 NTSC 480I TVs and ProLogic receivers), BD and HD DVD discs will LOOK AND SOUND BETTER THAN DVD.

They'll look better than DVD because of the added color-resolution and better compression/mastering. They'll sound better than DVD even in 2-channel ProLogic mode because they'll have higher-res better sounding audio compression (just like laserdisc 2-channel PCM routinely sounds better than 5.1 DVD). Most decent players will also downconvert high-res losses DTS and DD to high-bit-rate DTS/DD for your legacy AV receiver...which will also sound better than DVD. And even with downresing, the 540P image from a BD or HD DVD player will looking stunningly better than DVD...probably better than most 720P and 1080I HD you're used to watching from conventional sources.

Let's stop spreading the myth that "you'll need a new TV and receiver" to enjoy BD or HD DVD because that IS NOT TRUE.

 

[Juan C]

DaViD, only one thing - if in that statement you qualified 'enjoy' with 'fully', then it'd be true.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

 

[george kaplan]

I'm confused. Don't you need the maximum potential to fully enjoy it? Fully does mean that there is no room for an increase in enjoyment, so why would you need the maximum potential if you could fully enjoy it with less than that?

Now if instead of fully enjoy, you mean adequately enjoy, then that's a different story.

 

[Greg T]

Yep, I will be enjoying my new BD player on my 720p Optoma dlp pj that does accept 1080p, up until the new Optoma h-81 or other DLP PJ's come down in price to 5-6k street.

And once I get the 1080p PJ, I will then fully enjoy my new player

David.... there are zero players announced for hd dvd that have more than two channels of on board decoding, so no multi channel hi res audio until the new receivers/pre/pros hit the market next year.

As far as BD, its not real clear yet as to if any of the players will have on board decoding, but I suspect the ones launched this summer may.

Its also been suggested that the announced Sony special editions of Blackhawk Down, TFE, and The Bridge Over River Kwai may have linear LPCM never compressed multi channel audio on these 50gb announced special editions, that could be played back via analog.

I am not holding my breath on this but it does sound good(pun intended)

 

[DaViD Boulet]

George,

you're right. I got my mind in a semantic muddle.

 

[Rolando]

I have a headache!:frowning:

 

[Greg T]

Hopefully we soon get some concrete info on the PS3.
The nail in hd dvd's coffin imo.
The nail is in place, just waiting for the hammer to drive it in
http://www.digitimes.com/systems/a20060209A8050.html

 

[BrettGallman]

I hope they announce pricing then. They better not wait until E3 in May. Regardless, I'll be putting down my deposit as soon as the local game stores start taking them.

 

[Ken_F]

This was announced at CES.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Ahh...so the players will be able to "downconvert" lossless DTS right off the bat (and produce a legacy-style multi-channel DTS signal via coax for regular receivers) but doing so with lossless DD might take a generation or two? Did I get that right?

 

[Ken_F]

Right.

From what I understand, DTS-HD is designed as an extension to DTS, such that a signal bitstream encompasses both lossy DTS and lossless DTS-HD, and all players are able to transcode or separate the lossy DTS component without decoding the lossless component.

In contrast, Dolby TrueHD is an entirely new lossless format (based on MLP) without direct DD compatibility. Dolby TruHD decoders in players must incorporate Dolby Digital encoders to reencode the lossless stream into lossy Dolby Digital for older receivers; this makes TrueHD more complex to support (for semiconductor companies) than the lossless format from DTS.

The AACS in Blu-ray and HD-DVD apparently specifies a maximum of 16-bit 48khz digital output through spdif/optical, so that may serve to limit the bandwidth needed for the lossy component of DTS-HD.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Hmmm. That's odd given that DTS can go up to 20 and 24 bits in its current form on DVD (also sent over spdif connection). Or does that limition you mention only apply to "downresed on the fly" DTS?

 

[Ken_F]

David,

No idea, I'll have to ask. Obviously, it couldn't apply to current 20-bit DVDs, but of course they don't use AACS either.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

By all means ask...

it would just seem ironic that given all that the HD formats do to improve things, if they then actually kept DTS in "regular" form via coax from doing what it can already do on standard-def DVD.

thanks!

dave