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A Few Words About Coming from Warner Home Video... in High Definition (1 Viewer)

Robert Crawford

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That's not Fair! This is pushing the envelope for me in regard to buying this player even if I can only watch the dvds through the component input on my non-HDMI television. As I ease my way to the edge are these players readily available at Best Buy yet?;)




Crawdaddy
 

PeterTHX

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You forgot the biggest one (IMHO): not announcing support for Blu-ray disc, the ONLY major studio not to do so. :)
 

Larry Sutliff

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Judging from everything I've been reading for the past week, they may well be regarded as smarter than the other studios in this regard.
 

Shawn.F

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Mr. Harris,

You have made my morning, yet again. As always, much thanks for the information and reviews. Thanks!
 

PeterTHX

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Eh? 10 days into it and the war is over? Ask Sony how the support for the PSP as a movie format is going. (Hint: studios falling over themselves to support a format played by a single company supporting that sold out its initial shipments...)

Smacks of the same Universal who initially supported DIVX only.
 

JohnPM

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Is the general public going to support one format or the other, both, or perish the thought --- neither? Things would be so much cleaner and simpler if we didn't have this format war going on. I have to admit I'm confused by it and I'm really into this stuff (obviously).

http://greenbriarpictureshows.blogspot.com/
 

Ed St. Clair

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Agree!
Not only is the public facing a new technology (therefore, also facing the prospect of buying new hard/software). It's also "faced" with poorly setup demo's which will leave a lot of people with a "so what" feeling of HD on disc.
This is going to be a tough sell, especially to those currently w/o HD displays. Which puts HD on disc at under the magic 20% penetration market figure of success.
So there are already those that are considering an LD-like market share, where I always wanted a DVD-like market share. I think my wish will fall far short. Unless prices (let's not fight, just admit, HD DVD entry price is $499US & BD entry level price will be $499US, with each of these entry level products having there own failings, OK) fall FAST!
I wonder how many people three years ago would have though there would be under $500US players out in the first year of HD on disc?
 

Nils Luehrmann

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Well despite the format war and very different technological, hardware, and software differences, the general public have not shown a great deal of confusion over buying PlayStations and Xboxes. In fact, Sony and Microsoft together have sold well over 100 million consoles and billions of dollars in software for their consoles.

SACD and DVD-A lack of success was because the mass market simply wasn't interested in paying a premium for what they percieved was a marginal improvement in audio, especially when you consider the average consumer's audio system and listening enviroment.

MP3, despite having inferior audio quality, even compared to basic CD recordings became a massve hit as it was/is cheap, convenient, and offers the most titles.

Unfortunately, HD DVD, Blu-ray, or any prerecorded HD format may never catch on with the mass market for all the same reasons, but at least in the case of video, it is much easier to point out the better picture quality, unlike the difficulty in pointing out the difference in audio quality from CD to SACD and DVD-A.
 

Paul_Scott

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this to me is the big point that many people don't seem to understand.
the majority of people (want to) use music as a soundtrack to activity- not as a passive, constricted experience (like movie or tv watching).

I see quite a different paradigm with HD. Each year sees the adoption of more HD capable displays and larger screen sizes- even when people have access to HD content thru dishes or cable, the discs will still provide a higher quality presentation- as well as filling that basic human need to aquire and own something tangible. DVD will still chug along for people who want to watch a movie on their laptops and/or who have more limited needs- but i only see the demand for higher quality presentations growing.

and don't discount the 'keeping up with the Jones' factor.
 

Robert Crawford

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I'm not so sure, I know of a few people that have kept up with the Joneses by buying new televisions and still have their television hooked up by it's composite inputs which is quite sad to say the least.




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Steve Tannehill

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I think your finger slipped on the BD entry price of $999.

If you are going to drop the price of the BD player over time in your apples-to-oranges comparison, you have to apply the same logic to HD-DVD--and by that logic, it's price will have dropped by a large factor, as well.

- Steve
 

Chris Moreau

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Warner's Ultra-resolution process is phenomenal. For anyone not familiar with it, they take the original b&w Technicolor separation negatives, and combine them electronically, rather than optically or by using the old dye imbibition process. No actual print of the film is used. The results are astounding. The SD version of "Singin' In The Rain" is almost literally jaw-dropping. I can hardly wait to see what the HD version will be like!
 

Walter Kittel

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While I can't vouch for the validity of the information, I saw a post over at DVD Talk that indicates Warner Bros. will be releasing two HD-DVD titles on May 23rd:

Blazing Saddles
The Fugitive


- Walter.
 

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