What would keep you from buying into the HD formats? (1 Viewer)

[RobertR]

Discussions in another thread prompt me to ask this question: What would keep you from buying into either of the HD formats? I’m not talking about waiting until the dust settles. I’m talking about a “no, they didn’t do it right, so I’m not buying” attitude. For me, it would be the inability to show them on my front projector, or such a limited market penetration that we never see more than a very limited number of titles (such as happened with DVHS), or a BAD copy protection foulup that keeps people even with HDMI connections from watching the movies they paid for. That's unacceptable.

 

[Aaron_Brez]

Having to have the player connected to the internet or a phone line in order to just watch the movie.

'Course, apparently this is not going to happen, so I'm just waiting for prices to drop from "insans" to merely "silly".

 

[Marko Berg]

Mandatory internet connectivity, region coding, lacklustre quality of software - I want to be blown out by the video and audio.

 

[george kaplan]

Yep, interconnectivity, or some other form of screwed up paranoid copyright facism (e.g., titles that only play on certian machines, or for a limited time). Also, if the vast majority of titles available were pan & scan, or crop & drop to 1.78.

 

[Jim Smith]

Internet connection to watch movies. Thats as pointless as an internet connection on toaster. Luckly it isn't going to happen. Blu-Ray connects online but doesn't require it to watch movies. So nothing excists to prevent me from buying the Playstation 3.

 

[Shane Martin]

The only thing that would keep me from buying one is if all of the movies were 1.78:1 Pan and Scanned otherwise the other issues like DRM, internet connection, HDMI etc, I simply do not care about thus I consider them necessary evils.

 

[Paul_Scott]

internet connection is first and foremost followed by

-price: $500 is the magic number for me. i would own both formats if the players were in the $500 range- $600 or more and i won't own either)

-quality: i need to see reviews that say these are solid machines and will work well as a primary dvd transport

-selection: i'm not going to bother until there are at least a dozen titles i truly want, and that i know more are slated in the next few months ahead. right now , for the HD DVD format, i see about 4 or 5 titles i will upgrade, so i'll definitely be skipping the introductions, even if the above three qualifiers are ok.
i expect by the end of the year selection will be enough so that holiday sales prices will be tempting to finally jump in.

scope films cropped to 1.78 would be a call to arms. it goes without saying that the studio(s) that did it would be responsible for killing most of the enthusiasm we had for this format.
but i don't think they would 'dumb it down' so early.
this is going to be a niche format for many years- this won't become the Wal-Mart format for quite a while so hopefully we don't have to worry about nonsense like that.

 

[Ricardo C]

If an internet connection/periodical licensing/movie registration was required, I'd boycott the format in question. I'm fine with copy protection, but making the end user dependant on the content provider beyond the initial purchase would be the last straw for me.

 

[BrettGallman]

Any of the above DRM issues, definately. And one thing that is making me really hesitant about buying into HD-DVD is the lack of 1080p. Granted, my display can't do it now, but I'm sure I will have one someday, so right now Blu-Ray has the most upside, in my opinion.

Also, the price of discs themselves...if it's only going to be about 5-10 dollars more, I won't mind, but anything more than that might not be so good.

 

[Daniel-M]

These two aren't major cause eventually will be better
-Price
-The fact that i need a new expensice TV

- Cropping of 1.33 and 2.35 to 1.78
- The fact that they are releasing two formats

 

[Manus]

" "

Completely agree.But unfortunately , if a mistake is worth doing once then these dummies think its worth doing twice , see here :

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051228-5857.html

Online commentaries ??***%$£? I thought the whole point of these formats was that they had loads of space.At the moment we already have forced Fbi warnings , forced Anti-Piracy warnings, forced Previews , I even had one disc with a forced Toyota car commercial

Now , after the Sony rootkit fiasco , does anyone trust either they or 20th Century Paranoiacs to fill up the 50gb with 'quality extras' ? I'd love to be proved wrong , but I'm not hopeful.

~M~

 

[Cees Alons]

. Mandatory internet connection for any of the content I'm buying the product for

. players not outputting HD-video through "normal" existing standard interfaces (I'm not going to buy HDMI for this)

. low resolution (< 1080p) images

. low quality (< "lossless") audio

. even remote theoretical - as a result from it's official specs - chance of my player rendered permanently useless caused by data on a medium

. firmware on playing device not easily resettable to default (factory) state by user

. suspicion of insufficient longevity of the media

. inability to play media on my PC, or if they do, insufficient guarantees that the PC is totally unmodified afterwards (even the "5 allowed changes of region" are considered an inacceptable memory function by me now)

. extreme pricing of playing devices or media; this includes a necessity to buy too many different types of players (times price) when media are produced to different standards.


There may appear to be more.


Cees

 

[Paul_Scott]

just because the first wave of Tosh players won't output 1080p doesn't mean that the HD DVD format itself is limited to 1080i.
from what i understand, HD DVD is simply not encoded interlaced.

both formats have the same output capability here whether it is implemented or not comes down to a player by player issue.
i'm guessing the HD DVD format will introduce 1080p output players in the next generation or two (mimicking the progressive sd player rollout).

by the time you have that new display, Brett, i'm sure we will either have or see coming of a 1080p player for the HD DVD format.

 

[Ricardo C]

Plus, there are always scalers.

 

[Dennis Pagoulatos]

Interlaced video.

-Dennis

 

[ChristopherDAC]

Umm, where do you get that idea? The "definitive" high-definition system, the one that the Japanese developed and that has been on the market in some form since 1979 and that everyone else's work is based on, is 1125 lines per frame, interlaced two-to-one, at 60 fields = 30 frames per second. With minor technical differences, this becomes the US "1080i" broadcast format; most extant High Definition video is shot in this format.

In the US we also have "720p," a lower-resolution progressive-scanning format at up to 60 frames per second, and it's interesting to note that much of what is broadcast in 720p is downconverted from 1080i at the camera.

 

[RyanAn]

Cees has it all!


-

I also would not a pay-per-view or video on demand thing. I want my disc and I want to to work.

I'm sure as heck not going to always have my player in the same place, I like to travel, and I am not going to go without my films soley because I do not have a line.

Ryan

 

[Joshua_W]

First and foremost, any draconian DRM schemes will keep me away from the format. (Such as phone/net connection requirements; the ability to remotely disable players and discs)

Since I don't have a HDTV yet, any HDMI requirements don't kill the deal for me, though I feel the pain of anyone who got burned.

There's also the matter of media durability. I have some concerns about the media... will we be having "rot" problems with the HD discs like we do with DVD? Considering all of the problems with DVDs that have more than two data layers (DVD-14 and DVD-18) involving rot and defective discs, I'm curious to see how the HD discs will hold up.

I think I'll be sitting any HD-disc formats out for the time being, though. I don't see myself upgrading until the hardware and software is at a current DVD price level. I'm just not in any rush to run out and upgrade yet.

I've already spent a ton on regular DVDs, and I'm not in any rush to invest more in a new format.

 

[Kris Z.]

The inability to watch the movies on my PC. I'm not going to buy a new monitor, a new graphics card and a new OS just because of some HDCP crap. I'm also in Region 2 importing mostly Region 1 titles, so if they insist on using RC still, it'll probably be a long while before I give the new formats any serious thought.

 

[Paul_Scott]

Christopher, i was parroting something i read over on AVS that was posted by, i think, Kris Deering.
i will defer to your knowledge on the subject and retract or modify what i wrote.

i tried to find the exact post i had read, but couldn't.
i did find this though, posted by Stacey Spears, that clarifys 1080p on HD DVD