Not necessarily. It only means that they are abandoning any future development of the format, meaning no new features. They are continuing support for those who bought into the format, and arguably that could include combo players.
I would hope that you are right, but I have a sinking feeling that Jeremy may be correct with his assumption. I would love to be wrong and admit I very well may be. I just got the sense that Toshiba was moving on and looking to develop the "next thing".
I may well do that David. If it weren't too much of a pain to haul my gear, I'd even consider running the test with my audio class when we discuss compression. The disc probably won't be out in time anyway. Oh, well.
Oh, and I absolutely agree with you that 640 kbps DD vs lossless is a no-brainer. I'd add that 640 kbps DD versus a 1500 kbps DD+ track is also a no-brainer. It is the other comparison we have been discussing that is more difficult.
Maybe. I think it's more likely that, when it comes time to manufacture their first Blu-ray player, they'll see that including HD DVD capability is pretty close to free (they don't have to include any components that wouldn't be found in a Profile 2.0 BD player), and doing so will make their players more desirable to the couple hundred thousand or so people who have HD DVD collections than their competitors'.
That would be a great deal, if we knew something fairly soon it might even prevent me from buying a backup standalone and just waiting for that and putting my standalone HD DVD player in storage for backup. I don't find the Samsung and LG's particularly appealing.
Great thread and so true!! I agree BD wouldn't be where it is had it not been for the competition from HD DVD. My hopes for BD now is that BD Live and bitstreaming become a staple of all BD players from henceforth!