Posted on 02/21/2008 11:58:00 AM PST by Recovering_Democrat
NEW YORK — The HD DVD is now the Highly Dead DVD.
Toshiba Corp., creator of the HD DVD, dropped out of the battle Tuesday over the next generation of movie-disc technology and conceded to the rival Blu-ray format from Sony.
It was the biggest battle between two video formats since Betamax lost out to VHS in the 1980s.
In the long run, the end of the latest format war is expected to be good for consumers, who will no longer have to agonize over which technology to choose for high-definition movies, and won't have to go to the trouble and expense of buying two players.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Has anyone seen a blu-ray player that plays both DVD formats and VHS too?
Has anyone seen a blu-ray player that plays both DVD formats and VHS too?
Another BS article about the ‘format wars’.
The article insists that the Blu-ray victory is good for consumers, then goes on to state, “...it will take 12 to 18 months for Blu-ray players to become as cheap and full-featured as HD DVD players.”
Wonder what consumers are going to say when they find out Blu-ray only works over HDMI 1.3.
ping
They'll say "I wonder what that means?" then hand over their plastic to the salesman.
It’s good for consumers in the sense that there will now be only one standard format, hence no situation where movies from certain studios only play on one format — the format that you didn’t buy. No more agonizing over which technology to buy and trying to second-guess which one will have legs and therefore protect your investment. Now the choice is clear.
Do you mean VCD format? You aren’t really asking about playing a VHS tape?
It seems that Tosh didn't make the right moves strategically, which happens. MS had it's part in this loss, giving only lukewarm support, which ultimately doomed the effort.
Sony on the other hand, was just hellbent on not loosing another format war. When they lost the beta/vhs war, they went out and spent tons of cash to buy and hold a movie studio, which is THE key to winning a format war. It's all about content at the end of the day.
In the mean time Tosh and Sony still do lots of business together, and the only real victims are consumers like me :(
Nothing personal of course.
None of the media coverage about all this seems to mention the one thing I care about. Will my existing collection of DVDs run on these new machines? I have no need for higher definition or “new functionalities”. I’m just sick of electronic media marketers making everybody’s collections obsolete every few years. It’s getting difficult to find a CD player already.
Ther is one safe bet if you want a Blu Ray player that will keep up.
The PS3 is perhaps one of the better Blu Ray players on the market due to its upgradeablity and general hardware decoding power.
It also offers the best results in upscaling standard DVDs.
I have one that I use as my primary movie player. It also has an advantage in that sooner or later there may be a PS3 game worth playing.
Not yet, if you are thinking of havibg a dual player for tape and disk with a way to copy tapes to disk.
I am looking for one myself, that includes the digital tuner to record off-air or cable HD, but there’s none out there yet.
yes bluray and HD-DVD players will play old dvd’s just fine.
VH what? I haven’t touched one of those in years.
On all the crapola commercials for blu ray, they say that regular dvd's will play on "existing" blu ray players.
I’m glad they have decided on single format, but will probably not buy a blue-ray drive till fall.
couple things have to happen first:
Prices of players come down. I saw Sony player at best buy this weekend for $399.00
Prices of blue-ray movies comes down to standard dvd prices.
I heard that a major upgrade is supposed to be coming in the fall for player hardware.
Every few years? The compact disk has been on the market for over 25 years.
The DVD has been around for 15 years, and isn't likely to disappear real soon yet.
The Blu-Ray players I have seen also play DVDs and even audio CDs. However, even if they didn't cheap DVD players will still be available for quite some time.
Not only will your old DVDs play on it, but some (if not all) of the Blue Ray players upgrade your old DVDs, to show them on HDTV televisions.
I am amazed at the quality of the picture I get from my old DVDs.
The Blue Ray formatted DVDs are excellent, but I’m probably not going to go out and purchase all my new movies in that format for now. The price will have to drop before I will go that route.
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