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Blu-Ray Launch Expected Next Week 160

Posted by Zonk from the finally dept.
grammar fascist writes "According to a Reuters article, two Blu-ray players and 'various titles' are expected in stores next week, June 20th. From the article: 'Blu-ray, one of two much-hyped high-definition DVD formats, debuts next week, but the launch is expected to be muted amid device delays and consumer confusion, industry analysts said on Thursday.' On the 20th, Samsung, not Sony, is launching a set-top player (Sony's is due this fall), and Sony is launching a Blu-ray compatible VAIO PC. Sony's fall set-top player will probably cost $1500. No word on the cost of Samsung's player yet, but I wouldn't expect it to be cheap."
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Blu-Ray Launch Expected Next Week More

Blu-Ray Launch Expected Next Week

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  • Samsung's & Sony's for $1,000 (Score:4, Informative)

    by eldavojohn ( 898314 ) * <eldavojohn@noSpAM.gmail.com> on Friday June 16, 2006 @02:27PM (#15550349) Journal
    There was an article a couple days ago on TGDaily [tgdaily.com] that stated the Samsung's first blu-ray player to be a grand.

    I don't know why an article on Slashdot is reporting Sony's to be $1500 when Best Buy is already taking pre-orders for both the Sony BDP-S1 [bestbuy.com] & Samsung BD-P1000 [bestbuy.com] models each equally priced at a thousand dollars. Even the Froogle search [google.com] for it seems to come out on the one grand consensus.

    It seems a lot of articles have been against Sony while this fear of Sony's set top player being overpriced is relatively unfounded. As we all know, this shall prove interesting if the PS3s offer the same functionality for much less.

    If both players debut at $1,000, perhaps this will be a war one in quality instead of price? Ah, who am I kidding--whoever licenses pr0n easiest/fastest will come out on top (no pun intended).

    I don't intend to run out and buy one because the only movie I've seen advertised for blu-ray is the second Underworld movie. And I don't even know which kind of blu-ray player it's for (customer confusion indeed)!

    Just a side note, the same Reuters article is in The Washington Post [washingtonpost.com] and I've linked the print format to avoid having to click through pages and view less ads.
    • I can't believe they are selling them for so much money right off the bat. You would think the price would be a little more reasonable assuming there are multiple companies fighting over this realm.
    • while this fear of Sony's set top player being overpriced is relatively unfounded

      While that depends on if you consider a set top player priced at a "mere" $1,000 to be overpriced or not.
    • Ah, who am I kidding--whoever licenses pr0n easiest/fastest will come out on top (no pun intended).

      Perhaps, though I've heard a lot of porn actors/actresses (and some main stream ones like Cameron Diaz) aren't looking forward to how highdef will likely accentuate their physical blemishes and flaws...

      I still can't think of any new media that succeeded by ONLY offering higher resolution. And customers are at least sometimes very willing to give up high fidelity for good enough fidelity plus convenience: see

      • Perhaps, though I've heard a lot of porn actors/actresses (and some main stream ones like Cameron Diaz) aren't looking forward to how highdef will likely accentuate their physical blemishes and flaws...

        I still can't think of any new media that succeeded by ONLY offering higher resolution. And customers are at least sometimes very willing to give up high fidelity for good enough fidelity plus convenience: see MP3s for example...

        I completely agree. For me, the mere offer of higher fidelity through larger d

    • Speaking of customer confusion, does anyone know what the packaging on the different HD media is going to look like? Anything short of a different size box or really bright colors (xbox already took bright green) is going to confuse people (especially when the dumbass clerks start stocking them in with the regular DVDs).
      • Not sure myself, but something tells me that a blue Blu-Ray container is a no-brainer. Then again, I'm not one of those "creative" people in marketing who might think that a Red Blu-Ray container is a true example of their "creativeness."

    • It seems a lot of articles have been against Sony while this fear of Sony's set top player being overpriced is relatively unfounded.

      Exactly. People seem to have forgotten that prices for DVD players in 1997 were even higher: $1000 and up ! [dvddemystified.com] Sure a grand for a DVD/Blu-ray/Whatever player is expensive but it is NOT overpriced. It is perfectly normal for new formats to be sold at a high price when first introduced.

      That said, I am also impressed by the HD-DVD guys who have found a nice way to leverage the

    • Ah, who am I kidding--whoever licenses pr0n easiest/fastest will come out on top (no pun intended).

      Are you sure you want your porn in 1080p? Sometimes fuzzy can be adventageous.

  • Format wars? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Poromenos1 ( 830658 ) on Friday June 16, 2006 @02:29PM (#15550356) Homepage
    I don't know about you, but I am not at all excited by this. When DVD came out I couldn't wait for writers to come out so I could get one, but if we're going to be in the middle of a format war I don't even want a player. I think sales are going to be somewhat less than satisfactory.
    • Certainly, anyone who buys any HD-Video anything anytime soon is either an idiot, or just has too much money, in which case they might as well throw some away.

      • Certainly, anyone who buys any HD-Video anything anytime soon is either an idiot, or just has too much money, in which case they might as well throw some away.

        Why? I have a big HDTV, and some money, but no plans to buy either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. Ordinary DVDs are still almost good enough. What I'm not doing, though, is investing another dime in any of the content lockdown schemes that come along with these new formats.

        I'm not a criminal, I'm not a pirate, and I'm not a consumer of pirated movies. A

        • So you are just gonna stick with DVD, because with the new stuff they treat you like a criminal?!? I've got news for you; they treat you like a criminal with DVD. Macrovision, CSS, etc. etc. The only difference is we've cracked it all. So give that as your reason, not 'how they treat you'.
          • Because I have software today that removes the interference with my ability to view the movie as I want to. Maybe the Sony DVD player doesn't let me skip the FBI warning on the official disc, but it doesn't do anything about the unofficial discs. Blu-Ray and HD are going to be locked down much better than CSS, and HDCP may or may not ever be shattered the way CSS was.

            Sure, they treat me as a criminal today. And I don't like it. My farking ReplayTV one day decided to add Macrovision for my viewing "ple

    • also, there is a second problem. This is not being marketed to (most) TV owners. What percentage of TV owners own HDTV. half to a quarter would be my guess. So unlike the DVD the market that can actually use this technology is smaller as we..
      • This is not being marketed to (most) TV owners. What percentage of TV owners own HDTV.

        That percentage most likely to buy really expensive, "cutting edge" hardware with no content that is likely to be obsoleted by a format war within a year or two?

        KFG
    • I will wait a couple of years. My price point is $50 for the burner and $2 per 50Gb disk.
      So as soon as prices come down by an order of magnitude I will start caring (well, aside
      from the fact that 50Gb disks are not out yet - expected this Christmas season at the
      earliest).
    • For $1,500 you could buy many terrabytes of harddrives. Someone needs to rethink this whole thing; it is completely rediculous. If this is really anywhere near cost Sony is gonna take a bath on the PS3.
    • I am happy with my DVD setup and although I would welcome an improvement I would not go out and pay 10 times as much for something that might be a door stop in 6 months if they lose the format war. In fact I would not pay 10 times as much regardless. It is not 10 times better, in fact it is not better. Yes, it has higher definition but there is not yet the choice of films to watch, so for the next couple of years it will just be a conversation piece. Maybe in a few years when the rest of you are discuss

  • $999.99 (Score:3, Informative)

    by everphilski ( 877346 ) on Friday June 16, 2006 @02:29PM (#15550357) Journal
    $999.99 [ecoustics.com]
  • The Toshiba HD-DVD player premiered to some pretty scating reviews, with issues like a terrible remote control, a 30 second bootup time, and terrible response time when you pressed play, fast forward, etc.. Not to mention the thing was a behemoth. What can we expect from Sony's offering? A side by side review of the two products (Sony, Toshiba) would be nice as well..
    • Here is a review:
      http://reviews.cnet.com/4531-10921_7-6542126.html? tag=cnetfd.sd [cnet.com]
      The only thing, though, is that his observation about load times does not seem to match what the people on AVS are saying (some guys in Poland and Greece already have their players, and they are getting 10 second load times).
    • I saw a demo system at our local Future Shop. It was set up a Toshiba display so I don't think anybody at FS was allowed to mess with it. I presume the quality was as good as it should be. The screen was about 32" so pretty small compared to what the typical buyer would use. Overall the picture quality was only slightly better than a good up-sampled DVD. There was a little less blocking but overall I didn't find the colour, detail or sharpness any better. If the discs and players were the same price a
  • I see the sales of these being very slow just as I do HD-DVD...at least until more people get TV's capable of HD and until the prices drop more. Ultimately, regardless of what others say about sony this and that, I feel blueray will win.
    • > I see the sales of these being very slow just as I do HD-DVD...at least until more people get TV's
      > capable of HD and until the prices drop more

      Given that DVD/CD writers cost £15, and CD readers have been available very cheaply in devices like PSXs and CD diskmen etc, what's the reason blu-ray is so expensive? Is it the laser, the decoding hardware...what? Or is it just greed? How long before these are available as standard in the cheapest laptops (or perhaps diskmen)?
      • All of the above.

        HD-DVD and BluRay drives are new devices, thus it's natural they're expensive. Think back at when DVD-ROM drives for PC came out. I wouldn't be surprised if the drive itself costs 100-200 USD.

        The decoding hardware is also expensive. Both HD-DVD and BluRay mandates H.264 support. At 1024p, it takes a medium range PC to handle it.
        Toshiba's HD-DVD player actually uses PC hardware (1.8GHz P-M, 512MB RAM IIRC), running Linux.

        And then, there's profit. :)

  • Dual-Format Player (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CowboyTodd ( 611194 ) on Friday June 16, 2006 @02:31PM (#15550370)
    I'm personally waiting for a dual-format play before I buy a next-gen format. Unlike with VHS/Beta both formats are the exact same dimensions so I think it is just a matter of time untill we get a player that can play both.
    • But how much will is cost to license both formats? For that matter, it wouldn't surprise me if the format licenses disallowed it from being bundle with the other format. We'll see though.
      • Ohh common, since when has "not allowed in the license" ever stopped a chineese company?

        • Re:Dual-Format Player (Score:5, Informative)

          by BalanceOfJudgement ( 962905 ) on Friday June 16, 2006 @04:44PM (#15551441) Homepage
          Ohh common, since when has "not allowed in the license" ever stopped a chineese company?


          Uhh... you are aware, right, that Samsung announced it would build a dual player and was summarily trounced [com.com] by Sony for violating some obscure section of their license agreement?

          Don't hold your breath. Sony has no intention of letting anyone produce systems that will allow HD-DVD to exist.

          And that, by the way, reveals their true intentions for creating Blu-ray to begin with, and why it is stuffed chock full of DRM: vendor lock-in. They couldn't care one whit about protecting content.
          • You're aware, right, that this never happened, and two other vendors (Acer and LG) have announced dual-format readers too?

            I'm so sick of this troll. Can we put this to rest please?

            • Are you sure this is a troll? From the CNET article: [com.com]

              But the conflict goes far deeper. The rules that govern the organizations touting the different technologies currently bar manufacturers from combining the two standards into a single drive, Weedfald said.

              "The conundrum is that you've got two different camps. You've got licensing issues, you've got trademarks, you've got copyrights," Weedfald said. "You can't just be on the Blu-ray side and say, 'We will put HD DVD in there,' and the reverse is true.

              • The quotes in that CNet article are both nebulous and posturing. I'm sure he said those things to put some business pressure on the two sides to work towards unifying the format. Remember, there was one last push for unification around the time the article came out.

                Since Samsung, LG, and Acer all announced that they would ship dual format players back in March (three months after that CNet article), the only reason to cite that CNet article is if you're not paying attention, or you're trolling. If you're no
    • Not to mention that the actual media formats are exactly the same - a chip that can decode blu-ray content can decode HD-DVD content, and vice-versa.

      This really isn't a format war, it's just a media war, like DVD-R vs. DVD+R. In the end, it's all going to come down to the players that do both.

  • Poor Zonk (Score:2, Redundant)

    by fm6 ( 162816 )
    I guess this is technically not a dup, since there are some differences in the details. But it's still much too similar to yesterday's story [slashdot.org]. Zonk really needs to find a new line of work.

  • Netflix starting to roll out blu-ray support, too. (Score:5, Informative)

    by IvyMike ( 178408 ) on Friday June 16, 2006 @02:35PM (#15550399)
    I'm not going to be using it anytime soon, but I noticed the other day that Netflix is starting to roll out their support for blu-ray [netflix.com].

  • I don't care who wins (Score:5, Interesting)

    by the computer guy nex ( 916959 ) on Friday June 16, 2006 @02:36PM (#15550406)
    I just want someone to win fast.

    Pure 1080i or 1080p content on a TV with the full 1080i/p resolution (Sony SXRD TVs and some of the new DLPs) is absolutely amazing.

    Despite many claims on here, the jump from a normal DVD on a 1080p television to a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray disc is more significant than VHS to DVD. A full 1080p picture has around 10 times more pixels per square inch than a normal DVD (which is 480p).

    • Re:I don't care who wins (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It isn't the detail difference that switched people from VHS to DVD, it was the random access and lack of quality loss over time (tape hiss, drop in picture quality) that brought people over. Picture quality increase alone will not entice most people.
      • Speak for yourself. The first time I watched a DVD, I dumped all my VHS movies (over 200). The quality is, by far, the reason I went to DVD.
        • I think you've totally misunderstood. He isn't downplaying the jump from VHS to DVD, he's telling you that as exciting/wonderful/amazing as it was, this jump is EVEN BETTER.
        • He's speaking for me too. If it had only been a quality difference, I still wouldn't have a DVD player. Not having to fucking rewind tapes is the thing that won me over. The quality of VHS was good enough.

        • The quality is, by far, the reason I went to DVD.

          And the quality increase between VHS and DVD was an order of magnitude. The quality increase between DVD and HD is much more subtle (and not even visible if you don't own an HDTV.) Yes, you'll obviously get a "better" picture on an HD signal, but all of the artifacts that made VHS even worse than it could have been (tape flutter, finicky drive mechanisms, tape rewinders, tracking issues, and media size / weight / durability / cost) were completely solve

    • is more significant than VHS to DVD. A full 1080p picture has around 10 times more pixels per square inch than a normal DVD (which is 480p).

      While true, thats also pretty meaningless to your average user. Allow me a few bad analogies:

      1) You are playing a PC game and are only getting 10fps. You buy an upgrade for $100 to get you 100 fps. Call this upgrade VHS to DVD. Now you also have the option to spend $1000 and get 500 fps. Call this upgrade DVD to HDDVD (Blu-ray or HD-DVD). Between 10 fps and 100
      • 1) You are playing a PC game and are only getting 10fps. You buy an upgrade for $100 to get you 100 fps. Call this upgrade VHS to DVD. Now you also have the option to spend $1000 and get 500 fps. Call this upgrade DVD to HDDVD (Blu-ray or HD-DVD). Between 10 fps and 100 fps, the user will see a huge difference. However, between 100 fps and 500 fps even though there IS a more significant change, very few people would notice it all.

        Bad analogy; there is an absolute limit to the number of frames per second the

    • Re:I don't care who wins (Score:4, Insightful)

      by falcon8080 ( 975701 ) on Friday June 16, 2006 @03:22PM (#15550737) Homepage
      You know the biggest god damn problem with Hi Def TV?

      Its too complicated. 480i, 480P, 720i,720p,1080i,1080p, HDTV that displays a 720P in 1080i, that looks crappier than 1080i, 1080p sets that exist but cost $10,000+ but no actual content, 1080p content that is really just someother content, but 'upscaled', 480p not looking correct on a 1080i/p set, increased cost for 'digital' content via cable/sattelite, cable cards, hd-tv sets that are hd-tv ready, but not actually ready, and god help you if you just want to watch normal TV on the damn thing, not only does it look like crap, but theirs a dozen different ways to make it look slightly less crappy.

      Seriously, what bunch of idiots thought this up and actually thought this was a good idea? the average person has no hope of understanding all the formats, and just wait to see their responce when they buy one of these drives only to find out that the HD-TV set they brought can not in fact actually display these images. Then you have the PS3 with limited output on the lower end model, just try explaining that to some irate joe, when he finds out how much money hes wasted.

      This has been possibly one of the largest clusterfucks I have ever seen....
      • the average person has no hope of understanding all the formats

        I would argue that this is precisely why they did it this way.

        Sure, the system they have set up offers insane flexibility. There is no questioning that. But ultimately, the mass of buzzwords, terminology, etc. is going to make a whole lot of consumers just buy the most expensive thing out there. Lots of people (particularly lots of people with lots of money) just want to keep up with the Jones'. They want to have the biggest and best, and it

        • In my opinion, all of the types of TVs have some fatal dealbreaker that's keeping me from adopting. Plasmas use up all the plasma. Projection types have a poor viewing angle. LCDs have been showing signs of burn-in. CRTs burn in and are pretty bulky and heavy, to boot, and have (from what I've seen) a much less sharp picture.

          Wow, it's really cool that you have an opinion, but what does that have to do with reality? Plasma TVs do have a drop in quality over years - YEARS. Rear-projection TVs do have a rel

      • There's no 720i.

        And 1080p TVs (full 1920x1080x60 output and input) can be had for very little now. Dell is selling one for $800 (24" 2407FPW), and a friend bought a Westinghouse 42" 1080P with 3 1080p inputs for $1500 last week. Two other friends have had 42" Sharp HDTVs with 1080p input for 6 months, and each paid only $3400 for them.

        So please stop spreading the rumors that 1080p HDTVs cost $10,000.

        It's not as complex as you make it out.

        If you want to buy an HDTV, you have a choice. One that will display a
    • Despite many claims on here, the jump from a normal DVD on a 1080p television to a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray disc is more significant than VHS to DVD. A full 1080p picture has around 10 times more pixels per square inch than a normal DVD (which is 480p).

      Pixels isn't all there is to it. For example - good contrast easily wins out over resolution - universally people will prefer a transfer with good contrast at 720p and in most cases even 480p over a washed out 1080p transfer.

      But, presuming DVDs and the HD formats h
    • A full 1080p picture has around 10 times more pixels per square inch than a normal DVD (which is 480p)

      Hmm. Assume we display that 1080p letterboxed on a 4:3 display which is actually capable of resolving letterboxed 1080p (Some 4:3 sony sets have the vertical resolution to do this when leterboxing). Assume we care only about the letterboxed content that's actually displayed.

      1080x1920/480*640=2073600/307200=6.75

      If we don't letterbox the 1080p and cut off the extra width, we get

      (1080/480)^2 = 5.0625.

  • Why *DVD will win (Score:3, Interesting)

    by njchick ( 611256 ) on Friday June 16, 2006 @02:43PM (#15550454) Journal
    It seems to me that the "format war" Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD will remind the ATM vs Gigabit Ethernet as couple of years ago. People will stay with things they know (Ethernet, DVD) as long as they are seen as reliable (unlike e.g. floppies), and the technologies seeking to supplant (rather than upgrade) them will seek refuge in the server rooms next to SCSI and Fiber Channel.
    • Step one: Consumer buys HD-TV
      Step two: Consumer buys a few HD-DVD discs to try it out.
      Step three: These new "DVD" discs fail to play in consumers DVD player.
      Step four: Return counter: ...time passes...
      Step five: Person buys Blu-Ray disc because they have a PS3 and Blu-Ray has been heavily marketed recently, knows that Blu-Ray disc does not work in DVD player...

      There you have the entire lifecycle of the format war.

      If you had plugged in a gigabit capable computer into a 10/100 swicth and not had it work, wo
    • Hmmmm.... this is exactly why IEEE is having to go back to ethernet and add nice stuff like OAM (operation, accounting/admin, and management). Just because it is easy to use doesn't make it the better solution. Same thing with MPLS. A double stack of MPLS headers on your ethernet network and label switching routers... you have ended up back where ATM was, but still missing some critical functionality.

  • Bless The Bleeding Edge (Score:3, Funny)

    by CheeseburgerBlue ( 553720 ) on Friday June 16, 2006 @02:49PM (#15550489) Homepage Journal
    Bless you, members of the home-video bleeding edge, who will muddy your hands during the legendary Format Wars so that we mere home-video mortals can finally decide how to best replace our DVD players in 2009. Thank you.

    Please do be sure to post your blow by blow accounts of how you will be beaten within an inch of hope by this process, so that we may make snide comments while we secretly are grateful for your courage to wander into this firestorm of global-scale corporate tiddlywinks.

    Winner takes all. "Begun, the Format War has."

    • 2009? I don't plan on getting an HDTV until my non-HD breaks beyond (reasonable cost) repair, just like most people. Sometime in the middle of next decade is my guess.
      • Indeed. I remember playing Sonic the Hedgehog on an old black and white television in high school -- about 10 years ago. We kept that old thing until the magic smoke finally escaped.

    • Please do be sure to post your blow by blow accounts of how you will be beaten within an inch of hope by this process, so that we may make snide comments while we secretly are grateful for your courage to wander into this firestorm of global-scale corporate tiddlywinks.

      A good place for these blow by blow accounts is AVS Forum, where someone has already bought a $1000 Blu-ray player [avsforum.com] and is waiting for Blu-ray titles to arrive. Read fascinating details like how the Blu-ray player boots up and how well it up

  • BluRay Is Amazing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 16, 2006 @02:52PM (#15550513)
    I have been working on BD-J stuff for BluRay movies.

    See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globally_Executable_M HP [wikipedia.org] for a quick overview

    First of all, once you have gotten use to watching BluRay 1080p movies, anything less feels like an eyesore. You will probably be able to pickup a 1080p TV by the holidays this year for just under a grand. The TV manufactures all know that the market is about to be flooded with millions of cheap BluRay players, 499 component and 599 HDMI PS3s, and are all moving to put sets out that target that huge Playstation demographic.

    Second, the Java layer, that Microsoft seems to hate so much, on BluRay discs is letting us do all sorts of very cool stuff far beyond the simple menu systems that current DVDs have.

    Start watching for BluRay releases and make sure to check what cool additions the Java stuff we are doing are implemented on the new discs.

    • Smells like a troll to me, but quoth the parent:

      "First of all, once you have gotten use to watching BluRay 1080p movies, anything less feels like an eyesore. You will probably be able to pickup a 1080p TV by the holidays this year for just under a grand."

      You know what? I don't care. Do the marketers seriously think we're all going to rush out and buy yet another TV? I recognize that it looks a lot better, but not $1k worth, and certianly not even vaguely worth the replacement cost of my $40 DVD and 240G
    • If you have a good HDTV at home now, like a 50" Sony SXRD as I do, and a progressive capable DVD player (or even one of the newer upconverting DVD players) the difference with HD is going to be completely underwhelming. I was wandering around Futureshop and happened to catch The Last Samurai playing on a widescreen TV. I watched for a few minutes before I noticed the size of the DVD player was huge. I asked a salesman what DVD player that was and was surprised to learn it was the new Toshiba HD-DVD playing
  • The Blu-Ray devices have been selling for at least several years.
  • VHS tapes are still on the shelves at most, if not all, video rental stores. Most people are just getting comfortable with DVD's. It's normal to find them in your average household, my parents finally bought one 2-3 years ago. Why do we need a new format, much less, two incompatible formats? I hope this fails as much as the MiniDisc did, and I was a buyer of the MiniDisc. Yes, I know there's a niche market for MiniDiscs. I hope at best, that this is relegated to such a market.
    • You're completely right, I work retail and still have people coming in and buying their first stand alone DVD player. While I do like the prospect of a full 1080p/i signal, it's just too soon for the market. It's going to confuse a lot of consumers. I don't expect either format to take off for around five or six years. Which stinks, because I wouldn't mind a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD writer... daily backups on one piece of optical media.. mmm
    • "VHS tapes are still on the shelves at most, if not all, video rental stores."

      Maybe it's because every time they're out of VHS and I have to rent a DVD, my disc is scratched up my whatever moron had the disc before me. I absolutely hate renting DVDs. On a rental, I'll take the loss in quality and get a format that has played 99% of the time I've rented a movie on it.
      • I absolutely hate renting DVDs. On a rental, I'll take the loss in quality and get a format that has played 99% of the time I've rented a movie on it.

        That's a fair point though I must point out that every VCR I've taken to the grave yard had been fouled by a crappy rental tape that caused the VCR to 'eat it'. I've had thousands of tapes, had one break but not get eaten and have had 3 VCR's die while playing rental tapes.

        With Netflix I just mark the DVD as bad and get a new one. Oh, also if you have Netfli
    • If by on the shelf you mean put in the corner and ignored without many new releases.
      and if by just getting acceptance you mean fighting over them at walmart...
      then you would be correct.

      people are used to DVD, it is accepted, it is the standard and will be for a long time. The adoption will be much worse the new hidef stuff but DVD has been THE standard for awhile, 2-3 years ago might as well have been a decade in adoption.
  • are we going to have to go through all that crap again just to get it to play on freebsd?
  • So even with an HD-capable TV what exactly justifies the rediculous cost of these next-gen players for early-adopters, or even a year from now? Current DVDs look just fine on my HDTV, I'm not sure I really need to spend over $1000 just to get better definition of people's facial hair.

    This has all been said before here on slashdot, but the fact remains, there is no killer app for blueray/HD-DVD that justifies the huge expense to convert one's current DVD collection. I just don't get it.

    Also, why the hell a

    • >>Also, why the hell are they so expensive anyway?

      Because there's always some CEO, lawyer, doctor or spoiled brat for whom $1500 is chump change.

      The market price of new products is all about what people will pay and nothing about cost of production.
      Have you ever wondered why you can buy a 16x DVD drive for a PC for $30 when a 1x drive sold as a set-top video player is about $70?
  • This Blue-ray/HD-DVD talk has been raging for a while now. What suprises me is why we've not heard of any "standards" zealots. I do not spare the Open Source Software zealots either. They've been silent too. Should we think that their silence means something is cooking and should be out soon? The OGG folks showed us something instead of just keeping silent.

  • how many times..... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Churla ( 936633 )
    How many times will Sony need to push forth a predominantly vendor specific (although a couple other blu-ray vendors exist, we all know this is mostly a Sony standard) format for something before learning better? Or is Sony trying to corner the market on niche markets?

    1. Betamax
    2. Memory sticks
    3. Minidisc
    4. UMD

    How many times? How many other Sony formats am I missing? I know I have to be missing at least one.
  • For what its worth, I think Sony and the DVD Consortium are merely fighting over the next laserdisc. Most people I know don't own an HDTV, and its easy to see why. As stated about, the standards are confusing, compatibility uncertain, and prices are still too high for the average consumer.

    I'm in the market for an HDTV myself, however, like most Americans, I'm on a budget, and am looking for something no higher than around $500 for a 30". After doing some shopping, the best I've found are a couple of CRT mod

  • Complaints Sound Familiar... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by EXTomar ( 78739 ) on Friday June 16, 2006 @04:13PM (#15551126)
    I've heard all of this stuff before when DVDs were trying to be adopted. Classics are:

    - LD and VHS work great.
    - There isn't that much improvement over LDs.
    - No one knows if DVD will take off...
    - I am not interested in buying new equipment again.

    So on and so fort, lots of teeth nashing and woe. But hey we lived through it and few will say we are worse off. HDTV is the biggest change to NTSC since the modification to handle color. On the two HDTV displays I have I already see the quality problems with DVD even when the player upscales. I'm already hungry for devices that generate true high definition content. I'm not sure why people are saying they need to wait because I've heard all of this before and it was just fine.

    As for Sony, they design devices that have to meet certain requirements. They needed a "next gen DVD" system and this is what they came up with. Why are they evil for trying such a thing? Or why aren't the HD-DVD group evil as well? Sony is far from perfect often where they often "miss" instead of "hit" but that is the name of the game of innovation.

    • I'm already hungry for devices that generate true high definition content. I'm not sure why people are saying they need to wait because I've heard all of this before and it was just fine.

      Speak for yourself. I have no intention of re-buying all my DVD's that I've spent $thousands on over the past several years. For me, DVD is 'good enough' - which brings up another point. YOU may be hungry for devices that generate 'true high definition content,' but I know few who would say the same, including myself.

  • J & R (Score:2)

    by Joao ( 155665 )
    J & R in New York City has the Sony BDP-S1 Blu-Ray for pre-order at US$999. See http://www.jr.com/JRProductPage.process?Product=40 92871 [jr.com] /not associated with J&R
  • Aside from Blu-Ray & DVD what else do they support?

    I don't have an HDTV (I'd like to get once but it just isn't happening right now) so neither HD-DVD or Blu-Ray really intrest me cause I will get the same picture as my dvd's right now, big woop there.

    I have two DVD players right now that can play DVD, AVI (DivX & Xvid), pictures and MP3's. I don't see it listed for either player that it can play these formats.

    also the reason they cost a grand each is because they play in 1080p mode and upc
  • Blu-ray, one of two much-hyped high-definition DVD formats

    WRONG. There is only one high definition DVD format, HD-DVD. Blu-Ray discs are not DVDs.

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