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Retail Leaks of HD-DVD Players, Discs Reported 89

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the someone-about-to-get-fired dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Though the market launch of the first HD-DVD players and discs does not officially begin until tomorrow (Tuesday), the online DVD community is already buzzing with fan reports of early street date violations at some retail outlets."
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Retail Leaks of HD-DVD Players, Discs Reported More

Retail Leaks of HD-DVD Players, Discs Reported

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  • yeah, but will it play in Peoria? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by yagu ( 721525 ) * <yayagu&gmail,com> on Monday April 17, 2006 @03:52PM (#15144625) Journal

    From the article, I think the most key point is: Attentions will now be turning to how well these first-gen HD-DVD products meet expectations.

    Considering I've still not been able to show my parents how to use their system easily, I'm wondering how much backlash there will be with the new DVDs. My prediction? (who cares?): I think HD DVDs will have moderate success but really run the risk of suffering the same fate as SACD (Super Audio CD). Good and interesting technology but not better enough to offset:

    • complex setups
    • additional expense beyond new DVD players
    • compatibility issues (real or perceived)
    • DRM

    I'm not even considering introducing my parents to this technology. They're impressed when they see HDTV, but they're not inclined to jump through the hoops to get it up and running at their place. I'm also not recommending this to friends... I started out optimistic, but when they asked for advice (they always do), and I start laying out the logistical minefield to traverse to get all of the right pieces in the right places, their eyes quickly glaze... and for me, until this all settles and is easier, cheaper, more assured, and unencumbered, I'm just not going to push this stuff on others. And, you know what? They're not pressing to get it!

    (Yeah, the slashdot demographic probably statistically will be high in adoption of this, but that demographic is going to be the exception for a while.)

    • Re:yeah, but will it play in Peoria? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      HD signals are nice but they're not nice enough to get people to rush out and spend $5,000 on new AV equipment. The fact is that less than 25% of new TVs that are purchased are HDTVs, and the disturbing thing is that most of them are bought because of their size or because they can be hung on the wall; just ask any sales clerk whether they get asked about wall brackets or HDTV compatibility more when someone is buying a LCD/Plasma TV. The fact is that 'High Definition' is only a buzzword at the moment and,
    • "From the article, I think the most key point is: Attentions will now be turning to how well these first-gen HD-DVD products meet expectations." What ARE the 'expectations'? I'm dissapointed by these HD formats already, as all they seem to offer is a higher resolution picture and 'more secure' copy protection. Honestly, how is this a major improvement over DVDs, aside from being able to see the actor's bad complexion or the errors in a CG creature? Furthermore, why should I replace my entire collection fo

    • Re:yeah, but will it play in Peoria? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Jeffrey Baker ( 6191 ) on Monday April 17, 2006 @04:23PM (#15144792)
      One of the screenshots on the AVS Forum shows the Toshiba displaying an EULA on boot. That doesn't seem like the sort of thing that enhances the viewing experience.

      • Re:yeah, but will it play in Peoria? (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        That's just one more hint that those things are not expected to work like an appliance, but more like software - they'll crash here and there, have unexpected "features" and will probably require updates to even support most of the features advertised on the box, disabling others or introducing new annoyances in the process.

      • Re:yeah, but will it play in Peoria? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by TubeSteak ( 669689 ) on Monday April 17, 2006 @06:51PM (#15145746) Journal
        I'm not sure what post you're talking about, but I did track down a EULA

        It's about 3/4's of the way down in a different thread.
        Toshiba HD-A1 HD DVD - First End User Reports!
        http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/printthread.php?t=6 67248&page=5&pp=60 [avsforum.com]
        And this is the message you get when upgrading the firmware:
        http://www.cstone.net.nyud.net:8090/~dk/hda1legal. jpg [nyud.net]


        If you poke around earlier/later in the thread, there are pictures of the systems with their innards exposed & a pic or two of the DVD-player menu when you connect it to the LAN. On page 15, there's a shot of the HDMI chip.

        Apparently you can stream subtitles off your computer & onto/into the DVD player. That tidbit is on page 20.

        (Just so you know, I didn't actually read any of the posts, I skimmed through it all looking for pictures. Works great in Fark Flame Wars :o)

    • Re:yeah, but will it play in Peoria? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TinyManCan ( 580322 ) on Monday April 17, 2006 @04:23PM (#15144793) Homepage
      I think you are wrong on several fronts. Primarily the adoption rate. I believe that it will be very good.

      I also don't agree with your list of 'issues':

      complex setups
      Ummm, you plug the HDMI [wikipedia.org] connector into the back of the HD-DVD player and the other end into your TV. There is no step 2. Audio and everything is taken care of.

      additional expense beyond new DVD players
      True I guess if you do not have any HDMI based equipment. Around Seattle, there are a _lot_ of people with Plasma displays and all the recent ones have HDMI. The number of those sets are going to be increasing in the future. And the people that already own HDMI equipment are the same kind of people who want better quality and will go for HD-DVD.

      compatibility issues (real or perceived)
      I predict that no one will have any compatibility issues. Old DVDs will play fine (and maybe look better because of the HDMI link, as a lot of older DVD players are using Component or worse) and new HD-DVDs will look great.

      DRM
      In summary, HD-DVD is set for a good run if you ask me. The new players will integrate nicely into newer home-theaters and are going to look stunning. Sure a lot of people who don't spend a ton of money on this stuff are going to be left out in the cold for a while, but remember how expensive DVD players were when they first came out. The price is going to drop.

      Also, people who have to view a scaled down image because they don't have compliant equipment are probably not going to notice the difference. Believe it or not, some people watch DVDs on crappy 27" tubes from 1985 through the composite interfaces.

      • Believe it or not, some people watch DVDs on crappy 27" tubes from 1985 through the composite interfaces.

        Hey, I use coaxial you insensitive clod!

        And my TV was made in 1983.

        And it's only 19".

        But I only paid $25 for it.

        /cries

      • you plug the HDMI connector into the back of the HD-DVD player and the other end into your TV. There is no step 2. Audio and everything is taken care of.

        Your HDTV has surround sound built-in? It has hookups for at least 5.1 speakers? Cool, mine doesn't. I still need two cables: one to my TV (which only supports DVI, which isn't a problem as long as the player doesn't demand HDCP) and one to my amp.

      • Re:yeah, but will it play in Peoria? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Sure a lot of people who don't spend a ton of money on this stuff are going to be left out in the cold for a while, but remember how expensive DVD players were when they first came out. The price is going to drop.

        The price will drop quickly as these fail to find any sort of market at any price. Only a small group of uber-consumerists will buy players for this needless format.

        Believe it or not, some people watch DVDs on crappy 27" tubes from 1985 through the composite interfaces.

        "Some people" is well over 5
        • "Some people" is well over 50%. Most people actually watch DVDs for the sole purpose of being entertained, not to nitpick the difference between video resolutions, or to try to see how HDMI looks different from component video. Those crappy 27" tubes render the same plot, characters, and action as the widescreen, hi-def plasmas.

          I agree that many people are still using this old technology. When they go to buy their next DVD player, I would think they would opt for a similarlly priced HD-DVD player that i

          • None of this cost cutting is going to happen instantly, but within 2-5 years it will happen.

            And then it takes another 5 years for the format to spread widely. People don't replace their DVD players every year; they keep them for as long as they work and for as long as they can get DVDs. So at an optimistic estimate, the balance will tip for HD-DVD enabled players in seven years, maybe a little less. Is that fast enough? Or will there be another format around by that time?

          • Why build a new DVD only player when the market for them is smaller (however much smaller can be debated, but as long as 1 HD-DVD is sold it is smaller) and the costs are equivalent.

            Because by the time HD-DVD is cheap, DVD will be even cheaper, in part due to the expiration of key patents involved in DVD. In addition, a lot of DVD players are portable players with a built-in 7" (18 cm) screen, and I haven't seen any 7" HD screens.

      • Ummm, you plug the HDMI connector into the back of the HD-DVD player and the other end into your TV.

        Plug it in where? The only connector on the back of my TV is a 15-pin D-sub connector. If you count the converter box at the other end of that cable, my TV can handle composite, component, and RF inputs, as well as more exotic things like USB, Firewire, and 40-pin ATA.
      • "Ummm, you plug the HDMI connector into the back of the HD-DVD player and the other end into your TV."

        Yeah, but I didn't know my TV wasn't HDCP capable. =(

        As for DRM, it doesn't affect me outside of the lack of HDCP. Which sucks, but hey, I understand. Now I just gotta upgrade. Grr..

      • complex setups

        Ummm, you plug the HDMI connector into the back of the HD-DVD player and the other end into your TV. There is no step 2. Audio and everything is taken care of.

        Wait, all the audio must travel through the HDMI connector? Or all the audio can travel through the HDMI?

        My amp does all of my audio, if I must play my DVDs audio through the TV, this technology is dead in the frikkin' water -- I declare it so right now. Because my 43" TV is, essentially, a monitor. It doesn't participate in channe

      • Around Seattle, there are a _lot_ of people with Plasma displays

        What does "a _lot_" mean? 8% of the TV-owning public, instead of just 3%?

        And the people that already own HDMI equipment are the same kind of people who want better quality and will go for HD-DVD.

        That goes without saying. I just don't believe that group of people is large enough to provide critical mass for widespread adoption of this technology.

        Believe it or not, some people watch DVDs on crappy 27" tubes from 1985 through the composite inter
      • Are *new* users.

        As the price drops, kids will be getting their own TVs and players and disk collections. They will NOT opt for the old "No-Definition" TVs/NDTV(tm), or ND-DVD(tm) formats. Gradually, HD-DVD will replace DVD just by aging demographics.

        When was the last time any kid got a VHS player for graduation? DVDs came out when, 1996? Just ten years later and look what has happened at the local Blockbuster. Once they were filled with VHS tapes and one or two racks of Betamax.

        Today kids are getting "Home
    • I think the most important thing is the falling prices/increasing adoption of plasma/lcd tvs and increasing focus on home theatre systems.

      Anyone who has a 42" screen in his house and is stuck watching SDtv and DVDs, will probably be sold on HiDef pretty quick. And this anyone statistic is going up pretty fast, coz unlike HDTV the acronym, a plasma tv on a display window is an attractive device to anyone.

      Obviously i'm saying this in support of HiDef rather thatn HDTV specifically. So anyone who buys this be

    • Re:yeah, but will it play in Peoria? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17, 2006 @04:36PM (#15144864)
      Sure, I agree that many people won't care about the difference between DVD and HD-DVD. I do, because:

      - I own an HDTV,
      - I paid many times more for it than I did for my DVD player, and
      - I can clearly see the difference in quality between broadcast HD and DVDs, even though I have a relatively small screen (34").

      I think comparing HD-DVD (or Bluray) to SACD is mostly bogus. Consider equipment: to get what you pay for from an SACD, you need at least the player, a "high-end" receiver, "high-end" speakers, and "high-end" cables. "High-end" isn't well defined because we're not dealing with video resolutions. And I think to most people the end result isn't tangible because they can't SEE the difference.

      With HD video you need the player, the TV (which people already have) plus cables. Sure, there are details videophiles will worry about like are you getting 1080i or 1080p, but I'd think only a small slice of a small slice will care. And when you have your HD movies playing on your giant HDTV, you can SEE the results immediately: instead of looking at scaled up blotches, you're looking at sharp detail.

      The fact is TV screen sizes will keep going up, people will keep buying bigger TVs for the "wow" factor, and bigger screens need more pixels.

      • the TV (which people already have)

        Not if your TV wasn't manufactured with HDCP support.

        Sure, there are details videophiles will worry about like are you getting 1080i or 1080p

        Try 540p. Each disc in the HD-DVD or Blu-ray Disc video format can have an Image Constraint Token that forces the player to blur anything being sent over an analog connection.

  • Leaked? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by vertinox ( 846076 ) on Monday April 17, 2006 @03:55PM (#15144639)
    Apparently some people are bit too enthusiastic about a product which may or may not end up like Laser Disc or BetaMax.

    I'd least wait till Blue Ray comes out before getting one or the other...

    Well if you've got the money to blow, the more power to you.

    Although, I can't berate them too much, I used to own a Laser Disc player (but it was mostly for Anime imports back in the 90's).
    • The same can be said about Blue Ray.

      If it is easy to set up and and the product was leaked, HD-DVD could have a promising future.
    • Well if you've got the money to blow, the more power to you.
      Ack! No, if you've got the money to blow, then spend it on something that's not infected with DRM!
    • I disagree. The Toshiba retails for $499 and can be found for $430 w/shipping. This fight is going to take way longer than a year or two to finish. Most probably buy new computer equipment that costs more than that to keep up with technology, at least once every three years. So buy a player, get a netflix rental account and watch high def movies. Why deprive yourself of something, when you probably waste that much money on computer equipment regularly.

      • So buy a player, get a netflix rental account and watch high def movies.

        And a new TV.

        Why deprive yourself of something

        Because you can't afford to replace your HDTV with one that supports HDCP.

  • OK.. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Tepshen ( 851674 )
    Am I the only one who thinks HD-DVD is a bit premature? Existing DVD products fail to add compelling extra features in most cases with well done bonus features being few and far between. What do they hope to accomplish with all that freakin SPACE!? (saddled along with all that extra COST no less)
    • Duh, it is to try and force consumers to re-buy thier movie collection. And to add "better" DRM measures, also to try and get the idea into consumer's heads that a new video format every 5-7 years is OK. If hddvd or bluray take off you will see a super high def video format around 2015, sooner if the DRM is broken quickly.
      • HD-DVD is coming out because standard DVDs do not support HD resolution. It will probably be a long time until HD is upgraded, and as such will probably be a long time before a new format would be needed.

        With that said, the DRM actually IS better overall on HD-DVDs that standard DVDs, mostly because the content restrictions will be encoded on the disc rather than the player, so HD-DVD producers have control over how their content can be played. This might sound bad at first, but the alternative realisticall

        • Tell me in what manner I can play content is 'better'? I don't want to know what would be 'worse'.

          I am still just going to continue to rip my movies to my file server, and play them through the PC that is hooked up to my TV for just that purpose. This way not only do I have a more user friendly setup, but if the original disc is lost, broken, or stolen I can just burn a region-free verison with DvD shrink.

    • Re:OK.. (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Premature? HDTV supports resolutions (NTSC) of up to 1920x1080. DVD does a resolution of 720x480. Thats quite a difference. HDDVD has the higher storage space to support a movie at the higher 1920x1080 resolution, with higher resolution audio to boot. Truthfully, I am surprised it took them so long to release it
    • What they want to accomplish with all the extra space? High Def video takes considerably more disk space than the current standard-gen DVDs. So thats what the extra space is for.
    • Granted HD takes more space but with less than 10% market there isnt a huge market appeal for the format in the first place. I honestly think that they are rushing the whole concept to market to be first only to kill whatever interest there would be by being too far ahead of its time. Laserdisk's anyone? I think schoolboards and local governments were the only ones to buy into that one.
    • Am I the only one who thinks HD-DVD is a bit premature? Existing DVD products fail to add compelling extra features in most cases with well done bonus features being few and far between. What do they hope to accomplish with all that freakin SPACE!? (saddled along with all that extra COST no less)

      Well one thing I do think we'll see is TV shows, movie compilations and whatnot that used to span 5+ discs down onto one or two (or however may be appropriate for a particular product).

  • Save Your Money (Score:3, Informative)

    by iamghetto ( 450099 ) on Monday April 17, 2006 @04:02PM (#15144671) Homepage
    These HD-DVD players being released right now do not support 1080p, only 720p for the time being. The Toshiba DVD players do not support the dual-link HDMI-B specification required for true 1080p output. At best, for all your money you'd be putting out you're only getting 4/9 or 44% of the resolution offerd by true 1080p. That's GARGBAGE!

    Save you money. I watch 720p shows on the HD movie channels already, and its not -that- much better than a DVD. You can see the difference, but knowing that real -1080p- players are right around the corner, no way I'm being duped into HD-DVD.

    We're all better off waiting until TVs widely support the HDMI-B specification for 1080p and the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray players support that output resolution as well.

    The HD-DVD discs are encoded in 1080p however, and if watched on (for instance) a capable computer monitor the movies should show in true 1080p. Blu-Ray players, though non-existent, support 1080p output natively.

    • Re:Save Your Money (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mattACK ( 90482 )
      This will be very useful for all movies filmed at more than 24 FPS, like ______ and of course ____________. Clearly 1080p movies are a showstopper.
      • There's a 1080p24 format, which as the name implies is a native 24 fps format. This is an improvement from NTSC or PAL, both of which run at fixed frame rates, neither of which divide evenly into 24, and so require telecine using a variety of pulldown techniques and introduce noticeable judder.

    • Wrong, not informative (Score:5, Informative)

      by Wesley Felter ( 138342 ) <wesley@felter.org> on Monday April 17, 2006 @04:15PM (#15144747) Homepage
      Regular HDMI type A (you know, like the kind used by the PS3) can carry 1080p. Since movies are stored in 1080p24 on the disc, the player converts this to 1080i60 (which causes no loss of data), and then the TV performs a trivial inverse telecine to recover the original 1080p24.
    • The Toshiba DVD players do not support the dual-link HDMI-B specification required for true 1080p output.

      Uh what are you talking about? HDMI A is exactly like single link DVI (both up to 165 MHz) and capable of running 1920x1080p60. Maybe the Toshiba players don't support 1080p but it has nothing to do with HDMI A vs HDMI B.
      • You're right. My bad. :)

        Type B is intended for resolutions higher than 1080p and for the future when we'll receive multiple streams of data simultaneously. I mistook the a quote from a HD DVD "rep" from Microsoft where he said that 1080p support would come along with dual-link type B HDMI support. I assumed too much.

        But none the less, this first generation of HD DVD players do not support 1080p outputs and is to be added "at some point in the future". That was my point, sorry to have incorrectly comment
    • I say, after reading this comment, I do heartily welcome every single crap player sold.

      It will hopefully mean that the early adopters will see that they're being ripped off, and that they'll hopefully be pissed enough about it to avoid buying the final generation. And without early adopters, those HDDVD-players that won't support BluRay will sell as well as a calendar of 2005.

      Yes, that means a few people are going to lose a lot of their hard earned money. Call it collateral damage in the war against DRM.

      (Di
      • Either that, or let them not buy it ever. Personally, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are already dead to me solely because of DRM.
        • Dead to you, dead to me, dead to everyone who has a faint idea what DRM means. But go into the next Best Buy and ask 10 customers what they think about DRM. My guess is that you get to hear 8 times "DRM?" and at least once "is that something for my car so it needs less gas?"

          So those early adopters who simply NEED the latest fad tech will buy it, regardless. They have all those "HD-ready" and similarly labeled TVs and whatnots already, so they'll buy it to brag with the "incredible resolution" and all those
          • Maybe you should read the forums before posting comments. The player SUPPORTS ICT, not DEMAND it. ICT allows a company to force lower resolutions on people who are not using HDMI, however the forums state that at least The Last Samarui and The Phantom of the Opera does not support this, they offer the high res experience over Component.

            The limitations that are mentioned in the forums, limiting playback to 480P, are for SD DVDs, not HDDVDs, and that is through the component output. If I want to output a SD D
          • "Hey man, check out my rad new Hi Def DVD player! It has awesome resolution, and it even supports DRM!"
        • I'm sure you know DVDs have DRM as well. Of course, it has been broken (and I don't know if you're subject to the DMCA or similar laws in your locality).

          I'm just curious to know if the DRM is broken on HD-DVD/Blu-Ray you would buy, or perhaps you just think the new DRM is so incredibly overbearing you will refuse to buy. You could make the case that distributing floppy disks with the write-protect window open is a very crude form of DRM (easily circumvented).
      • I'm not exactly sure what you're issue with DRM, but Sony has announced that Blu-Ray discs will be region free. That's a step in the right direction.
    • I'm pretty sure that my DVI connection is capable of carrying a signal at 1920x1080 at 60Hz (go check wikipedia if you don't believe me, 1920x1200@60Hz is in single-link specs). So if they want me to change my equipment just for some content protection they can go to hell.
       
      I'll wait to see which comes out on top, then get a drive for my HTPC which will then be "liberated."
    • You are not totally correct and very misleading. The Toshiba HD-DVD player outputs 1080i at 60fps. Movies are encoded at 1080p at 24fps. So actually, the bandwidth required for 1080i60 is actually, larger than the 1080p you so desire. Unfortunately, 24 does not evenly go into 60, so there are some digital issues that need to be overcome, but in general 1080i should be just fine when upscaled to 1080p.
    • The Toshiba DVD players do not support the dual-link HDMI-B specification required for true 1080p output.

      I'd just like to add as a qualifier to my above comment...

      The dual-link HDMI-B does not carry any bearing at all on 1080p output. In reading an interview with an HD-DVD rep, he alluded to HDMI-B support and 1080p support arriving together, which along with other comments I had read earlier, led me to be believe that the two were related.

      They're not.

      But my point still stands. 1080p is not supported by t

      • Re:Save Your Money (Score:3, Interesting)

        by PrvtBurrito ( 557287 )
        You are correct in theory, however, most, 1080p tv's only accept a 1080i HDMI signal, even though HDMI and the TV supports 1080p (I think the HP dlp is the only tv that can). I think the reason for this is that the engineers know that 1080i60 can be converted to 1080p24 without loss. So you can get upset about it and deprive yourself of something cool, or you can realize that it really doesn't make any difference anyway.

        For further examples, TV shows are 30 interlaced frames a second which in HD world
        • I think you're over estimating the ease that such a process can occur at. Displays that natively progressive scan (except for plasma) have a difficult time telecining images as you an few others have implied. By your theory, looking at a TV with a 60hz interlaced signal and a TV with a 30fps progressive scan signal should look indentical. They don't. It is a very processor intensive process to de-interlace video, sequence your key framnes properly, and combine your two seperate fields back into the one
          • It isn't as hard as you think.

            The reason that good deinterlacing kit costs real money is that it has to cope with video sourced interlaced images. With images that come from a video camera (or console games where the frame rate is at 60Hz), then the interlaced frames are not just halves of a single still frame but represent images where time has advanced by a 60th of a second. This is a complete nightmare to deinterlace properly as to do a good job you need to combine slow moving parts to form a high resolu

  • AVS Forums (Score:3, Informative)

    by gravis777 ( 123605 ) on Monday April 17, 2006 @04:16PM (#15144754)
    The article fails to mention the where the AVS forums and reviews of the new players are at. They are here [avsforum.com]

  • Toshiba HD-XA1 has 10/100 Ethernet? (Score:3, Informative)

    by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Monday April 17, 2006 @04:39PM (#15144876) Homepage
    I saw pictures of some of these players the other day, and I just double checked on the Toshiba website to see what I could find out.

    Their HD-XA1 player (the more expensive player) has this, but the HD-A1 (the cheaper player) does not. Does anyone know what it's for? At first I thought it was for key revocation (in case it gets cracked, like DVD did) but since it's not on the cheaper player, I'm guessing that's not it.

    Why would my DVD player need to be hooked up to a network? Are they planning on letting me stream movies between the boxes in my house? Or is this just to set the clock with NTP (a rather stupid reason to put the thing on there).

  • PC? (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    At AVSforum pictures of the motherboard were shown and it has an Intel Mobile ICH4 southbridge. The CPU is under a heatsink but I'd bet it has a Celeron M CPU. Also it has an ATA HDDVD-ROM drive. Anyone up for a linux port?

  • Demo disks? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Monday April 17, 2006 @07:57PM (#15146023) Homepage
    In the early days of stereo, recording companies made, and in some cases sold at bargain prices, demo disks that would show off the capabilities of the new medium.

    These disks usually had a mixture of material on them, some quite gimmicky (marching bands marching across the soundstage, jet planes, steam engines, popular music arranged with extreme separation between left and right channels), but always recorded with truly high fidelity and often genuinely impressive.

    Under the right circumstances... the difference between a high-fidelity mono recording of a symphony orchestra belting out something like the 1812 Overture and a stereo recording of the same material... was extremely dramatic. And wallet-loosening. Alas, the average classical stereo LP was not as well recorded as the demo disks...

    Similarly, the early presentations of Cinerama, which represented very roughly the same improvement factor over traditional 35 mm as HD does over NTSC, were anthology-travelogues that just plain grabbed you by the eyeballs and thrilled you. OK, after an hour or so it was hard to maintain a constant "wow!" level, but just about the time you were starting to yawn at the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, boom! they'd stick you in a plane flying over the Grand Canyon.

    So, where are the $3.95 demo HD-DVDs with, I don't know, slo-mo shots where you can count the stitches in the seam of the spinning pitched baseball, the glorious aerial shots of America from sea to shining sea, the shuttle launches in full surround sound.... what the heck, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir... or, if you prefer, Fifty Cent... something to show you instantly why you need this gadget NOW?
    • Here are your WOW videos [yahoo.com]

      Unfortunately, they are not $3.95, and are on HD-VHS, not HD-DVD.

      They also have WMV HDDVDs here [yahoo.com], but once again, not HDDVD, and not for $3.95.

      I can guarentee, though, that Best Buy will have demo units in the store.

      Also, the AVS forums state that the Last Samurai has an HD-DVD Demo at the start of the disc, showing off titles such as Harry Potter and Batman Begins.

  • BitTorrent (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    When can I expect to see a torrent of these HD-DVD movies?
  • ...given that I watch DVDs through my computer anyway.

    Now if a nice HD-DVD-ROM drive comes out in a year or so that can play both Blu and HD, and the price drops to something economical, that I could see getting...

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