Sierras, full-range or crossed at 80hz?

[Dread Pirate Robert]

Since it is a relative pain to change my fronts to large and sub off for music and small with sub on for movies, I may end up just leaving everything crossed over at 80hz. I have to play with my harmony remote to see if I can create a macro.

At the risk of complicating matters, while what I said about turning your sub pre-out off for music is technically true and the proper way to set up your system, in practice it may or may not be a major issue. If you try leaving it on while crossing over the 170SE surrounds only, and this turns out not to be a noticeable problem with music that has relatively aggressive surrounds, then maybe it would be OK for your specific setup. Anomalies would be more pronounced with your current 340SEs than they would be with Sierra-1s, if anything, so any tests you may decide to do now will be valid. A lot depends on how your sub is integrated, of course.

To complicate things, I'm thinking that maybe I should upgrade to HD-DVD instead of upgrading my speakers.

Sigh...I'm still waiting for the format war to end, myself --I haven't added to my movie collection in I don't know how long.

I guess it's all about bias, but I'd feel I was throwing money away buy a HDDVD player over a bluray player.

Well, the formats are virtually equivalent in technical capability, with the only significant difference being the larger storage capacity of Blu-ray. The question for me is which of the two will the market decide to keep around--which doesn't necessarily have anything to do with capability--assuming they both don't end up battling one another indefinitely within a niche market. Blu-ray stumbled out of the gate very badly (nice going, Sony), but appears to have taken the lead for the time being.

And buying either right now is a bit iffy in itself because neither have unit capable of all the functions you will likely see come christmas. Especially codecs.

Electronics of this sort tend to peak around the third generation, give or take, in terms of both quality and features for a reasonable price. After that point, the market will begin to separate into capable but relatively expensive units and cheap crap.

With regard to codecs, specifically Dolby TrueHD would be nice to have, whether it's in the player or receiver (preferably the latter--I don't care for any silly things the player might want to mix in, just give me the soundtrack unmolested!).

Then you have that sony has exclusivity on somehting like 15 of the top 20 movies in the last year, that makes HD-DVD a hard sell despite being cheaper.

Software is a major factor, as well as cost, as you've pointed out, but these factors are quite fluid. Who knows, perhaps the deciding factor will turn out to be the name "Blu-ray" if consumers like how it sounds and believe that having such a different name means that they're getting something different and better; conversely, "HD-DVD" seems more familiar, which may inspire more confidence in other people. I really have no idea what will happen--whatever. Thanks a lot, Hollywood.

[dallas]

Software is a major factor, as well as cost, as you've pointed out, but these factors are quite fluid. Who knows, perhaps the deciding factor will turn out to be the name "Blu-ray" if consumers like how it sounds and believe that having such a different name means that they're getting something different and better; conversely, "HD-DVD" seems more familiar, which may inspire more confidence in other people. I really have no idea what will happen--whatever. Thanks a lot, Hollywood.

for me,the biggest factor is that blu-ray is 90%-99% of the market in all the terrortories except the US. If the US goes HDDVD , it's VHS all over again. Everything would be cheaper if we follow the worlds lead and stick to one format. But if you have a must see that's only in HDDVD, and can't wait, i guess you don't have much choice either.

[muzz]

for me,the biggest factor is that blu-ray is 90%-99% of the market in all the terrortories except the US. If the US goes HDDVD , it's VHS all over again. Everything would be cheaper if we follow the worlds lead and stick to one format. But if you have a must see that's only in HDDVD, and can't wait, i guess you don't have much choice either.

Yeah,1 format I agree!!

Only I disagree on the choice.

BD has problems, they can't even get interactive going,meanwhile Microsofts IHD has been working just fine.
Lets face it, they(powers that be) WANT Interactivity, so that BD/Java based system is lacking right now.
HD DVD makes it affordable to the masses, BD doesn't,but BD has more studios..... we'll see how many studios defect when HD DVD becomes $200....

That will put a BIG damper on the price gougers known as BD, and don't think the studios involved, won't be paying attention.

They will.

[drewface]

does anyone remember when the blu-ray and hd-dvd parties were considering joining forces to incorporate the best of both formats, but then they got greedy and decided to scrap the talks of helping each other and continued on producing two separate formats that would end up making one side more money than the other? i was heartbroken when i heard they decided to not work together...

oh, what could have been...

[muzz]

does anyone remember when the blu-ray and hd-dvd parties were considering joining forces to incorporate the best of both formats, but then they got greedy and decided to scrap the talks of helping each other and continued on producing two separate formats that would end up making one side more money than the other? i was heartbroken when i heard they decided to not work together...

oh, what could have been...

Sony can lick my .....

[drewface]

Sony can lick my .....

HAHAHAHAHA

[dallas]

Sony can lick my .....

I don't buy into that angle. it's about me not them. I'm too selfish to care about them. Besides, if it's cuz you hate sony, then that means you support microsoft and toshiba, or vice versa. There alot of so called negative reasons on both sides. Microsoft is a monopoly and all that tired jazz, and toshiba, I cant' remeber the accusations, but they were involved with something pretty bad, I think selling american military secrets to the russians or something. I'm sure at somepoint, sony was building bombs to kill americans and grinding up babies and butterflys to fuel the fires of their child labor chemical plants.

6 one way, half dozen the other.

I'm all for voting with your dollars, but to me you cant vote "against" someone, only for someone. But when it's big companies, it's usually two sides of the same coin.

[muzz]

I don't buy into that angle. it's about me not them. I'm too selfish to care about them. Besides, if it's cuz you hate sony, then that means you support microsoft and toshiba, or vice versa. There alot of so called negative reasons on both sides. Microsoft is a monopoly and all that tired jazz, and toshiba, I cant' remeber the accusations, but they were involved with something pretty bad, I think selling american military secrets to the russians or something. I'm sure at somepoint, sony was building bombs to kill americans and grinding up babies and butterflys to fuel the fires of their child labor chemical plants.

6 one way, half dozen the other.

I'm all for voting with your dollars, but to me you cant vote "against" someone, only for someone. But when it's big companies, it's usually two sides of the same coin.

Yep.

My DOLLARS vote for ANYONE that has quality goods vs Sony.

Sound better?

[Dread Pirate Robert]

for me,the biggest factor is that blu-ray is 90%-99% of the market in all the terrortories except the US.

Hmmm...the most recent article I've read claimed that the European market, at least, has tracked the US market quite closely with regard to the HD formats. If this is true, then this format war is far from over in quite a large portion of the world's total market. I haven't been keeping close track of the situation in Asia, but it seems that true to form, they have a few additional formats on top of the two we're talking about.

If the US goes HDDVD , it's VHS all over again.

I don't really care, as long as the format that sticks around is up to the task. Betamax wasn't all that much better than VHS anyway. That said, I tend to support the technically superior product as long as it's pragmatic enough.

Everything would be cheaper if we follow the worlds lead and stick to one format.

From everything I've read, it seems that the situation worldwide is at least as convoluted as that of the US market--there is no lead for anyone to follow (as with just about everything). In the end, unless the studios and CE manufacturers agree to support a single format, we may end up with each market being dominated individually by one or the other.

BD has problems, they can't even get interactive going,meanwhile Microsofts IHD has been working just fine.
Lets face it, they(powers that be) WANT Interactivity, so that BD/Java based system is lacking right now.

I'd take any format that supplies high quality HD video and audio, and won't become derelict within a year or two. Additionally, the faster it can start playing when I press "Play" the better, and the more space it can use for encoding A/V the better. Everything else is just window dressing, in my opinion.

HD DVD makes it affordable to the masses, BD doesn't,but BD has more studios..... we'll see how many studios defect when HD DVD becomes $200....

I believe that most studios--including Warner Brothers --have been releasing at least some titles on both formats of late. If this trend continues, then consumers will have more of a say in which format will win out, although it won't necessarily be "the masses" to any large extent because HD is mostly off their radar.

That will put a BIG damper on the price gougers known as BD, and don't think the studios involved, won't be paying attention.

Well, they'll just have to reduce their prices, then. Another way to look at this, in terms of the software, is that both formats will charge the consumer whatever they feel the market will bear, but the HD-DVD format is cheaper to implement, which means more profit for them and less capability for us. Remember that every studio is looking out for themselves only--those who favored Blu-ray believed that they had to offer more to the consumer to get their attention, while those who favored HD-DVD believed that they had enough storage capacity and wanted to minimize costs and thereby maximize profits. For better or worse, both sides are partially correct at this point: HD-DVD does have enough capacity to offer high quality, but consumers are still not taking enough notice to make either format a runaway success. It remains to be seen which basic strategy will survive in the end, and both sides still have "cards" to play.

does anyone remember when the blu-ray and hd-dvd parties were considering joining forces to incorporate the best of both formats, but then they got greedy and decided to scrap the talks of helping each other and continued on producing two separate formats that would end up making one side more money than the other?

I don't think that the best of both formats was ever a realistic option. Sony had a lot invested in their physical storage medium, while the HD-DVD camp was devoted to taking a more conservative approach that allowed an easier and less expensive transition from DVD to HD-DVD manufacturing. If Sony had relented, as they had with the DVD format previously, then they would probably have been given a few "scraps" just like the last time (namely the eight-to-sixteen modulation and the enhanced Reed-Solomon product error correction code). With more advanced technology (whether or not it's "better" or more cost-effective) and more studios on their side regarding HD, it's hardly surprising that the Sony camp chose not to relent this time around (neither did the Toshiba camp).

I don't buy into that angle. it's about me not them. I'm too selfish to care about them.

That's probably the only valid attitude to have in this case.

Besides, if it's cuz you hate sony, then that means you support microsoft and toshiba, or vice versa. There alot of so called negative reasons on both sides. Microsoft is a monopoly and all that tired jazz,

I have to be honest and admit that I'm a bit biased myself, being a computer programmer who has used Microsoft's operating systems and software very intensively for the past 20 years or so. Let's put it this way: Sony's TVs are the only thing I like about them, but that's exactly one more thing than I like about Microsoft....

and toshiba, I cant' remeber the accusations, but they were involved with something pretty bad, I think selling american military secrets to the russians or something.

Yep, and I haven't bought a thing from them since, although it's not really a huge consideration (you can always find dirty people just about everywhere). Like you, I'm looking out for myself--and the public in general by extension--first when it comes to this format war.