HD-DVD & Blu-Ray

[Nicholas Mosher]

Anyone else biding their time for the release of these formats?
*waiting*

[Kurt C.]

Yep. I have a 36-inch monitor that nicely displays 480p. I can't really justify buying anything newer until HD DVD/Blu-ray gets released (I don't watch TV...) My plan is to spring for a new monitor or projector about the time HD DVD gets released and then get a 2nd generation player about 6 months later.

[smokey]

More HD content is good, but neither of these formats, as they stand right now, are interesting to me at all. The crazy, draconian DRM schemes the studios are inflicting on consumers are completely ridiculous (imo) and are likely to slow greatly adoption of these things. And that is on top of the format war confusion, crazy high prices, etc. To me, these things have DVD-A/SACD written all over them. But I've been wrong before.

-Smokey.

[shane55]

Until the 'war' is nearly over and a clear 'winner' is announced... there is not much point in me paying much attention to this fray. These competing formats might be the death of both. Consumers are not going to want to get the 'wrong' one (think Betamax), and might avoid the mess completely. That, and the fact that initial costs will be high, DVD saturation is nearly complete, and the majority of earthlings will never, never, never see, notice or care about any improvement over their DVD's... of which they have emmassed quite a collection.

With convergence being paramount these days, the latest announcement by Microsoft backing one of these formats might signal a serious contender, but who really knows. It might be many years until there is a format that I'll plunk my money towards.

cheers

shane

[metalaaron]

just do some casual mentioning of this to other people in your life that you know aren't as tech savvy as you, and it's really not surprising (to me) that very few people know about these formats. i would submit that if you in turn tell them there's a possibity of a new dvd format release coming soon...they won't like the news. try it and see what kind of responses you get. i've had good and bad.

i think microsoft's stance was based on their new console release because sony's console is supposed to ship with blu-ray support next year.

[mattepntr]

We interrupt this program for a public service rant....

With the current state of the movie industry, it's hard
for me to get excited about hi-def DVD formats. Especially
if they're going to be as expensive and user-unfriendly
as it appears right now.
I mean, does the average SD DVD viewer really care that
they can't count the pores on Ben Affleck's face when they
watch "Gigli"?
For myself, I'd rather watch a terrific movie shot and projected
in Super 8, than something like "Dukes of Hazzard" in 1080p.

On the production side of things, Hollywood's latest buzzword
is "4k". In digital production, "film resolution" has so far been
defined as being right around 2k (1920 x 1080 pixels). Now,
the push is to raise that to 4k, as if what's wrong with movie-
making is that people can't see the image clearly enough. Yeah.
That's it. Same thing with the current craze for 3D, digital projection,
features shown in IMAX theaters et. al. ad nauseum.

Call me a content snob. That's fair. I deserve it.
But I'll get excited about home hi-def formats (and willing to sink
thousands into equipment upgrades) when the studios give me
better content to make it worthwhile.

Wow! Did I say that out loud?

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled program

Rick

[muzz]

The Matrix Trilogy will be released May22 in HD DVD.
Most folks already have it ordered. I don't, but I WILL have it to play on my projector!!

The reviews have given it top notch(5/5 or 10/10 stars depending on reviewer) in both Video and Audio.
Audio is in TrueHD.

[spunky721]

I've got the Complete Matrix Collection on HD DVD. So far I've only watched the first one, but it is stunning and sounds great on the Ascends, as well.

[muzz]

Yep, thats what I've been reading, VG PQ/AQ...

Now thats what I'm talking about!!

I will have to get off my ass, and go and get it.... probably this weekend I'll headout.

[muzz]

I forgot to mention..

I got the Matrix Trilogy on HD DVD...

OUTSTANDING!!