I love problems with esoteric gear.

In one breath you guys say 1080p is there, but in the next you diss Blu-ray by saying you don’t need it? High quality 1080p and Blu-ray are synonomous. It is by far the best 1080p source available for consumers.

I agree that watching Blu-ray or any 1080p source from 10 feet away on a 46-inch set is not going to blow anyone away, but it is far less likely to have visible artifacts that a DVD may reveal at that distance.

HD DVD was cheap due to lack of support. Cheap players that were being significantly subsidized by Toshiba kept other makers away. The players were cheaper to start with due to only having support from three major studios. Remember when Paramount dropped Blu-ray, HD DVD still had the same level of support that they did from the beginning. The only thing that would have saved Toshiba and Microshaft would have been a BD studio like Disney swinging completely over to HD DVD.

Sorry I have just heard too many podcasts from you and Clint waxing poetic on the $99 HD DVD player. It was one thing and one thing only, a firesale.

BTW, keep up the good work.

I’ve got to agree with Craig. It seems like you did kind of contradict yourselves. And I would also agree witht the ‘keep up the good work’ part of his message, too.

I agree $500 is too high for mass acceptance, but have you heard Walmart is carrying some 1.1 standalone players for between $300 and $350. I think by the holidays we will see $250.

Again, HD DVD was forced to lower prices at an unnatural agressive rate. A lot of that was due to the fact that Toshiba and MSFT had no real answer for the fact that every PS3 sold was a fully functional Blu-ray player. HD DVD fans can deny it all they want, but PS3 is the reason that Blu-ray won.

And here’s hoping to a player under $200 in the future. Blu-ray will be the best source available for consumers for quite sometime for both video AND audio.

For people like myself who have projectors (a Pro 1080UB here), Blu-ray is what many of us having been anxiously awaiting. There is no comparison between DVD and Blu-ray on a 92-inch screen at a 10-ft viewing distance.

Last night I finally got around to watching my LOTR:ROTK theatrical cut DVD. After a steady diet of Blu-ray over the last few months, the thing was damn near unwatchable. Funny what a steady diet of high quality HD will do to you.

BTW, I completely agree with you and Clint that you have to be price conscience especially in today’s economy.

Not saying that you guys are guilty of it, but I have seen a lot of people slag on new technology because of its price.

The fact is that if you want to be on the bleeding edge you have to be willing to pay. As the technology matures the price falls. Blu-ray is not $1000 anymore and even DVD started out with players costing between $500 and $1000.

For all the arguements I hear on why Blu-ray won’t make it, there are even a greater number of arguements why competing technologies will fail.

For all the BS I hear from the download proponents (the same ones who probably slammed BD for its extra layer of DRM), do they think the downloads will not contain the same level of DRM if not more?

Other obstacles facing DL:
Internet/Web2.0 is still a long ways off for most consumers meaning that most so-called HD downloads are going to be overly compressed heavily filtered robbing the image of detail and lossy audio with be the standard.

ISPs and content providers are going to fight one another to get their share of the profit pie. This will drive up costs. We are already seeing this with ISPs wanting to cap usage. Some of this is due to the fact that those ISPs are also cable providers with OnDemand/PPV services. They don’t get any extra cut when you download the same film they offer off of AppleTV/TivoUnbox/Netflix.

And the big one that scares me the most is if physical media is replaced completely, content providers now have all the control and can change the rules anytime they wish. That unlimited view download you just purchased may be made unplayable if they change their mind. If you think Blu-ray is expensive, hang on to your wallets if digital distribution takes over. The Hollywood copyright lawyers behind Circuit City’s DIVX are waiting to strike again.

Speaking of being cost effective and at risk of being labeled a shill, I write to report that my Oppo 980H has been repaired by the manufacturer free of charge within a day of drop off at their Mountain View location. This occurred 10+ months after I purchased it and following damage to the DVD loader due to in house abuse (kids). I was open to them about the abuse to the unit and they let me know that the mounting rails were bent and promptly changed out the loader, provided a replacement remote, updated firmware and sent me on my way free of charge. I may next upgrade to the 983 and sell this unit on ebay.

Blu-ray looks and sounds amazing. But I am 100% convinced that it is the LAST great movie medium we will ever see 🙁

There are those of us who care a great deal about audio fidelity. But the market proved in no uncertain terms that great audio fidelity is NOT an attractive product to the mass market. Sadly, both DVD-Audio and SACD have died and now the ancient CD is really the highest quality audio medium that is widely available to us!

Blu-ray is the same niche. There are those of us who care a great deal about image quality, but sadly, I simply do not see the mass market ever caring, just as they completely did not care about DVD-Audio or SACD. DVD, like CD, will end up being the highest quality video medium that is widely available to us.

The future for movies is exactly the same as it has proven to be for music – highly compressed, easily pirated, peer-to-peer downloads. Already, P2P bandwidth accounts for a HUGE chunk of all internet bandwidth usage and a huge chunk of that P2P usage is movies.

There does not need to be a “Web 2.0” for this transition to take place. All that is needed is something even more highly compressed than DivX so that movies can be downloaded even more quickly via P2P networks.

The mass market is perfectly happy listening to music through ear-bud headphones, their car stereo or TV speakers. And they are likewise perfectly happy to watch VHS quality movie videos.

Large sized HDTV sales are driven by sports, not movies. DVD is more than adequate in terms of quality for what the mass market wants and they will be perfectly happy with even lower quality.

Those of us who care about high quality are a tiny percentage. Apparently, somewhere around 5-9%. That is simply not enough to matter. So my only plan is to stock up on as much high quality content as I can before it all disappears!

SACD and DVD-A, in my opinion, failed beacuse most people don’t have the system that would allow then to hear the difference between a standard CD and the high res audio. Most of my friends listen to clock radio/boom box quality in thier homes and the ones that do have a home theater system are hanging on to the low end with poor quality HTIB systems. With 1080P flat panels flying out the door like hot cakes (I’ve never actually witnessed hot cakes selling or flying out doors)it won’t be long before people will start expecting DVDs to look like HDTV and Blu-ray will have a outlet for that higher resolution. High res audio only ever had the audiophile niche to buy it.

……….hmmmmm very interesting, hate to say it but I like what CraigW and Rob are talking about. I do enjoy my BDs I have seen the difference. Not to long ago my wife was watching Transformers BD on a 37” LCD when my brother came for a short visit. Two days later he asked me, “I thought that TV brand was cheap (Polaroid), why did it look so good?” I was surprise he was able to see a better picture even at a small and very cheap LCD! Of course I explained the hole Blu-Ray world to him. Now hes giving thought on BD.

Of course now im trying to save up for a 1080p 58” THX’d Panasonic