Comments on: Disc format apathy

By: Foe-hammer

Foe-hammer — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 06:57:31 +0000

Good point on older movies (1993 and earlier) just upscaling the image for HD-DVD and BR, and slapping 1080p on it to justify the extra $10 for the movies, and the price of the player.

I did purchase the 360 HD-DVD player, but soon realized that all my older DVD collection was just fine as they were, and there was no need to repurchase these movies on HD-DVD when they came out because they wouldn’t look any better. The main advantage for HD-DVD/BR is the new movies being released, because they will take advantage of the true 1080p/720p resolutions.

By: twistedsymphony

twistedsymphony — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 12:26:00 +0000

To be perfectly honest I hate the idea of downloading my movies (and it’s $10 to OWN not rent, downloaded rentals are closer to $2 or $3) I’d my personal preferences is to have my movies on a disc. Unfortunately that’s not the direction I see the market moving. Download services be it through a computer or you local ISP are picking up steam at a far greater pace then either HD-DVD or Blu Ray, and many haven’t even been availble as long. I believe it’s mostly due in part to the convenience but the prices of discs and equipment doesn’t help either. If your local cable company will give you a DVR that can download HD movies and TV shows for $10 and $4 a pop respectively why would you go out a spend a few hundred dollars on a Blu Ray player? What benefit does it actually offer over the download service other then a physical item? As for the $30 to $40 tag, that’s MSRP Street prices obviously vary with stores, sales and time of year. though I don’t understand your logic of you get what you pay for. If the downloaded movie is recorded in the same codec at the same resolution, uses free equipment and costs half or less per disc. I still ask what benefit they actually provide over the download?

As for video games, you can sit there and say we need more space, but I’m still not sold, as I said we haven’t seen any games span more then one disc, nor have we seen any games that supposedly might have been better if there was more space availble. Even most PS3 games so far are small enough that they could have fit on a DVD. And suppose for a moment that we do have a game that needs more space is having to swap discs, so bad that it’s worth all of the negatives associated with the newer disc formats? Lots of people can pour on their opinions but I’ve yet to see anything hit the market that makes me think more disc space is somehow vital to how much enjoyment I get out of my games.

By: poppe

poppe — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 10:38:53 +0000

Long too long article this time Twisted. However you somehow miss to pint out that even thought compression and such things are making stuff smaller its still isn’t keeping up with the need for space, Now I’m not talking game space or video space I’m talking in general. We/I want bigger storage mediums a 4.5gb dvd 5 isn’t big enough anymore, and dual layer dvds aren’t taking off a new medium is needed. Its just sad that toshiba and sony decided to duke it out instead of going together like they did on previous formats.
And the format war comes down to this hd-dvd will prevail if the name matters which it very much does everyone can understand what highdef dvds are but hardly any one nows what blureray discs are. BD will win if space is what consumers want.

And twisted paying 10$ for rentals isn’t how I’d want my dl service to be. The 20-25$(don’t now where you get the 30-40$ figure from) for hd-dvd or BD movies is pretty cheap considering you at least get what you pay for.