Does it mean Blu-ray won?

The layer delay is an issue with the players, not inherent to the discs them selves, and it's also not confined to cheap media or players. It's a design flaw that had to be worked out due to a buffering system in stand alone players. That and most modern DVD's are 6.5+gb dual layer discs.

Sadly, the firmware issue is a permanent one unless the player has the ability to update the firmware, which many don't. Apparently it's not like the 1.1 players with have limited 1.2 playing capability, they wont be able to recognize the discs at all.

I too will be waiting till a winner comes out, and until then I'll keep hoping HD-DVD pulls ahead from behind. Or perhaps holographic DVDs will be created and usurp both HD-DVD and Bluray .

 

Well it seems we officially have a winner. For those not in the mix, HD-DVD will be dropped by Wal-Mart & Sam's Club this June. Best Buy is now endorsing BluRay as their choice. Netflix is no longer carrying HD-DVD. Finally rumours are abound that Toshiba (Main HD-DVD backer) is cancelling production on HD-DVD equipment and closing their factories.

If it was not over before, it really is now.

Guess it is time to either pick up a PS3 or wait until they finish with the Blu-Ray player 'upgrades' and the price comes down a bit.

 

Actually, newer PC's with video cards which can be ran in SLI will give you a 1080i/p HDMI picture as well as new computer screens. Also, if your really into computers and image quality you can run PCs with video cards that have HDMI outputs onto large 50+" LCD/plasma/LCD projection/projection screens which all have 1080i/p technology and image quality. As for Blue ray and HD-DVD...its a crapshoot. Sure you could say that blue-ray has won because of the loads of people buying it but if you look back at sonys history (beta-max v. VHS, minidisc v. mp3, etc.) sony hasn't had win in the electronics industry with a format since the sony walkman.

Either way, HD-DVD players= 150$ at walmart.

 

Not really a contest anymore. If Toshiba truly does close up shop it is over. As it is I do not see how HD-DVD can survive when a huge store like Wal-Mart won't carry any of your products. Best-Buy pulling the plug too can only do harm as well.

 

At this point I would put my money on blue-ray. Save your money till TVs with 1080p come down in price and cable companies agree to send out 1080p signals. Although, not many people can tell the difference between 1080i and 1080p. At this point sink your teeth in. Possibly try a media PC.

 

Have you unearthed any of the reasons your computer is unstable? There are a million reasons why it could be but initially I'd start with 1) drivers 2) cooling and 3) power supply with enough power. I would definitely put my money on blue ray at this point and start investing in blue-ray burners and video cards which support blue-ray formats. Once sony gets over winning the prices should start coming down in players.

 

Ok, it is OFFICIAL OFFICIAL. Toshiba announced today that they are shutting down HD-DVD production. The Next-Gen DVD wars are over.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/19/technology/toshiba.ap/index.htm?postversion=2008021904

 

What kind of video card are you running to support your HD signal? A good video card with HD support should take much of the load off of your processor and if you were to run 2 video cards in SLI than it shouldnt even break a sweat with even the most outrageous HD material. Previous formats have never put such a strain on computers as HD does with twice the pixels of previous media formats.

 

None of this really matters though. The industry is really working hard on digital downloads. Soon we will all be using that and dvd's will be like 8 tracks, tapes, and records.

 

These are coming back in stock at my local dealer tomorrow and I'm seriously considering getting one...

 

I can say personally I will not adopt digital downloads. I prefer a physical copy.

 

I completely agree, I hate digital downloads. But it doesn't matter what you or I want. If the companies stop making dvd's we don't have much of a choice. The producers and artists love digital downloads, it gives them complete control over the usage.

 

They will only do it if they think the market will let them. If enough people scream about it then we'll have physical media for a long time coming.

 

Digital Downloads would make sense if you could have a online foolproof digital vault that you could store all your digital media and access it from anywhere. You buy it, you store it and you keep it for good. I'd hate to lose all that if it was stored locally. You could even upload DVDs and music you already own. Now if someone could come up with a business model that would work. Something like this is not cheap.

 

That's a good point Rich. That is my main concern with digital downloads is the possibility of using a magnet to wipe out all of what I paid money for. Obviously physical media is not fool-proof either but a computer crash is not going to cost me all my movies.

 

I havent heard of the Tivx but the sling box is a very popular multimedia player for moving media types from one type of viewer to another (ie. pc-tv). As for digital media, downloads aren't exactly the worst thing in the world You could burn all your downloaded movies to blue-ray discs with the right software and hardware. Also, you could purchase a hard drive and bring 500gigs worth of movies with you in something no bigger than a couple dvd cases. If your so worried about magnets ruining your hard drives you could also invest in solid state media (i.e. flash drives) which they are now creating hard drives out of which is a much more magnetic-friendly type of storage. Soon enough (within the next few years) everybody will own some sort of device that you can just plug a hard drive into and watch the movies onto your tv. These devices are already available and as digital media becomes more popular many more people will start buying them.

 

They are working on it. Look up Sony LocationFree and others like it.