HD DVD sales not good

I'm definitely not sold on HD. I'll wait until there's a clear standard established before I do any sort of upgrade. I'm getting by just fine with what I have now.
 
spunknoid said:
Big brother goverment is supposed to be stepping in on making HD the standard.
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Also, this is not true. The FCC is mandating digital broadcasting, but not HD. They are not the same thing.
 
I'm not so much worried about HD, it's the 16:9 that gets me. Walk through the big box stores and most are widescreen. I've said this before I would be totally happy with a16:9 DVX100. I think Panasonic should have jumped on that.

So you can get a DVX100 and letterbox etc, get a HVX200 and shot DV. You can buy the Z1 or all the other camera's in DV to get 16:9. Why not just have a 16:9 SD?
 
HorseFilms said:
I'm definitely not sold on HD. I'll wait until there's a clear standard established before I do any sort of upgrade. I'm getting by just fine with what I have now.
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If I already had one I would be fine with it too and I might be in a couple of weeks. But I thing I'll see what kind of news pops up.
 
Draccan said:
All you need for the formats to succeed is the big companies stopping support of putting out films on DVD and then poof everyone will get the new format and they can even earn an extra dollar by making them more expensive..
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No. Because there is no logic in selling only HD discs, because television is still broadcast in SD, and SD looks like shi* on HD screens. And no one will make that expensive conversion from SD to HD that quickly.
 
pto2212 said:
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No. Because there is no logic in selling only HD discs, because television is still broadcast in SD, and SD looks like shi* on HD screens. And no one will make that expensive conversion from SD to HD that quickly.
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im pretty sure it was a hypthetical
 
Yeah, HD will take over one day, but not because of consumer demand. It'll happen by default, as HD is implemented by content providers and manufactures... all abetted by the FCC. Sort of like folks are not clamoring for Vista, but because all new PCs will come pre-installed with it, and old PCs eventually die, well, Vista will take over. By contrast, folks *were* clamoring for Windows 95 as they left 3.1 behind.

Fact is, that at a certain point, consumers think the product experience is good enough (like XP SP2). They may or may not even see/hear the difference. They are certainly reluctant to pay extra for such nebulous advantages. Of course, the standard caveat, I'm not talking about the perhaps 5% of audio/videophiles, early adopters and assorted gadget freaks.

So, if you are selling QUALITY of image - the difference between HD and SD is a loser for the consumer. Not worth it. Same with audio - folks are happy listening to mp3 or Apple's crappy iTunes downloads (128?). Audiophiles are maybe 5%. Same with videophiles. Consumers actually can't tell the difference.

So what will drive them? Cost? Now, I know nobody on this board would ever do anything like it, but believe it or not, any kid out there who is not living in deep Appalachia, knows all about bittorrent and the price is hard to beat. You can try selling convenience - legal downloads, but what is bt if not a download at an unmatchably low price (free)?

Try telling a consumer who grew up on bt that he/she needs to shell out thousands because of great quality picture/sound and see how far that argument goes. Yes, there's always DRM and legal enforcement, but by its very nature a human must have the 1's and 0's of digital translated into analog in order to experience it, and that means that it is impossible to generate an unbreakable DRM.

Yes, this generation will take time to dominate, and old school consumers are still the bulk, but the day when it's the other way around is not far off.

Content providers must figure out a way to sell their product to a willing public. There is no technological fix. HD is just a gimmick for most consumers.

Now, if they came up with something that's truly revolutionary as a visual/audio experience - think IMAX level - delivered to the convenience of your home, at a price point that's equivalent to today's cost of technology solutions (TV + DVD player + DVD), you got a market.

HD doesn't come within a light year of that. It's some imperceptible improvement to SD at an outrageous cost/convenience penalty.
 
I think 100% of the people can see the difference in HD to SD comparisons, 5% dont care if they have it or not, but eveyone would want it.
 
I am curious to see if the Japanese are paying more for their HD programming like they want us to in the US. Does anyone know? And if you do know, how much are they paying?

If having HD has worked so long for the Japanese, why can't it work for us? Are we doing something different than the Japanese? Do they really pay $3,000 for an HD-ready set? Do they have to pay so much more to watch HD programming?

Are any Japanese people reading this board?
 
Watching some HD is free in the US, you just need a UHF antenna. The major networks broadcast for free.

If you want the cable channels, that's where you have to pay. $9.95 gets me about 9 channels (well, the free over-the-air or OTA channels, plus a few others like Discovery). Then if you want the premium channels the prices go up from there.

But you can get Fox/ABC/CBS/NBC programming for free, assuming your local affiliate is broadcasting the HD signal and you can pick it up with a UHF antenna...
 
If you already pay for stuff like HBO and Showtime, and you subscribe to HD, you dont have to pay extra for HBO and Showtime and other premium stuff to watch it in HD, it should be free w/ subscription to the premium service of course.
 
Barry_Green said:
Like "Plastics".
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Hudsucker "You know, for kids"

Regarding On Demand:

I heard that in order to stream HD over the existing cable lines they have to massively compress it. Is this true?
 
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Ya, theres sometimes some not so good compression artifacts in big action sequences, sometimes its not so bad. HD-DVD/Blu-Ray dont have these problems. Its bliss
 
It's interesting to hear the negatives on BLU RAY and HD-DVD. I know a lot of wedding videographers who have already charged clients an extra $2K in order to sell them a downconverted HDV to SD-DVD with the option for the client to order an HD-DVD/BLU RAY version down the road.

Reading this thread it almost sounds like there might be some unhappy newlyweds in the near future. I personally don't think the majority of the couples that pay the extra $ for HDV are getting an amazingly better image with the downconversion, and how many of them will actually follow through and order the HD version later.
 
Has anyone turned their gaming counsel into a Linux Box? It was either X-box or PS2 that was sold at a loss in order to recoup on game sales, can't remember which. Anyways some penguin gurus loaded linux and got cheap fast little computer...I'll find the link and post.

PS...Yeah $2k is probably a high estimate.
 
No, but im sure you can get a faster linux machine that is definatly cheaper from fry's. They sell them for about 129.99 a few times a month for a week at a time. Its usually an AMD @ 1.5ghz with 128 or 256 ram and pre loaded with linux and all that fun stuff.
 
Cynic821 said:
No, but im sure you can get a faster linux machine that is definatly cheaper from fry's. They sell them for about 129.99 a few times a month for a week at a time. Its usually an AMD @ 1.5ghz with 128 or 256 ram and pre loaded with linux and all that fun stuff.
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Nice tip...Thanks. They also sell the panasonic minidv tapes for as cheap as I've found most places on the net..approx $3.45/each and no shipping.
 
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