HD DVD Format Wars... the saga continues?
 

Best Buy is selling a Blu-ray disc player by Samsung for $800 and a Toshiba HD DVD player for $300, quite a difference in price. I'm wondering if this large price difference shows a significant step by the HD DVD companies to capture a greater share of the market and solidify the HD DVD format over Blu-ray?


Has anyone read if either side is winning the HD DVD format war?

I usually check with The Digital Bits for news on that front.

It's just like VHS and Beta all over again. Sony pretty much shot themselves in the foot by selling the Beta for much more. I've seen the HD players as low as $279.00

Many people are unphased by HD. They are not dumb, they see how bad non-HD material looks, which is about 90% of what they want to watch. The HD makes it look worse than the other tv. Beyond that, they know that the DVD looks about the same as the HD discs. The cost of HD discs and players isn't helping either one. Video games have no sway over the video discs, so forget all the PS3 and XBOX-360 non-sense. Of those that actually care, HD-DVD is the better choice. The players are a loss leader, to sell the discs. Sony wants to profit from everything, as usual, so they lose, always.

All I watch now is HD content (since I get HD versions of NBC, FOX, CBS, ABC, and CW)

Interestingly enough I think I watch more DVD's and prime time shows (regular shows that are not broadcast in HD look like VHS) since getting my HDTV.

With the combo players now out and the price on both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray coming down monthly (HD-DVD just cut their players by $100-250 in some players and offer free movies and Blu-Ray is going to slash $200 off their current players) its really not that big of a deal.

Unless the industry stops releasing regular DVD's we just have to wait till either decide to play nice with each other or one dies.

The only real advantage to having a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD is if you have a HDTV that is bigger than say 65", anything under that a cheap upscaling DVD player (I have a Phillips that is amazing) will work just fine at upscaling the image. However my friend has a 65" HD unit and you can defintly see the difference between regular dvd and hd-dvd/blu-ray (again upscaling units make that difference minimal).

All the tech should get MUCH cheaper next year, here in Iowa they have just about phased out all SDTV's and are starting to only sell HD units (they are between $200-500 depending on size for a 27"-37") compared to a year ago where my TV for instance (an Olevia 332H) was going for $999 and I got it for $499 in Feb

I was eying an Olevia 42" for $899 last night. However, I want a 52" Sharp Aquos LCD, so I have to save my pennies for probably another year here.

the blue ray/hd pc burners are also not that much right now (around the 1000 range, well enough) but I assume will be getting lower in price faily quickly.

I still am going to stick with the dvd camp. I see a lot of people I know with large screen hd tvs and such and I see the signal they get or the quality of what they watch. And I do not understand how they find it acceptable. I mostly see artifacts and block noise all over the place. I'll stick with analog until the Gov forces the change in 2009

Thats because you are not seeing the HD signal, you are seeing either analog cable or digital cable which both SUCK on HDTV's. Analog cable is grainy and muddy while digital cable is full of blocks and artificats. It also depends very much where you are sitting, HDTV has to be watched from at least 3ft back, if you are up close it looks like utter garbage because thats how its designed. 3ft-6ft is the sweet spots when watching a big screen or HD set.

If you were watching the real HD feeds it would be almost mistaken for a DVD. Sadly though the HD channels are far and few in between (right now only the major networks and "some" cable channels like TNT, ESPN, and the pay channels HBO/Showtime/Cinemax)

DirectTV has promised to add more HD feeds of regular channels this year so that should help in quality issues.

But as a whole for a majority of TV a regular old tube TV has better quality.

I bought a 37 inch LSD Vizio and the picture is amazing and the color is beautiful. They are for sure an up coming new brand. I'm starting to see a lot of commercials for them now.

If Im not wrong, and I dont think I am Vizio is a rebranded Sony.

I'm loving my Voom channels. I've become a Rave addict over the past few weeks since I upgraded my DISH.

Actually, I think the gaming division, with the Sony PlayStation 3, has consumers forced to adopt the Blu-Ray has helped Blu-Ray. Yeah, I'm all for High Definition Discs...when the battle ends.