News Cheap HD DVD players on the way

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/08/30/cheap_hd_dvd_players_on_the_way/1

A budget HD DVD player will soon hit the market thanks to Venturer Electronics.

 

Step towards winning for HDDVD over blueray if they are really cheap and Blueray players dont drop as well

 

Was'nt the reason VHS beat BetaMax because JVC licenced the manufacture of cheap VHS players. I always expected the HD-DVD Vs Blu-Ray to end in a similar way.

Ps: Is Amazon's deal open to UK customers too?

 

lets wait to see the price....

 

ditto.....I also wonder what the sampling rate will be....and how long the warranty will last.....

 

If its in the $100-150USD range I'll likely pick one up and finally take the plunge.... then again, maybe my better judgement will continue to wait and see how sales go in order to see if it looks like a solid investment.

It will depend on how I feel that morning

 

hmm when does Amazon do the discount, when you put in your credit card info because I selected HD-DVD Xbox Player and 7 other titles because I already have a blu-ray player but it shows everything at normal price where does it discount the movies to make them free? I clicked on the link to see eligible selections and made my selection???

 

If you read it says when you order your drive it comes with King Kong you then pick an additional 2 to get then at the top theres link saying you download it print it out and send it off for the other 5 movies or sommit when youve got your player.

Its located at the top of the page

 

I don't care if the local electronics store start giving them away. I still don't own an HDTV, and my current TV does not have an HDMI input. These machines can play all the high-definition discs they want, but without a proper television, and without a proper audio setup, I won't be able to see or hear any difference.

I think there's still a huge knowledge gap when it comes to HD. A lot of people are still buying HDTVs under the assumption that their current DVDs are somehow magically displayed in high definition.

-monkey

 

I was watching "Modern Marvels: 80's Tech" last night and they talked about the betamax vs vhs format war. The said the vhs won out because jvc licenced the technology to others which brought the price way down. They also said that vhs, at its first introduction, could do two hours of movie. Beta had better definition which made it only able to record one hour of movie. Which since movies for are roughly two hours that kind of prevented beta moving into the movie rental realm and triggered a movie rental bonanza for the vhs format. They also mentioned the porn thing where the porn industry had chosen vhs as its format which pushed vhs as well.

 

That kind of brings about my problem/situation: 2 1/2 years ago, my family bought a new house and we knew we needed a home theater room and we had to buy something to make that happen. We bought an inFocus HD Projector (4850 I think). It does offer DVI (HTCP), but do you know how much a cable would've cost not only to buy it, but also to run it? $400! So guess what, we ran a 100 ft. Component Cable because we knew there wouldn't be any signal loss issues AND it was cheaper and more reliable in long-run situations. Now we're stuck in between this HDMI stage and it sucks because everything coming out is requiring it for full 1080i/p capabilities. Honestly, we're probably going to have to wait for a good long while until we upgrade and then we're going with a wireless setup, which I wish they had available 2 years ago, but that's technology. Anyways, I hear you supermonkey and most people (including my parents) have no idea what HD is let alone all of the formats that are offered.....

 

That 'upconverting' of DVDs is called upscaling, by the way.

 

only 1080i... for an HD-DVD player... so they arn't even going to output native.... right..

 

That's what makes it "cheap", but it's filling a niche

 

only? in this case i think it is more than enough for a cheap player.....

 

Can't you get the HD-DVD add on for the Xbox 360 and use that on PC?

 

some guys did that.... they even went far enough and disassemble it and make it work as a standard dvd drive.

 

yes u can use it on your PC as long as your hardware is HDCP compliant, thats what Im doing,

Edit:

Making it a standard dvd drive is far more work then its really worth, leave it as usb and you will be fine.

 

It doesn't say how "cheap" it is though does it?

The 360 HD DVD is only like £100 so that's pretty awesome compared to the £300 odd of the standalone ones.

 

Sure, if you own a 360 or have an HDCP compliant PC .....otherwise you're better off going with the standalone.....