News NEC ships hybrid next-gen optical chip

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2006/10/10/NEC_ships_hybrid_next-gen_optical_chip/

 

Well thats a better idea. Now people can get a player without worrying about which format will survive.

 

Bah, makes me glad I dont even have a dvd drive in my computer. The format war's if they ever come to a reality in the market will just create added costs for consumers. It is nice to see an aim to create a hybrid player that will be friendly with both formats. Good move NEC

Edit:
Woo 533 posts, now my posts are running at pc2700 speeds!

 

IIRC, when other companies (Samsung?) declared plans to come out with a hybrid player, Sony said "if you want to be in our BluRay camp, you can't make anything for HD-DVD."

In other words, I'm pretty sure the only reason we haven't seen hybrid players yet is because of Sony.

HOoray for NEC. Anytime anybody wants to buy a new optical drive, I recommend NEC...and the last 3 I've bought (for different computers...NEC drives have never broken on me) have been NEC. Even if their prices went up a little, I'd still buy from them out of loyalty and the quality I know I can expect.

 

What price range will the hybrid players have? If they will be closer in price to a blu-ray player than an HD-DVD player then I don't know that consumers will be inclined to buy it. The price advantage may still be on HD-DVD's side.

 

I can not see it ending the format wars purely because the companies will still fight as to which format is "best" until one is dead. The only bonus is to the consumer this time for a change, as they fight i am sure prices will drop quickly and thus an owner of one of these drives is quids in.

 

I see it as a good thing for the consumer, they can now have just one choice, the disc they buy, which ultimately will just boil down to price.

But I can see Sony lawyers running for the lawsuit button.

 

Didn't samsung just release a lappy with an HD-DVD drive

 

I think someone needs to make a more universal format that everyone can agree on. Maybe some fan of open-source stuff comes up with a non-proprietary format. I suppose this is a good thing for the time being though, although I do not want an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player.

 

I thought PC2700 was 333MHz???

Anyway, this was inevitable, and ultimatly, NEC cash in on two formats, especially if they patent the design of the hybrid

 

I'm still waiting on final agreements / standards / crap shoved down our throats on HDMI / HDCP / content restrictions forced by MPAA for the display end. Until all these ... people get their sh-tuff together I'm not buying any of it and none of this matters.

 

yea whoops my bad, I was thinking about the front side bus of my old p4. Used to be the day the fsb was the same as the dram clock. sigh.

 

we all saw this one coming a mile off... just the same as the DVD-/+ wars of old... although my mony's on HD-DVD this time 'round, if only because of a certain company's track record of proprietry formats... mini-disc, umd, memory stick... all still used with little market dominance, the PS3 will always be the saviour and bastian of BR.

 

I have always said I will not buy a high def movie spinning machine until prices drop to a less stratospheric level, inevitable early bugs are ironed out, and a player hits the market that:
(a) supports both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD (or one format or the other is dead);
(b) plays DVDs, DVDA, CD and SACD; and
(c) outputs full 1080p content over digital interconnects without content protection (I firmly believe 2nd gen high def players will support stripping of HDCP via some kind of hack, much as DVD players have been multi-region hackable since early on).

Most importantly of all, however, I'm awaiting a decent library of content that actually takes advantage of some of the new features. I've heard that some discs are being encoded in MPEG-2 rather than VC-1 / H.264, while others, worse still, are simply upsampled from the DVD source rather than redigitised from film. Why would they do this? Surely they want to impress early adopters with the best content possible.

 

NEC will be sued..... by sony.

 

On what grounds?