News Sony debuts Blu-Ray player #2

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/02/28/sony_debuts_blu-ray_player_2/

 

you can buy BD films now ?

Anyway - seriously, why would you get this and not a PS3 - same functionality plus the PS3 has gaming capability
IMO their crazy anyway, who wants a $600 BD player (which still cant decode the dolbytruehd codec)

lmao that's quite some marketing spin there

 

Still won't bite until I can get a region-free hybrid HD-DVD/Blu-Ray/upscaling DVD player outputting all three in 1080p (free from HDCP crap), with full support for all mandatory and optional lossless and lossy surround sound formats. When all that is available in a decent quality device costing under £300, I'm there. That said, by then I may very well have an HTPC, and will (hopefully) be able to just drop in a hybrid HD-DVD / Blu-Ray drive (or one of each, if necessary and if affordable) and do all of the above. Still has to be region-free, however.

 

Perhaps because a standalone player will almost certainly offer better sound and picture quality, will be quieter and less power-hungry than a PS3, and will come as standard with a proper remote control, rather than having to use a game pad / buy a separate remote.

That's like asking why anyone would buy a £150 DVD player when they could just buy a PS2 or an XBox. If you don't need or want the games functionality, you're better off getting a device designed purely for movies.

That said, at this early stage, Blu-Ray players are absurdly overpriced, so a PS3 might just be the best value option you can get. When the tech gets cheaper and the Chinese knock-off manufaturers move in, the price/quality ratio of Blu-Ray players will improve by close to an order of magnitude, whereas the PS3 will likely not get vastly cheaper for quite a while.

 

Hybrid all the way baby, yeah...

 

^^^ yep, what you guys have just said. Not bothering until I can throw away my current region free upscaling DVD player.

 

I will not buy a High def player until I can pick one up for under $100. In the meantime, I may get a PS3 (also once the price comes down)
$600 for the player, pfft, its just going to end up like my uncles DVD player, unused since it won't play practically any DVD as it was the first ever made and doesn't support any of the new AACS or whatever is on DVDs. It doesn't work properly anyway, and its huge!!

 

The problem with LG's hybrid player (the snazzily named "BH100 Super Multi Blue Player") is that its HD DVD playback is cobbled. You can't play the discs own interactive menus, instead you have to rely on the player's own menu system.
Lame, and not the panacea that everyone thinks it is.

Even Warner's own "TotalHD" discs (which are now not due to apear until H2 07) are just flipper discs - which to me is just a throwback to the early days of DVD before dual layer discs were common.

 

Yeah, I heard that. But it is the first hybrid player announced. Give it a few months, and there will be many more, and these early problems will be history.

True, though AFAIK you have the full movie on each side, in different formats, so you don't actually have to flip the disc part way through (I borrowed my mate's early print of 'Goodfellas' on DVD the other day. It's a double sided single layer job - really begrudged getting off the sofa to flip it over!!) The TotalHD discs, as I understand it, are more analogous to the early DVDs which had widescreen on one side and pan/scan on the other, before proper anamorphic presentation became commonplace. Who watches pan/scan anyway?! So you have content on both sides, and no picture on the disc (just identifying writing on the centre dead zone), but you only have to play one side to watch the whole movie.

 

Expect to wait a minimum of five years then. It's only relatively recently that super-cheap DVD players have become commonplace. Add to that the fact that the perceptible consumer benefits of the VHS->DVD leap (smaller physical format, no need to rewind, no moving parts on media, random access, extra features (e.g. multiple branching for different cuts), subs, soundtracks, never wears out with repeated plays, not sensitive to magnetism) are far more significant than the incremental picture and sound quality benefits of HD over DVD, which will only be of benefit to those who already have invested heavily in HD displays and surround sound. We're talking reasonably high spend consumers, who will not flinch at a few hundred for a new disc spinner. $100 is really bargain basement territory, and it will take a long time for HD to filter down to that level.

 

Um, I bought my first stand alone DVD player for $99 five years ago. It wasn't the best out there but it still had pretty damn good picture and sound quality and became region free and marcrovision disabled within minutes of being out of the box. We'll have decent priced HD players out sometime next year.

 

I think I am going to wait until I can get a reasonably priced Blue Ray drive and HDDVD drive into my media server, rip it and just serve it from there to my TV, if I buy one player over another I am only going to regret it and the Hybrid does not seem to be the killer device I thought it was from the earlier comments.

 

A little bit better news if you want a bare drive for under $100. Current recorders are about £500. The first DVD-RW was about that price when they debuted in 1999-2000. In 2003, I got a DVD writer for well under £100.

 

Five years ago is 2002. DVD came out in around 1997, so the format was five years old by then. Blu-Ray / HD-DVD are pretty new now, so I'd say five years is a reasonable estimate, especially when you factor in the fact that the 'convenience' benefits of DVD that drove the mass market demand and the enormous economies of scale that made low price devices economically viable, will not apply to the HD formats. As I said, unless someone has shelled out a fair amount on a reasonably high end LCD/plasma/projector and surround system (which may be becoming more common, but are still by no means mass market), they will see no benefit of HD over DVD.

Depending on your definition of 'decent priced', you may be right. I expect prices to fall considerably in the next 12-18 months, but nowhere near the $100 level. I will eat my hat if you can get a hybrid drive for under $100 by the end of 2008.

 

Just been promted that it will be the actual player/burner that I will wait for, my PC is my "entertainment center" and will be building an HTPC, I have never owned a standalone DVD player, and I doubt I will own a standalone BD/HD DVD player.
Right now I am perfectly ahppy with 1.4-2.1GB rips of DVDs.

 

Prices of consumer electronics have a tendency to fall much faster now then they did five to ten years ago. Look at just how fast dvd burners dropped in price compared to cd burners. The big price hitch in BLU-ray players right now is the hard-to-maintain-a-good-yeild-quantity led. Manufacturing processes are ramping up and so is the yeild quantity. Add to the fact that alot of components being used in both BLU-ray and HD-DVD players are already in use in other electronics and you can see that there will be a great decline in the price of the players. You're not going to see top brand players on the cheap for the next few years but I'm pretty damn sure you're going to see a $100 APEX player for around that by the end of 2008.

My starting point in my last post was that you said it wasn't until "relatively recently" whereas I really don't consider 5 years ago recently. I actually think I got my DVD player before then but I don't know the exact year. I know I was still in high school and I haven't been there for 6 years or so.

 

Will they be full featured hybrid players with proper 1080p output and DVD upscaling? I very much doubt it. The licensing of Blu-ray and HD-DVD patents alone will probably eat up a lot of that, before you even factor in the cost of components. Maybe you'll get cut down single format players by then, but I doubt the quality will be up to much - probably better off with a similarly priced DVD player.

Fair enough. I should have been more clear and, in fact, I wasn't aware it was quite so long since cheapo players hit (how time flies, eh?) Nevertheless, the format was still considerably more mature by then than Blu-ray / HD-DVD will be by end 2008.

Another factor that will scupper rapid mass market uptake is the confusion over formats. I think once hybrid players become available, it will be somewhat moot, but Joe Average who wants something he knows will work with all high def discs (as well as his existing DVDs) might put off his purchasing decision. If / when one of the two HD formats kills the other, mass market adoption will probably speed up.

I'd still say end 2008 is ambitious for mass market el Cheapo full featured hybrid consumer players.

 

I never said that we'd see cheap hybrids by then. I really don't know where that implication came from as I thought all of my statements were geared towards either/or and not both.

Unlike when DVDs first came out though, you're not seeing a major change in formats or components which will lead to the prices dropping quite abit faster then before. Factor in that digital distribution is really taking off now and you'll see an even faster decline in price points to try and hit the saturation point of the market place. Both formats may just completely bottom out when "disc streaming" hits mainstream (IE. an entire "dvds" contents are streamed including extra features, subtitles, alternate languages and audion options... it's here already just not very prominent yet) as I think that's one of the reasons that alot of people still hold onto their own copies. I know that if I could get special features and subtitles instead of having to use closed captioning, then my physical disc purchasing would decrease dramatically to dammn near none at all.

 

Ah, maybe we're somewhat at crossed purposes. I was still on the hybrid track based on the preceding posts in this thread. Nevertheless, I'll still be surprised if single format players at under $100 are here by end 2008.

I take your points, but there just isn't the improvement over DVD required to make everyone rush out and buy this, regardless of the price point. DVD's success hinged on its appeal to everyone, from techie early adopter twenty-somethings to grandma and grandpa, from school mums to busy professionals. Only a small amount of that was down to picture and sound superiority over VHS (though many consumers might THINK that was the main driver) - it was ease of use, pure and simple. People were sold on the handy features, the fact they don't have to rewind before taking it back to Blockbuster etc. HD simply doesn't offer enough in terms of lifestyle benefit over DVD to drive mass adoption on the unprecedented scale of DVD, especially when you look at the still relatively low penetration of HD ready TV sets.

 

You'd be surprised at the penetration levels of HDTVs and HD Ready TVs (I seriously hate HD Ready sets with a passion). With the massive drops in prices and 1080p sets already at the $1500 for some 42" and larger sets, the market is really starting to pick up on them. With this of course, has been an influx in purchases of HD broadcasting systems and upscaling DVD players. I think the big player in HD-DVD and BLU-ray purchasing is the amount of movies available for it. Sales will really start to roll when there's actually a fairly good amount of movies available for each format (I'm talking in the high hundreds/early thousands). Back when DVD first appeared on the market, I know of a bunch of people that put off buying into it not because of the price point but because of the small selection of movies that were offered. More and more movies now, though, are being offered in both of the HD formats so we'll see the sales starting to increase at a faster rate then previously.

Back to the HDTV thing. The biggest complaint that I've fielded so far when it comes to purchases of HDTV sets is the relatively small amount of HD content available. What the general consumer doesn't realize is that buying a HDTV will not make your standard or plain digital cable look any better. Hell, most of the time it actually looks worse then if it was on a SDTV if you don't have decent equipment (the local lable here looks like ass unless you have a half decent upscaler in your home theater [most people who buy a 1080p set should buy a decent upscaler because at a native 1080p display, 1080i signals {the most common 1080 signal} will actually end up being a 540p signal....blah]). God, that was too many brackets. The local cable boxes are also pretty crappy and have a tendency to reset their damn settings so I end up going out to the same houses at least once a month to reset a couple of setting on the cable box so that the picture doesn't end up squashed or stretched but displayed how it should.