John, while of course that's an excellent argument...how many kinds of DVD can you purchase now?
I'd argue (regardless of my personal position) that consumers can't manage the difference between two formats when given the choice, given that one can't see the differences between BD and HD DVD (actually, you can, but that's related to the decoders, not the disc itself).

Hi Douglas,

I think you're right that most consumers can handle choice: Coke or Pepsi, Bud or Coors, Ford or Chevy. But note that by the time CD and DVD burners went truly mainstream, universal drives had hit the market.

In fact, just today a friend who works in printer technology and marketing asked me about DVD-RWs. He had no idea about the DVD types. He thought the "-" was just a dash.

The other problem is journalists. They love conflict. And they play dumb. (Okay, not all are playing.) So, they say there this format "war", and it's confusing and it's like Betamax, and you could make the wrong choice! It's hard to build a mass market with press like that.

So, maybe there will be a winner. And maybe universal players will emerge as the norm. Or movies on universal disc will solve it all. But it will be dead simple before HD players reach an 80% adoption rate.

But we've got a while before that happens.

In the meantime, it will be fun to watch it all play out. (And it will be nice when HD disc playing - and burning - becomes more affordable.)

Wired News is reporting that a hacker may have cracked the DRM encryption on HD-DVD disks:

http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2007/0...w_hddvdbl.html

Will the HD-DVD consortium add new encryption which makes old disks unusable in next-generation players ... give up on DRM ... or just abandon the format if content providers pull the plug on it?

A month ago it was not only cracked, but an HD-DVD movie appeared online for download...

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=84249

Blu-Ray is about to be fully cracked as we speak and I was browsing through that forum yesterday and they want Blu-Ray to be cracked so badly because some of them fear that this may give an advantage to Blu-Ray. As I said in other forums, Sony knew that AACS was going to be compromised so they developed other protection schemes to be used in the future and I wouldn’t be surprised if they use it this year.

I Find it very ironic that they claim its for fair use but when movies becomes available for file sharing, you can clearly see what the motives are.

Sharp Blu-Ray recorder
 

http://sharp-world.com/corporate/news/070214_2.html

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-ente...scs-236589.php
http://crunchgear.com/2007/02/14/sha...-over-the-top/
http://www.t3.co.uk/news/247/enterta...another_player

If a Blu-Ray recorder is not your cup of tea, then you can always pick up the Sharp 1TB hard drive recorder.
http://sharp-world.com/corporate/news/070214_1.html

http://www.engadgethd.com/2007/02/14...-and-counting/

Anyway, I think JVC will probably release a Blu-Ray recorder with a hard drive very soon.

The previous crack was the per disc crack. The new crack is for any disc (process) and also applies to Blu-Ray as it is the same key (was in the Doom9 thread this morning). The Doom9 thread, while technical, is an entertaining read. New keys can be issued later, but the method now yields the key. Years in development, millions in cost, cracked in months. CSS was known to be vulnerable when created. But then again, Hollywood still thinks you just type faster to crack 1024-bit keys in 30 seconds. ;) None of the cracks were breaking the key or even HDMI. It was all about watching the process accessing the data and finding the key. If it is digital, it can be probed.

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=121866&page=6

PS - Mike Brown, I suggest you edit your post and remove the key. I just want to make sure the morons do not do a web search and finger Chris for having it on this site.

OK ... added some ellipses. They'll have to follow the link to get the full key.

Currently, I am supporting HD DVD (XBOX Player). I have been stunned with the quality and have no issues at all with it. The movie selection currently and in the coming year is much more suited to my tastes (Matrix, Lord of the Rings, Clerks 2, V For Vendetta, Harry Potter, etc...).

The surge was defiantly due to the PS3, but that may level off. Also, with Apple on the brink of releasing HD Downloads, I will partake in that as well, and then combine the HD DVD studio's with Apple's, and you have everything but Sony and Fox currently.

Even if Blu-Ray "wins," it won't be for a while. And then, what does it matter. All of my HD DVD movies will still play fine on my player, and I will just keep stock of them. Not really a big loss.

10X Blu-Ray write speed.
http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News...x?NewsId=19792

Sony is releasing a more affordable standalone Blu-Ray player called the BDP-S300 for 600 bucks. It’s going to be a lot slimmer than Sony’s previous standalone player, the BDP-S1. Expect to see it in stores this summer.

Still, you can get a 20 gig PS3 for 500 dollars and a 60 gig PS3 with WiFi and memory card slots for 600 dollars and both of them include 1.3 complaint HDMI ports.

At least the slim design of the BDP-S300 should hopefully attract buyers.
http://news.digitaltrends.com/article12357.html




Toshiba is releasing the Qosmio G30-AV6, a multimedia notebook that burns HD-DVDs.
http://marketnews.ca/news_detail.asp?nid=2575
Price $2,999

SRDVD-100U ProHD DVD Player?
 

So what's the running opinion on the JVC SRDVD-100U ProHD DVD Player? Does it stack up against some of these new players? I'm not looking for a home theater unit as much as I am just a box to archive and watch the raw .m2t streams from the camera on. However, being able to play BluRay or HDDVD would be a nice bonus - though (for me) not for 2x the price. The SRDVD-100U ProHD DVD Player is $379 from B&H...

How about this news?
http://www.dailytech.com/Bluray+Tota...rticle6257.htm
Bluray is selling more than HDdvd since the launch of the PS3...

Re JVC SRDVD-100U ProHD instead of Blu Ray
 

Jeff, based on the my HDV file sizes from my Sony HDR-HC1 (1080x1440 60i), I estimate that you could only get 23 minutes of this material on a DVD single layer or 46 min on double layer. This is at the 25mbps rate of such cameras, or CineformAspectHD/PremierePro2 edited output. If thats OK with you, fine. Most of my projects are longer than that. The JVC is $379 now at B&H but a Sony BluRay burner for your editing computer, model BWU-100a is down to $699 now. Of course, then you need the newly announced Sony BDP-S300 player ($699) for your TV...so it adds up....but you paid plenty for your camera too.

Actually, its 599 not 699 for BDP-S300.

Disk Makers ReflexBlu Blu-Ray Tower Duplicators
 

http://www.i4u.com/article8123.html
http://www.emedialive.com/Articles/R...rticleID=12465

2 discs http://www.discmakers.com/shop/ItemD...D=DUP010-10058
4 discs http://www.discmakers.com/shop/ItemD...D=DUP010-10059

Hitachi-LG Blu-Ray/HD-DVD combo Drive for PC
 

Jon- It IS just a dash. Dash and plus are the 2 dvd formats. N'est ce pas?

I would have wanted it if it also played back SVHS PAL and DVCPRO tapes

The Toshiba HD-A2 HD DVD player is now selling for $299, with 5 free movies by mail.

This is a darn good deal...and pretty much the magic price point for a lot of people.

As a side note, making a HD DVD with footage from my Canon HV20, authoring it and burning it on a regular DVD-R is a nice little trick--and one of the main reasons I got my Toshiba back in January.

I can't believe we are at a point where we can shoot in HD and then make a HD disc that plays on our HDTV.

It's a brave new world...

Not bad: http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-HD-A2-...5917051&sr=8-1

It will be interesting to see if this stems the shift toward Blu-ray with the introduction of the PS3.

What are the options right now for burning/authoring an hd dvd? We edit on PPRo with Cineform Aspect HD. Since we do weddings, etc. our final product is at least an hour.
I shoot with a Canon H1, sony FX1 and Canon HV10.
Thanks
Bruce yarock
www.yarock.com

The latest version of Adobe Encore reportedly supports Blu-ray authoring, and you can buy a Blu-ray burner for $599 or so. Render your finished timeline to HDV 1080i at 25 Mbps and you should be able to fit about two hours on a single-layer Blu-ray disc costing ~$10-15 each. I'm not sure what the best options are for authoring a Toshiba HD-DVD, but some people are rendering to H.264 and burning to standard red-laser DVDs (which gives you HD playback but no menus).

On the Macintosh side, the only option of making HD DVDs, as of right now, is DVD Studio Pro 4.1.2. The workflow is exactly like making a standard DVD--you can still make menus, chapters, multiple audio tracks etc.

However, there is no ability to take a take advantage of the sophisticated menus features in the new format[picture in picture type of stuff, menus popping up and overlaying the movie etc.].

The real rub with HD DVD is that there are no burners or media currently available that I see.

You can fit 30 minutes of HD on a single layer DVD-R. With a dual layer DVD-R, one can fit an hour of HD. [Never tried dual layer]

It's a good cheap option till true burners become available.

On the horizon, there is rumblings of even cheaper HD DVD players from China...might be the ticket to share family videos.

And of course, you have to put the discs in the new generation format cases to complete the package:

http://www.gadgetizer.com/2006/03/17...from-seastone/

http://www.seastonemedia.com/

Blu-Ray is blue---HD DVD is red.

Toshiba been offering 5 free DVDs for a while now and the reason for the HD-A2 being that cheep is because it isn’t 1080p. Amazon is selling it for around 307 to get rid of them because their probably hard to sell. The player that’s replacing it, the HD-A20 has 480p but the Amazon price is 460. For 40 dollars more you get a 20 gig PS3 that’s not only a 1080p Blu-Ray player but also a game system.

What is the visual difference between 1080p and 1080i?

You quoted me before I got to fix my mistake. I meant 1080p not 480p.

If there wasn’t a difference then Toshiba shouldn’t be making 1080p HD DVD players.
Anyway, the biggest difference is when you’re watching a Hollywood movie shot on film because of the 24 frames per second.

Samsung announces hybrid player
 

Samsung BD-P1200 review