Today @ PC World LG to Launch Dual-format Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD Player — This could be the breakthrough the consumer has been waiting for.
The company has just announced it will be launching the first dual-format high-definition disc player at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week. The LG press release issued in Korea early Thursday morning is short on details–the player will launch in “early 2007”, but beyond that, we have no information on pricing–but thats of little consequence for now. I imagine the details will become clear by Sunday, when LG holds its press conference at CES.
LG stated it was considering a dual-format player at the CeBIT show last March, but the company has been quiet about its progress until now. The company is the first to formally announce a dual-format player; prior to this, Ricoh and NEC had both announced they had developed components that could read both Blu-ray and HD DVD media, but neither had announced actual products. Samsung had also made rumblings about coming out with a dual-format player, but the company backtracked on those reports early last year.
SCREW it, you are ALL wasted…TI already made a chip to do ALL the DVD/HD/BR formats…
Way behind..
[ed note: are you high? we are talking about a drive not chips!]
Well, if we’re making predictions: I’d like to predict that one day Apple will go out of business. I’d also like to go ahead and predict that one day the United States of America will collapse. Oh, and one day the Earth will come to an end. And I want to predict that one day the sun will burn out. And for my last prediction: one day the entire universe will collapse on itself again and start all over.
It’s not God who did it, though. It was the second probable deity.
And as far as the HD/Blu-Ray, I thought the real issue wasn’t tech, but the licensing agreement you had to sign in order to build the player. I once read that each camp had carefully worded the agreement so that you couldn’t LEGALLY build a dual-format player and sell it (at least in the U.S.) I could care less if you can do it technically. I want to know if the players will actually get off the boat in Long Beach harbor before a judge seizes all of them.
It’s about time. Thus, the battle has ended. Buy one unit and all your problems are solved.
Tech is a big part of the issue, on both sides of the coin. At the player level, you need different optics for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD due to their construction. At the manufacturing level, the tolerances for Blu-Ray are such that a manufacturer must install new manufacturing equipment. HD-DVD is based upon an improvement of current DVD tech so a foundry only has to upgrade their machines to produce HD-DVD disks.
However, this issue is becoming moot as removable storage will become a niche application. Huge hard drives and broadband delivery will dominate the video playing field. For example, instead of time-shifting using a DVR, many people now suscribe to their favorite show and watch it on their iPod during their commute, lunch, or other downtime.
3 “I thought the real issue wasn’t tech, but the licensing agreement you had to sign in order to build the player.”
I agree, I’ve heard the same thing. I wonder if anyone will actually be allowed to sell them in the US. My guess is that both camps are so desperate not to turn into this generation’s DVD-A and SACD that they’ll be willing to allow this to happen.
It makes sense for Sony to sell a Blu-Ray player with an included HD-DVD player versus selling no player at all.
For the difference of visual, I can’t justify the price? I will be a late adopter for sure!
8. “For the difference of visual, I can’t justify the price?”
I agree. CDs and DVDs took off when the prices came way down. Heck, considering you can get a DVD player for about 20 bucks, there is no excuse not to have one if you want one.
If the MPAA and the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD camps really want to dump DVDs, they have to drastically reduce the prices of the players. You should be able to buy a low-end Blu-Ray/HD-DVD combo player for 120 bucks. Low-end individual players should cost about $70.
This could be the breakthrough the consumer has been waiting for.
See that guy over there, over to the left… that 45 year old guy wearing the baseball cap backwards… that’s the consumer that has been waiting for this.
The rest of the crowd couldn’t care less. Blue Ray? Are those some kind of sunglasses?
I just wanted to point out that Warner Bros is about to release a format containing both the Blu-Ray and the HD-DVD content on one disc.
11,
It would have to be double-sided, as the two technologies can’t be layered. Having said that, if they somehow manage to pull that off I’ll stand corrected (but I doubt that very much).
As far as I know it is double-sided.
Someone was working on a triple layer version though (DVD/Blu/HD).
Having just seen some really nice 1080 content on a 52″ screen.. I have to say that if I had $3000+ to blow on a TV… then I probably would. However it really isn’t enough to make me spend that much on one.
When the price is below $500, then probably.
Awesome! I’ll wait it out a while and wait till the Hollywood collective push the “red button” and enforce image constraint onto the masses for not using HDMI. That’s when the fun begins.
The LG press release is a blessing and a curse at the same time… at least this gets consumers more receptive into buying technology that will limit their freedoms of how they can view HD content
We are one step closer to having the masses buy into the modern day trojan horse. Most people don’t know what HDCP or image constraint is nor do they really know why HDMI is “better” than DVI. In case you don’t know, it’s because it’s got integrated audio…. nothing is mentioned about HDMI’s video capabilities over DVI last time I checked.
Now that Hollywood studios have sidestepped consumers’ fair use rights with the DMCA, I wonder how long it will be after heavy enforcement of anti-copy protection measures by means of DRM via HDCP and image constraint for people to archive their originals will yield high profits for the movie studios. Hollywood wants to sell you 50 versions of the same movie. I’m not just talking PPV / VOD, DVD, HD-DVD, Blu-Ray… I’m talking the basic edition, special edition, director’s edition, uber extra edition…. and you wonder why Hollywood complains about “lagging” sales… could it be they’ve conditioned the masses like Pavalov’s dog to wait for the “final” edition? When will it be clear most people don’t buy more than one copy of movie?
After all, you don’t legally own a movie you purchase…. because you purchase the right to view it, not own it.
Which brings up another inside joke that merchants have but Hollywod turns a blind eye to…. why do merchants advertise with phrases like “own it today” when that’s obviously not the case? Truth in advertising would be “own the right to watch it today”…. not “own it today” when it’s legally clear you do not actually own the movie that’s on the disc you’re buying. But most people don’t know this.
Whatever the case, I see in the future that not only is it currently illegal to break copy protection to archive your originals but converting it to other formats as well since this will be in direct conflict with Hollywood’s “50 editions” plan. It’s not the archiving that makes you a “hard criminal”, it’s the cracking of the protection. I think Bill Gates even went so far as to state in Congress that pirating movies fuels terrorism. Afterall, everyone who archives must be a pirate. Right?
Something is wrong in society when a pedophile can do less time in jail than someone who copies movies. Just my 2 cents, but I think it should be the other way around.
I hope when the masses finally realize that they’ve bought into an infrastructure to have Big Brother dictate what they can do in their Living Rooms that people vote with their wallets and just stop buying into this stuff.
Sorry about the ranting, but this is the first time I’ve seen so much hype for a new techonlogy that restricts consumers so much and sadly most people won’t know until after they’ve invested lots of money.
Two interesting things may come of all this. If HDCP isn’t embraced by consumers (and why would they?) then I wonder how things pan out for MS Windows Vista. Also, China of all places may be the hero in that a black market of consumer friendly devices may emerge when the masses rebel. Leave it to a country that has a history of not respecting copyrights and intellectual property rights to possibly produce what consumers want.
Flame on!
Just an addendum to my little rant, I meant to say Bill Gates was talking about pirating software, not movies. But the argument is the same.
18. “This current generation just doesn’t give a damn about anything…”
People tend to get what they deserve.
19. “People tend to get what they deserve.”
That goes both ways. Maybe after Hollywood bites enough of the hands that feed it, then people will stop “feeding” them.
18. You have to wonder what the REAL motivation behind switching to digital was. Was it truly to push the HD “revolution” (even though the same could be accomplished with Analog but with more overhead), or was it because digital makes copy protection easier to implement, easier to change, and harder to crack?
Switching to digital benefits them more than it does us. Digital makes it oh so easy. Too bad they’re trying to plug the analog hole through Congress. And who do you believe pays for all this extra hardware and infrastructure? Them? Nah, that’s part of the total package. We all do when we buy one of their products.
It’s funny when you think about it. They’re profiting on the additional hardware they insist must be present by having us pay for their infrastructure. And to add salt to the wound, Sony from what I hear doesn’t even bundle a HDMI cable with their PS3s… that’s extra!
#5 However, this issue is becoming moot as removable storage will become a niche application. Huge hard drives and broadband delivery will dominate the video playing field. For example, instead of time-shifting using a DVR, many people now suscribe to their favorite show and watch it on their iPod during their commute, lunch, or other downtime.
Comment by Smartalix — 1/4/2007 @ 5:14 am
I used to love the future… But that’s a horrible future. iPods suck, period. Any screen you can carry in your pocket is unworthy of a Scorsese picture. And this whole subscribing BS is just a way to kill ownership. I want a library. Not a transient, fleeting form of entertainment. I want an archive.
Yes… I do still watch Elia Kazan movies. Yes… I will put on Lawrence of Arabia. Great movies deserve to be permanant, and they deserve a quality presentation without compression.
The day they shipped the first VCR, they starting killing what made movies great. Better tech can make for better gaming, better medicine, better accounting, better cars, better everything…. except movies and music… Art has been severely damaged by technology that removes the “event” quality and makes media into a disposable commodity where quality takes a back seat to so called convenience.
21,
Mores change. Once upon a time when TV was first developed, even though the image sucked people turned Vaudville off and TV on so fast you’d have thought both were electronic, Initial adopters in every field put up with a certain level of functionality in pioneering devices. You’d be surprised at what you can get in portable video gear.
This example also addresses your comments on rejecting such technology. I recently had the chance to play with the myvue video visor. Everyone I showed the device to loved it. It currently displays an NTSC-resolution 4:3-ratio image, but it’s very easy on the eye and the sound is great. I bought the entire first season of Battlestar Galactica on iTunes and watched it on the subway.
The next generation (or at worst the one after that) will be HDTV.
OFTLO- I expect you’ll be going into a cave soon, growing a crazy beard and writing The Luddite Manifesto. Soon you will be mailing suspicious packages to college professors and Technology Journalists.
I’d like to be your sidekick.
#21 & 22. we are probably going in the direction of downloadable video, including HD content, but bandwith contraints are going to limit that for some time. and I doubt if it will actually replace physical media, just as PPV has not replaced Blockbuster, Netflix, etc.
plus, given the onerous DRM that the MPAA insists on, I want my physical media! I can play my disk on my home TV, on my PC, on a portable DVD player. if my DVD player breaks, or if I want to upgrade, I can buy a new one and play all my existing media on it – no “authorization” needed.
I can loan it to whomever I want, as many times as I want, and they can loan me theirs. I can check them out from the library.
and so on.
in other words, the MPAA’s ability to restrict my use is very, very, limited so long as I have that shiny plastic disk. anyone wanna bet that the MPAA is going to allow all that with downloadable movies any time soon?
more likely i the short- to medium-term downloadable is going to supplement movie rentals. Blockbuster and NetFlix rent you a set-top box – or its an add-on to your DVR – that you hook to your broadband, which trickles every movie in your que (heavily encrypted) to you through a BitTorrent type setup. you have 3 active at one time and you activate another when you deactivate one of the ones you watched already. somebody crunches the numbers and the renters will do it when they figure they save on inventory and postage, more than they pay in bandwith.
#23 – You’re in… Get a cape and meet me in the parking lot of the Sip-N-Save. I’ll be waiting in the Ludditemobile… (a 1992 Dodge Durango)
This is the crux of what irratates me. Because the technology of music and film makes prices so low and distribution so easy and bootlegging even easier… The percieved value of a Martin Scorsese film is now roughly the same as a box of Pop Tarts… Studios, producers, TV Networks, realizing the the audiene will be just as entertained by Deal or No Deal as they would be by The West Wing, have no incentive to create content that rises to the top… prefering instead to pander with cheap, stupid crap…
I’m not suggesting that until recently, all entertainment was masterpiece theater… It wasn’t. There has always been crap. But there has always been a balance. It always used to seem that even failures started out trying to be great. Now, they just churn out the most effortless crap they can imagine and can it art.