Microsoft Announces External HD-DVD Drive for 360

[Razor Ramon]

I didn't mean to write all of that. Don't read all of it.

I love this line.

[stormy]

i disagree with the people who say we don't need a new movie format yet. We most certainly do need a new movie format. The weakness of DVD is apparent to anyone with a high def screen. You can cry that not many people have them yet but it's catching on fast. Every Best Buy/CC/Fry's is loaded with HD screens, while the SDs sit lonely in the back corner. They need to start the market penetration now so that in 3-4 years there will be a nice movie catalog available, prices will have leveled, and i won't have to stare at my shitty dvds on a nice HD set. This is not like audio at all. Standard consumer level equipment cannot reflect the difference in cd/sacd/dvda/mp3. Anyone (which will be everyone) with an HDTV will be able to tell 480P from 1080P.

[Joust Williams]

Just as an interesting segway, Master made me aware of this a few days ago:

"News of the video bizarre: According to a just-released survey by Scientific-Atlanta, millions of people who have HDTV sets apparently think they are watching high definition television, but aren’t. The survey was spurred by an earlier Forrester Research projection that by the end of the year some 16 million U.S. households will have HDTV sets, but only seven million wll have HDTV reception. The Scientific Atlanta survey found that, yes, some 49 percent of households were not taking advantage of their HD equipment. About a quarter found that their HD set itself provided better reception, without taking the additional steps necessary to view HD. Eighteen percent said they didn’t even know needed additional equipment, such as a set-top box or antenna. A quarter admitted they thought they were watching HD video because, after all, the programs said at the beginning that they were broadcast in HDTV."

Having said (quoted) that, I know that I can tell. It's just kind of funny, is all

[Son of Bryce]

Consumer whores.

[TobalRox]

The hell? I don't know about any deathblow you were expecting, but in what way is HDDVD now looking more impressive? Seriously, there is still absolutely zero advantage of HDDVD over Blu-Ray, as far as I know, and Blu-Ray not only has far more support, but is technologically superior.


I have no idea where you're getting this.

Are you basically saying that HDDVD looks more impressive because it will have a better selection of launch titles? Because despite the incredible subjectivity of that by itself, is there any real, actual point that HDDVD has over Blu-Ray? I genuinely would like to know, if there is.

As mentioned, the benefit is that HD-DVD uses current pressing plants, so there is no need to spend all this money building new ones. Sure, they need to be upgraded, but that's a much cheaper price to pay. Not that it's much of a reason, Blu-Ray is still WAY better, but I'm just saying that's why there has been such a fight over which format.

Didn't impress anyone in the home theater community. HD-DVD made Blu-ray look stupid because everything was all packaged up with a bow for the Blu-ray group, and they didn't take it today, so now it's back to confusion.

It's entirely possible that the PS3 could make every person in the world adopt Blu-ray DVD and this is moot. My opinion, though, is that neither of these techs will ever reach the level of regular DVD. We'll see if I'm right ca. 2012.

It'll reach the level, since DVD is not HD, and if you have an HDTV, you notice a difference.

Also, movies being upconverted I'm not too sure about, since so many movies have already been remastered in High Definition.

It doesn't matter. DVD is going nowhere for the forseeable future, it only became the market leader 4 years ago. You name me a media format that was dethroned in less than 10 years after coming to power, I'll give you a cookie.

Best case scenario, one sticks around like CDs did against cassettes, slowly gaining ground on the prevailing format over 4 or 5 years, then takes over when it finally has a majority share. It certainly won't be a quick transition.

Hate to tell you, but the world is changing at a much faster pace right now. Look at how often people upgrade computers now... heck, look at how much sooner the "next generation" of consoles came out. Sure, that's not the same as a format people use casually, but the point is that things change at a faster pace than ever before, and therefore formats cannot last as long anymore because people will demand something better.

[marwan]

I've never heard of HD-VHS. Maybe you're thinking of S-VHS (S-Video), or what was originally called Super-VHS?

no i'm refering to High Definition movies on VHS, it was a very limited release, only few movies were released on it.

here are a few links...

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/reviewsdvhs/u571dvhs.html

http://www.dvhsmovie.com/hardware/hardware.asp

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/review...dvhsnotes.html

[Bacon McShig]

Hate to tell you, but the world is changing at a much faster pace right now. Look at how often people upgrade computers now...

Not very often. GAMERS upgrade their PCs a lot, but don't you dare think that they're anywhere near the number of casual users.

heck, look at how much sooner the "next generation" of consoles came out.

Er, 5 years is about the norm. It just seemed faster because one of the last companies to get in on the last gen was the first to enter the new one.

Sure, that's not the same as a format people use casually, but the point is that things change at a faster pace than ever before, and therefore formats cannot last as long anymore because people will demand something better.

I guarantee you if you ask people if they want a new format over DVD most will give you an emphatic "no" or "not so soon". There's only a very small cadre of very particular people demanding anything, the only way a new format will see a speedy transition is if it's a) priced the same and b) DVD is actively phased out. I'm not saying it won't be successful, as there will be a lot of PS3 owners to help it along... but it will still likely be pretty drawn out.

[mollipen]

Games don't need more than 9 GB's of disc space so it's not like they're responding to a gaming demand, it's like the DVD remote kit for the original Xbox.

A lot of game developers seem to disagree with you. Everything I've heard has had game developers complaining that regular DVD isn't enough for what they are wanted to do, because you have to now take into account things like high-res textures to make use of these new high-res abilities.

Even though PS2 is a shitty DVD player

I keep hearing people say this, yet they can never tell me what it means. I use my PS2 as my main DVD player, and so far I've seen nothing "shitty" about it. Is it a high-class DVD player? No. Can it do progressive scan upscaling or whatever the hell it's called? No. But otherwise, what makes it shitty exactly?

[gamevet]

no i'm refering to High Definition movies on VHS, it was a very limited release, only few movies were released on it.

here are a few links...

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/reviewsdvhs/u571dvhs.html

http://www.dvhsmovie.com/hardware/hardware.asp

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/review...dvhsnotes.html

That's the dumbest idea I've ever seen. The only reason anyone would buy something like that, was to record HD programming, but they have DVD players that do that now.

[TobalRox]

Not very often. GAMERS upgrade their PCs a lot, but don't you dare think that they're anywhere near the number of casual users.

Er, 5 years is about the norm. It just seemed faster because one of the last companies to get in on the last gen was the first to enter the new one.

I guarantee you if you ask people if they want a new format over DVD most will give you an emphatic "no" or "not so soon". There's only a very small cadre of very particular people demanding anything, the only way a new format will see a speedy transition is if it's a) priced the same and b) DVD is actively phased out. I'm not saying it won't be successful, as there will be a lot of PS3 owners to help it along... but it will still likely be pretty drawn out.

I know plenty of people that play ZERO games on their PC (ok, maybe solitaire and snood), yet they are buying computers every few years because things just start running slow with advances in the internet, MP3, digital cameras, etc. My mom is on her 4th or 5th PC in a little over 10 years. She checks Hotmail and uses quicken. Now she can watch DVDs and she loves it.

People will say "no" now because they don't have HDTVs... if they had them, they'd want it. Well, except for the people that buy it just to say they have it.