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65.12.43.2
In Reply to: RE: I've had it. posted by Dalton on May 29, 2007 at 19:06:03
Blu-ray is not a Sony proprietary format. Though it's supported by >180 companies, here are the companies responsible for the Blu-ray format development:
Follow Ups:
> > > Blu-ray is not a Sony proprietary format. < < <
For all practical purposes it is. Yes, there are other companies in the BDA, but it really is a Sony baby.
It is Sony that is selling a game consiole that is undercutting all other companies's stand alone players.
It is Sony who is subsidizing the sale of PS3s (see above)
It is Sony who is waiving replication fees(for major studios) of the discs
It is Sony who is controling the production, at least at the moment, of BD-50s.
It is Sony who is putting out the majority of BD exclusive titles.
It is Sony who is keeping BD alive.
Yes, there are other companies in the BDA, but they really don't count all that much.
Jack
Pick your poison.
I'll take Sony, thank you very much. So will Disney/Buena Vista, Lionsgate, MGM. Warner and Paramount are neutral. The only one firmly in Microsoft's camp is Universal, but look for that to change over the next year.
Really, though, the enemy is standard definition. Look what happened with that SACD vs DVD-A war. We early adopters were so caught up in the minutiae, we ended up with lossy downloads. If that happens with video it will be a real shame.
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
That is and always was the issue. I don't subscribe to the Highlander Syndrome-"There can be only one!". I've been saying all along that the 2 formats will coexist as niche markets. The masses just don't care. I'm not a fan of Micro$oft, though they did develope VC-1. Nor, do I care for Sony, but I do have one of their TVs.
Right now, sales of discs aren't big anough for any studio to change positions-there just isn't enough money involved to make it worth while. The biggest selling title on HD right now is The Departed, where with both formats *together*, just broke the 100,000 mark. Casino Royale on BD sold about 60-70,000. That's peanuts, a whole lot of nothing. Surprisingly, Planet Earth is doing relatively well in sales. There really are customers outside of gamers, imagine that.
Sales of players hasn't really been great either, until very recently, with the sale on HD DVD players. One spokesman said sales went up 5-10 fold(I'm skeptical), but we'll have to see what effect that will have on the software. The PS3 has sold, albeit not as well as expected, but with an attatch rate of about 0.5 movies/unit, it isn't breaking any records either. The BDA's plans of catering to gamers/kiddies for a quick 'win' doesn't seem to be working.
Its still way too early to say much. Time will tell how things go.
Jack
PS. I don't see downloading movies as a real alternative-it takes way too long to download that much info, and most people still don't have broadband.
Of course, this isn't the first time Sony has tried to jump start a format by targeting the wrong customers.
Hoping that PS3 game consoles will help Bluray is roughly equivalent to the hopes in 2001-2003 that sales of Sony DVD players with SA-CD capability would help SA-CD. It didn't happen before, it won't happen now. Gamers buy PS3s to play games, not to watch movies just as the Sony DVD/SA-CD players were bought to watch DVD movies, not to listen to high resolution audio. A small minority of PS3 owners will be tempted to try Bluray - once. They'll buy one or two movies and lose interest because their gaming setups in most cases won't be optimized to show them the advantage of the high resolution theater experience. They won't see the benefit of paying $25 for a Bluray movie they can get for $10 on DVD.
I feel that both formats will coexist for a few years. Projecting at 106", I can certainly appreciate the benefit of high definition video. And most of the high definition programming I get on DirecTV is so compressed that it's unwatchable except for nature and travel programing where the images are fairly static. So I figured there's no sense waiting now that the HD players have become affordable and the first-generation bugs have been (to a reasonable extent) resolved to my satisfaction.
Most gamer these days are hi-res freaks. They will appreciate the blu-ray movies as much as the games, which are blu-ray too, by the way.
With Sony's latest firmware for the PS3, this is more of a home multimedia center than a game console. Even I will start using it as such and I was mainly interested in the games and movies.
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
"Most gamer these days are hi-res freaks"
As a Nintendo shareholder and fan of the top-selling Wii and DS, I'd dispute that ;-) Imaginative gameplay and story are higher on my list than polygons.
What can I say? I'm tempted to get a PS/3, but as a gaming machine, it's mostly untapped potential right now, and it may be so for quite awhile to come: Figure that Halo 3 for Xbox 360 will have taken almost 3 years! Having hardware capable of rendering every blade of grass is one thing, but actually doing it is another! The more detailed things get, the longer they'll take to produce and the costlier the whole production becomes. And games publishers will be inclined to play it safe, rather than try something daring.
What have you watched on it so far?
Jack
So far, so good Jack. I haven't had a lot of time with it yet. I have watched "Poseidon", which I'm using as a reference/calibration disc. Yeah, I know it's not a very good movie. But I'm a sucker for disaster at sea movies and the original version, "The Poseidon Adventure", is a long time favorite. "Poseidon" has great visuals (if admittedly terrible characterization) including both spetacular cgi effects and elaborately detailed real sets. You can see where the $200 million production cost went (apparently not enough of it went toward a good script). Is the picture quality better on the XA2 than the A2? I'm not sure. Both have excellent detail resolution. I think I see smoother color rendering in the faces of the actors. But truthfully, both are more than satisfactory as far as picture quality is concerned as far as I can tell with my Optoma HD70 which is really the weak link in the system. The Optoma HD70 does not have the best color depth or sharpness, but is a good compromise while I wait for 1080p projectors to come down in price.
What impresses me most is the sound quality with the HD-XA2. Set up only took a few minutes using a Radio Shack dB meter and the Toshiba's test tones and on-screen prompts. Using the analog outputs I am able to access the Dolby TrueHD soundtrack on "Poseidon" and it sounds much smoother and detailed than the low resolution Dolby Digital track through the A2's optical output. Bass resolution is especially improved over the A2 and dialog is clearer and more natural sounding. For instance, before the wave hits there is a announcement over the noise in the dining room that I could never quite make out in Dolby Digital. Now I could clearly hear it: "Brace for immediate and heavy roll". I have a Vienna Acoustics Oratorio center speaker and this is the first time it really sounds great with DVD. I can hardly wait for the shipment of HD-DVDs I ordered from Amazon, which includes a couple of concert videos.
I have also watched a little bit of "Field of Dreams" on HD-DVD. There's some disturbing pixelation or noise present in the twilight sky near the beginning of the movie as Kostner is hearing voices in his cornfield. But that could be the projector. So far I am very satisfied with the HD-XA2.
Been wondering about that. I have a Denon AVR3803.
So I don't I have a receiver with HDMI. I only have a Tosh 50" RPTV with component. Not sure how good the picture quality would be also.
I think I have it straight regarding the audio I can get using the 5.1 analog outs for movies. Perhaps though it's too early for me for this technology considering what I have.
Glad you like it. Yes, the XA2 has a better picture than the A2, and my A1-it has a better chip inside. I watched the first 2 Matrix movies-stellar picture and sound. I just got my import of Mulhalland Dr.(no region coding on HD DVDs), but haven't watched it yet. More and more discs are coming out with TrueHD sound-those analog outs really are nice aren't they? While not HD, Pan's Labyrinth upscaled looks very very good, if not a little disturbing...
Have fun,
Jack
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