Re: Toshiba announces Super Upconversion DVD players due out in 2009

What's funny is he has no rebuttal for what Skyhawk or Hendrix said. And then there was silence.....cricket.........cricket........cricket.

Ladies and Gentlemen Skyhawk has left the building.

Love, what you are not understanding is that the technology takes 9 frames from that original 480i images and digitally combines them at a 960p native output. Disregarding flaws and other defects that show up in most upconversion, or cheaper model scalers, primarily used in televisions. Shit look at Sony XBR4 line-up! That DRC crap is brutal! SU is pretty impressive. Yes, it not High Def but, does give consumers options to not only watch previously recorded material on a new HD set, without spending money on a $2000 scaler. Upconversion DVD players for the most part do not do a great job, but there is a few that do. This Cell structured technology isn't there to replace HD DVD, but even in Toshiba's memorandum statement upon HD DVD demise, they said they would focus more on improving current DVD standards. What's wrong with that. They ultimately will sell new machines with with SU, but why argue when you are currently watching all your material in HD? It makes no sense why all the Big Blu-Ray supporters at this site are constantly bashing improvements to DVD for consumers? Hey I own Blu-Ray myself, but there are thousands of people that could give two shits about Blu-Ray, nevermind High Def? For the most part, the majority of rentals are still DVD. It just happens that I own the best HD DVD player on the planet. But for a JOE SHMOE that doens't have a clue that HD DVD players are $54 at Wal*mart, by 2009 WTF $99 for a SU player? WHO THE F CARES? You guys are watching HD! If that's what matters for you, that's all that should matter for you!

psst...before everyone blows a blood vessel in their foreheads...relax and chill...

This technology isn't even going to see the streets for at least 15 months, if ever...given the rate technology changes are accelerating.

The main sticking point seems to be...that this Super Upconversion is high def...well, no, it is not...it might be considered pseudo high def at best...

Real high def comes from a real 720p/1080i/1080p high def signal...not something that is Frankensteined together by combining picture and pixel elements from nine sequential frames into make-believe high def frame.

BTW - where does 960p fit into the ATSC scheme?

Do a search on the internet for "Super Unconversion" and all you are going to find are a bunch of forum posts from months ago...that's it.

Until something a little more substantial is released from Toshiba, all this arguing is for nothing.

Skyhawk,

Quote:
Last I heard, iTunes Music Store was only the second largest retailer of music in any form in 2007, behind Walmart's CD sales (according to NPD).

Well, this is what Apple wrote on April 3rd.

Quote:
Apple® today announced that the iTunes® Store (www.itunes.com) surpassed Wal-Mart to become the number one music retailer in the US, based on the latest data from the NPD Group*. With over 50 million customers, iTunes has sold over four billion songs and features the world’s largest music catalog of over six million songs.

“We launched iTunes less than five years ago, and it has now become the number one music retailer in the world,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes.

Quote:
The iTunes Store became the largest music retailer in the US based on the amount of music sold during January and February 2008.

Also, what I said was. I don't see Blu-ray selling more units (movies) than DVD per month anytime soon if ever. However, I see downloads surpass DVD both in rentals and in sales and predict it will happen in 7-10 years time.

So, again. A lot of more years for DVD and Blu-ray which I'm happy for. I like (crave) the superior quality that Blu-ray can deliver but I just don't see 10 years of continues surge (like DVD) for the Blu format. The world is moving to downloadable content on all fronts (Music, Software, Games, TV in form of IP TV and much more) and eventually it will catch on for movies as well.

[Post edited by Henning on May 12, 2008]

Quote:
9 frames fused to create 960p via computation. Think about it Sony put it stock into the Cell chip and you guys are knocking your PS3's?

CELL is excellent for video/audio processing. It is worthless for running games.

Just like how Xbox 360 is the most powerful and best architectured game console ever put together, but is a so-so video player.

Quote:
but how can DVD's standard definition quality morph into HIGH DEFINITION?

By fusing features of 9 frames.

Quote:
Not possible.

Every time you watch the sattelite images off google map, you are witnessing the example of super upconversion.

Quote:
And you keep being critical of Funai

1. Funai, in spite of its name, is a Japanese firm, not a Chinese firm, charging Japanese prices.
2. Funai depends on Sony and Matsushita for most of component, meaning their cost structure is same as Sony and Panasonic's. In other word, Funai doesn't enjoy a lower cost structure than Sony and Matsushita do, hence little room for a price cut.

The native 960 for the 'super-upconverters' (go figure that one out ) doesn't mean anything for the 480i SD DVDs...it only means that it's gona output a 960 signal...just like PCs, having a 1024x768 screen doesn't mean that the sucky youtube videos will magically convert to 768p (yeah, right)...why all the fuss?

Even when those players get into BB, CC, Wal-mart or Target ( ), they won't be hooked up properly to show the full capacity of the players (sounds like everything plugged into those stores already)...and???

Toshiba is just promising better upconverting techniques, which, will only benefit middle income and lower Average Joe consumers (I will include myself).

And again, what is blu-rays percentage over the home media side? 5%, right? OK, those 5% people, are the ones who really care about A/V quality (like many of us, which means, WE ARE those 5%), and we are going to be the ones dominating the HD media market for a while, until the economy gets better, and the WHOLE WORLD's economy gets better...

Quote:
Well, this is what Apple wrote on April 3rd.

OK Henning, lets say that Apple's own stats will coincide with stats from NPD and they have sold more music than Walmart during 2 months this year.

However, this is your original post:

Quote:
Also, it took Apple five years to beat conventional stores in terms of music with the iPod and the iTunes Music Store.

I read the above as Apple beating all conventional stores (total CD sales), which is extremely far from today's reality. Yes, there will probably be a time when downloaded sales of music will exceed that of CD sales. But we are not there today.

It's interesting that VOD has been offerred by cable providers for years now, yet the service has yet failed to take off and affect the conventional rental market. Offering day&date releases may help compete better against disk rentals, but having to pay $6 a pop for convenience to watch a very highly compressed standard definition movie may still be a deterrent to widespread adoption. And luckily it isn't widespread, because our provider would need to invest a few Billion in infrastructure impovements just to maintain the quality as it is if usage suddenly exploded exponentially. Then they'd have to recoup that infrastructure investment... *gulp*

Quote:
Because the sales of upconversion player is up 5% this year, while the sales of Blu-Ray player is down 40% this year.

Deadmeat, you know that this is a garbage stat. The 40% drop is January/08 to February/08 and the 5% increase is Quarter 1/07 to Quarter 1/08. You need to compare the figures using the same approach to find any true meaning. There was a sales spike in Blu-ray player sales in January after WB made their announcement, so a drop in February isn't a surprise, especially considering that electronics sales tend to drop dramatically during this time anyway.

And as I have noted before, the sales include all of those $70-$90 upconverting DVD players, which is unlikely to represent the people who are truly considering higher audiovisual quality. I know you won't reply, because you haven't responded to a single one of my other posts challenging some of the "facts" in your postings, but perhaps Henning or John would care to weigh in? You guys have been clarifying various other points, but I haven't seen you make this apples-to-oranges comparison clear yet, despite this nonsense being repeatedly stated as fact.

Quote:
Love, what you are not understanding is that the technology takes 9 frames from that original 480i images and digitally combines them at a 960p native output. Disregarding flaws and other defects that show up in most upconversion, or cheaper model scalers, primarily used in televisions. Shit look at Sony XBR4 line-up! That DRC crap is brutal! SU is pretty impressive. Yes, it not High Def but, does give consumers options to not only watch previously recorded material on a new HD set, without spending money on a $2000 scaler.

Reaggie, you seem remarkably impressed by a techology that you haven't even seen in action yet. Limited pictures and demos on a few webpages with the use of controlled material doesn’t count. I’ve expressed my serious doubts about SUC, but will ultimately wait to see for myself. I’m especially interested to see what will happen during action scenes and panning shots. How will SUC handle these scenes when the consecutive frames are so drastically different?