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

Good point sbmess about the January/February sales period... sales are ALWAYS LOWER during this time (1st quarter), as people are paying their bills from the holiday shopping season (for credit card purchases), as well as your ANNUAL property taxes (and inventory taxes if your own a business) which in most USA states is due by Jan 31, otherwise you pay penalties for each month thereafter for deliquency.

Plus Toshiba didn't announce ending their HD-DVD support until 2/19, so that's 7 weeks after Jan 1, so improved BD player sales would not be expected to rise much until March/April, and then you have your annual INCOME TAXES due. So, all of these factors can weigh upon people considering buying a $400+ BD player for the first time.

Also - AGAIN - improving upconversion with cleaner resolution does NOT change standard definition content into HIGH DEFINITION. HD is more than just 'resolution', and Deadmeat knows this but avoids talking about the other factors that make up an HD image, beyond just improved and cleaner resolution techniques.

As for Funai, the new Profile 1.1 player has now debuted in Walmart stores recently (under the Magnavox name) for $298 - INFO HERE. Might the price get even lower by the 4th quarter? Hmmm.




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-JIMI McLovin (the Voodoo Child)

[Post edited by Love Hendrix! on May 12, 2008]

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As for Funai, the new Profile 1.1 player has now debuted in Walmart stores recently (under the Magnavox name) for $298

Good find Hendrix! This came out of nowhere - even the guys on the AVSForum were a little blindsided. Since Magnavox brand is now owned by Philips, everyone is wondering if the Philips Blu player shares any internals with the Magnavox. They've already taken it apart, and things look very similar except for the missing electronics to support the analog 5.1 outs (including the DAC chips). We shall see.

As far as cheaper prices by Christmas season, that's a no-brainer. Hopefully this ol'fashioned American style competition will help spur the higher-end brands to lower their prices while the year progresses. Again, we'll see.

Hey Skyhawk (and others)... FYI - the new Funai OEM players (sold under other name brands) is being discussed (with more info) on the AVSForum's thread here (from last week).

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-JIMI McLovin (the Voodoo Child)

God. What a bunch of geeks.

Don't you people get tired of saying the same things over and over and over...

It's not that complicated to figure out. DVD is King. Blu-Ray is niche. Downloads are future.

Yes, but we are on page 10...

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It's not that complicated to figure out. DVD is King. Blu-Ray is niche. Downloads are future.

I feel your pain. If only HD DVD had won as it should, we would never be having this conversation because then HD DVD would be mainstream in at least 2 years (heck $99 players should be $20 in two years!), plus we'd expect to get $300 worth of free movies! That's $280 in the average Joe's pocket in 2 years for adopting the superior format for free.

Sadly, now that HD DVD lost HD-media will remain as niche, cause it will cost at least $300 with no free movies for much of this year while downloads will continue to gain popularity. Heck, like the average Joe, I also have an HDPC in my livingroom connected with fiber from the wall (DWDM!) and I live in a rural town! My 47 terrabytes of storage is cool, because I have RAID Level 4 just like everyone else in my village. That high-end HTPC and raid array only costed us $99! And it's great that our better than Blu-ray media costs us only $10 a shot to download and keep forever, and the lack of DRM makes it easy for us to play on any TV or device in our house - and even in the SUV!

Too bad though that HD DVD didn't win, cause it would have costed us even less, and perhaps optical media would have lasted a little while longer

[Post edited by Skyhawk on May 12, 2008]

Brilliant ^above Skyhawk! - If only...

bladerunner said -

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"Downloads are future."

Yeah, that pixelated, microblocking, heavily compressed 1080i 'downloaded' image may be part of your "HD" future (LOL), but not mine! Give me 1080p/24 Blu-ray Hi-Def, with lower-priced sale movies/concerts/TV shows, and easy rentals from online giants Blockbuster and Netflix... and I'll never ever consider download/streaming. Well hey, we've practically got that now, with lower player/disc prices still to come... not to much farther in the future (IMO)

And come to think about it, $300 to $600 for a Blu-ray player is not an unreasonable price currently, when you consider how the US dollar is getting worth less and less. So Go BD HD, and forget 'compromising' with SUC SD... as HD is the 'future' (and now), so why even consider SUC in 2009 - it's only 480i standard definition with a twist.

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-JIMI McLovin (the Voodoo Child)

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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?

If the technology does what it is supposed to do, it will greatly help the market out. Not only will it improve products by Toshiba, but it will also help other manufactures out. A technolgy with refinements in the future will also contribute to broadcast issues with providers that will still continue to support SD Channels, I don't know about you, but when I watch a SD channel on my Projo, it looks ok but not great. If broadcasters can adopt the Cell SU chip, your SD images would look comparible to the HD channels. I know the goal in the US is to abolish SD broadcasting, but nothing is 100% full proof yet. I am excited to see, improvements. Will it fly to the general public, maybe not, but I'm sure the implications of this technology will help!

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If broadcasters can adopt the Cell SU chip, your SD images would look comparible to the HD channels.

I’m all for better visual quality, but how can you make statements like this without even seeing it in action for yourself? Toshiba bragged about “near HD quality” on their HD-DVD players, and I strongly disagree with that representation.