Bashing the format....

Why is everyone still bashing blu-ray?
Half the Message Board is filled with posts on "how up-converting looks great and will kill blu ray" or "Blu ray is so expensive...", "failed to reach sales target..."

Now, i don't know about you, but to me, a blu-ray title looks a lot better than an SD disc "umped" to 1080.
"Up conversion" was available even before "HDTV'S" were available. Back then it used to be your computer monitor, running windows on 1280x1024, playing a dvd title from a dirt-cheap drive on primitive software such as "Power DVD 4".

Ask anyone who is into imaging and they will tell you that re-sizing pictures, using any algorithm, will result into a bigger but SOFTER image. Because the detail is not there to begin with. What these new technologies do is simple. They apply "sharpening" filters on variable amounts depending on the signal coming through. Claiming that it "Looks great" and creating gimmicky hype around smt that is mathematically impossible (SD umped to HD, actually looking equal or better) is pointless. So what if a few UK magazine reviewers went and saw a demo involving i dunno how much rigged equipment? These "official" demonstrations are highly controlled and very often vary from the actual end-user product.
Same people who are "rooting" Up-conversion and how it's gonna be "the next best thing" now. were doing the same with the divxHD codec that could fill an entire hd move on a SD disc a few months ago.

The war is Over, Blu Ray won (Fortunately or not) and stores everywhere offer an HD solution for the home.
As for the price, sony released some figures something like a week ago, stating millions and millions of losses over PS3 due to lowering the price in an attempt to ensure household penetration for blu-ray during the war. PS3 is the no.1 selling blu-ray player out there.

And as for what is going to kill blu-ray eventually, i told this before, stop looking at physical media, online will eventually take over. Everybody is moving that way already, and high-bandwidth is getting cheaper and cheaper.

Still, i would prefer playing a movie from a high-bitrate source.

Only Deadmeat makes such ignorant posts. I asked him if he invested in HD-DVD like I did but he said No. So maybe he couldn't even afford HD-DVD. Most HD-DVD fanboys like myself have moved on, we realize that Blu-ray is the new standard and have accepted that. Deadmeat might have been an HD-DVD owner/liar or he is just very content with DVD and low resolution.

I don't understand why anyone wouldn't want true HD.

Why settle for upconversion/faux hd?

I don't have a problem with Blu-ray, HD DVD nor SUC. If SUC is a significant improvement over stand UC, and it makes me think twice about double-dipping on a BD, then that will be a good thing for me. All 3 formats will have a place in my home, and I'll be tickled pink if the ugliest (DVD) can get a boost from SUC, since I do have a rather large collection.

i agree blu ray does look better than up convert dvds. I wish blu ray would use hddvd title screens, much better looking to me. other than that i have no comlaints about blu.... oh i hate the cheap looking blu cases as well lol

those cheap blu-ray cases are a result of liberal minded enviromentalyists
plus you can have a larger collection in the same space that you would dvd or the older bulkier cases

Though it is obvious that Blu-Ray has won the battle, I'm not convinced that has it has won the war. The PS3 has not won me over, regardless of HD-DVD's demise. It's still a confused device that doesn't know what it's purpose is.

I don't believe that SUC will kill Blu-Ray, but it will certainly hamper it's success. There's a reason that there are so many cheap (both in quality and price) HDTVs are being sold, and that is because a lot of people don't want to spend a lot of money. For a lot of people a cheap set is good enough.

Many DVDs look great upscaled on my A20, while others (with poor compression) look like crap. Given that Blu-Ray is slowly expanding it's library, and the high cost of many titles, I think there's plenty of room for SUC, even if it doesn't match Blu-ray's specs. All it has to do is fall right between DVD quality and Blu-Ray quality. Upscaling a 16:9 480p DVD is certainly not like upscaling a 320x240 1200kb wmv file.

Blu-Ray supporters can gloat all they want, but if SUC proves to be good enough, it will have a big advantage over Blu-Ray - an enormous amount of movies that are not on Blu-Ray, and many that probably never will be on Blu-Ray.

Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of room for Blu-Ray, but SUC will make it very hard for Blu-Ray to ever fully replace DVD (or maybe even to simply surpass it).

Damn it Tim, how about this?

Or this?(dual minidisc recorder, sweet!)

Or this last one I love!

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[Post edited by ReaggieP on Jul 4, 2008 - CDT 7:38 AM]

Reaggie,

The first picture is, of course, a second-generation Betamax tape player. I know because I used to own the exact model, and it gave me many years of service. And I wish I owned the disc player in the final picture.

John

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[Post edited by John J. Puccio on Jul 4, 2008 - CDT 12:40 AM]