Blu-ray discs sales figures are higher then HD DVD discs this year

That study is skewed by the fact that most laptops sold lately come with Blueray over HD drives, so that becomes the motivation. Is it HT? Is it convergence? Also how much of that is due to having the more popular titles? I hope eventually the format that "wins" is the technically better one, not the marketed or politically better one, like what happened to Beta. Nobody really benefits if the technically superior one loses for political/marketing reasons.

Ever hear the aphorism, "Better is the enemy of good enough?" B/R appears to be slightly superior, but does it matter? Perhaps to technophobes who claim they can detect the improvement in sound when a amp has 3ft of sterling silver power cord connecting it to the household current (carried by yards of lowest common denominator romax).

Most home theaters aren't calibrated and most consumers aren't videophiles. I suspect that either HD or B/R will be superior to anything off air. The market itself will determine the best value, neither politics nor marketing.

R / John

|>> New research data released last Tuesday by Home Media Research provides a |>> 1st look at actual disc sales numbers for the 1st half of this year, |>> which |>> shows good news for Blu-ray. |>

|> That study is skewed by the fact that most laptops sold lately come |> with Blueray over HD drives, so that becomes the motivation. Is it |> HT? Is it convergence? Also how much of that is due to having the |> more popular titles? I hope eventually the format that "wins" is the |> technically better one, not the marketed or politically better one, |> like what happened to Beta. Nobody really benefits if the technically |> superior one loses for political/marketing reasons. | | Ever hear the aphorism, "Better is the enemy of good enough?" B/R appears | to be slightly superior, but does it matter? Perhaps to technophobes who | claim they can detect the improvement in sound when a amp has 3ft of | sterling silver power cord connecting it to the household current (carried | by yards of lowest common denominator romax). | | Most home theaters aren't calibrated and most consumers aren't videophiles. | I suspect that either HD or B/R will be superior to anything off air. The | market itself will determine the best value, neither politics nor marketing.

At 25 GB vs. 15 GB, the advantage is in the hands of B-R. More time at the same compression, or less compress at the same time. Or more data files on your computer.

< snip >

A supportive look back: Betamax home video was first from Sony (1975 ) and had arguably better quality video. When VHS was introduced, it quickly gained an advantage by having longer taping time per cassette. According to one article I read,

RCA pushed Matsushita for the LP VHS mode. Apparently, the VHS time advantage was all that mattered. I had both machines in the late 1970's/early 1980's and it mattered to me! Tapes cost $25.00 each.

Very true. Again the issue will be whether it matters or not in the consumer marketplace. Will a movie be clearly superior in B/R to John and Mary Q. Public? Will the higher data capacity matter when you can just stream to another disk? Ultimately, I think its going to get down to price and right now that's still mostly in the arean for the videophile/technophobe who always leads the tech charge. IIRC, Blockbuster went with B/R. If a consumer (Walmart) priced player or drive comes out soon, it'll win.

R / John

Perhaps to technophobes who

.....with an even greater improvement after it has been "broken-in" after

20 hours of use. Having it blessed by a Shinto priest provides even more improvement, especially in the mid-bass region.

| |> The market itself will determine the best value, neither politics nor | marketing. |>

|> At 25 GB vs. 15 GB, the advantage is in the hands of B-R. More time at | the |> same compression, or less compress at the same time. Or more data files | on |> your computer. |>

| | A supportive look back: | Betamax home video was first from Sony (1975 ) and had arguably better | quality video. When VHS was introduced, it quickly gained an advantage by | having longer taping time per cassette. According to one article I read, |

RCA pushed Matsushita for the LP VHS | mode. Apparently, the VHS time advantage was all that mattered. I had both | machines in the late 1970's/early 1980's and it mattered to me! Tapes cost | $25.00 each.

My Sony EIAJ deck needed tape reels that cost $39.95 for just one hour. At one point I had 5 reels before I finally sold it. I had it hooked up to the baseband output of a JVC professional monitor and had to change tapes real fast (it involved threading the tape around the head) to record a two hour movie (and later rewind both). I could deal with that. But it was getting expensive to buy tapes on a college student budget. The 3/4 inch cassette deck came out so I sold the EIAJ and started to save for one of those. Never did get one. But they do show up on EBay every now and then these days (as do the IVC one inch reel-to-reel pro decks I really wanted). I finally broke down and got a VHS deck around 1987 (and it was toasted by a lightning induced surge in 1994 that killed the CPU on it). It was actually a very nice deck with insert editing which I used to cut commercials on the fly as I recorded TV shows. I would stop the record just after commercials started and back it up to the start of commercials and single frame to the first black and pause it. It would then let me switch to record while in pause and stay paused, and then go forward at full speed when I hit play, all done right on the deck itself to avoid remote latency. Playback across those edits was very smooth.

For those who have not yet read the news today, , Paramount and Dreamworks have switched from Blu-Ray to HD-DVD.

Target and Blockbuster recently announced their decision to sell Blu-Ray only. Now, a bad decision.

"WGD" wrote in news:EDHyi.2545$wW6.1406@trnddc08:

Yes I cancelled Blockbuster because of that

It is understandable that retailers want to jump on the bandwagon; however, the wagons are still at the starting gate. WGD

Target has now said that they will be selling Blu-Ray players and both Blu-Ray & HD-DVD disks

I did a similar thing with my DVD/SACD/DVD-Audio player; went for the Panasonic that plays both SACD and DVD-A. Now I don't care which of the two audio formats wins.

-- Jay

Jason Burgon - author of Graphic Vision

What we didn't anticipate was that they would both lose!

r

Several years ago I bought a Denon DVD player which has DVD-A capability. I do have a few DVD-A discs, am amazed with their quality, distraught that there are almost no new releases worth buying, and concerned that ultimately when I upgrade to High Definition DVD, the player wont support the format.

Yes, the number of releases on either format has been very disappointing. Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" on SACD shows just what incredible results can be acheived.

I think the bottom line is that Joe Public doesn't care much about sound quality, and is quite happy with his MP3 download playing on his £20 speakers. :-(

-- Jay

Jason Burgon - author of Graphic Vision

I think that really does hit the nail on the head and is part of the problem that Hi Def DVD is having in gaining marketshare.

First all too many average homes have TVs smaller than 50", but even at

50" if they are watching from 10' or more away, they can't see enough difference between Hi Def DVDs and upscaled standard DVDs.

Then with the HTIB or small surround, or maybe just the TV sound, they don't get enough benefit from the better soundtracks of the newer HDDVD/BD encodes.

That's why total marketshare of both hi defs combined is only 1-2%.

SACD seems still quite alive; out of 16 disks I just bought, three are SACD. Most but not all of the others were recorded in plain stereo ... there is no surround or center channel to cause a need for SACD. The recordings I have on SACD span the time period of initial recording from 1955 to 2005. The 1955-1967 ones of course are not surround, but rather three channel stereo with a separate center channel, and play as such on the SACD player.

Doug McDonald

your numbers not only say the format is dead, its been embalmed and buried.

sad to say

You are absolutely correct.