Just noticed this post today:

http://www.audioholics.com/news/industry-news/netflix-goes-blu

A couple weeks ago I finally took the plunge buying a PS3 right after the Warner Bros. announcement. At first I was mad since I wanted HDDVD to win this war. Not to mention HDDVD had some very nice offers around the holiday season and I almost purchased a HDDVD player. But, it looks like it is going to be Blue ray.

Now, I know with this kind of format war anything can happen. But, I say now is the time to jump in. At least buy a PS3 and start renting or buying any movies that you would buy on dvd on Blue Ray. Encourage any friends and family that are even remotely interested in a nice picture on their big screen tv to do the same. If people wait too long for the format war to be over then Blue Ray is going to be in a new format war with downloads (that are already starting) before it can even establish itself well.

I realize that download speeds are nowhere near fast enough to download DVD's let alone High Def one's. But look at the music industry. When people learned that they could get the convenience of downloads they could care less about the quality as a majority. Look at all of this overly compressed crap that is being sold much better than cd's (the dying format). We are not far away from downloaded movies being overly compressed crap with no alternative, if Blue ray doesn't get established very soon. I can see the mass majority of people very happy that they can download a "high def" movie and it is only 2 to 4 gigs and being oblivious to the fact that it looks worse that a dvd they bought from the store a couple years ago.

Now is the time to get into this format if you care at all about high def movies.

- Nick

Yep, and Best Buy just announced that Blu Ray will be their recommended hardware/software in the stores, however, they will keep some HDDVD stuff as well.

so, my toshiba HD DVD player that i purchased back in November for my under construction home theater is already obsolete.

can you say eBay?

and, always buy you equipment last

later.

When Best Buy's employees are recommending Blu-ray, I wonder if they're going to be telling customers about the different Profile versions.

Exactly. It's disappointing that Bluray is winning out. Especially since costumers will think they are getting the greatest and best product on the market when in fact 6 months down the line they players will not be compatible with the latest Bluray profile. Sad really.

I personally feel HD-DVD was a better format from the get go. I had at one time a PS3 and Xbox HD-DVD player. I ended up selling the PS3 because I didn't see anything special with the Bluray. Luckily I have held out and not purchased any HD-DVD's and only rented them via Netflix, but not anymore.

My upconverting player just went in for warranty repair and I was thinking that if it cant be repaired I was gonna get a HDDVD player as a replacement since they are cheap and will upconvert my DVD's as well.

Do most Blu Ray players still not upconvert DVD that well?? Or are they reasonable? I have lots of my kids and wife's DVD's and some classic sports DVD's that I own (Hoosiers, Raging Bull, Breaking Away, etc.) I was gonna use the HDDVD as mostly an upconverter and watch some HD for a few years until Blu Ray improved upconversion and came down in price.

Still a reasonable strategy or should I try to get store credit on a BD player??

Do you mean "Final Profile", "Final Profile 1", "Final Profile 1b", "Definitive Final Profile", "Definitive Final Profile v2"...
If I ever see a "Final Profile 1b", I will laugh for weeks and weeks!

I'm satisfied with the quality of DVD upconversion of my ps3. I can't speak of other standalone players though.

I've heard the Panasonic Blu Ray player does a great job upconverting standard DVD's. The Sony's have been "alright".

Last October I bought an HD-DVD player. Last month I bought a Blu-ray player. On my 118" screen and 1080p projector, nothing comes close to the picture quality of either of these two formats. They are simply amazing. On our new 56" 720p TV, a good upconverting DVD player can make standard DVD's look nearly as good as HD cable and almost--but not-quite--as good as Blu-ray/HD-DVD's. The moral of the story: If you have a screen over 60 inches, go with high-def disks. They are fantastic. If you have a smaller screen and don't sit too close, get a good upconverting DVD player for now if you're not sure about Blu-ray/HD-DVD.

Also, I can't recommend Panasonic's DMP-BD30 Blu-ray disk player enough--especially if you have a new Denon receiver with HDMI 1.3. Great machine.

As for Blu-ray/HD-DVD players handling upconversion of standard DVD's, I'd recommend buying the Oppo OPPO DV-980H for $169. Regardless of how well a certain Blu-ray or HD-DVD player may upconvert, they are very slow compared to most stand-alone DVD players and it can be frustrating to navigate DVD's. I say keep them separate.

I'm 5 minutes away to go and grab a DMP-BD30. Good timing as I just read two good comments on that model.

I saw this as well this morning. Of course, Best Buy (at least around here) has been pushing Blu-Ray much harder since they came out. Prime floor space right inside the door. Larger and many times multiple displays for Blu-Ray. Even sales guys pushing it harder, so I can't imagine how they could do it MORE unless they decide to just unplug the HD-DVD display, box it up, and just display the non-operating merchandise on the shelves.

Oh, and I read the report about NetFlix yesterday, and about 5 minutes later got my "We're Sorry" email from them since HD-DVD is my prefered format. At this point, I've got a few more HD-DVD movies to rent and I am dropping NetFlix. HD movies were why I went with them, and I am not jumping into Blu-Ray until they get their act together on standards and prices become more reasonable. I still like the upconversion on the HD-A2 I got for $12 (after I took 4 of my "free" movies to WalMart for store credit), so I am now just looking at it as though I have a good upconverting DVD player that also happens to play HD-DVD movies.

There is one bug that may be fixed with a firmware upgrade soon. Until it was pointed out to me, I never noticed it. If you have a good receiver, the bug can be corrected easilly. When playing uncompressed PCM tracks--which most Blu-ray disks have--the LFE is 4-5 dbs too low. If you just increase your LFE on your receiver or sub directly, you'll never notice it.

Thanks for info. I had read that on this forum, but had forgotten about it.

My receiver allows me only to remove LFE by protocol, and only by 10db increments!

I guess I'll manage. But, again, thanks for the warning.

Like I said, I didn't notice this fault until it was pointed out to me. PCM tracks still shook the room with their bass. And if the news is accurate, both Denon and Panasonic are working on a cure. The twice-as-expensive Denon Blu-ray player uses some of the same components as the Panasonic afterall. It also suffers from the same bug.

I won't consider my HD-DVD player obsolete until Transformers gets released on BluRay.

I will probably buy a BD player but I'll keep the HD-DVD player to enjoy the few HD movies I have already bought. Hopefully, buy the time it breaks and I'm SOL to watch my HD-DVD movies, there will be yet another technolgy taking over. 3d maybe......

If Paramount and Universal stay with HD-DVD, there will be a few more titles worth buying forsure. I too plan to keep my HD-A35 and my HD-DVD library until it gives up the ghost. That may be only 20 titles, but boy do they look good.

I totally agree, I'm fairly amazed at how good it is actually as I didn't expect much from it for upscaling. The nice thing about the PS3 is that it updates itself over the net, which allows for some flexibility to adapt to future format changes.

Just one opinion, but I haven't noticed any slowness on SD DVDs with the PS3, but maybe I'm just lucky. If so, I won't complain.

I'll continue to use and enjoy my HD-DVD and will probably purchase some more titles if the price is right. Tthe Hell with BluRay for now.

Regarding hi-def format upconversion of players.
I am format neutral with a Toshiba A35 (HD-DVD) and a Panny BD30 ( b) ). I also have a Pio DV48 (SACD, DVDA, SD) and a Toshiba HD870 (SD).

Of the lot, the A35 HD-DVD is the better upconverting player. Noticiably better. The BD30 is OK, but then again so is the Pio DV48.

That was one of the reasons I decided to keep the player.
Others included: HD-DVDs purchased at firesale prices (have acquired 10 since the announcement at an average of $4.30),
Bitstreaming of HD codecs, Playback of the 20 some odd HD-DVDs I already had.

Just got my Panasic BD30 (an hour ago). Nice machine and viva HDMI (one single cable + power chord! and 2-3 settings and I have DolbyTrueHD and so on piped directly to receiver)!

I also have an A30 for HD-DVD. The main reason I switched now (although depending on price I might get more HDDVD titles too) is that I already have 3 friends who just went Blueray. it is a lot more economical when we all have the same format so we can exchange movies and series and keep the ones we want to see more often.

I've watched over 20 Blu-ray movies on the BD30 with no problems. It seems like a solid unit. Congrats!

Couple of points
1) HD and Blu-ray both are not consumer ready. I would say we are about two months away from being main-stream ready. XA2's latest FW have some issues when it comes to MPEG encoded movies at 24FPS. (24FPS, to me, is another eye candy feature that's more marketing than anything else).

2) BD profile is over rated for me (IMHO). I will never see PIP commentary of director while watching movies so it's not big deal for me. Hence, Samsung 1400 and PS3 that I have are worthwhile investments for me.

3) My XA2 throws up errors every once in a while (as does my bluray players). It's rare, but it's annoying nevertheless.

4) XA2 does a great job of upconverting, so I'll continue to get benefit from that player.

5) I've been format neutral from the start, and I knew HD or Blu-ray player would eventually be obsolete. But I wanted to enjoy both formats. Case in point. Transformers in HD DVD is *GREAT* The EP500 gets a *REAL* workout during Transformers (one of my favorite movies now!)

6) I'm still fascinated by how strong people feel about one format over the other. I just don't remember that with beta/vhs war.

Somehow, I ended up getting all these devices! Wii is great for the family and the kids. We love it. Xbox360 is fine, and I've had it for about a year. I recently picked up PS3 and to me, the graphics is much better. I guess it took some time for the developers to take advantage of the cell processor.

Ironically, I think purchasing MX900 URC and MX350 RF/IR was one of the best investments I made. With all these gadgets, MX900 is a **MUST**

Ah the remote.

No MX here, but the 2 best investments for the Enjoyment factor for the family were:

1. good programmable remote
2. Squeezebox 3

I have a Pronto 7000 that I programmed activity based. The family and friends only have to push 1 button to do whatever it is they want to do, regardless of what is happening currently.

WAF and FAF is very high here.
Without it, they are all loss and couldn;t use a thing

The WAF was also very high on the SB3. She really didn;t understand my vision at first. When it got here (I already had a server with music ready) and she was off and going within minutes. Wow never knew we had that. Wow, I haven;t heard that forever.

It's just easier than sorting through hundreds or thousands of discs to find something you like, take it to another room, and play it.


System usage is much closer to 50 HT/50 Music now.

I second that ! PS3 was a great investment! HDMI 1.3 when it lauched!