HD DVD players

rudyusmc1980

I have only two movies I would replace. Shawshank Redemption and Fifth Element. I agree that replacement won't happen like they would have us believe.

In saying stop standard DVD production, I meant only the players themselves. Studios can do what they want in releasing on old/new + competing HD discs. The Manufacturers need to get smart and prevent someone from buying an upconverter, the very same consumer who should by all rights be more interested in a true HD disc but may be confused or just not know.

The point of upconverters, IMO, is to keep it all digital. getting rid of the DA to AD conversion steps does more, I think, to improve pq than scaling inside the player. I am quite sure that my mitsu has a better scaler in it than a $200 upconverter dvd player that was rushed to market. and by all accounts, even the HDDVD players can't scale to 720p well because Toshiba went to the trouble to make the signal 480p and then 720p! this is why Tosh says output at the discs native res. it was a cost choice to make it a poor crossconverter.

rudyusmc1980

studios also feel they are gaining by the new copy protection and premium pricing.

winpitt

First, there would be some pretty significant licensing issues related to dropping standard DVD production. Not to mention retooling of production lines, etc. Just ain't gonna happen soon. The very concept of releasing new technology involves having higher tiered pricing for early adopters to help offset R&D costs.

Second, remember that the ICT protection will not be enabled - at least for a while. Therefore, the studios get nothing other than potentially slower sales for the mainstream - and we all should recognize that HD-DVD/BD ain't gonna be "mainstream" for a while.

Again - wish there were one real standard, but manufacturers other than Toshiba and Sony are not willing to pay for this battle.

rudyusmc1980

licensing issues? who do you think is behind HDDVD? answer: the same people you brought you regular DVD!

IMO, they should pull everyones license to make dvd players. Pull them off the shelves. put them in a shredder. stop making them and stop selling them. It might seem high-handed, but it's no different than the FCC putting cutoff dates on analog tv.

extreme? yes.
effective at speeding adoption? yes
gonna happen? no

BobY

The govenrment push is not for HD, it's for DTV, but I agree it can't help but increase HD adoption rate and that can't help but make more opportunity for HD discs.

Retooling production lines is a much bigger deal for Blu-Ray. One of the DVD Forum requirements for adopting HD DVD as their HD standard was insuring that upgrading the disc production equipment could be quick and (relatively) inexpensive. That's why the aperture was kept close to standard DVD and why HD DVD has less theoretical storage capacity than BD.

You can output 480p over HDMI and still have the display upscale it all in the digital domain.

Regarding HD DVD at 720p, I know the articles said Toshiba is downscaling 1080i to 480p then upscaling that to 720p, but that doesn't make sense to me--that's more work than just going straight to 720p. I suspect they are taking each 540-line field of the 1080i output and upscaling them to 720p (i.e. 1080i-to-540p-to-720p). This is a much simpler conversion and there are *many* 720p displays on the market that do exactly that.

SLedford

rudyusmc1980,
I must admit that I your idea of pulling regular DVD players off the market to force people into buying HD-DVD (or BD-DVD) players is interesting. One of the things I love about a forum like this is different views / ideas.

There are two problems that I see with this approach:
(1) The delay in forcing people to buy HD/BD-DVD players, and
(2) A financial "hit" to the hardware makers,

Suppose production stopped on standard DVD players immediately and all DVD players re-called from stores (an expensive proposition - the manufacturers would have to buy them back). I wouldn't be forced to buy a HD-DVD player - my player works fine, and I have another one (not as good) that I could use if it/when it quit working. Yes, this would eventurally force people to buy HD/BD-DVD players or find a regular DVD player on the resale market, but it could take years. A better solution would be to drop the HD/BD-DVD player prices down to a "must buy" level.

This would be financially tough on the manufacturers. They would be sacrificing a large standard DVD market for a period with limited sales of HD/BD-DVD players till the supply of standard DVD players dried up. Keep in mind that the manufacturers DO want to move to HD/BD-DVD players, since the prices have dropped on standard DVD players, along with profit margins.

The public has never reacted well to strong arm tactics by the government and/or businesses, and this would certainly look like a strong arm tactic. It could even cause a backlash that would hurt the industry.

This will work itself out as the percentage of high def televisions continues to rise and the prices of these new formats falls. Hopefully one of these formats will survive and keep us happy till the next replacement product comes along in 10 - 15 years.

__________________
Toshiba 57H83 television, Paradigm Monitor 5 front speakers, Paradigm CC370 center speaker, Paradigm Mini Monitor surround speakers, Sony subwoofer, Yamaha HRT-5590 receiver, Denon DVD-2800 II, Toshiba HD-DVD A2, Play Station 3 - 40 Gig, Comcast HD Cable

winpitt

Uh, if you think licensing is "flat rate" I think you should reconsider. License and patent law are a heck of a lot more complex than that. I daresay licensing for HD-DVD/BD will be more expensive out of the gate than for DVD today.

While I agree that your solution would serve us on this board better, it's not in any way reflective of reality and frankly extremely bad business practice. It would drive their revenues down through the floor. If I were a shareholder, and you were an executve suggesting that, I'd fire you. Not to be rude, but it's just not a commercially viable solution.

Plus, I think all it would do is generate interest on something else. I don't think it would really speed adoption. It would just create further chaos.

Oh, and the government did NOT say analog had to die within a certain time. It said that content had to be provided in digital. So, they can still provide both and be compliant, therefore not abandoning all users with non-digital equipment. And they have a single standard. Not two. At least by my count.

I think you're focusing on the wrong problem. The issue is Toshiba vs Sony, and the answer is NOT to have them force yet more chaos on us.

winpitt

Absolutely agree with the first comment below.

Don't agree with the second - only in that I think that it will be far sooner than 10-15 years.

BobY

Yeah, I don't think the strong arm tactic is very credible--there's no way to force a recall of existing players on the shelves even if you pull the manufacturers license (as the license was in effect when they were manufactured). Besides, the majority of members on the DVD Forum are the hardware manufacturers, and they're not going to trash their inventory.

There is no reason, however, that the hardware manufacturers couldn't opt to stop producing conventional DVD players. There is absolutely no margin in them at this point and they are strictly commodity items. Even with all the mainstream manufacturers building their product in China, the Chinese companies are still undercutting them and there is really nothing they can do about that as the Chinese have lower overhead and can operate on even smaller margins (at least in the near term). So there is some motivation to drop low-profit conventional DVD and move to what could ultimately be higher ASP/margin HD players. At product launch, margins are pretty bad even at higher ASP, but that improves pretty quickly as volume increases.

winpitt

Actually there is a reason. The low cost mass volume commodity manufacturers will continue to build DVD players. Plus, there is a growing business in DVD recorder/players. Therefore, they would just be alienating themselves from a very large portion of the market. The "average joe" will continue to purchase DVD players - they will just no longer then purchase them from the big guys - who will then become not so big.

It would kind of remind you of several attempts to do that in the past - none of which to my knowledge were successful as it's just a bad model.

BobY

Well they don't have to stop making DVD recorders and there's nothing stopping them from ultimately producing combo HD recorder/players, especially since HD players can also play conventional DVD. People who are buying DVD recorders are not the same people who are just buying cheap players. There are people who want to record and people who don't.

Can you give me some examples of manufacturers that have lost out by discontinuing product lines that weren't very profitable to them?

Right now these companies that are (or will be) producing HD players are discontinuing CRT-based displays and leaving them to the Chinese, even though they are still in demand. It's just not worth the effort for the level of profitability.

Mainstream digital camera manufacturers long ago gave up producing low-end, lower resolution cameras, leaving that market to the Chinese (take a look at how many digital cameras K-Mart has for under $100--I don't think there's even one brand name anyone has ever heard of).

Computer companies do it all the time (both hardware and software).

Still, I agree it's difficult for a company to abandon a market segment, even when they aren't making money at it, as it makes them less visible in the marketplace. It's essentially a form of marketing/advertising to keep consumers aware of them at retail and, as such, has a value beyond direct sales profit.

liquidmetal

I have Helios HVD 2085, and I'm happy with it.Check these pics:

These movies are taken on "The Watcher", "Breaking Through", "Hero" unfortunately they have only titles to choose from so I'm reqesting them to produce more out from DVD libraries.

rudyusmc1980

so, we let the chinese build all the $39 DVD players they want. We sell all of our current inventory to an unsuspecting public (how long would that take if all production was stopped? three months?).

Release all movies as combo discs to relieve inventory stress. If you want an upconverter, you buy a blulaser product. If you want DVD for your grandmas 13 inch b/w, you buy the $39 player from china. Everyone in the DVD cartel (except sony maybe) agrees to stop production and switch to HDDVD.

They all make hundreds of different models, at least one of which does everything they promised, and we all live happily ever after without having to buy a new receiver next year!!

winpitt

The problem (again) is the content. It's all about the content. If all movies were to be released as combo disks we wouldn't be having this conversation whatsoever. They are not. They're not even all being released in one format or the other. That's the problem, and these manufacturers (not the el cheapo chinese ones) do not control all the content publishing.

Plus, the cost of retooling ALL of their product line would be WAY WAY WAY (how many times should I type that?) more than they could tolerate at once.

Therefore, taking such an action as you recommend would have extremely negative results on their corporate performance.

rudyusmc1980

all right, so hyperbole and exaggerations aside, who's going to win the stanley cup? basketball? anyone?

as I said earlier, my plan won't happen. but as for firing me as ceo, that's fine, but I think tosh should lose the battle now to win the war later.