Blu-ray Wins the Battle, But May Lose the War

Dpierce37 · Ladies Man Joined: 23 Apr 2003 Posts: 7659 City: Austin

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20080108/tc_nf/57617

Sucks to be all the people who bought HD-DVD players....

course int he end, we will all lose. HD Video-on-demand is the future and it's closer then we think. No more pesky components, just log into your library online, hit play and Bam..your movie in all it's 1080p 7.1 surrond sound goodness!!!!

Wakebrad · Ladies Man Joined: 11 Dec 2003 Posts: 12257 City: Dallas

Interesting. I saw it coming over the Holiday but didn't think it would pretty much officially end so soon.

Glad I didn't buy an HD DVD player already, I was close.

Dpierce37 · Ladies Man Joined: 23 Apr 2003 Posts: 7659 City: Austin

Wakebrad, I am curious as to what microsoft is going to do now? Are they finally going to ditch the HD-DVD for blue-ray as well? Sony doesn't have a copyright on it does it?

chavez · RIP MHL 04/25/1958 - 01/11/2006

Dpierce37, I have been saying this for how long now?

The USA is so far behind other modern countries in terms of internet speed and bandwidth it's not even funny.

Dpierce37 · Ladies Man Joined: 23 Apr 2003 Posts: 7659 City: Austin

chavez, yea I know. I can see the future now. All TV's will come with a keyboard/mouse type thing. No more cd players, no more dvd players, no more tuner. Everything will be in your own online homepage.... Only thing I see that you would need is a pre-amp for the speakers.

That will make everything so clean...I could even see your speakers working without wires. They have the tech already...but the sound quality is lacking. Me likey!!!! Mr. Green

JRW160 · Soul Rider Joined: 03 Aug 2006 Posts: 367 City: Huntsville

Tyler T · Posted: Jan 10, 2008 8:07 pm Post subject:

JRW160 · Soul Rider Joined: 03 Aug 2006 Posts: 367 City: Huntsville

Dpierce37 · Ladies Man Joined: 23 Apr 2003 Posts: 7659 City: Austin

yea the powermat is just a replacement for the chord.

JRW160, well you could always have a plug to each corner of the room like they do the wires for surround sound. Then jsut get a 6" chord from the speaker to the plug.
Course thats just as pain of an arse as running wires. HAHA

Tyler T · Posted: Jan 11, 2008 12:21 am Post subject:

joedirt00 · Posted: Jan 11, 2008 5:41 am Post subject:

Does anybody here have a Blue Ray player? I was at the Sony store here in town and I was pretty much blown away with the quality. Only thing I'm not sure about is if it was the player, the LCD tv or a combination of both. The entire image was sharp as hell and there was a disting difference in sharpness between foreground action and background. It gave it alot of depth. Is this in the player? If it makes my 65" Toshiba look like that I would probably buy a PS3, but if not I'll just wait for streaming tech.

JRW160 · Soul Rider Joined: 03 Aug 2006 Posts: 367 City: Huntsville

garveyj · Addict Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 877 City: Savage, MN

Actually they were talking about a bluetooth charger of some sort at CES this year. The device would charge or power other items over bluetooth.

Maybe that is where it is heading.

chavez · RIP MHL 04/25/1958 - 01/11/2006

The next step in shiny disc obsolescence is at hand:

http://www.macworld.com/article/131580/2008/01/itunesmovierentals.html

oshensurfer · Posted: Jan 15, 2008 1:52 pm Post subject:

How many people have done what DP has done and hooked up a PC or Mac to their large format TV?

I guess I could just hook up a laptop with a wireless connection instead. What are others doing?

chavez · RIP MHL 04/25/1958 - 01/11/2006

oshensurfer, more than you would think.

The MacMini is an ideal solution for this. I hooked my mom's up this way, and they were amazed with all you could do.

One device: DVD player, www, streaming content (movies, net radio, whatever), music, pictures, etc. etc.

At some point I am going to drop the coin on a Mini to do all of this. I have an email out to my bro to see if Apple is going to offer the HD movie rentals on regular Macs via iTunes/FrontRow.

Also, I asked what the broadband requirements were for the HD content. He asked and they said it is min 1mbps down with 5mpbs recommended. So as long as you don't have the cheapest of the cheap broadband/dsl you are good to go. They also strongly recommend 802.11N if you are going to try this wirelessly.

Wakebrad · Ladies Man Joined: 11 Dec 2003 Posts: 12257 City: Dallas

oshensurfer · Posted: Jan 15, 2008 2:12 pm Post subject:

chavez, Cool. Thanks for that info. I might consider that mini now. However, I think a macbook would serve me better.

chavez · RIP MHL 04/25/1958 - 01/11/2006

Wakebrad, your PC can handle that. I've done 5 and 6 monitor setups in the past.

The way Apple proposes it is to have the AppleTV at your TV, not a full blown PC or Mac. Then stream the content across wirelessly (using N) or wired (if possible). The Apple TV interface is very similar to FrontRow and all but the most tech challenged can handle it.

Erik · Posted: Jan 15, 2008 2:19 pm Post subject:

It will be a slow death. 3-5 years. And by then there will be a digital distribution model in place. So the title of this thread is accurate.

I have the HD-DVD add on for the Xbox 360. Oh well! I'll enjoy it while it lasts. I'm still not 100% banking on any of this news yet - so close to CES and all of the marketing money spent. It all could be very well spun but the signs are pointing to Blu-Ray winning this format war/farce.

pet575 · Posted: Jan 15, 2008 2:20 pm Post subject:

Aren't digital cable providers and DirecTV providing downloadable or on-demand stuff in HD already? I know my new HD DVR is capable of being hooked into my broadband connection for this type of service. I just haven't ventured down that road yet.

Wakebrad · Ladies Man Joined: 11 Dec 2003 Posts: 12257 City: Dallas

pet575 · Posted: Jan 15, 2008 2:28 pm Post subject:

These concepts are all great and everything, but there is one problem that may cause consumers to hesitate to jump into accepting delivery of movies that they want to purchase and keep as their own via online technology. That problem is the retention issue. How many other people out there have ever had a DVR fail that was full of content that they wanted to retain? I've lost one, and several shows, movies, etc. that were on it. It sucks, because I can't get them back.

If distribution of purchased movies, shows, etc. is going to happen, they are also going to have to find a way to safeguard those purchases to protect against this type of potential problem. I'm not going to invest in a service and equipment that is going to leave me open to that risk and require me to re-purchase everything in the event of a failure of my equipment.

If you have it on a computer hard drive, you have a method to back it up with a DVD burner or CD burner. But, if they are going to move toward TV-specific machines that aren't PC's, this seems like an unlikely possibility.

chavez · RIP MHL 04/25/1958 - 01/11/2006

pet575, some are yes, but their bandwith is severely limited, so they cannot provide and "iTunes" style rental library.

This is Blockbuster/Netflix, with no tangible media - AND in HD.

Wakebrad, that merger is probably coming sooner than you think. We are already halfway there, that Sat/Cable box under your TV probably already runs some form of LINUX.

Wakebrad · Ladies Man Joined: 11 Dec 2003 Posts: 12257 City: Dallas

pet575, I would guess if you're "buying" something permanently that you would want to re-watch, you would have the license for it and could re-download it any time you needed.

chavez, the cable box under my TV is capable of a lot more than it does. A friend of mine talked to an engineer at motorolla who works on those boxes and apparently they have capabilities out the wazoo, they're just disabled by the cable companies until they can find ways to charge for them.

pet575 · Posted: Jan 15, 2008 3:14 pm Post subject:

Wakebrad, I would hope so. Kinda like an iTunes Store type of deal. Again, though, I can easily back my library up onto a CD. I was just working under the assumption that the distributors wouldn't want to take it upon themselves to archive that info on their own disk space for years after delivery. It makes sense, but that is a LOT of info over time.

chavez · RIP MHL 04/25/1958 - 01/11/2006

pet575, pretty much what Brad said.

But, that is one of the reasons I favor a device like the MacMini over AppleTV. The AppleTV is intriguing to me, but I want to have my cake and eat it too.

MacMini = everything in one very tidy package.

J-Ro · Posted: Jan 15, 2008 3:31 pm Post subject:

Anyone see that Sony is coming out with their own proprietary competitor to USB 3.0? God I hate Sony.

chavez · RIP MHL 04/25/1958 - 01/11/2006

J-Ro, they are f**king brilliant. Long live MemoryStick.

Whatever their engineers are smoking, they need to stop. Put them on A&E's intervention and get it done.

JRW160 · Soul Rider Joined: 03 Aug 2006 Posts: 367 City: Huntsville

I have a pc hooked up to my tv via a dvi-hdmi cable. I have a laptop I use for web browsing and email and stuff. From the laptop I remote in to the pc to do everything. I mainly just use to pc to download tv shows off newsgroups and to play dvds. I have a wireless keyboard and mouse stored under the couch for when I want to watch the pc.

I would ideally like an ir solution to control the pc using the harmony 880, but I'm not sure how feasible that is. I haven't looking into it much.

chavez · RIP MHL 04/25/1958 - 01/11/2006

JRW160, that is why I am looking to the MacMini. Using the Apple remote, you certainly could train the IR codes in to a UNI like the Harmony line. Then you could control FrontRow and all of your other devices with the one remote.

There are other IR solutions out there that will work - in fact I'm pretty sure Microsoft has a "media center" remote setup that I'd assume will work the way you want it to.

FrontRow is just so simple and clean. Anybody could use it. Even my grandma. Laughing

JRW160 · Soul Rider Joined: 03 Aug 2006 Posts: 367 City: Huntsville

frontrow does look nice. I have heard of the media center remote, but I really haven't looked into it much. The idea of installing media center on that machine crossed my mind, but I never got around to it. I don't mind using the keyboard and mouse, but it would be nice to have a more elegant solution.

Will the mac mini allow you to play streaming video?

There are a lot of options out there. The macmini is one I hadn't thought of. I had ruled out appletv because of it seemed to be locked down by apples rules. Eventually I need to come up with a reasonable way to get content to other tvs in the house. I'd like to store everything on one machine and stream content at other locations using xbox360, original xbox with xbmc, or something like that.

Dpierce37 · Ladies Man Joined: 23 Apr 2003 Posts: 7659 City: Austin

pet575, about your question on losing info stored on a peripheral device...I think in a few years, peripheral will be non-existent. Just like your have like 10gigs of storage with your gmail account (not sure exact), I think everyone will have there own online directory, accessed buy the press of a button...your house Burnes down, tornado tears it up...you still will have all your movies, songs, pictures, etc stored in a place you can access from anywhere just like checking your email. Your at a friends house, log into your account, and you can watch any movie you own..in HD. Thats were the future is at.

pet575 · Posted: Jan 16, 2008 7:16 am Post subject:

That would be great and would solve that problem. I just wonder if the distributors will be willing to take on the cost of storing all of that data and maintaining it. Plus, what if you changed providers? How long would they keep it? Would you be able to access it afterwards (essentially "taking it with you") or would that access end and you would be responsible for backing it all up yourself before ending your relationship?

I'm sure these questions would have to be answered as part of a good business plan for any distributor. Just asking cuz we don't know right now.

chavez · RIP MHL 04/25/1958 - 01/11/2006

JRW160, the MacMini is a full blown computer. It will do anything you need it to.

Hell, I have one here in the office running XP pro through bootcamp. It might be the fastest machine here. It certainly is the newest.