As you may or may not know, Sony & Toshiba are engaged in a "death match" for the successor to DVD: Blu-ray versus HD-DVD. Though I don't follow it the subject too closely, as I have no desire to pick a side (more specifically, little desire to choose the loser), Blueray has had the advantage for the most part, based on greater availability of content and by making the Play Station 3 Blu-ray compatible (and a cooler name?). HD-DVD has the advantage in quality (from what I've read), price of player, more features and fewer Digital Rights Management issues.
Now, with the holidays approaching, Toshiba is pushing the hardware price angle a lot. Best Buy has the Toshiba A-2 for $99.99 (in store only) and Walmart will have it on sale tomorrow for the same price. And the mail in rebate for 5 free movies is still applicable. So that really helps the cause. It should be noted that the price drop is to clear out stock for the to-be-released A-3, which is largely the same player with some firmware grades and interface improvements (and which will be on sale at Sears for $170 on Black Friday)
I just asked Joanne if she wanted to get one, and she actually said yes (which surprised me a bit, based on my other consumer electronics wants/gets). The player is backward compatible (plays regular DVDs), and it's up-converting. When I talked with Joanne, I thought it wasn't. But it is in fact. And that's the option she finds appealing--as it would make our existing DVDs look better (supposedly).
I have read, however, that upconverting may not be all that, as an HDTV has a scaler that does the job anyway (taking the 480p from the dvd player and making if fit its resolution of 720p or 1080i, or whatever). Then the only question is does the $1500 TV or the $100 DVD player have a better scaler? Dunno.
In terms of just a regular up-converting player, my want there would be the Oppo 980H, as Oppo has an excellent reputation for its upconverting players and its players are universal--region free and playing pretty much any shiny disc format you put in it (except Blu-ray and HD DVD), which is key because I'm pondering buying into the "dying" format that is SACD (mainly classical and jazz releases). I only have two at the moment, and they're both hybrids (meaning they have a regular CD layer), so it's not like my investment there is great.
End result? This leaves me in my normal consumer electronics conundrum--can I actually tell what is good, and is the difference worth the cost? The fact that the A-2 does upconvert changes the calculus a bit, and I'd have to decide if higher resolution/multi channel music is worth it--I do think it's better, but I have some question how much value I place on that better quality.
EDIT: Local Best Buys are sold out apparently. That was reasonably fast.
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2 comments:
Had this conversation at work last week. Answer is, it depends on your TV. If you TV only does 1080i, then Blue Ray and HD-DVD are equivalent. If your TV does 1080p, the blue-ray is visibly better.
Second hand experience. (Cow-orkers were discussing it, no personal experience)
-Jot
If the two guys around the water cooler have it right. From http://tinyurl.com/fls36:
Myth: Blu-ray is superior because it supports 1080P and HD-DVD doesn’t
Reality: This myth stems from the players themselves and not the actual disc formats. All HD-DVD’s released to date are encoded at 1080p; Blu-ray and HD-DVD are no more defined by their respective players than the DVD format was. Many of the first DVD players didn’t support DTS, but do you hear anyone claiming that DVD doesn’t support DTS?
No, neither the HD-A1 or HD-XA1 currently support 1080p output, but with Toshiba’s third HD-DVD player/recorder supporting 1080p output, I think its safe to assume that all future HD-DVD players will do the same.
More importantly only a handful of the 1080p displays on the market today accept 1080p input, they take 1080i and internally de-interlace it to 1080p, this is why Toshiba chose to forgo 1080p output on the first two players. It was a simple matter of real-world functionality versus a perceived benefit.
The truth of the matter is the majority of the 1080p capable displays on the market, have the ability to internally de-interlace 1080i video to full 1080p resolution. So 1080p from HD-DVD is technically possible right now.
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of course that's just some guy on the internet.
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