Slyck.com have an interesting interview up with muslix64, the guy who defeated the copy protection efforts on HD DVD and more recently, Blu-Ray discs.

Seems like one big ego trip to me...

I dunno, I think he's doing everyone a favour by contributing to the hopefully sudden death of this retarded format war that we're all going to have to endure until one of them wins, or both of them die.

My tv supports true high def 1080 whateva it is, but didn't buy a blue ray player to take advantage as i wasn't sure where everything is going... However blue ray players and blue ray dvd's are selling so I think blue ray will be here to stay, no matter what these interviews suggest.

^ There's no 'e' in Blu-ray.

On a related note, I saw an interesting video about Trusted Computing ...

like there is even an argument the only people pushing blu-ray are the sony fanboys, and they just happen to be rich.

My tv supports true high def 1080 whateva it is, but didn't buy a blue ray player to take advantage as i wasn't sure where everything is going

HD-DVD is 1080p as well. As I understand it, the level of quality is the same on both mediums, its just the media itself that really differs?

Time being it might be worth getting a dvd player that upscales? At least you know dvd's will be around for a while yet.

This debate would be easier if it was like Betamax/VHS. But it's not. The differences are just simply too small to rally behind one or the other - two different implementations of exactly the same thing.

People can argue MPEG-2 vs VC1 vs H.264 vs some other MPEG-4 flavour and in the end, it's pointless in the eyes of the Joe Consumer bloke.

LG have tried to "win" with a combo player that uses the Broadcom chip - nice try, but unfortunately the LG player costs more than an HD-DVD player and a PS3 together. Not to mention that the player can't use the HD-DVD logo anywhere on the player (it's not certified by the HD-DVD consortium). Most likely this is because LG can't afford to lose its Blu-Ray ties with Sony.

At the end of the day Sony are, again, being pig-headed bullies. But what goes around comes around...

last edited by Creepy at 04:49:22 26/Jan/07

Khel, I believe what you say is true...

As to HDMI upscaling, what does this mean exactly?? I have an LG DN100H dvd player that supports this feature.

Specs: http://au.shopping.com/xPF-LG-DN100H

http://au.lge.com/md/product/prodcategorylist.do?actType=detail&currPage=1&categoryId=0200000302&parentCategoryId=0200000003&categoryLevel=3&productId=1100000949#

last edited by Marty at 05:34:07 26/Jan/07

It's a standard definition optical media player (ie. DVD), which performs a realtime upscale of SD content to HD.

You don't gain resolution as such, you're simply outputting a "blown up" image to your HD set to keep it at 1080 @ 50i/60i

Why upscale? It removes (to some people) the unsightly scanlines you see when viewing 525 or 625 lines on an HDTV.

In some cases, upscaling (and keeping everything 1080) means less dicking around with your TV setup depending on the TV you bought and how "smart" it is in handling different resolutions.

that trusted computing video was pretty nifty.

yeah, but with upscaling, you can panasonic/LG's version of upscaling and then you can get something like a marantz which uses a Faroudja chip to do a far better job.

the cheap ones just blow it up, the better ones scale it properly and look a lot better.

i'm still holding out hope that HD-DVD will win, because it's region free

I'm not 100% knowledgable about the bits that go into those new Panny and LG players, but the best job is to get a genuine scaler - these puppies cost a lot more than your upscaling DVD player to be sure.

I'm just not that anal enough. In the end, you can't make a 576 picture into a 1080 picture and it look "better" - that's as doable as a movie which "enhances" at satellite photo of a man's face to be clear as day.

is HD DVD format already on sale?? cause Blu ray is.

yeah, players are out, discs will start coming on sale in the next 2 weeks or so

HD DVD was out months before blu ray. Dunno about here, but it came out over in the US about the same time Serenity came out on DVD, because I remember Serenity was one of the first HD DVDs.

ah ffs.. so which one should i buy, I do not know lol... I guess what this is what this debate is about.. I aint buying anything for now as it is overpriced, f***ing way overpriced. I will wait till this format war is over and a clear winner is prominent (and cheap), and until there is support in Blockbuster so you can hire the things out.

The only other thing that would influence me in with which fomat player to buy is the compatibility to play the other format.. eg, will the HD DVD player also play Blu Ray discs or Blu Ray players play HD DVD discs. This would be most controversial and influential to my decision.

Speaking of which, I did a quick google and players that play both formats are available. Here is one made by LG but apparantly doesn't have support for all the features in HD DVD format, however it won't be long until a decent player comes out which plays both formats and supports all of their features.. Don't even know why LG even bothered releasing this player, lame as: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/archives/2007/01/25/dual_hidef_player_not_recommended.html


On another note, if Blu Ray is the dominant format, when I was in HN, their cheapest player was the panasonic for $1600 and my jaw dropped. For that price you may aswell wait till the PS3 comes out for $1000 and you have a Blu Ray player and the bonus of a powerful gaming console aswell.

But seriously, $1600, that's how much DVD players cost when they came out and you can buy a cheap DVD player in Coles for $30 which outlasted my LG one lol. You'd be a fool to buy it for that price, talk about free money for these tech companies.

nar I don't want no upscaling crap.. I'll wait till the hd players get cheap and buy that.. I wan't best quality.

Wait out the format war and go for a decent upscaling DVD player such as the Pioneer DV-696AV, which I bought for AUD$299. True, it won't ever look as good as native HD but it goes a long way if the de-interlacer and upscaler in your HDTV is cheap (in most cases). I hooked it up to a 1 year-old LG 32" HD LCD TV and the difference was incredible. The LG has a horrible de-interlacer (probably bob) which resulted in an image with bad pixelation. With the Pioneer through HDMI (set to 720p output) the image was smooth with barely any aliasing - a very HD-like image.

That is really interesting; I've often wondered if you could get players with better enhancing of the picture (done in software or whatever) so its neat to find out that you can.

nar I don't want no upscaling crap.. I'll wait till the hd players get cheap and buy that.. I wan't best quality.

You may have to wait a couple of years then...

Buying a decent upscaling DVD player is a good solution to extend the life of your existing DVD collection if you currently own a HDTV. Sure, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players have upscalers in them too but the current players are first generation and you're essentially paying a premium price for Beta hardware (both take atleast 30secs to boot up and current Blu-Ray players don't support Java interactive content), on top of the fact you'd be taking a huge risk in buying into the losing side of the format war.

Buying an upscaling DVD player will allow you to enjoy your DVD movies to their fullest as you'll also benefit from HDMI video output. Damn, I'm sounding like a salesman... I really should get a job as one.

chuck your old DVD's into this fairly cheap Marantz baby. Run it into a good quality Hi Def panel/CRT/whatever and be amazed. This model is on my 'wish list' for the new house, I would be getting this first before I decide on the Blu R and HDDVD formats.