For those of you have been following my travails in the home-entertainment hardware realm on this blog, you may now gaze upon the first professional fruits of my labors in this realm: the inaugural Hi-Def Consumer Guide, wherein I rate various and sundry discs in the HD and Blu-Ray formats, is on the proper website now. My pick hits this month are Black Book and Ratatouille, but as they say in blogland, read the whole thing. Please, I mean.
Hi Glenn,
I now have a Panasonic HD TV and an Oppo DVD player. Although I guess I don't have a pressing need to own any of the films available on Blu Ray or HD, it would be fun to have that experience. But since I don't think I'd want to invest in both Blu Ray and HD players, let me ask you the solomonic question of which player I should choose if I limit myself to one or the other. Since HD players are cheaper, I'd be inclined to go with one of those.
Ciao, Richard Porton
Posted by: Richard Porton | November 21, 2007 at 06:26 PM
Standard-def DVD upconversion is generally better on HD DVD players as well.
Posted by: Jeffrey Allen Rydell | November 21, 2007 at 07:34 PM
I wanna A-B some standard-def discs on my two players before I weigh in on your statement, Jeff. But I've got to say that right now I am very glad to own my Playstation 3, and glad I sprung for its separate dedicated Blu-Ray remote as well. I kept hearing that the thing was a nightmare of a disc player and it's the opposite—loads up faster than my Toshiba HD disc player, for one thing. But HD manufacturers are counting one you to go with the inclination that results from cheaper player prices, while in fact both the number and range of titles in Blu-Ray is bigger (I've got a Blu-Ray of "The Seventh Seal" on order from England, coming soon), and the tech itself is more sophisticated, or, I should come out and say, better, particularly in terms of storage ability. To wit, the HD-disc of "Clockwork Orange" had to be spread out over two discs while on Blu Ray it's only one...and pretty much the same. Consider these factors as well when making your selection, as they say.
Posted by: Glenn Kenny | November 21, 2007 at 08:06 PM
Hmm, I'm a little confused. Given what you've said about the advantages of Blu-Ray, does it make any sense to buy Playstation 3 if you just want to watch movies but have no desire to play games? Wouldn't a simple Blu-Ray player suffice? Or there are some advantages to getting PS3 for viewing movies that go beyond the mere ability to play games as well?
R. Porton
Posted by: Richard Porton | November 22, 2007 at 12:37 AM
Blu-ray has had a lot of delays in the implementation of their proposed interactive content, and first-generation players won't be able to be updated to the upcoming spec via firmware.
The single-layer HD DVDs are sufficient storage size for films themselves, and if they need an additional disc for extras, I really can't be bothered to care.
Additionally, HD DVD is about to introduce a dual-layer disc that will put them 1GB ahead of Blu-ray (whoop-de-doo, right?). Advance word is... shall we say, *conflicted* on whether present generation players will have any problems playing them.
As to upconversion, HD DVD's reputation is a bit better all round there, but especially with their Toshiba standalone units - I can vouch for last year's flagship player, the XA2, in this regard...
-Jeff
Posted by: Jeffrey Allen Rydell | November 22, 2007 at 02:36 AM
"loads up faster than my Toshiba HD disc player"
Oh - keep up on your firmware updates. They help with the load time.
Posted by: Jeffrey Allen Rydell | November 22, 2007 at 02:38 AM
Er, this might save you some looking:
http://www.tacpservice.toshiba.com/ConsumerProductSupport/productupdatesandnotices.asp
Posted by: Jeffrey Allen Rydell | November 22, 2007 at 02:41 AM
They're supposed to be sending me regular firmware updates—I'm registered!—but nothing yet. I'll check out their site soon, thanks for the link...
Posted by: Glenn Kenny | November 22, 2007 at 09:59 AM