First HD DVD then Blu-Ray and now a THIRD option...... Total HD??

[KenW]

Crap. Can the powers in control of this not sit down for the good of the consumer? Such potential but greed will keep us from really enjoying it for years to come is seems. Sorry if already posted but what a damn way to start the day.

http://www.avrev.com/news/0107/04.total_hd_disc.shtml

[tkam]

TotalHD is just blu-ray on one side and hd-dvd on the other. I imagine it will be rather costly which will kill it off relatively quickly. And no the powers that be can't decide because they are all too damn greedy.

[KenW]

My point was does Total HD offer any real solution? So what if it can hold Blu-Ray on one side and HD DVD on the other. These to warring camps can't agree on much of anything. Doubt they'd be able to agree on content rights either. Given the major players in each camp it appears the average John Doe consumer will continue waiting for them to throw us a bone and come up with a universal standard.

[tkam]

No it's not a solution at all, the only positive that could come from it if it became popular is that retail stores would only have to stock a single copy to cover the available HD formats instead of two copies as they do now. I still think in the long run blu-ray will likely win out due to more studio support and larger disc capacity. In the mean time though LG has announced a universal player that will play both hd-dvd and blu-ray. The current rumor is that it will just have a hd-dvd and blu-ray drive shoved into one case but we'll see.

[DigiPete]

In the mean time I am enjoying my Toshiba HD-A2 by renting HD dvds from Netflix

Just wathched Superman returns in HD last night... spectacular.

[tkam]

Yep I'm enjoying my HD-A2 as well. I'm hoping there are some 2nd gen blu-ray players announced at CES next week as I'd like to pick up one but the current crop of 1st gen players don't impress me much.

[KenW]

I'm in a bit of an all round holding pattern. Until there's more content for HDTV, I'll wait on getting my set upgraded and until I make that jump, there's little reason to go with either HD format at the moment. I will admit to a longing to upgrade the entire home theater but I'm just not seeing a good reason to pull the trigger right now.

[Iron_Dreamer]

I'm with you Ken. Right now, HD over Satellite (all that's available where I live) looks like crap, with tons of compression related distortion, I'd rather watch a DIVX file, thanks!

[DigiPete]

HD over cable looks pretty good, if that is an option for you... that's what I have.

Blu-ray might be interesting but the $1000+ price tag is not. That's why I went with the <$450 Toshiba.

[en480c4]

I thought Sony had successfully sued to prevent universal Blu-Ray/HD-DVD players

I guess a universal player is a nice solution until one or both formats win or die.

As for HDTV, I've been pretty happy with it through Comcast. There's definitely some issues still to be worked out, and quality does vary, but any of the broadcast networks' primetime shows at their worst still bury SDTV. And when there are no issues with the feed it's stunning.

[tkam]

I'm not aware of any such lawsuit. I know Samsung had been planning to do a universal blu-ray/hd-dvd player but they canceled those plans and instead are 100% backing blu-ray only.

[aerius]

The give-a-shit-o-meter remains firmly pegged at zero. The companies can go fuck themselves until they come up with a unified standard and enough affordable content to support said standard. In other words, I want to be able to replace every DVD I have with hi-res whatever for $15-20 a disc. Until then, I couldn't care less what they do.

[Dusty Chalk]

It strikes me as DualDisc all over again.