projectorsrule said:
At a "Studio head forum" at CEDIA it was brought up by one of the studio executives on the panel (Sony I believe) that 90% of HDTV's in Japan have only analog inputs and that was a big concern for them. Since the HDDVD/BLURAY will have more robust region coding it's rather apparent that the studios are out to screw Americans. Greedy Bastards
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I never understood why they use region protection.. I mean if someone buys DVD's in the UK.. and then moves to the US, why is it wrong for those paid for discs to play in region 1? And if the labels are so paranoid about Pirates stealing HD, then why would they leave the components open in Japan? It only takes one person to make a copy for it to get distributed illegally. If they are going to use ICT flags.. then they better flag them all. I am thinking that the reason that Japan has 90 componet outputs on their HDTV's is because they are more hi tech.. Obviously they bought into HDTV way before they came up with HDMI outputs. Its too bad that HDTV may be crippled before it can even get off the ground.
But I really hope blue ray dies quickly. The tolererances are much more strict and by default, it will never be as robust as HD DVD. People say there will be cheap blue ray with PS3. Ever wonder why that console never gets released? ITs because of manufacturing issues. And once they do manage to get blue ray to market my 2 cents says they won't be as nearly reliable as DVD HD. DVD HD will be as reliable as DVD players since they use similar specs. Reliability is very important to me.. And from what I read about the issues with blue laser and how it bends the laser to function.. and how tight the tolerances are.. no thank you. I want a simplier machine.. simple means reliable.
I don't think people see how important the backward compatibility is.. Do you think the average joe is going to have the extra inputs on their HDTV for two DVD players and a satellite box etc? Is it true that Blue ray players won't play existing DVD content? If that is so... they are DOOMED.
In the end, HD DVD players are going to drop in price faster.. its a no brainer considering that they have a huge manufacturing advantage. The movie companies will also be able to manufacture movies cheaper and the media will also be cheaper to produce.. Everything is price driven. Price points will kill Blue ray. Sony is not my favorite company anyway.. After what they did with Altrac on PMD's and that copy protection on their audio CD's that put a root kit on your PC.. I don't like them.. Hope they lose it all like they did with betamax.