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Pub Member / Supporter
Most of the posts I see in the war zone are centered around who will win based on popularity that is driven by studio exclusives/titles and retail price deals on players.
While this is fine I would also like to add my own perception and rude awakening over the two formats.
When I first saw the Blu Ray and HD DVD formates demoed a couple years ago, I became initially one sided favoring the Sony Blu Ray for this reason- I produce content and being a Sony House, I felt that Sony's DVD authoring and editing software that I use and like today would directly support this medium. It would be a good choice to have a BluRay burner in the studio and a set top player in the Home theater. Plus, I could see the wide acceptance of the Studios on BR vs, few on HD DVD. I never forget that content choices / titles available is king when winning the so called format war. In addition to that, I was told by Sony and some BR supporters that the format was technically superior to HD DVD primarily because it was being designed from the ground up as a higher capacity disk plus a burnable format that could be used for video producers to run off short quantities of HD productions. They said HD DVD would not do that.
Well, it's two years later and I am getting ready to begin my Home theater transformation to 1080p and a deal surfaces that I could not turn down. It was one where I buy the 1080p projector and a DVDO 50 Pro processor that has a 4x1 hdmi switching at a good price, PLUS it was bundled with a free Toshiba A30 player. This is how I end up getting into HD DVD before Blu Ray.
But I am not giving up on Blu Ray. I just needed to continue shopping for a player so I can be "Purple" as the saying goes. Here's where my surprises surface-
After 2 years waiting for this format war to be decided, plus 2 years waiting to be a medium that is out of the early adopter stage, I discover several personal misconceptions about the two.
First, I get the HD DVD setup working and I am most impressed with the quality and features. I sign up with the largest Block Buster store in Jacksonville, and have what seems to be a good quantity of HD DVD titles. Well with Movie pass, I quickly exhausted their library of new titles and have reverted to watching others as in reruns. The Wow factor of HD DVD is spent as far as Block Buster is able to supply. Now I do a census count and discover that this store has reduced it's HD DVD titles shortly after I signed up and now has about 1/4 of the number of titles available for rent. The true census is what is available to buy or rent with other services such as Netflix. The title count is about equal and therefore the deciding factor is get both or settle for one that has the title collection you prefer. For me that would be a difficult choice so being Purple is the only answer here.
So, happy with how things are working with my HD DVD, just not happy with available titles to rent, I decided to ramp up my decision to buy into Blu Ray. The A30 I had came as a free bonus but was selling for around $300 where I could find it so I felt all things being equal, I should pay no more than $300 for a Blu Ray player. I begin to shop and after eliminating the high end stores who only sold Blu Ray for $1000 and up, I looked at the CC and BB deals. Hardly any inventory. I'm reading forum threads on which player is best and was shocked to learn that BluRay has barely entered the market with any sort of maturity. For waht I was told 2 years ago about being a technical superior format, I discover the opposite is true that HD DVD offers these high end features Now and most of the Hd DVD's are offering them too. Well, slap me on the side of the head! My favored Blu Ray is still in the "early adopter stage of development with what they call profile 1.1, to offer us some better audio and a PIP feature was just released and no disks will support it until January or March depending on which editorial you believe. Only one title! WTF? Here I wait for 2 years and it's still early adopter with Blu Ray.
Well as I said before You'd never know it because with all the sales of HD DVD players promotion, BB still has 4 times as many titles as HD DVD to rent. Something seems out of balance here, don't you think?
So here we have more players with fewer disk rentals for HD DVD and plenty of titles available that lacks high tech features and will only play on expensive hardware for Blu Ray. IT makes no sense! The only way we can explain it is the "spoils of war" between the two formats. The consumer is getting screwed!
Well, I order a Player for Blue Ray so I can get the titles to view, knowing full well the technology seems inferior to HD DVD, it will do for now as long as I don't over pay. I find the Sammy 1400 for a bit over $300 which was my goal and have it on the way. But continuing the fiasco this war brings, I discover some more problems such as very long startup times with Blu Ray as well as stuttering and judder. Further confirmation that BluRay is stuck in the early adopter level of development. Hopefully, I can put up with the issues I've read about with Blu Ray, and I'm hoping Sony and partners will soon fix all this stuff. Then I can buy a real feature rich BluRay player that matches the technology I now get with HD DVD plus have that long sought after tight integration into my edit system for HD content production. At this rate I may be retired from the business before this all comes together. with Sony and partners.
After considering all this- I have concluded that HD DVD is the better choice today for a mature format and available titles but do not spend too much on it. Blu Ray, seems to have more rental availability but lack features if you are into that. If you just want to see the movie and send it back, ignoring these features then Blu Ray today will serve you well. But again try not to spend too much on this format for a player because these players are ALL developmental products full of flaws and lacking features of the competition.
While all this was disappointing to me, I can say it has given me renewed excitement over some of these productions since the quality difference is so pronounced. Even the sd, DVD played on the HD DVD player offers significant improvement over an older SD upconverting DVD player. So, its worth it even with SD DVD library. Again, just don't pay too much as the technology will improve and the price will keep coming down to the under $100 price.
This is a personal experience post of my assessment today in the format war. Hopefully, I won't become collateral damage in the battles. So far it seems I lost a battle at Block Buster as they have reduced the inventory at my store of HD DVD as compared to Blu Ray.
BluRay vs. HDDVD; who will win? I think there is no clear cut answer.
While this is fine I would also like to add my own perception and rude awakening over the two formats.
When I first saw the Blu Ray and HD DVD formates demoed a couple years ago, I became initially one sided favoring the Sony Blu Ray for this reason- I produce content and being a Sony House, I felt that Sony's DVD authoring and editing software that I use and like today would directly support this medium. It would be a good choice to have a BluRay burner in the studio and a set top player in the Home theater. Plus, I could see the wide acceptance of the Studios on BR vs, few on HD DVD. I never forget that content choices / titles available is king when winning the so called format war. In addition to that, I was told by Sony and some BR supporters that the format was technically superior to HD DVD primarily because it was being designed from the ground up as a higher capacity disk plus a burnable format that could be used for video producers to run off short quantities of HD productions. They said HD DVD would not do that.
Well, it's two years later and I am getting ready to begin my Home theater transformation to 1080p and a deal surfaces that I could not turn down. It was one where I buy the 1080p projector and a DVDO 50 Pro processor that has a 4x1 hdmi switching at a good price, PLUS it was bundled with a free Toshiba A30 player. This is how I end up getting into HD DVD before Blu Ray.
But I am not giving up on Blu Ray. I just needed to continue shopping for a player so I can be "Purple" as the saying goes. Here's where my surprises surface-
After 2 years waiting for this format war to be decided, plus 2 years waiting to be a medium that is out of the early adopter stage, I discover several personal misconceptions about the two.
First, I get the HD DVD setup working and I am most impressed with the quality and features. I sign up with the largest Block Buster store in Jacksonville, and have what seems to be a good quantity of HD DVD titles. Well with Movie pass, I quickly exhausted their library of new titles and have reverted to watching others as in reruns. The Wow factor of HD DVD is spent as far as Block Buster is able to supply. Now I do a census count and discover that this store has reduced it's HD DVD titles shortly after I signed up and now has about 1/4 of the number of titles available for rent. The true census is what is available to buy or rent with other services such as Netflix. The title count is about equal and therefore the deciding factor is get both or settle for one that has the title collection you prefer. For me that would be a difficult choice so being Purple is the only answer here.
So, happy with how things are working with my HD DVD, just not happy with available titles to rent, I decided to ramp up my decision to buy into Blu Ray. The A30 I had came as a free bonus but was selling for around $300 where I could find it so I felt all things being equal, I should pay no more than $300 for a Blu Ray player. I begin to shop and after eliminating the high end stores who only sold Blu Ray for $1000 and up, I looked at the CC and BB deals. Hardly any inventory. I'm reading forum threads on which player is best and was shocked to learn that BluRay has barely entered the market with any sort of maturity. For waht I was told 2 years ago about being a technical superior format, I discover the opposite is true that HD DVD offers these high end features Now and most of the Hd DVD's are offering them too. Well, slap me on the side of the head! My favored Blu Ray is still in the "early adopter stage of development with what they call profile 1.1, to offer us some better audio and a PIP feature was just released and no disks will support it until January or March depending on which editorial you believe. Only one title! WTF? Here I wait for 2 years and it's still early adopter with Blu Ray.
Well as I said before You'd never know it because with all the sales of HD DVD players promotion, BB still has 4 times as many titles as HD DVD to rent. Something seems out of balance here, don't you think?
So here we have more players with fewer disk rentals for HD DVD and plenty of titles available that lacks high tech features and will only play on expensive hardware for Blu Ray. IT makes no sense! The only way we can explain it is the "spoils of war" between the two formats. The consumer is getting screwed!
Well, I order a Player for Blue Ray so I can get the titles to view, knowing full well the technology seems inferior to HD DVD, it will do for now as long as I don't over pay. I find the Sammy 1400 for a bit over $300 which was my goal and have it on the way. But continuing the fiasco this war brings, I discover some more problems such as very long startup times with Blu Ray as well as stuttering and judder. Further confirmation that BluRay is stuck in the early adopter level of development. Hopefully, I can put up with the issues I've read about with Blu Ray, and I'm hoping Sony and partners will soon fix all this stuff. Then I can buy a real feature rich BluRay player that matches the technology I now get with HD DVD plus have that long sought after tight integration into my edit system for HD content production. At this rate I may be retired from the business before this all comes together. with Sony and partners.
After considering all this- I have concluded that HD DVD is the better choice today for a mature format and available titles but do not spend too much on it. Blu Ray, seems to have more rental availability but lack features if you are into that. If you just want to see the movie and send it back, ignoring these features then Blu Ray today will serve you well. But again try not to spend too much on this format for a player because these players are ALL developmental products full of flaws and lacking features of the competition.
While all this was disappointing to me, I can say it has given me renewed excitement over some of these productions since the quality difference is so pronounced. Even the sd, DVD played on the HD DVD player offers significant improvement over an older SD upconverting DVD player. So, its worth it even with SD DVD library. Again, just don't pay too much as the technology will improve and the price will keep coming down to the under $100 price.
This is a personal experience post of my assessment today in the format war. Hopefully, I won't become collateral damage in the battles. So far it seems I lost a battle at Block Buster as they have reduced the inventory at my store of HD DVD as compared to Blu Ray.
BluRay vs. HDDVD; who will win? I think there is no clear cut answer.
11 Replies
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2927 views
Pub Member / Supporter
Lifetime Supporter
Wasn't exactly sure where to post this. Just had a customer come in inquiring about internet. He has HughesNet and had heard good things about mine. He asked if we provided email addresses and it kinda caught me off guard. I said he should be able to keep whatever email he had been using....my sister in law is still using a BellSouth email addy and they haven't been around here for many years. He said he had gotten a letter from HughesNet stating that they had until Nov 16th to save, move, forward, whatever, their Hughesnet emails because they would lose them after that date.
I have never heard of a company simply mass-deleting email accounts (the customer still has his HughesNet service). From what I understand, in the past, the company who was ditching their email service simply sold the customer base to a company like Google.
Anyone else getting this letter. He said he would show it to me tomorrow when I go out there and set up his internet.
I have never heard of a company simply mass-deleting email accounts (the customer still has his HughesNet service). From what I understand, in the past, the company who was ditching their email service simply sold the customer base to a company like Google.
Anyone else getting this letter. He said he would show it to me tomorrow when I go out there and set up his internet.
8 Replies
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156 views
Still the same number of years, just more Sunsets…Wouldn't we then die of old age sooner?
Supporting Founder
Lifetime Supporter
For the naysayers who did not think this service would make it, just added another 4.9M subscribers and that was after the removal of 1.2M Russia subscribers.
This is even better, Paramount+ revenue grew 120% and Subscription revenue grew 74% year-over-year ( 2nd quarter 2021/ 2nd quarter 2022) to $830M, principally reflecting paid subscriber growth on Paramount+.
Now compare that to Peacock with only 13 million paid, 13 million free.
This is even better, Paramount+ revenue grew 120% and Subscription revenue grew 74% year-over-year ( 2nd quarter 2021/ 2nd quarter 2022) to $830M, principally reflecting paid subscriber growth on Paramount+.
Now compare that to Peacock with only 13 million paid, 13 million free.
665 Replies
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61558 views
So, this means that those of us with Commercial Free subs, won't be Commercial Free, unless we wait till after the show is over ?
Which would make same day, not that big of a deal.
Paramount+ has always had the CBS shows on the CBS local channel and yes with commercials. What they are doing now is releasing the OnDemand versions of the show which I believe they don't release until after the shows air on the west coast. And they will be commercial free if you subscribe to the ad free version of Paramount+.So, this means that those of us with Commercial Free subs, won't be Commercial Free, unless we wait till after the show is over ?
Which would make same day, not that big of a deal.
I wasn't up at 3:00 am to check but they are there at 8:00 am today.
The new curated multiview is now live.
While on many of the sports channels and non sports channels there is a multi view option button. It will pull up a side bar with many different multi view options.
While on many of the sports channels and non sports channels there is a multi view option button. It will pull up a side bar with many different multi view options.
5 Replies
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184 views
Supporting Founder
Pub Member / Supporter
Lifetime Supporter
Apple has finally released their Apple TV 4K with built-in Siri and a microphone so it can respond to your queries even if you don't have the remote. It also increases in price, to $299. I had been planning on updating my current Apple TV 4K streamers, but that's $600 for the two of them, and that's a pass at this point.
At $299, it had better come with 256 GB of Storage, Gigabit (or better) Ethernet, the latest HDMI tech and standards, and one year of free Apple One. But it probably won't…
At $299, it had better come with 256 GB of Storage, Gigabit (or better) Ethernet, the latest HDMI tech and standards, and one year of free Apple One. But it probably won't…
Apple TV 4K
Apple TV 4K. New Siri AI and hands-free control. Stunning picture and immersive HomePod surround sound. Works with your Apple and smart home devices.
www.apple.com
16 Replies
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204 views
S
. apple's been making money off of software and not hardware for a while
they all do that anyways.. ever notice your cell phone slows down when you come up for an upgrade..
. apple's been making money off of software and not hardware for a while
Linus Tech Tips
Time for another AWESOME video from Linus Tech Tips!
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aV81SqB6HQg
Direct YouTube Link - NVIDIA Told me How to Benchmark RTX Spark
Linus on Facebook
The LTT Store
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aV81SqB6HQg
Direct YouTube Link - NVIDIA Told me How to Benchmark RTX Spark
Linus on Facebook
The LTT Store
0 Replies
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2 views
Pub Member / Supporter
Cutting Edge
I created this thread on the original Edgecutter Cutting Edge Forums site. It's simply a place for those to review the latest software available for those using Windows 10 and Windows 11. To date it has received 112,559 views. I have been asked by staff to continue this thread here.
522 Replies
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47243 views
To each there own but I've found that Windows can't do much more than Linux can. Can't have everything.
For niche use cases, yes I agree. Kali for ethical hacking and security testing, and running a Cacti server for network monitoring are the two things I have experience in. Plus thousands and thousands of other things, but for every day use I just can't see it. The owner of the GMRS repeater that I pay to access is changing the Tx DPL tones tomorrow, while Chirp is available on Linux, the software to program my MXT500 is not.To each there own but I've found that Windows can't do much more than Linux can. Can't have everything.
I run Fedora and Ubuntu in VMWare, honestly I don't care much for the UI of either of them and I don't feel like spending days/weeks to customize the UI to make it look Windows-like when I could just use Windows. The cartoonish dock at the bottom of the screen reminds me of Apple products.
For some reason, the satelliteguys.us site is loading a lot slower than usual on both Chrome on my Asus laptop and Safari on my iPhone.
I'm also seeing longer appearances of the blue bar at the top and the "3 blue bars" loading symbol.
Is anyone else also having the same problem? Thanks in advance.
I'm also seeing longer appearances of the blue bar at the top and the "3 blue bars" loading symbol.
Is anyone else also having the same problem? Thanks in advance.
528 Replies
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17967 views
Remember folks... just like DNS... its always Foxbat. 
WTF… …What the Foxbat!Remember folks... just like DNS... its always Foxbat.
S
wow what a kick in the balls!!! the wife blames you when things don't work now scott's blaming youWTF… …What the Foxbat!
I know. Here's what Scott has in store for me if I get out of line:wow what a kick in the balls!!! the wife blames you when things don't work now scott's blaming you
S
OMG to freaking funny
Supporting Founder
Several Dish offers showed up today in my account. Once you choose one the rest are removed. Offers were Showtime, Starz, AMC and others.
33 Replies
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1597 views
Not for me, mines has no mention of how long aka the offer period and the Terms and conditions the $0.00 is good for. All I see is one can lose $5.00 if you decide to remove it before day 31 after you add it to the account.
Staff member
HERE TO HELP YOU!
Cutting Edge
Sometimes a thread gets so many posts in it that is can cause issues for the server so that why today we introduce The Song Name Game Part 3!
So let the game continue!
The last song was added by Bobby who posted...
One Meat Ball - Andrews Sisters
CONTINUE ON AND HAVE FUN! WELCOME HOME TO SATELLITEGUYS.US!
Here are the original rules for the game as posted by WebbyDude back in 2006. http://www.satelliteguys.us/threads/68645-Song-Name-Game
Just name a song title and the band who performed it. The next person does the same thing, but needs to list a song title or band name which includes a word from the previous entry. Pick songs from any genre.
Example:
Long Live Rock and Roll -- Rainbow
Rainbow in the Dark -- Dio
Another example:
Ride the Lightning -- Metallica
Lightning Strikes -- Ozzy Osbourne
Get it?
An additional note: we all know that song titles, sometimes, use profane words. Because this is a family friendly website it is advised that you clean up that title up a bit. This is accomplished by using something like sh!t instead of the real word. Thanks....
So let the game continue!
The last song was added by Bobby who posted...
One Meat Ball - Andrews Sisters
CONTINUE ON AND HAVE FUN! WELCOME HOME TO SATELLITEGUYS.US!
Here are the original rules for the game as posted by WebbyDude back in 2006. http://www.satelliteguys.us/threads/68645-Song-Name-Game
Just name a song title and the band who performed it. The next person does the same thing, but needs to list a song title or band name which includes a word from the previous entry. Pick songs from any genre.
Example:
Long Live Rock and Roll -- Rainbow
Rainbow in the Dark -- Dio
Another example:
Ride the Lightning -- Metallica
Lightning Strikes -- Ozzy Osbourne
Get it?
An additional note: we all know that song titles, sometimes, use profane words. Because this is a family friendly website it is advised that you clean up that title up a bit. This is accomplished by using something like sh!t instead of the real word. Thanks....
68496 Replies
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2670703 views
TWiT Tech Podcast Network
Time for another AWESOME video from the TWIT Network!
View: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/z72cjoZP83E
Direct YouTube Link - AI Can Self-Replicate: Unplugging the Threat! #shorts
TWIT's Website
TWIT Live Feed
View: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/z72cjoZP83E
Direct YouTube Link - AI Can Self-Replicate: Unplugging the Threat! #shorts
TWIT's Website
TWIT Live Feed
0 Replies
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19 views