This artical is reporting about new HD DVD's that will reduce the quality without a specific cable.

Which brings up a question about HD DVD quality. Are the next generation of DVDs supposed to provide better quality than what would be recieved OTA or from Cable/Sat.

If these disks/players will source 1080p without the artifacts of 1080i upconversion I could see myself buying a lot more DVD's.

I think the silver lining behind this HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray competition is that it forces the vendors to find something - anything - to differentiate themselves from the competition. If somebody sold you a player that guaranteed you got the proper, high-res signal, no matter what, then wouldn't you buy it?

Regardless, I think HD-DVD and Blu-Ray will be about as successful, relative to DVD, as SACD and DVD-Audio were, relative to traditional compact discs. Do consumers really care about the extra difference in quality? For most, probably not. Somebody, at some point, will sort out the mostly legal issues holding back video-on-demand meets high-def meets DVRs. Then, who's going to want to buy discs any more?

The same people that buy discs now, no?

HD DVD and Blu-ray both are 720p/1080i, I don't think they'll provide 1080p, but I could be wrong.

Quote:
...HD DVD's that will reduce the quality without a specific cable.

That's a requirement of the Advanced Access Content System (AACS) and is implemented via a flag called the Image Constraint Token (ICT) on the disc itself. The content provider, and not the device (DVD player), controls this flag, so it's possible to have discs that do not down-convert. If it is enabled, I believe it restricts output to 960x540. Also, AFAIK, all discs that have the ICT flag enabled must state so on their packaging.

I've heard rumors that a few of the studios are already saying they won't be using this flag, at least for the initial releases. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Do you have netflix over there? It does everything besides the immediate aspect.

I can only see the HD disc standards working out if they're just a few bucks more than regular discs. What really drove DVD's wasn't new release sales, but everyone buying everything they already had on tape. The incentive to go from DVD to HD is minimal except for a few movies, where DVD was leaps and bounds better than VHS.

Matthew

I'm not sure I buy that. The upgrade from CD to SACD is marginal at best, and requires special, expensive equipment. The upgrade from CD to DVD-Audio is significant, but requires significantly more labor to make worthwhile. (I'm thinking specifically of having more than two channels, not the different sample rates.) Part of the lack of acceptance for both of them is the scant number of releases for either of them. The upgrade to an iPod is about convenience rather than quality. Basically, I don't see the iPod and SACD/DVD-Audio as being competing technologies.

On the other hand, the upgrade from DVD to hi-def DVD (whichever) is significant to all but the blindest of us, I think. In addition, most people will upgrade to some sort of HD solution in the future, mostly as a force of the marketplace as a result of the manufacturers' compliance with FCC regs. I imagine that, before too long, all TVs sold will be HD and all DVD players will play hi-def DVDs and lo-def DVDs because it will be cheaper for the manufacturers to make one product than two. As such, you will reasonably quickly have a large set of people who have the appropriate equipment, as opposed to the acceptance of SACD players, which has no popular push behind it. In addition, while it may take more processing time to master a hi-def DVD, it doesn't take any more labor, so I doubt that there will be a dearth of hi-def DVDs available for rent and sale. What would definitely make it take off is if they were also readable by lo-def DVD players so that there would be no need for manufacturers to make two different media, but, then again, they produce movies as UMDs in reasonably high numbers, which is going to be a niche market in perpetuity, so I doubt there's a concern there. And there are lots of people now who buy DVDs and have a TiVo, so I don't see that having both is an impediment in any way.

The problem I see is if the marketplace starts selling lots of TVs that downconvert everything to 540p or something in order to save on the price of hi-def displays. Another problem would be the availability of broad on-demand capability.

I dunno, but I don't expect we'll see any such thing until there are $50 hi-def DVD players, personally.