Latest on Blu-Ray vs HD DVD ?

You can wait until the dust settles, (like most people, in 5 years) or you can buy now and enjoy some really super picture quality that you just simply can not get on standard def DVD.

Up until this point Blu-ray had the titles and HD-DVD was missing some titles. That is about to change with the Matrix trilogy, on HD-DVD only. (due later this month) Blu-Ray has some good Disney titles coming later this year, and at present time they will not be offered on HD-DVD. So my take at this point is that both formats have either announced or pre-announced a decent number of titles, to make this a non-issue between the two formats.

The brand new Toshiba finally outputs 1080P, so don’t get confused and buy the older, less expensive player and think that you are getting full HD-DVD, because you will be disappointed. But even still the brand new second generation HD-XA2 still does not output 1080p/24. 1080P/24 will become prevalent in the fall along with HDMi-1.3

As for the new lower cost Panasonic Blu-Ray, it does NOT output 1080P/24. The Sony BDSP-1 and the Pioneer unit does.

The LG combo player has been applauded because it plays both discs, but it has received poor reviews for its color saturation, and it does not have a full implementation of the HD-DVD functionality.

Be sure to check out the review in Home Theater June 2007.

I compaired the Toshiba 1st gen player and the Sony. I bought the Sony because the picture was significantly sharper, and brighter. I have not compaired the new unit but I have seen it in action and it looks to be closer to what I get on my Blu-ray setup.

Enjoy

Thanks for the correction, I realized my mistake. I still have some homework to do. Thanks again to all for the input.

I have not really been paying much attention to the new hi-res video players. I am much more of an analog 2-channel audio guy..... Having said that I do like watching movies on my HT system. So I wonder if you guy's can give me some general feedback (not to hijack Blkadr's thread)? I have a Sony XBR 40 CRT TV that's about three years old now and of course doesn't have HDMI or 1080p capabilities.

Would the new hi-res Blu-Ray or HD-DVD formats be much of an upgrade over my current Sony S9000ES DVD player? Or, do I need to wait until I upgrade my TV (which is not happening anytime real soon)?

Thanks,

Chris

CMO, I use the same TV in one of my systems and hooked the Sony Blu-ray to it. Although it will not do 1080p, the 1080i did look significantly better. It was so sharp, you could see how the actors makeup is applied! I also own the 9000es and the HD is superior. On regular DVD formats the 9100es makes as good a picture as the BR and is a step above the 9000es. I use it because the BR player doesn't play CD or SACD. I normally use the BR player on the 46" set.
Too bad the 40" want do 1080p because it certainly has a better picture than any other of the newer sets I have viewed. I have a 46" Sony XBR LCD set and the older 40" XBR is superior even though I like the size and weight of the newer set vs the 300#+ of the older one. It also formats regular video full screen instead of the black left and right areas of the new set in its native size. I don't like the stretch modes because it distorts the picture too much on the newer set.
I still can't understand widescreen when both sets have the upper and lower black areas. You would think a widescreen set would show a widescreen full screen but that is not the case. Unfortunately, I guess we are stuck with what is for the time being.

My projector- a Marantz 1 chip DLP that peforms quite well, on a Stewart gray screen, cannot accomodate 1080p, but the picture from hi-def discs definitely looks better on the big screen. I did buy the LG player, I don't really care about the lack of HD functionality because I essentially plop a disc in, watch a movie, that's it. Given the limits of my current projector, I cannot make meaningful comparisons of the two formats, but my suspicion is that the quality may have more to do with disc mastering than with the technical differences between the two formats.
My biggest gripe as an early adopter is that there are no HMDI 1.3 compatible audio processors available- the lossless compression on these discs is available if you use the analog outputs of the blu/hd players.
In other respects, my video system, while not the latest by any means, has served me well: older Meridian processor; an HD Leeza backbone for video processing and native rate scaling, and a host of ARC tube amps, a big McI, a bunch of Snells and a pair of Velodynes. Some of this equipment has been in HT service since the mid-90's, so I'm pretty happy about the mix between newer technology and shelf life of the various components.