Speaking of gaming communities.

THe rumors were that MS will not touch BR but will eventually go with HDDVD. Nobody knows if they will upgrade the 360 to support that later, yet. The first round are on standard DVD drives, still. They pretty much had to do this to get an earlier release.

This is also one of the reasons people were thinking that BR would be the preferred medium. Few people are going to buy stand alone players. A lot of people will be buying consoles.
 
taeric said:
THe rumors were that MS will not touch BR but will eventually go with HDDVD. Nobody knows if they will upgrade the 360 to support that later, yet. The first round are on standard DVD drives, still. They pretty much had to do this to get an earlier release.

This is also one of the reasons people were thinking that BR would be the preferred medium. Few people are going to buy stand alone players. A lot of people will be buying consoles.
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A lot of people under 30. People over 30-35 just don't play video games as a general rule. Guess who are the largest share of people with HDTV? Men in the 30-65 age range. AVSForums had a poll asking if people would buy a next-gen console for high def movies. The older ones were totally against it. They didn't want to dick around with a "kids box". Same thing sorta happened with the PS2. Find me 3 people that weren't in college or high school that bought the PS2 to use as a DVD player. It just didn't happen.
 
fly said:
I had heard that a while ago, but really don't keep up with this stuff. I take it that is totally wrong?

edit: thanks taeric. Now I wonder where I heard that.
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I thought you were just being an ass. Did you mean to say the 1st gen 360s?
 
theacoustician said:
A lot of people under 30. People over 30-35 just don't play video games as a general rule. Guess who are the largest share of people with HDTV? Men in the 30-65 age range. AVSForums had a poll asking if people would buy a next-gen console for high def movies. The older ones were totally against it. They didn't want to dick around with a "kids box". Same thing sorta happened with the PS2. Find me 3 people that weren't in college or high school that bought the PS2 to use as a DVD player. It just didn't happen.
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I can agree with the thing about it only being people under 30 that will get a "kid's box". However, I can also say that 90% of the people I ever saw that had DVDs were in this boat. It wasn't until Blockbuster started carrying DVDs that I noticed a shift in my family towards them. They were perfectly happy with VHS long after most of us had switched.

But this is missing the point. The vast majority of families do not have HDTV. This is why Nintendo is going to flat out ignore the market. However, content providers are wanting to start the move to either HDDVD or BR. It will be hard to argue for HDDVD if the PS3 gets an installed base of several million. That would be several million BR players to the several thousand HDDVD players out there. Which would you try to leverage?

Now, this is a weaker point, as the PS3 is shipping well behind what it was originally projected at. Still, I do not know of ANYONE planning on getting a next gen DVD player. I know of quite a few that are getting a console.
 
fly said:
I thought that was assumed, but yes. :p
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Well, when I see just Xbox, I assume you mean the big black beast. taeric kinda answered your question though. There may be an adapter in the future, but I'd count on them bypassing hard media entirely for HD content and trying to push everything through Xbox Marketplace.
 
taeric said:
I can agree with the thing about it only being people under 30 that will get a "kid's box". However, I can also say that 90% of the people I ever saw that had DVDs were in this boat. It wasn't until Blockbuster started carrying DVDs that I noticed a shift in my family towards them. They were perfectly happy with VHS long after most of us had switched.

But this is missing the point. The vast majority of families do not have HDTV. This is why Nintendo is going to flat out ignore the market. However, content providers are wanting to start the move to either HDDVD or BR. It will be hard to argue for HDDVD if the PS3 gets an installed base of several million. That would be several million BR players to the several thousand HDDVD players out there. Which would you try to leverage?

Now, this is a weaker point, as the PS3 is shipping well behind what it was originally projected at. Still, I do not know of ANYONE planning on getting a next gen DVD player. I know of quite a few that are getting a console.
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I think its going to come down to price. I don't think that people who really want HD movies are going to flock to Blu-Ray if HD-DVD discs are cheaper and offer similar quality. With HD-DVD players seemingly going to beat Blu-Ray to market in both stand alone and computer drives by several months, and the media theorized to be priced only 10% above today's DVDs, I can't imagine people going for Blu-Ray just because "the PS3 has it". For the record, it is theorized that Blu-Ray will cost 30-40% above today's standard DVD prices mostly because of the difficulties of the physical structure of the disc and keeping quality control. That could all go out the window if companies start subsidizing discs and get into a price war.

I do wonder who is going to press all these discs. DVD lines can be converted to HD-DVD lines in a matter of about 2 weeks. Blu-Ray requires an almost entirely new assembly process and would require a few months to change the line over. No one has made any Blu-Ray production lines so far, all discs are made on a one-off basis right now. If PS3 is going to launch in Spring, you would think there would be reports of production lines retooling in Asia right now. So far, nothing on either side with the exception that Toshiba has made two HD-DVD lines, but that was more a proof of concept to show how quickly they can convert a factory.
 
theacoustician said:
Well, when I see just Xbox, I assume you mean the big black beast. taeric kinda answered your question though. There may be an adapter in the future, but I'd count on them bypassing hard media entirely for HD content and trying to push everything through Xbox Marketplace.
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I agree and I like the idea. It will be a long time before a considerable market is able to stream HD material over the internet, though. (Note, long time in console years. So... more than 3. )
 
taeric said:
I agree and I like the idea. It will be a long time before a considerable market is able to stream HD material over the internet, though. (Note, long time in console years. So... more than 3. )
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Actually, they can do it now. Think Steam ...
 
theacoustician said:
Actually, they can do it now. Think Steam ...
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It can be done. But the market that has access to internet connections that are fast enough to do this is tiny compared to the total amount of people that have the consoles. I mean, if I'm not mistaken the vast majority of people are still on dial up. (I have no stats on this at the moment. Go figure.)
 
There are 45 million broadband subscribers in the US as of the end of Q2 2005. It also marked the first time that broadband subscribers outnumbered dial up users. So if you think that there are at least 2 people per household (probably more like 4) and then there are instances where people are using high speed connections, but don't get counted normally (colleges, some apartment complexes), you're looking at 100-200 million people in the US use broadband connections at home.
 
My only gotcha there, is that I know the connection is not fast enough to stream real HD stuff. I mean, you can start a download for a 2 hour movie and be able to watch it in about 3 hours. Not horrible.... but not exactly on demand, either.

That, and I know a lot of us (myself included) like the idea of having a collection.
 
taeric said:
My only gotcha there, is that I know the connection is not fast enough to stream real HD stuff. I mean, you can start a download for a 2 hour movie and be able to watch it in about 3 hours. Not horrible.... but not exactly on demand, either.

That, and I know a lot of us (myself included) like the idea of having a collection.
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You'd be surprised what some large media companies can do with streaming MP4-AVC :shifty:...

I see your gotcha about having a collection. Its one thing to buy the rights to watch something, its another to have it ready to go in your hands at all times.
 
Yep. Broadband is a rather broad word. For instance, with Bellsouth, thats a DSL Lite connection (256k). If its Starband Satelite thats up to 700k, neither you would want to surf and stream high quality music with let alone try to download a 2 to 4gb file.

Yes the 14.95 and 24.95 plans were needed to get some people to drop dial up, but I hate how most companies count them as broadband users. Except for a few key locations there isn't any real competition either. In the end FIOS is being pushed by Verizon because of a need to make most of their network fiber. The vast majority of Bellsouth's network IS fiber believe it or not (they by far have run more fiber than any other baby bell) but because of this they dont want to start over and run it to the home. I dont see SBC doing anything big until they have completely assimilated AT&T and with the cable industry overall I dont see any major FIOS like speeds with them as a whole (Optium Online does not count) until they move to an entire Mpeg-2 or Mpeg-4 system. I dont know about anyone else but with Comcast this is going to happen much sooner than you think.
 
theacoustician said:
You'd be surprised what some large media companies can do with streaming MP4-AVC :shifty:...

I see your gotcha about having a collection. Its one thing to buy the rights to watch something, its another to have it ready to go in your hands at all times.
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:) Fair enough, you definitely have more exposure to this than I do. I still have doubts over some of the streaming capabilities.

And the collection this is a weird one. I know I like having the collection, but I also know the convenience of online access would be very very nice. So long as i was online, at least. :)
 
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