Comments on: HD DVD Booth CES 2008

By: Wesley Novack

Wesley Novack — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 20:16:50 +0000

My complaint was that the HD DVD booth had nothing new to show. CES is all about showcasing new and upcoming products and technologies.

They could have displayed some new interactive HDi or HD DVD internet connected features that are in development. Instead they showed off “U-Control” from the Bourne Supremacy.

They could have displayed some concept designs for the generation 4 Toshiba HD DVD players.

SOMETHING new would have been nice. They had nothing new.

By: Binston

Binston — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 20:10:00 +0000

wow, so basically the complaint here is that the hd-dvd format is stable and was forward looking enough that they don’t need revamped hardware. I just read the “visit” to the blu-ray booth article. There was much gushing over the 2.0 spec. Here is a basic summary of the two articles:

HD-DVD: No new hardware needed, new movies out.
Blu-Ray: Finally getting their shit together and in a “highly beta phase” they had the PS3 running Profile 2.0 of the Blu-ray spec.

Golly, its only taken 3 YEARS for Sony to get the spec up to par with HD-DVD. I am no fan-boy and have $0 invested in either spec. I have not taken part in this format war because of these reasons:

1: HD-DVD, the plainly more mature format, is floundering due to lack of industry support. It’s players arent obsolete after 1 year?!?!

2: Blu-Ray is literally HOSING consumers. Sony’s stance is “buy a PS3 and there will be nothing to worry about cause it can handle all future spec revisions.” There are blah blah millions of Blu-Ray players out there. When they say “players” they really mean PS3′s plus a half mil to 700K stand alone players. And of those, how may people will be bent over the rail into buying a NEW player every year until the Blu-Ray Association define a final spec??

It seems to me, Blu-Ray is far too immature as a technology for me to consider as a consumer. I don’t appreciate being forced to buy a $400 BD player over a $300 just so I know it will “work the day after tomorrow”. This “war” is only delaying the adoption of HD by the masses. I don’t care who wins, but my stance is this, if HD-DVD wins I would buy a player tomorrow. If BD wins, I would wait until the final spec is set or the price of the PS3 drops to >$300.

A format war like this just proves how unintelligent and uninformed consumers here in the US are.

George Carlin said it best: “Whoever coined the phrase, LET THE BUYER BEWARE, was probably bleeding from the asshole.”

By: Wesley Novack

Wesley Novack — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 22:49:19 +0000

Thanks for that tip Ian. It probably is a rebadged LiteOn drive. Unfortunately, Lite-On was not displaying at CES, so I have no new information on their products.

This NU HD DVD burner will probably never see the light of day on retail shelves anyway….

By: Ian

Ian — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 20:35:11 +0000

The model of that NU drive sounds a lot like a Lite-On. In fact, Lite-On has an HD DVD-ROM drive with the model DH-4M1P.

By: Captain Obvious

Captain Obvious — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 09:22:51 +0000

way to go Toshiba… show off the same HD DVD-R burner 3 CES’s in a row. I’m *SURE* it’s going to launch ANY DAY now… LOL