One year from today--bye bye analog TV

[Wolfman]

http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/D ... 6-14-51-51" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I have 4 "older" TVs in the house and all are hooked up to Comcast cable. I will not need any special box to
watch TV. As my older sets go kaput, I'll replace them with the newer HD TV's. By then the costs should be
no problem.
Good luck to those out in the sticks who have no cable or satellite !

[Bobby42]

Guess what..

Link

[Mister Bushice]

http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/D ... 6-14-51-51

I have 4 "older" TVs in the house and all are hooked up to Comcast cable. I will not need any special box to
watch TV. As my older sets go kaput, I'll replace them with the newer HD TV's. By then the costs should be
no problem.
Good luck to those out in the sticks who have no cable or satellite !

What the fuck do two people do with four tvs? Get out much?

[Wolfman]

One in my den, one in the guest bedroom, one in the master suite, one in the family room (no TV in the living room--the room that no one sits in).
Oh, and we do "get out". Thanks for caring !

[smackaholic]

I just scored a beautiful 32" sony trinitron outta the local fishwrap for 75 bucks. The couple I bought it from bought a new flatscreen for over 2 grand. Why they needed this flatscreen in the fukking shoebox ranch they lived in is beyond me.

I love it when knuckleheads get rid of high quality shit for pennies on the dollar because they gotta keep up with the joneses.

If weight is any indication of quality, that trinitron is a pretty good set. It had to weigh damn near 2 bills.

[smackaholic]

One in my den, one in the guest bedroom, one in the master suite, one in the family room (no TV in the living room--the room that no one sits in).
Oh, and we do "get out". Thanks for caring !

No tube in the shitter? You need to rethink your tv placement strategy, old man.

[Wolfman]

Funny you should mention that---old "family joke" perpetrated by my younger daughter was that I'd have a TV in every room in the house. I do want one out on the lanai though, so I can relax out there and watch football, etc.; but the shitters are for reading !

[Rack Fu]

I'll be damned if the local 10:00 p.m. news didn't just cover the BLU RAY / HDTV DVD battle. They also said that BLU RAY might be short lived as we will soon have the technology to download high quality movies from the internet.

So I think I'll simply hang on to my current TV's and DVD players for now, as it's gonna be a little while before they end up in storage with my 8-track tape and album collections.

Mace

The Blu-ray vs HD DVD battle is over. HD DVD lost the support of Walmart, Best Buy and Netflix last week. That's on top of announcements in past months that Blockbuster and Target had dropped HD DVD as well. So, Blu-ray is the next physical medium for movies.

Digital downloading for movies has way too many hurdles to currently overcome to be nothing more than a niche thing in the short term. The movie industry is a different animal from the music industry where downloads took over quickly. It'll eventually be the way to go but we're probably 10 years away from that. The main problems, which simply cannot be overcome in the short term, are:

1) Internet connections speeds are nowhere near where they need to be in order to download a movie. Until everyone has FIOS-type speed, movie downloads are going nowhere. There are still parts of the country where broadband isn't available, not so much because they're poor, but because they live in undeveloped land from a infrastructure standpoint.

2) Disc storage space? The downloadable movie files are HUGE. Where are we going to store them? Although the price of hard drive storage is relatively cheap, the amount necessary to store a movie collection is cost prohibitive. The average consumer isn't going to spend the money necessary for terabytes of storage space.

Other factors:

a) People like to have something tangible to hold onto. Movie fans love their collections.
b) Downloadable movies are nowhere near the quality of a Blu-ray movie. Let's take the HD movies that you can download from services like Xbox Live. They are very, very compressed 720p versions of the movie, often without the nice 5.1 or 7.1 audio options. A Blu-ray movie is a relatively uncompressed 1080p version which means much better quality - assuming you have the TV set to display it in all its glory. It would literally take days to download a Blu-ray sized file with a broadband connection. It still takes several hours to download movies from services like Xbox Live.

Now that we have one high def movie format, we'll see prices start to drop as they look to knock DVD off the hill.

[Mikey]

I just scored a beautiful 32" sony trinitron outta the local fishwrap for 75 bucks. The couple I bought it from bought a new flatscreen for over 2 grand. Why they needed this flatscreen in the fukking shoebox ranch they lived in is beyond me.

I love it when knuckleheads get rid of high quality shit for pennies on the dollar because they gotta keep up with the joneses.

If weight is any indication of quality, that trinitron is a pretty good set. It had to weigh damn near 2 bills.

Finally replaced the 27" trinitron that we bought in 1986 with a 32 inch flat screen, about 14 months ago. The picture was still outstanding on the Sony but the speakers had started to rattle so badly that nobody could stand it any more. Plus, the new 32 inch flat screens had just broken the $1,000 barrier (we paid $1,200 for the Sony when it was new). I think you can get a 42" unit (12" is enough for most women, BTW) now for under a grand.

One thing I can say about the new TVs...I can pick up and carry that 32" set with one hand. Moving the 27" picture tube was a major undertaking.

[Mike the Lab Rat]

I'll buy a Blu-Ray player if and when they are back-compatible so they can also play DVDs. No fucking way in hell that I'm going to drop the $$$ to replace all my "old" DVD's with Blu-Ray after having replaced the VHS tapes with DVDs. I'm guessing that most consumers are going to feel the same way.

[PSUFAN]

I'll buy a Blu-Ray player if and when they are back-compatible so they can also play DVDs. No fucking way in hell that I'm going to drop the $$$ to replace all my "old" DVD's with Blu-Ray after having replaced the VHS tapes with DVDs. I'm guessing that most consumers are going to feel the same way.

All of the High Definition players that I've seen appear to be backwards-compatible.

[Goober McTuber]

The entire Vogel family is back-door-compatible.

[Felix]

I'll buy a Blu-Ray player if and when they are back-compatible so they can also play DVDs.

they are capable of playing standard DVD's...additionally, most Blu-Ray players will upconvert standard DVD's to a better quality picture than that of a standard DVD player.....

[Dinsdale]

And many modern televisions have multiple video inputs... duh.

[Rack Fu]

As already mentioned, all next gen high def players (Blu-ray or HD DVD) play standard DVDs and will upscale the resolution to near-HD quality. That assumes that it's connected via a digital connection like HDMI (you would be using this type of connection with a Blu-ray player already - unless you were a moron). Component cables can't upscale standard DVDs.

[Dinsdale]

That's not an issue. Flash drives are dirt cheap. Cheaper than blank VHS cassettes that's for sure.

Uhm... Blueray disks are 50 gig.


How much are 50 gig flash drives going for these days?

Just saw a smoking deal on 4 gig flash drives, for around $20.

Let's see -- 50 gigs, that's about 12 4 gig flash drives, at $20 a pop...


Yeah, $240 for the storage of a Blueray movie seems reasonable, and certainly much cheaper than a VHS tape. I can hardly wait ti start my collection, at that price. Hell, I might even keep multiple copies, because they're so cheap.


Nice math, bro.

[Felix]

HD DVD

rest in peace.....

http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/indu ... 67_12.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I'm glad I took the sales clerks advice and bought Blu-Ray

[Rack Fu]

2) Disc storage space? The downloadable movie files are HUGE. Where are we going to store them? Although the price of hard drive storage is relatively cheap, the amount necessary to store a movie collection is cost prohibitive. The average consumer isn't going to spend the money necessary for terabytes of storage space.

That's not an issue. Flash drives are dirt cheap. Cheaper than blank VHS cassettes that's for sure.

How do you figure that it's not an issue. One HD movie download is several gigabytes in size. An 8 gig flash drive costs about $50 to $60. I'm not sure you could even get one HD movie download on that. Standard DVD is 4.7 GB in size and HD movies are five times that size (Blu-ray discs are about 25 to 50 GB in size).

Using flash drives is impractical anyway. Hard drive storage units would obviously be the way to go. That said, 1 terabyte external drives are still $350 or more. That could only hold up to 40 Blu-ray quality movies. The downloaded movies are much more compressed but are still probably close to 10 GB in size.

As I said, it's cost prohibitive right now.

[Rack Fu]

HD DVD

rest in peace.....

http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/indu ... 67_12.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I'm glad I took the sales clerks advice and bought Blu-Ray

I'm not sure what to do with my HD DVD player. Knee jerk reaction is to put it on Ebay but there's a zillion players for sale on Ebay now because of the latest news.

I may just keep it and look to pick up a bunch of movies via the inevitable fire sales to come.

[Dinsdale]

Umm...movies (even HD movies) aren't even remotely that large.

No. They only go about 18-20 gig.


So, at $20 per 4 gigs...


Your math still sucks.

[Felix]

I'm not sure what to do with my HD DVD player.

keep it.....

assuming it plays standard DVD's it's still a kickass player.....

[Rack Fu]

I'm not sure what to do with my HD DVD player.

keep it.....

assuming it plays standard DVD's it's still a kickass player.....

I'll probably end up keeping it. Not like I'm going to get much for it anyway, as you can buy one brand new for less than $150. I may pick up another player in the fire sales to come and slap it on one of my other TV's. I have four HDTV's in my house. The Blu-ray and HD DVD players are hooked up to my main (and best) TV. One has an upscaling DVD player attached to it and the other two have just regular 'ole progressive scan standard DVD players hooked up to them.

[Dinsdale]

Screw that, Fu -- just get yourself a couple of flash drive sticks and you'll be fine.

[Rack Fu]

Screw that, Fu -- just get yourself a couple of flash drive sticks and you'll be fine.

Let me second mortage my house so I can afford all the sticks that I'll need.




The other point I haven't mentioned yet is DRM. That's another huge sticking point for digital movie downloads. Yet another roadblock.

[PSUFAN]

Have you ever tried streaming a 5gig video file directly from an external hard drive?

You'd better have USB 2.0...and the HD better be pretty fucking durable. It'll be running at full (hopefully 7200x) capacity for hours and hours. When it fails, your movie collection is kaput.

Removable media, please...

[Cuda]

I'm not sure what to do with my HD DVD player. Knee jerk reaction is to put it on Ebay but there's a zillion players for sale on Ebay now because of the latest news..

Don't bother trying to unload it thru the Fish Wrap. I wanted to run a 10 day ad for real estate and they wanted $425.

Me: "How big is this ad for that price?"

Cunt at the Classified Desk: "Just a regular size ad- 4 lines, 15 words counting the commas, "&", and phone number."

Me: "Why so expensive? Classified Ads are supposed to be cheap"

Cunt at the Classified Desk: "Well, over a million people a day will see your ad..."

Me: (laughing) "There aren't a million people a day reading the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post combined"

Cunt at the Classified Desk: "We don't make these things up"

Me: "Bullshit. Cancel the ad"

[Uncle Fester]

If you had placed THOUSANDS of those ads in THOUSANDS of newspapers, you could have made THOUSANDS of dollars.

[Felix]

If you had placed THOUSANDS of those ads in THOUSANDS of newspapers, you could have made THOUSANDS of dollars.

I'll see your thousands of dollars, and raise you "tens of thousands" of dollars....

sincerely,