netflix going to Blue-ray only :(:(

Trust me there are TONS of pissed off HD DVD buyers. Toshiba and partners had a fire sale on the players after Warner Brothers annonced they would switch to all Blue Ray. It appeared not to help at all but still those people are now stuck with soon no movies coming out in HD DVD and no company to rent old HD DVD releases.

The solution:

Amazon.com: Samsung BD-UP5000 1080p HD-DVD Blu-Ray Disc Combo Player: Electronics

Amen! Actually, if the cable didn't just "work" when I plugged it into the wall, I wouldn't bother with cable myself. I'm getting a converter with a coupon. I don't care about all the latest technology. My TV is fine and it's analogue.

Oh and I don't do Comcast Cable Broadband at $50 a month. I do ATT DSL at $20 per month, and it's as fast as the stupid cable is.

Well I don't see that happening, but who knows.

What's amazing is Toshiba's stock has been rising since the rumors of them bailing hit the wire. Apparently HD DVD is operating at a significant loss right now and even having to write down tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in losses is seen as a plus since investors know the black hole has been sealed.

Hmmm, I'm thinking as far as audio goes, there should be little or no difference:

"http://hometheater.about.com/od/dvdbasics/a/bluhddvdinfo.htm"

General Specifications - Blu-ray:
Audio Specifications: Only Dolby Digital, DTS, and Uncompressed PCM are required on all players. However, the following formats are optional - Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD.

vs

General Specifications - HD-DVD
Audio Specifications: All HD-DVD players are required to incorporate the following - Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD, and Uncompressed PCM, as well as standard Dolby Digital and DTS.

Storage capacity is the biggest advantage I see, so more of virtually near identical video and audio can be put on a blue ray. Here's a link that supports that contention (sorry, sometimes I research things as I post):

[H] Enthusiast - Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD: The War of the Formats

See the Round 1 paragraph, looks like neither Blue Ray nor HD DVD deliver true HD:

"While Blu-ray’s 50 gigabytes of storage may sound impressive, it is simply not enough for “real” HD, which takes hundreds of gigabytes to store. It must be reduced in size while retaining as much quality as possible using compression. The real test of video quality is based on the HD video codec used to compress the video."

I wonder how much of a Blue Ray's disk space is wasted as a movie is generally the same size in true HD (the 100's of GB that is indicated), yet the codec used to compress without losing quality is the same standards for both ?

I'm sad for HD-DVD. But I have a feeling that Blu-Ray won't be around for long either, there is already development by a few companies by something even better. But we'll eventually get to the day where everything is just downloaded in HD. So... I don't know.

But I have so many damn HD-DVD's that it's incredible. I love the sound, picture, and everything. Just pop in 300 and watch any scene there is, even the opening, and then you'll be hooked.

My issue with Comcast, they want you to bundle everything, telephone, internet & tv. The issue, while I might save some money bundling, my telephone and power have never been out for weeks on end, even turned off on me when I pay my bills as a loyal customer. I live where hurricanes are a fact of life, the last one that went thru here, telephone never went out, power was down for 5 days, cable was out for 2 weeks. Bundle your services with Comcast and you'll be without a phone, internetless and tv-less for weeks, maybe even months. Comcast installed my new next door neighbors cable, that very same day my cable went out. As I traced my cable to the terminal box, I found that I had been completely disconnected and that there were no more recepticles to hook the cable to. And then I saw the tag on a cable marked as my new next door neighbor's apartment #. Well, I was astonished that Comcast claimed to have sent someone out to attempt to fix my outage. Turns out they lied to me for 5 days. Just before 2007 Thanksgiving, they indicated it would take another 11 days to have my service restored. That's 16 days without. Had I bundled (and Comcast solicited me days before disconnecting me), would any of this have happened ? Would it still have happened and then I'd be out everything for 16 days ? Well, if that is their tactic (and it pissed me off that I had to see my new neighbor watching my cable connection when I came home every night to this very day), they can keep their services and raise prices to those who have to be their victims. Not me. Around 2007 Christmas, they showed up claiming they could reconnect me that same day. I told them not to bother, that I had disconnected them from the wall and I didn't want them anywhere near the wall to reconnect it. They went across the courtyard to try to solicit another neighbor, the guy rejected them and I started laughing at them and said to them, "see, there's someone else that doesn't want you in their home."

My ordeal if it didn't happen to me in reality, I'd swear was something you'd see in "The Cable Guy" or it's sequel.

Good point, the volume of the download really cripples dvd piracy. These companies monitor your bandwidth and they can safely assume you as a pirate. Basically to host such a website, you'd need terrabytes of storage. The 500 GB hdd, that's going to hold 10-20 movies ? Better off buying the dvd. It's time to take back America, let them do as they will, don't go to a movie theatre and disconnect your cable/satellite. They lose enough revenue, you'll see how fast they realize that their own greed is their downfall.

...which means a normal DVD on the currently popular large plasma's and LCD's looks like shit when compared to the Blue Ray. Otherwise, you'll see a significant blurring of the image. And you don't get to take part in the superior sound AND pic quality. Really is no comparison, once you've seen the different formats.

Eh, I'm not terribly sympathetic. That's the risk you take if you just have to have the latest technology right away, rather than waiting to see which format would endure and then waiting for prices to come down a bit.

I have to agree. It's not as if we all didn't know there were competing formats and that one would surely lose. But some people have just gotta have the latest and greatest. Their own stupidity.

When they come down to £50, I'll buy one.