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I suppose my point is that even with a unified HD format, unless the price point is similar to that of DVDs on the software side, I'm likely to still buy the DVD over the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray unless the quality of that particular title warrants the extra expenditure.

This has already been discussed with HD-DVD camp pricing being $5-$10 more than the DVD version. Obviously, Bluray movies would be using the the same pricing structure becasue I think all studios are thinking about the same on this matter ($5-10 premium over DVD, at least initially for x amount of years).

For me, I can justisfy purchasing Bluray movies (ignoring the word HD-DVD purposefully because I have no intention of supporting two formats) as long as they are new releases and I'm not paying to go to the movie theater. In other words, I put the price of a couple movie tickets toward the purchase of a Bluray movie. I rarely go to commecial theaters unless it is something like Star Wars Episode III or Gladiator, in which case I simply get too excited. So for me, I'll do the same thing with Bluray that I do with DVD and buy all the good titles, particularly any new movies I've never seen before, even if they are only mediocre, just because I prefer to watch them on my theater.

Bluray 1080p resolution and 1080p digital projectors will allow for much larger projector screen sizes, so that will likely fuel my desire to purchase Bluray movies as agressively as I have purchased DVD's over the past 6 years. One of my attendings just purchased a 3 chip DLP with incredible amount of lumens and a 200 inch screen, so I'll be anxious to see that! I look forward to taking advantage of the resolution that Bluray offers by boosting screen size to at least 140-160 inch diagonal, perhaps larger with constant height,etc... Looking forward to summer of 2006 God willing!! Hopefully we will get a good variety of 1080p projectors by then.

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Along similar thoughts, had there been only one hi-rez audio format, instead of SACD and DVD-A splitting the market, do members feel it would have fared much better?

Certainly. With the convenience and ability to make samplers with CD, rip your CD's lossless to computer media players like J Rivers Media Center, moving to SACD/DVD-Audio was already too constrained. No digital outputs except in $40,000+ front ends... And then to have this niche market divided on top of that frustration with no digital rights? I absolutely live for multichannel music and I write emails to hearts of Space, and various lables encouraging artists to RECORD in multichannel. But even with so much enthusiasm, there is just so little DVD-audio 'software'. Quite frankly, the vast majority of my music is only available on CD, and I absolutely love playback with J Rivers Media Center. What a dissapointment with DVD-Audio (did someone even mention SACD? Bwaaah.)

Would be great if we could have options up to 8 channel 24/192 MLP with DVD-audio. Does anybody claim to hear any difference between 24/96 and 24/192? Apparently Bluray supports 24/192 6 channel PCM, and 24/96 8 channel PCM... but who is going to release music master quality unencrypted PCM? What is the future of high resolution multichannel audio now that Bluray is coming soon? (don't answer this unless you take into consideration the audio codec choices have not been finalized yet).

[This message has been edited by Health Nut (edited 02-19-2005).]

7.1 System