Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems BR Is the King OF HD.

One weakness of the JVC RS1 is that it comes in black and will stick out like a sore thumb on my living room ceiling. WAF = -100

Trival in one respect, but major in another!

Cliff

WAF is a big deal, I think there is nothing trivial about it because if the spouse is unhappy= you unhappy= headache= no enjoyment of the toys= not effective use of funds. Therefore before you engage in any toy purchases, you should be sure that SWMBO is happy

Oh, and SWAMBO says MPEG-2 is so last century!

best regards,
Jerry

This is totally insane.This threat is just turned between two or three people from UK who just learned about HD and one or two guys from US who has no clue about it or just hate HD just because they already spent thousands of dollars on their 800s or what ever else SD DVD that they might have and they trying to convience the rest of you that SD DVD is good.I understand that UK guys have never seen HD before and coming here and reading this BS about HD might wondering may be this HD thing is not for them.As they say once you go BD HD you never feel the same about SD DVD again.

Nope- dont hate HD. Love it. Its not about loving or hating a format- that is what I fear has been lost. Its about the simple fact that, despite our now involvement with these formats, they are doomed to fail because they simply do not offer what the market place wants. SACD and DVDA all over again. I was the very first residential customer with HD in Manhattan! This is not about if you are pro or con HD.

best regards,
Jerry

^^DITTO^^
It's more about whether the new formats create enough differentiation to take hold ; I'm anxious to experience them to see if that changes my preconceived notions... that's what I see this opportunity providing

ken

I already had an HD DVD player in my system and although it looked good and better than SD DVD I'm not on the band wagon yet. SD DVD still looks great.

Ron

This UK guy has been living with HD for four years or so - initially via OTA broadcast recordings from the US and then D-Theater. And all at 1080p via a Faroudja 5000 video processor. Right now HD-DVD offers the best image quality I have yet seen in my home.

Mark

Mark,
I have many movies on DVHS, if you like email me at z8mania at mac dot com and I will arrange to get them to you.

How do you like that Faroudja 5000? Its really quite something!!!

best regards,
Jerry

Hi Jerry,

Thanks for the offer but I've stopped collecting DVHS for a few years now, mainly due to technical issues with my players - image drop outs, sound drop outs and also because of mpeg2 artefacts in the broadcasts. I stopped collecting D-Theater when the format died. However, I do now have a nice collection of 100+ HD movies on tape to use (at least until the player packs up!) while I build up my HD discs collection.

As for the Faroudja 5000 - it was *great* in it's day but is now retired. I currently use a Lumagen ProHD which outperforms the Faroudja in all ways with film based material and very importantly allows me to do 48Hz refresh. The Faroudja still wins with video but I rarely watch video based material in my cinema so that is a non-issue. Hopefully the new Lumagen models will crack the video side of things...

Mark

Hey we might all live in castles but we're not stuck in that dark ages to THAT great a degree here you know. 2006 may have been the year we finally started getting domestic HDTV broadcasts, but seeing HD content has never really been out of the reach of anyone over here who is technically savvy enough to seek it out. We've all got computers after all, and it's never been hard to seek out newsgroup HDTV content alongside official online HD demos.


I still say the DVDA and SACD analogy only stretches so far. Yes it can be said the consumer may have felt CD to be "good enough,' and without doubt devices like the iPod killed off any progress for high end music, but there are at least different things at play here. HD and HDTV as buzzwords that are increasingly seeping into public consciousness. People are aware of the existence of high definition more than they ever were high resolution audio. DVD is going nowhere, but I am not ready to doubt that an HD optical media format can also have a future alongside it.


I did wonder at the start of the year how Europe in particular would take to the sudden shift to HDTVs and so forth, given over the past decade governments have encouraged us to go 16:9 and adopt standard def DVB broadcasting which the masses have done in droves. There was a thought that having only just been told to buy all that would damage interest in HD on this side of the pond since people might not be willing to upgrade so suddenly, but interest seems to be constantly increasing here and I am really encouraged by it. Flat panel TV sales in the UK especially are obscenely popular, and it's difficult to walk into a shop now and find a TV that isn't HD ready. Whilst certainly many buying these sets are not doing so with an eye to immediately combining them with an HD source (though Sky HD sales seem to have gone well this year), there will come a time where they'll eye an HD source to go with it, and if one of these bloody disc formats can die sooner rather than later we'll have adequate marketing that doesn't confuse the consumer, scaring them away because there are two formats, and HD on disc ought to be able to then appeal to the masses. That outcome of course rests on how continuously stupid and stubborn studios and manufacturers wish to be.

Mark,

Let me know if you change your mind on the tapes. I know what you mean re: the sound. My tapes are not D-Theater, they are strictly DVHS I recorded off my cable company when things were brand new. The audio was DD 2.0 and as such I simply connected the playback via analog as the digital did drop out quite a bit.'

Daniel,
I think you make a good point about awareness. But I think a new disc based format like HDDVD/BRD is doomed. I think more in the consciousness is downloading and I think this will carry the day. The infrastructure is not there yet, but the consumer is just now warming up to the concept. I do not know if it will be Apple, but I think they are showing that people want downloads. Btw- I wonder if we had stats on how movies have been downloaded at the itunes store vs. how many HD DVD/ BRD discs have been sold and if we could come up with a common time frame, like say average monthly sales. Id be curious to see how that shakes out. My gut says the downloads are way ahead.

best regards,
Jerry

The thing that really bothers me most about downloads, beyond DRM and lossy compression, is data integrity. What happens when (and it will) the hard drive containing your entire downloaded collection dies?

Mark