I saw a SOny laptop with Blue Ray and some blank BR discs for sale at the sony place in Nova last week.
Special price… 50 quadrillion NT dollas.
the funny thing is that i was said they dont read br movies, only br media 
sony likes to shoot itself in the foot![/list]
How things change… Blu-ray discs are now outselling HD-DVD by about 2:1 and increasing and has 96% of the market in Japan. Of the 12 movies studios, 9 are releasing Blu-Ray discs. Only 6 are releasing HD-DVD.
We may have a winner in the silly format wars, but I don’t care who it is.
The only reason that Blu-Ray is doing better now is because the PS3 is selling like hotcakes and includes a Blu-Ray drive.
[quote=“jlick”]The only reason that Blu-Ray is doing better now is because the PS3 is selling like hotcakes and includes a Blu-Ray drive.[/quote]Yes, that certainly helps it. And it’s the cheapest Blu-Ray player released. As the the VHS/Betamax war, it will probably be determined by the one with the best marketing.
You misspelled porn.
You misspelled porn.[/quote]This guy: thedigitalbits.com/mytwocentsa133.html#cs (The same place I based my above post upon) thinks otherwise, porn is just as good on DVD, and apparently you can get it online too.
Apparently Toshiba’s throwing in the towel.
[quote]Investors cheered an impending end to a format war for next-generation DVDs on Monday, pushing up shares of both Toshiba, on the verge of abandoning its HD DVD discs, and Sony, the leader of the rival Blu-ray camp.
Toshiba Corp shares jumped 5.1 percent as analysts praised its decision to cut its losses, while Sony Corp, whose technology is set to become the industry standard for the next generation of high-definition home movie DVDs, rose 2.7 percent. . .
A source at Toshiba told Reuters on Saturday that the electronics conglomerate was planning to give up on the HD DVD format after losing the support of key retailers and several movie studios including Warner Brothers.
Toshiba, which led a consortium promoting HD DVD, would suffer losses of hundreds of millions of dollars to scrap production of its equipment and other steps to withdraw from the business, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported.
But analysts gave high marks to Toshiba’s seemingly quick decision to pull the plug on HD DVD because of the heavy costs involved in promoting the format. . . [/quote]
reuters.com/article/hotStock … 3320080218
This is good news. HD-DVD couldn’t have won, but it could have stretched it out as long as possible, possibly waiting for a buy-out from Blu-Ray. Now they can stop wasting money promoting HD-DVD and start making money making Blu-Ray players. And now people are certain which format to buy, so they will buy more hi-def players than before.
Is it too early to get a Blu-Ray player? They seem expensive just looking on the Internet. I want it to play all regions and all types of discs.
PC Blu-Ray drives are going for under $6k locally. Just make sure your video card and monitor support HDCP or the copy protections will refuse to play. Standalone players are still too expensive in my opinion.
[quote=“Dr. McCoy”]Is it too early to get a Blu-Ray player? They seem expensive just looking on the Internet. I want it to play all regions and all types of discs.[/quote]The best deal atm seems to be a Playstation 3. They are also firmware upgradable to the latest standards (while standalones aren’t), it won’t play all regions, but as I mentioned in another thread, in the Blu-ray scheme, Taiwan is in the same zone as the USA. If you really wanted to play European or Australian disc, only about 30% of discs use region coding.
PS3 is also the only player available in Taiwan.
[quote=“jlick”]PC Blu-Ray drives are going for under $6k locally. Just make sure your video card and monitor support HDCP or the copy protections will refuse to play. Standalone players are still too expensive in my opinion.[/quote]You also need a mad processor. They will play without HDCP, just at a lower resolution. As far as I know, no discs require HDCP yet, they are holding that for a couple of years to give people time to buy HDCP equipment.
Yeah, Core 2 Duo 2.2ghz or better minimum, 2.6ghz dual core to be safe. And on PCs PowerDVD only plays on HDCP compliant hardware, regardless of disk protection.
[quote=“jlick”]And on PCs PowerDVD only plays on HDCP compliant hardware, regardless of disk protection.[/quote]I didn’t know that, that’s a bit rubbish, stand alone players (including the PS3) will play on non-HDCP equipment, if the disc requires HDCP, it will be at a lower resolution.
For more about the PS3 as a Blu-ray player, see here: forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopic.php?t=67868
Thanks for the quick info. I’m not sure I can justify getting the PS3. I don’t want to play games and we already have Wii. I might get a player even if I have to get a new one in a year or so.
[quote=“jlick”]PC Blu-Ray drives are going for under $6k locally. Just make sure your video card and monitor support HDCP or the copy protections will refuse to play. [/quote]I assume it will only work on Vista 64bit? That’s the only OS that requires approved drivers so they can control the drivers from drive to monitor
No, there’s approved driver and video card combos on both XP and Vista. It is a bit tricky though as there are some video card chipsets that have an HDCP compliant driver for Vista but not XP (e.g. Intel X3500). Cyberlink has a little program to download to check if your stuff is compatible or not, if you have any doubts. I think all these protection hurdles are going to be a problem once average consumers start buying gear and discovering they need to do stuff like upgrade firmware to watch the latest releases because of copy protection changes. Something is really wrong when watching a movie gets more complicated than putting it in the player and pressing play.
I was looking at the Blu-ray site and they have a lot of titles available. They have the Blue Man Group. And then I went to my video store and they have a lot. They have the Fifth Element, but not the remastered one. They have A Clockwork Orange. Some newer movies and some concert DVDs. (Nothing good though.) It might be a good idea to wait until more stuff starts getting released.
I’d like to get a Blu-ray player with a Bluetooth remote and watch the Blue Man Group and eat some Bleu cheese. And maybe get some of those Bloopers on disc.