Geekzone: technology news, blogs, forums
Guest
Welcome Guest.
You haven't logged in yet. If you don't have an account you can register now.


lchiu7

6470 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#18310 6-Jan-2008 06:39
Send private message

A number of sites have reported this - here is one

http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssConsumerGoodsAndRetailNews/idUSN0432340820080104

Tons of debate on avsforum with the consensus being this signals the death knell for HD-DVD.

Not much impact here I guess with there being only one (?) HD-DVD player available and that costs $800 I recall but big in the US.

Now I have a (US) PS3 and on my Xmas trip picked up the Toshiba A3 HD-DVD player for US$178 which included 10 free titles and have since bought a few more so I guess that purchase is not going to be long-term for me. Still the Toshiba is a very good upscaling DVD player and unlike the US PS3, it will play PAL DVD's (albeit with region coding removed since there is no region free crack available for it).

Just wondering if any other GZ's have purchased a HD-DVD player?




Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD.  https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd  PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.


View this topic in a long page with up to 500 replies per page Create new topic
 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
Fossie
1240 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

  #103135 6-Jan-2008 11:35
Send private message

Closely followed by New Line.



lchiu7

6470 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

  #103137 6-Jan-2008 11:50
Send private message

Yup - already reported here that New Line will switch.

http://au.dvd.ign.com/articles/843/843709p1.html

Guess that means LOTR will be out in BR?




Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD.  https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd  PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.


sbiddle
30853 posts

Uber Geek

Retired Mod
Trusted
Biddle Corp
Lifetime subscriber

  #103142 6-Jan-2008 12:30
Send private message

Personally I pick the winner as being H.264 downloads - IMHO 2008 will be the year of video on demand and it will render the whole Blu Ray vs DH-DVD battle almost irrelevant in some respects.



old3eyes
9119 posts

Uber Geek

Subscriber

  #103171 6-Jan-2008 16:10
Send private message

sbiddle: Personally I pick the winner as being H.264 downloads - IMHO 2008 will be the year of video on demand and it will render the whole Blu Ray vs DH-DVD battle almost irrelevant in some respects.


With NZs internet standards I don't think so..




Regards,

Old3eyes


sbiddle
30853 posts

Uber Geek

Retired Mod
Trusted
Biddle Corp
Lifetime subscriber

  #103173 6-Jan-2008 16:17
Send private message

old3eyes:
sbiddle: Personally I pick the winner as being H.264 downloads - IMHO 2008 will be the year of video on demand and it will render the whole Blu Ray vs DH-DVD battle almost irrelevant in some respects.


With NZs internet standards I don't think so..


Why not? There are now plenty of people in NZ who are easily obtaining 6+ Mbps with their ADSL connections and the ADSL2+ rollout has started. While there are plenty of people with poor broadband connections in many cases it's really their own fault if they're willing to choose an ISP that is delivering a poor quality product.

lchiu7

6470 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

  #103174 6-Jan-2008 16:21
Send private message

There is a new and quite popular VOD service out in the US called vudu (www.vudu.com). You purchase a STB and then only pay for the movies you watch or rent.  No HD content yet but coming. Out of interest I did their speed test from NZ and it said my speed was fast enough to get instant playback(!).  Theoretically could purchase one of their boxes, take it home and use it (so long I guess as we had a US billing address and they didn't do silly stuff like check IP addresses).

But given that a BD or HD-DVD already uses H.264 compression and disks range from 15Gb to 50Gb it's somewhat hard to see a viable VOD service here working for HD content. And who wants further compression on that content?




Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD.  https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd  PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.


Fossie
1240 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

  #103177 6-Jan-2008 16:32
Send private message

.MKV has been the winner for some time.

 
 
 

Cloud spending continues to surge globally, but most organisations haven’t made the changes necessary to maximise the value and cost-efficiency benefits of their cloud investments. Download the whitepaper From Overspend to Advantage now.
old3eyes
9119 posts

Uber Geek

Subscriber

  #103240 7-Jan-2008 08:47
Send private message

sbiddle:
old3eyes:
sbiddle: Personally I pick the winner as being H.264 downloads - IMHO 2008 will be the year of video on demand and it will render the whole Blu Ray vs DH-DVD battle almost irrelevant in some respects.


With NZs internet standards I don't think so..


Why not? There are now plenty of people in NZ who are easily obtaining 6+ Mbps with their ADSL connections and the ADSL2+ rollout has started. While there are plenty of people with poor broadband connections in many cases it's really their own fault if they're willing to choose an ISP that is delivering a poor quality product.


That may be true but how many HD movies are you going to get  before you  use your monthly allocation??




Regards,

Old3eyes


cokemaster
Exited
4927 posts

Uber Geek

Retired Mod
Trusted
Lifetime subscriber

#103245 7-Jan-2008 08:58
Send private message

old3eyes:
That may be true but how many HD movies are you going to get before you use your monthly allocation??


With some providers having 'autosense', pay as you go, or data blocks - is there really an allocation any more? You just pay for more traffic.

Yes its going to cost money, but its time for the trolls to grow some balls (who keep going on and on about it) and stop making poor comparsions to other countries without taking into account other factors.




webhosting

Loose lips may sink ships - Be smart - Don't post internal/commercially sensitive or confidential information!


sbiddle
30853 posts

Uber Geek

Retired Mod
Trusted
Biddle Corp
Lifetime subscriber

  #103249 7-Jan-2008 09:10
Send private message

old3eyes:
sbiddle:
old3eyes:
sbiddle: Personally I pick the winner as being H.264 downloads - IMHO 2008 will be the year of video on demand and it will render the whole Blu Ray vs DH-DVD battle almost irrelevant in some respects.


With NZs internet standards I don't think so..


Why not? There are now plenty of people in NZ who are easily obtaining 6+ Mbps with their ADSL connections and the ADSL2+ rollout has started. While there are plenty of people with poor broadband connections in many cases it's really their own fault if they're willing to choose an ISP that is delivering a poor quality product.


That may be true but how many HD movies are you going to get  before you  use your monthly allocation??


Without giving anything away (because I have heard some whispers) all I can say is that it depends who your ISP is.

If you look in Australia for example movie download services have partnered with certain ISP's to zero rate traffic. The chances of such a thing happening here in the future could be very good.

cyril7
9058 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified
Trusted
Subscriber

  #103254 7-Jan-2008 09:25
Send private message

Yep, if the services are mirrored locally via your ISP then its local traffic which for many ISPs is not counted or for certain services provided by them is not an issue.

Edit, just checked out the Vudo site, very nice bit of kit, and I also managed a 3.2Mb/s speed test to their server at the end of 3.5km of corroded old PostOffice special. I did note on their forums that typical 100min HD movies streamed in around 4Gbyte.

Cyril

walt12
324 posts

Ultimate Geek


  #103258 7-Jan-2008 09:35
Send private message

With the current state of our network, if VOD were to take off in a menaingful way here, I seriously doubt it would handle it.

When we all have fibre at the curb, this becomes viable.

On another note, have any of the major video chains begun stocking many Blu Ray or HD-DVD titles yet?  My locals have nothing, and at ~$50-60 a hit, I'm not particularly keen to purchase outright.

rscole86
4973 posts

Uber Geek

Moderator
Trusted
Lifetime subscriber

  #103261 7-Jan-2008 09:41
Send private message

walt12: With the current state of our network, if VOD were to take off in a menaingful way here, I seriously doubt it would handle it.

When we all have fibre at the curb, this becomes viable.

On another note, have any of the major video chains begun stocking many Blu Ray or HD-DVD titles yet? My locals have nothing, and at ~$50-60 a hit, I'm not particularly keen to purchase outright.


What is wrong with our current network? Ok so I am on cable, but still there are a lot of ADSL customers that can get higher speeds than I do, and more reliable at times. Regardless on whether you have ADSL or cable I still think we would be able to implement a VOD service here in NZ.

Some Video Ezy stores have Blu Ray or HD-DVD titles AFAIK.

lchiu7

6470 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

  #103262 7-Jan-2008 09:42
Send private message

My local VideoEzy and also the other chain have both BR and HD-DVD for rental but the selection is limited as you would expect.

Looking at Whitcoulls yesterday I noticed they had inserted all their BR movies into the main DVD area sorted by title - an interesting idea I hadn's seen anywhere else in the US stores. Prices ranged from $34 to $49.  I have been taking advantage of the BOGO deals on Amazon - buy one get one free. While I bought a ton while I was there with BOGO even with shipping to NZ prices for discs are averaging NZ$25 which is a great deal.

The forums are awash with talk about VOD being the future, primarily I guess from the HD-DVD supporters! But even with the US Internet infrastructure,  nobody is saying that this is certain in the near or even medium term future. And as for here, it's hard to see how that would work with our current infrastructure and billing mechanisms.

And finally, who wants to have their titles tied down to a particular machine or face complex mechanisms to move titles from a machine to another?




Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD.  https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd  PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.


walt12
324 posts

Ultimate Geek


  #103265 7-Jan-2008 09:46
Send private message

A few thousand customers downloading HD 25GB+ content simultaneously would bring a whole new meaning to peak time.  In addition to the existing crowd of "regular" (light) users.  As it stands, the state of the network currently seems to have finally caught up with existing usage patterns ... HD VOD is a whole different ballgame.

 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
View this topic in a long page with up to 500 replies per page Create new topic





News and reviews »

Air New Zealand Starts AI adoption with OpenAI
Posted 24-Jul-2025 16:00


eero Pro 7 Review
Posted 23-Jul-2025 12:07


BeeStation Plus Review
Posted 21-Jul-2025 14:21


eero Unveils New Wi-Fi 7 Products in New Zealand
Posted 21-Jul-2025 00:01


WiZ Introduces HDMI Sync Box and other Light Devices
Posted 20-Jul-2025 17:32


RedShield Enhances DDoS and Bot Attack Protection
Posted 20-Jul-2025 17:26


Seagate Ships 30TB Drives
Posted 17-Jul-2025 11:24


Oclean AirPump A10 Water Flosser Review
Posted 13-Jul-2025 11:05


Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7: Raising the Bar for Smartphones
Posted 10-Jul-2025 02:01


Samsung Galaxy Z Flip7 Brings New Edge-To-Edge FlexWindow
Posted 10-Jul-2025 02:01


Epson Launches New AM-C550Z WorkForce Enterprise printer
Posted 9-Jul-2025 18:22


Samsung Releases Smart Monitor M9
Posted 9-Jul-2025 17:46


Nearly Half of Older Kiwis Still Write their Passwords on Paper
Posted 9-Jul-2025 08:42


D-Link 4G+ Cat6 Wi-Fi 6 DWR-933M Mobile Hotspot Review
Posted 1-Jul-2025 11:34


Oppo A5 Series Launches With New Levels of Durability
Posted 30-Jun-2025 10:15









Geekzone Live »

Try automatic live updates from Geekzone directly in your browser, without refreshing the page, with Geekzone Live now.



Are you subscribed to our RSS feed? You can download the latest headlines and summaries from our stories directly to your computer or smartphone by using a feed reader.