# LG could End HD Format Wars



## Pupton (Jul 15, 2006)

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2079049,00.asp

Interesting.


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## chhelo (Dec 28, 2006)

I wonder if this will be a one drive player or will just house 2 drives? Only a few days left until we know for sure.:dontknow:


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## Sonnie (Apr 11, 2006)

Sounds promising, although the 1st generation models will probably be too expensive for my blood. However, just the fact that LG gets it done will be an encouragement to other manufacturers to get on the ball and develop more units.


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## bobgpsr (Apr 20, 2006)

They (LG) kinda half-way announced it a year ago. Reports are that they have been working on it hard for the past year. So quicker than you think it might be available to buy. I'll bet it is a single drive machine with a nifty dual-purpose Blue-ray/HD DVD optical pickup in the drive. Not really that hard since Blu-ray drives have to change from focusing through a 0.1 mm layer for BD with 405 nm blue/violet laser versus 0.6 mm for Standard DVD (650 nm red laser). The only diff for the universal drive's optical pickup unit is that HD DVD is a focus through 0.6 mm with the 405 nm blue/violet laser.


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## MikeL (Jun 18, 2006)

I don't know but hard to believe that it is LG doing this. We typically don't think of them this way (atleast I don't). I imagine it will be quite expensive as wasn't the thought of licensing the obstacle to this. Hopefully, it will be the start of the future as I feared these technologies would end up being similar to the whole SACD/DVDa thing. ie. not mainstream, which hurts everybody. Hoping the best.

Mike


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## Guest (Jan 5, 2007)

Expensive or not this is GREAT news. :T I wonder if there will be issues with one format being handled better than the other.

Looking forward to seeing more on this in the next little while.

best regards to all ...
Peter


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## JimP (May 18, 2006)

Turns out that its just over $1K.

This would be good if it is well implemented.


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## chhelo (Dec 28, 2006)

I saw a price of $1,199 MSRP. Most likely a street price under $1,000. Only drawback I saw was slow load times when going from HD to Blu-ray.

We should see reviews shortly.


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## Sonnie (Apr 11, 2006)

I'd say it is priced to sell if you figure $500 for each format... well worth it in my opinion. I wonder if they will be hard to get?


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## basementjack (Sep 18, 2006)

the LG combo player is a Blue-Ray Trojan horse.

Engadget reports that upon further inspection the HD-DVD feature set has been severely crippled:

http://www.engadgethd.com/2007/01/09/a-little-dirty-detail-about-lgs-combo-hd-dvd-blu-ray-player/

"LGs combo HD DVD/Blu-ray player could very well be the killer blow for HD DVD. What's that you say? Well, the combo player fully supports Blu-ray's interactivity, BD-J, but the BH100 seems to have forgotten all about HD DVD's interactive features, iHD. That's right, none of it - no PIP, next-gen menus, user bookmarks, HD DVD downloads/updates - nothing that will "WOW" the average Joe. However, when our friend Joe pops in a Blu-ray disc, the menu pops with excitement and is accompanied with, well, PIP, downloads/updates for instance. Why would Joe buy an HD DVD the next time out when the Blu-ray discs offer so much more? (He won't) Is this player the saving grace for both formats, nope, but it may well turn out to be the saving grace for Blu-ray. Plus, with the $1200 MSRP, you could make your own combo player by getting a PS3 ($600) along with a Toshiba HD-A2, ($410 at Amazon) duct taping 'em together. Then you can sit back and enjoy the best of both worlds with enough money left over to buy some titles on both formats. We just hope Warner's Total Hi Def hybrid disc doesn't have any skeletons in the closet."


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## Sonnie (Apr 11, 2006)

I don't explore the menus myself, so the deciding factor for me would be price and video quality. Will the Blu-ray be up to par with the HD-DVD. 

I'm extremely satisfied with HD-DVD and SD-DVDs on the Toshiba player. If I can eventually get a Blu-ray player for $500 or so (one that actually had good video quality and no bugs), I'll probably buy it and forget about combo player.

However, for someone who doesn't already own a player, this combo will possibly be the player to have, provided BR can get their act together with the PQ and buggy stuff. 

In no way do I even begin to believe that this one player will cause the downfall of HD-DVD. It just ain't gonna happen. HD-DVD will end up winning out the format war, unless a respectable combo player surfaces, and then I'm still not sure BR will survive and thrive like HD-DVD.


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## Sir Terrence (Jun 8, 2006)

This player will not make it to the market if Microsoft has its way. Apparently according to this article it will not meet DVD forum certification because it lacks support for HDi interactive. 

http://ces.betanews.com/entry/LG_Hybrid_BlurayHD_DVD_Player_Cannot_Be_Sold_As_Is/1168407626

Along with the fact that it only supports HDMI 1.2(which excludes the incorporation of Dts-HD master audio), tells me this is not a forward thinking design, but just something to throw out there as a niche product in a niche market. It will make no difference in this format war. Not when you have both a bluray and a HD DVD player with HDMI 1.3 installed.


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## basementjack (Sep 18, 2006)

Sonnie, 

I love my HD-DVD. I don't even own a BD player or movies or a PS3. And I'm not a sony fan. But I have to say, I think BD is going to win the war, and this saddens me greatly, because I don't think it's a better format, much like VHS wasn't better than Beta nor LaserDisk, and the original Xbox was better than the PS2. I've picked up BD titles and most don't even have Dolby Digital plus, let alone true HD. (And if you haven't tried the in movie commentaries, you're missing out!)

I'm doing my part to try and make HD-DVD win - at best buy I interrupted a salesman pitching Blu-Ray to talk up HD-DVD. I've steped up the pace on buying HD-DVD software in hopes it might make a difference.

But I'm being realistic about what I see in the market place.


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## basementjack (Sep 18, 2006)

Sir Terrence, this is great news. People deserve the full HD-DVD experience.


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## bobgpsr (Apr 20, 2006)

If the player decodes the advanced audio codec then all you need is HDMI 1.1 to transport the decoded to multichannel linear PCM to the AVR. Most all HD DVD discs use Advanced Authoring which requires the player to decode so the button sounds and commentary audio can be mixed in. With this case the HDMI 1.3 capability to transport raw bitstream of the new audio codecs does not help or do anything.


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## Sir Terrence (Jun 8, 2006)

bobgpsr said:


> If the player decodes the advanced audio codec then all you need is HDMI 1.1 to transport the decoded to multichannel linear PCM to the AVR. Most all HD DVD discs use Advanced Authoring which requires the player to decode so the button sounds and commentary audio can be mixed in. With this case the HDMI 1.3 capability to transport raw bitstream of the new audio codecs does not help or do anything.


Yes, you are right in the case of HD DVD, but not bluray. Secondly I don't really want my audio transcoded from one format to another. This combo player does not support Dts-HDMA being offered on Fox's bluray movies, which makes it useless to me.


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## Sir Terrence (Jun 8, 2006)

basementjack said:


> Sonnie,
> 
> I love my HD-DVD. I don't even own a BD player or movies or a PS3. And I'm not a sony fan. But I have to say, I think BD is going to win the war, and this saddens me greatly, because I don't think it's a better format, much like VHS wasn't better than Beta nor LaserDisk, and the original Xbox was better than the PS2. I've picked up BD titles and most don't even have Dolby Digital plus, let alone true HD. (And if you haven't tried the in movie commentaries, you're missing out!)
> 
> ...


You are correct, bluray does not support Dolby Digital plus, but it does support Dolby Digital core at its highest data rate, which so happens to be the same data rate that Warner ports to DD+ on HD DVD titles(640kbps). However, what it does have, and chooses to emphasize is uncompressed PCM audio which is far better than any loseless codec. Bluray doesn't need Dolby TruHD nor DD+. It has the capacity to use uncompressed PCM at the studio convience, so I would not hold the lack of advance codecs against them.

HD DVD NEEDS these advance codecs, that is why they are supported on that format. If HD DVD where to use uncompressed PCM without the packing features of the advance codecs, then it would run out of capacity with longer movies, or the video would have to be further compressed to include extra's. 

While I own the A1, I am a supporter of BOTH formats. I have no issues with Toshiba or Sony. Aside from the larger capacity of bluray, the are both technologically the same. However, studio support is not, and I think everyone is overlooking the fact that cheap players don't bring software. You can have all the cheap players in the world, but if there is little to very little to play on it, it won't survive. 

CES was not good to HD DVD. The only real announcement they had was that three chinese electronic companies that specialize in cheap DVD players along with Onkyo are going to release HD DVD players in 2007. None had prototypes to show. Universal made no big release announcements, so HD DVD was visible with nothing to show. There were no additional studios going neutral, and the few that are going to support HD DVD in the future made no special titles announcements. You cannot spin this, and its not good for HD DVD, and something to worry about in the future. 

I personally think that the studios have already decided for us the winner, and are going to push long and hard to make it a reality. BR exclusive studio are showing such enthusiasm(too much IMO), and putting out the word so loudly, that its all the reporters from my station could talk about. As a matter of fact, in talking with my counterparts from 3 other local stations in my area, their reporters also really talked up bluray when they reported back to the station from CES. That to me is not a good sign for HD DVD, it was as if they were not even there. 

Toshiba really needs to ditch the idea that they are going to cheap their way to victory. They need content along with cheap players if they are going to win.


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## Sonnie (Apr 11, 2006)

I still say HD-DVD is gonna end up on top... but I've been wrong many times before. Blu-ray has shown me nothing as of yet... if they are gonna do something, they need to bring it on. $1000 for a player and buggy movies won't get it for me. They can talk all they want, but they gotta produce.


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## basementjack (Sep 18, 2006)

Sir Terrance, thanks for the BD primer, didn't realize uncompressed multi channel PCM was a built in feature - but it makes sense - 4 or 5 gigabytes for PCM audio is a real option when you still have 45 gig left over. I'm also reading that Fox is supporting the DTS high end codecs on blue ray.

I agree with all your statements about BD/HD-DVD at CES. and I've seen the same happen at a local best buy, where the BD is proudly on display and the salesmen can't wait to talk about it. 

I'm really excited about the warner dual format announcment - even if it adds $5 a disc, thats much cheaper than having to re-buy any of these titles 5 years from now if one format goes dead..

Sonny, the BD players IMHO are $500 with a PS3 thrown in as a free bonus. Game consoles typically have poor quality analog audio and video, but now that the signal path is all digital from start to finish, I don't imagine the picture quality should be any different now, and sound quality shouldn't matter once we upgrade to new receivers that can pull sound from the HDMI cable...

Add to that that I love video games, and the PS3 just got a lot more attractive (It's on my plan to buy list now, it wasn't before the CES blu-ay/Lack of HD-DVD announcements)

just my 2 cents, again I love and support HD-DVD till the end, which I fear is very near.


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## bobgpsr (Apr 20, 2006)

basementjack said:


> the BD players IMHO are $500 with a PS3 thrown in as a free bonus.


Did you miss the announcement of a WinCE/Broadcom SoC reference design (and hardware demo'd in CES private suite rooms by MS and Broadcom) to be used by chinese manufacturers for HD DVD players due in the 2d quarter (April - June 07)? When the user can go to Walmart and get a player for $299 (July?) then a bit later in the year for $199 magic price points -- everything changes. When it happened for DVD, that is when it really took off. The current MSRP $499 price point is not going to last long. Right now you don't have to look hard to get a HD-A2 for $450 -- even some reports of $399. No such discounts yet for the PS3. Then also for 10.4 million Xbox 360 users there is the $199 (list) HD DVD player add-on.

The number of titles available now -- or in the next 6 months for either BD or HD DVD (hundreds for each) is miniscule compared to the > 12K titles in DVD. HD DVD press announcement said what -- 300 world wide now with 300 more by the end of the year? BD studios did do a better PR job at CES of announcing future dates for near term BD releases.

IMHO the end is nowhere near for either HD DVD or BD.


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## Sir Terrence (Jun 8, 2006)

bobgpsr said:


> Did you miss the announcement of a WinCE/Broadcom SoC reference design (and hardware demo'd in CES private suite rooms by MS and Broadcom) to be used by chinese manufacturers for HD DVD players due in the 2d quarter (April - June 07)? When the user can go to Walmart and get a player for $299 (July?) then a bit later in the year for $199 magic price points -- everything changes. When it happened for DVD, that is when it really took off. The current MSRP $499 price point is not going to last long. Right now you don't have to look hard to get a HD-A2 for $450 -- even some reports of $399. No such discounts yet for the PS3. Then also for 10.4 million Xbox 360 users there is the $199 (list) HD DVD player add-on.
> 
> The number of titles available now -- or in the next 6 months for either BD or HD DVD (hundreds for each) is miniscule compared to the > 12K titles in DVD. HD DVD press announcement said what -- 300 world wide now with 300 more by the end of the year? BD studios did do a better PR job at CES of announcing future dates for near term BD releases.
> 
> IMHO the end is nowhere near for either HD DVD or BD.


I am going to offer this up to you. Would you buy a cheap player with only three of 8 studio's supporting your format, and only one exclusive? Alot of folks I have talked to are just not convinced that HD DVD is going to win, cheap players or not. Software is going to drive this war, not cheap hardware. All the consumer is going to do is lump cheap HD DVD with cheap DVD, but without the support of some of the largest studio's in Hollywood. This is not a build it cheap and they will come. You have to have BOTH studio support, and reasonbly priced product. Toshiba has one without the other, and in the future blu-ray could have both. That is a BIG could if they do not get to work. 

I totally agree with your last statement.


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## bobgpsr (Apr 20, 2006)

Sir Terrence said:


> Would you buy a cheap player with only three of 8 studio's supporting your format, and only one exclusive?


The cheap player that I bought was the 360 add-on, but with also having a XA1 and and XA2, I must beg for mercy and claim that I am not typical -- just techy. :nerd: I probably will never buy a cheapie $199 chinese no-name brand HD DVD player now. 

But a US new purchaser of a HD DVD player will see 192+ HD DVD titles available right now, and likely 150 more US released titles this year. That very well may be enough for a lot of people. It amazed me that I bought 38 HD DVDs these past 9 months -- I only had bought about 20+ DVDs ever before. I would guess that a "normal" shiny video disc user might buy about 30+ titles a year. There are enough titles available right now to support that.

Plus when there are 2 million plus, high attach rate, player owners out there at the end of this year, I'll bet that all the exclusive studios but Columbia (Sony) will publish in the other format. If the PS3 attach rate gets high enough Universal may even publish in Blu-ray Disc -- eventually (next year), esp in Japan. Again the result would be that both formats co-exist for a few years.

IMHO HD DVD will win out eventually (due to lower cost players and discs) -- until internet downloads take over. I respect that you have a different opinion.


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## MACCA350 (Apr 25, 2006)

Sir Terrence said:


> I am going to offer this up to you. Would you buy a cheap player with only three of 8 studio's supporting your format, and only one exclusive? Alot of folks I have talked to are just not convinced that HD DVD is going to win, cheap players or not. Software is going to drive this war, not cheap hardware. All the consumer is going to do is lump cheap HD DVD with cheap DVD, but without the support of some of the largest studio's in Hollywood. This is not a build it cheap and they will come. You have to have BOTH studio support, and reasonbly priced product. Toshiba has one without the other, and in the future blu-ray could have both. That is a BIG could if they do not get to work.
> 
> I totally agree with your last statement.


Currently Blu-Ray is exclusively backed by Sony Pictures, MGM, Disney and 20th Century Fox.

Currently HD DVD is exclusively backed by Universal Studios, The Weinstein Company/Genius Products

From Wikipedia: HD-DVD support
HD DVD is promoted by Toshiba, NEC, Sanyo, Microsoft, and Intel, among others. In terms of major studios, HD DVD is currently exclusively backed by Universal Studios, The Weinstein Company/Genius Products, and is non-exclusively backed by Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., Warner Music Group, HBO and New Line Cinema, Image Entertainment (including Discovery Channel),[22] Magnolia Pictures,[23] Brentwood Home Video, Ryko, Koch/Goldhil Entertainment,[24] and Studio Canal. HP, Lite On, Onkyo, Meridan and Alpine also support HD DVD. 

cheers

_Edited to remove subject that is not to be discussed per Forum Rules... Moderator_


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