I think the fact that the PS3 is a blu ray player is slightly underestimated as a factor here...every single PS3 can play blu rays, and the projection for the PS3s lifetime sales is what, 30-40 million, on the generous side? That means 30 million blue ray players in homes and a blu ray player on the market that retails for 200 dollars or less that also plays PS3 games by generations end...I don't care how well the HD DVD attachment for the 360 sells, it's never going to get 100 percent attachment rates. HD might not be on a lot of people's minds right now, but everybody who buys a PS3 can switch over whenever they get an HDTV and pop in high definition disk.

Alot of people trying to convince themselves that luxury disc formats will in any way take off in the next five years. Pity really. DVD was a utalitarian progression from VHS, it made watching movies better, easier and more convenient. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray only give you a better picture, that's all. An improvement of a factor that is by and largeconsidered a luxury is hardly a driving force to push a new format to success especially when HD-TVs still only have less than 10% of the market.

Let's take a look at some of our major media formats shall we... 

CDs made listening to music more convenient because you could switch through songs, didn't need to rewind or fast forward and didn't have to worry about the degredation of the media over the course of time. This was a great improvement over the casset and benefited the ease by which the consumer could enjoy audio media immensely.

vs 

- Mini-Discs basically just did the same thing CDs did only with a twist, they really didn't bring anything new to the fray outside of recordability and ultimately were too much of a niche and luxury item to really take off as their own format in the long run.

- DVD-A Like Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are to DVD, DVD-A is the quintisential upgrade of quality in the CD format using a DVD disc instead of a CD disc for music. However, this new format requires a new player severely limiting the appeal of a media where digital media reigns supreme and audio quality has never been a real issue for the consumer..

- SACD (Super Audio CD) Like Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are to DVD, SACD is the quintisential upgrade of quality in the CD format. However, SACD has one promising aspect for its future. It can be played on regular CD players only requiring SACD compatible players to unlock its true potential. It's only downfall is the lack of interest in a new HD Audio format at this time given the heavy dependence on digital media and stricter disc protection this new format would bring.

----------------------------------------------- 

DVDs made watching movies more convenient because you could switch through chapters, didn't need to rewind or fast forward, could have multiple languages and interactive options and didn't have to worry about the degredation of the media over the course of time.

vs. 

- UMD basically just did what DVD did, just with less space, a higher cost and less appicability. Its novelty as a portable DVD format was largely compromised by much cheaper portable DVD players already on the market and the lack of interest to drive what was essentially a luxury item.

- Blu-Ray basically just allows for High Definition DVD movies, it has far more space but utilizing this space without compromising read times raises a series of new problems whose solutions ultimately make the utility of such a format questionable as a step forward in regard to consumer convenience. Incidentally its one major advantage being limited to HD-TVs makes it even more of a luxury item and a questionable step forward after only a few years since DVD had become the market standard.

- HD-DVD basically is in the same boat as Blu-Ray with minor variances towards their specs and abilities, in the end both are limited in that their only advantage, an HD-quality image, which can only be exploited on HD-TVs making them luxury items with no real utalitarian benefit to the consumer.

- Red-Ray Like Blu-Ray, buch cheap, affordable and economical. This format's only dissadvantage is its late emergence into the fray and limited appeal of HD formats at this time given their dependence on HD-TVs. However if any format has a chance of succeeding DVD this one seems to have everything necessary to win over the consumer who is looking for the next economical and sensable leap. 

I raised that question a while back and right now he does seem to be quite "anti-Sony" with his bashing of the PS3 and Blu-Ray.   Right now his argument has been laughable.    I will admit though that once he takes off his Nintendo colored glasses he can be quite good.  But so far in this thread it's been a Sony bash fest by him.

I still don't see why constructing logical arguments for or against any particular platform is inappropriate behavior for a moderator, or any member for that matter.

There's a difference between being biased and calling it like you see it, and Shams is usually the latter.

Just because you don't like what he has to say doesn't make him wrong. Keep on keepin' on with that ostrich syndrome.

Oh, and before you rip me, I own a PS3. That doesn't mean I can't call it out for its faults, just like I do my 360 and I did my Wii (before I sold it). 

I own a 360 too.. Not that it really has anything to do with it all. From my opinion, it comes off that he's biased against the PS3. You can fight it all you want, but it's what I see and I won't accept yours or anyone else explanation on it. The main reason why I say that and why others view it as being biased is because it's nothing but negativity and little constructive criticism. If the critcism was constructive and not bashing of Sony, then I wouldn't have that viewpoint of him. It could be that many out there who see it differently are those who are biased towards another system or company.


Gelmer, comparing UMD as the next DVD is just silly. It is and was a format that was used for the PSP primarily for games, but they saw a niche market that would buy movies on UMD to play in the PSP. I don't consider the device a failure, I just consider the strategy they used as a failure. The focus on UMD movies should have been small. Heck, it would have been great if they created a drive that consumers could use to copy movies they own onto a UMD and use when traveling to watch movies. Make it a re-writeable drive as well so they can just copy over movies they copied before. But, I guess that with the costs on the memory sticks dropping fast and getting alot for a small price people now have a tool they can do that with now and it's fairly inexpensive.

Shams is downright polite and agreeable compared to ckmlb's one liners.

Damn, how did this come to a discussion about HD?
Anyway, talking about HD, my opinion, from the start, is that people talking about HD penetration in whatever years are deluded. My only explanation is they are graphic whores.

I'm in the home theater world since a long time, and if there's one thing I learned, it's that people (mainstream) don't buy new techno because the image is better. People that believe that are delusional, really.
People didn't buy DVD because the picture was better, but because it was more convenient. They discovered the better picture later.
People don't buy HDTV because the picture is better (in most situations it's worse), but because most are flat. BTW, even RPTV try to flatten as much as possible, emphasizing geometry problems that destroys the picture, but despite the lesser quality, they will sell better.
Finally, people have no reason to buy HDDVD or BluRay. NONE!
When I say people, I'm talking about all the mainstream people you need, to be a success in the video market. As long as people don't see a clear immediate difference without having to make a comparison with what they had before, there's no way picture quality will be an incentive.

That's why all HDTV sets are by default at some maximum white level that destroy your eyes. It's nowhere near a good setting, it's one of the worse actually, but it will catch your eye in the store.

I highly doubt what everyone is saying about certain parts of the PS3 being removed. The whole reason the 20 GB was phased out was because it wasn't as popular as the fully loaded 60 GB which had everything. I think people believed that the 60 GB SKU was the standard, but the price is nowhere near where they want it.

Supposedly the PS3 costs $639 to make now, and if Sony were to make a real price cut on the 80 GB for $400, it would put them back to their original plan to sell at a $240 loss. They would lose a lot of money as originally planned, but technically they can do this. I hope for the sake of any potential PS3 owner that Sony is able to cut costs without having to strip anything else on the console.

Gelmer and Dodece bring up two very good points.

HD penetration is still light years away from being main stream. This is because of 2 reasons that G & D brought up, convenience and price. First off the price is still ridiculously high that for (i'm in the US, so i'll stick to that) your average family who makes around 35k-45k a year, it's literally 2-3 weeks worth of pay just to enter into the HD market. Since the US as a country is in deep shit in terms of credit, this makes one of the easiest ways to afford HD much less of a viable option. So who is really buying these HDTV's; These HD-DVD/Blu-Ray players? The people who buy these kinds of products whether they can afford it or not.

Obviously the price is one concern for the mass market out there, but the convenience is definitely the biggest concern for consumers. It is not easy for Joe and Deb Homemaker to figure out how to set up there HDTV. They don't know they need HD programming to take advantage of the higher resolution. They are being bombarded by notions of "needing" 1080p, when in reality as long as you Have a 70" TV or less and sit no closer than 10' from it, your eyes WILL NOT be able to see the difference in quality. They don't know these things because it's not intuitive. How hard was it to switch from VHS to DVD? It wasn't. It was all NTSC 4:3 aspect ratio. You didn't have to change your settings on your DVD player or your cable box to match those of your TV. It just did it automatically. On the other hand, it's inconvenient for consumers to try to get the most out of thier HDTV equipment because there are just way too many variables to deal with. It's not just not intuitive.

Until they make it easy and cheap for everyone to figure it out, it will be many years before its adopted by the general public.