JsARCLIGHT

Well, there IS a spec for what HD "should look like" and that spec is 1080p. The vast catalog of "HD" televisions out there do not meet this spec. That is not a "problem" per se as much as it is an array of "cheaper alternatives", cheaper in both price and spec. I equate the HD market to fast cars. The old adage of "Speed is simply a matter of money, how fast can you afford to go?" applies to HD home theater as well. How good of a spec do you want to see and hear? Well, how good can you afford to own? And to be honest much like fast cars you reach a point where every extra 10 horsepower costs you an inordinate amount of money that pales in comparison to the output gain your are adding. In the end there are three camps of people, those who want the appearance of speed, those who want actual speed and those who want to break the sound barrier. In other words you have people who simply "want HD" and buy based on price reguardless of spec, people who wish to have "very good HD" and shop for the best spec they can afford or justify, and lastly you have those (like me) who will only buy the best of the best regardless of price because everything else is a "compromise" in our eyes. IMHO all you really truthfully need to have a "near perfect" decent HD home theater right now is a decent HD television that supports at minimum 1080i through component or HDMI (1080i usually guarantees you back compatibility with 720p as well as direct line compatibility with all over the air or transmission based HD sources), a decent surround sound receiver with decent speakers that supports at minimum 5.1 DTS via PCM or HDMI and some form of next gen source like a Blu Ray / HD DVD player or some form of digital signal in HD be it terrestrial antenna, cable or satellite. Anything above and beyond those specs such as a 1080p television, 6.1 or 7.1 True HD receiver et cetera is more or less large dollar expenditures that don't really reap a large scale improvement for their cost... and those "basic" specs can usually be had for under three grand all in the form of "over the counter, out of a box" items. Most people will never really notice or appreciate the difference the higher priced higher spec devices will produce anyway.

How can a console corrupt a save? I mean, unless you unplug the thing in mid save or something I always thought it was impossible for a console "save" to be corrupted? Yes these new consoles are "mini computers" but they don't have all the crap going on in them like computers do... a PC, yes I can understand corrupted data, but a console? The more I hear the more skittish I get about my own 360. It has not had one single problem since the day I bought it... but I feel like a person living with a psychopath, you never know when it's going to "snap".

That is what I meant, I was talking about LCD computer monitors. IMHO the "HD" LCD monitors you see around these days are nothing more than glorified computer monitors. Nearly all of them cannot achieve the higher 1080i or 1080p resolutions and the vast lion's share are "off resolution" displays. Then again the new "push" in HDTV for the masses seem to be lower resolution, cheaper units. I myself am shopping for a new HDTV that can push 1080p and it's actually quite disappointing to see how slim my options really are... I was on BB.com yesterday perusing their offerings and the vast majority of them where all off res LCD units or low res DLPs. All the 1080p units were either way too large for what I wanted (50" +) or they didn't possess the options I wanted. Looks like I'm going to have to mail order another TV.

In regard to the question posed by David, that Samsung model looks to be an "off resolution" LCD. Meaning it's max display is 1366 x 768, which means it's input is most likely capped at 720p. From my limited experience with HD items, I have seen that certain sets that are designed to only accept one signal type (like 720p or 1080i, etc) tend to have display issues when given a signal they can't display. I've also seen that many HD LCD sets are not really "HD sets" but rather are akin to computer monitors and possess strange max resolutions. And as we all know computer monitors have that -one- resolution that they love but they handle the others in strange ways. A friend of mine who has one of those old CRT HDTV's had this problem. His Phillips CRT can only display 480i and 1080i, nothing else. If you give it a 720p signal (say, from an Xbox or PS3) it won't show it... it will just throw up a bunch of rolling bars and garbage until you reset the signal to one it can read. My plasma can display 720p or 1080i but if I give it a 1080p picture it will do the same thing. It could be that the carrier signal BB stores have running is in a resolution that set cannot handle, so perhaps it is detuning itself to 480i to display some sort of piggybacked low grade signal. My satellite box has the ability to decode an HD signal into a standard 480i def signal and if I hooked my plasma up to that output the image I would get on the screen would be a 16x9 widescreen image letterboxed on all sides (because it is outputting a letterboxed 4:3 image which when played on a 16x9 screen gets letterboxes on the sides as well) and it looks really, really crappy because the box is realtime downgrading the signal to 480i which results in some color banding and artifacting. From what it sounds like the folks at BB are either feeding that TV a signal it can't handle and it's kneecapping itself, or someone for some reason is feeding it a low grade 480i signal that it is doing it's best with. Plus you also can't rule out some kid with chocolate smeared on his face screwing it up. It IS a demo unit after all.

I highly doubt that is what Sony has in mind for this technology. IMHO this whole thing reeks of "look what else our console can do!" rather than an honest improvement in anyone's entertainment value. Personally I'd rather see more time spent making some good games rather than trying to sell me "more of the same from a different box".

But if the basic ability is inherently linked to a terrestrial broadcast mode like Freeview then the "tuner" will have no inputs to hook anything to... it will just be a little box with a little metal antenna on it with a USB plug out the back. Like what the Xbox 360 Wireless Network adapter looks like. Half the articles reference a "USB Key" like device that plugs in and acts as a terrestrial antenna... and that is about "it" for info on the subject. Just a Sony New Zealand guy opening his mouth about it and an internet rumor storm erupting. I personally see this becoming nothing more than the Japanese "P-TV" system for the PSP, just as a terrestrial broadcast rather than an "over the internet" broadcast. Plus if the "tuner" is hardwired to only tune Freeview broadcasts then it will be pretty much useless anywhere that does not have Freeview waves in the sky.

That is because that signal has already been decrypted by your box. The digital signal carried from the direct line is encrypted... in order to "get" that digital signal you need a popper box with the proper decoding hardware. I cannot just take the direct feed from my satellite dish, plug it's coax into something and expect to record anything. Unless that "thing" has the decode routine it will receive nothing but junk from the signal. The same goes for digital cable... the "digital" signal is encoded. YES you can draw the analog basic cable carrier over a raw coax but in order to get the digital signal you must have a decoder, which means this "tuner" would need a slot for a cable card in order to gain the proper decoder. That's because that is a streaming feed, you don't encode a streaming feed. Basically it is the point A to point B dump into your monitor. You can only record what is being output, which is one channel in real time. It would basically be "dumb box" recording like the old VCR+ scheme... you are not be able to "set your PS3 to record any show on any channel at any time" because you would have to manually set the channel yourself so it was being output and then tell the PS3 "record between X o'clock and Y o'clock" and it would do it, dumb terminal style. That is not how a true DVR is supposed to work. If you read all the articles about this "tuner" and it' DVR features they all say it is linked to the Freeview terrestrial broadcast service. Which means if you live in a country that has Freeview (which is only the UK right now) your PS3 tuner can tune Freeview as it is OTA terrestrial unencrypted. The tuner would be able to have "true DVR" functionality as it is the tuner/decrypter... but for all intents and purposes it is ONLY for Freeview which is ONLY in the UK right now and has no plans to come to the US, making the whole thing moot. Edit: It should also be pointed out that all the news aritcles about this "tuner" are all referencing the same source, which was a Sony rep talking to a New Zealand reporter about Freeview services inside New Zealand, which are slated to start March 2008. Everyone is maligning this story into something global when in reality the Sony rep was only talking about a local (New Zealand) event.

I just looked up these rumors of a PS3 "DVR like" capacity and Tuner. They are all gimmick. They are all based on the special terrestrial tuner service called Freeview which is not available in the US. It is it's own broadcast service offering it's own channel lineup. Which means if it's on Freeview, you can "DVR" it. If it isn't on Freeview, you can't. Sounds very limiting to me. And the biggest limit of all is that unless Freeview comes stateside we Americans will not be seeing this "accessory" as for all intents and purposes it's married to the Freeview service.

How will it "tune" anything, it has no physical tuner? It also has no physical video inputs. The only two options would be some crude terrestrial tuner via a USB connection, which would be practically pointless as any standard television already has that capability... OR a USB connection that jumpers between your signal and your cable box or satellite box, which would be kind of pointless because both use encrypted signals for their digital reception and all it would be able to read would be the analog signal which is not much better than OTA broadcast... OR some sort of internet based broadband broadcast which would ALSO be pointless as you'd need a nice computer with a broadband modem, broadband service and a network adapter to connect the PS3 to which itself would have far more options for receiving and recording than the PS3 for internet based television anyway. The whole thing sounds like some cockamamie gimmick rather than any sort of functional accessory.

How would that work exactly? I'm no expert, but I am a Tivo owner. The PS3 does not have a TV tuner or any sort of signal inputs... how can you make a game console into a DVR unit when all it has is outs and no ins other than USB? Having recently hooked up my PS3 into my system, which has both a HD Tivo box and an HD satellite box, I do not see how a PS3 can function as a DVR.

You might want to do what I and few others do, go to HighDefDigest.com and read their reviews of Blu Ray and HD DVD movies. I have found them to be very, very accurate in their reviews and they have actually saved me some money in the past few weeks by avoiding certain movies that I would have bought without thinking and encouraging me to check out other movies that I would normally have avoided just to see how good they looked. It will also surprise a few people just how many next gen media releases there currently are in the market right now and just how many of them barely rate 3 stars out of 5. If I had to guess I'd say only something like 20% of the releases rate 4 stars or above.

That point of demarcation with Blu Ray is usually associated with the switch from MPEG2 to the newer codecs. Pretty much every first release on Blu Ray was in the old, crappy codec... the new ones use the newer, better codecs and have visibly better picture quality.

Sleepy Hollow is known for it's poor HD master. I've seen a lot of people at a lot of sites badmouth how poor it's HD encode is in both Blu Ray and HD DVD... lots of grain, lots of "fuzz" and not much clarity. That all goes back to my original feelings that the lion's share of the Blu Ray and HD DVD titles on the market are "shovelware"... they don't have a good enough remaster to justify the HD media. Their distributors just crapped them out on an HD media seemingly just to "have them out on the market". I hate to keep beating a dead horse but the first release of The Fifth Element on BD is the prime case study for this sort of behavior. They just dumped it on the disc... crappy encoding, crappy picture quality, no special features... it was totally not worth the upgrade. Now that they have come back and re-released it with a decent encode and decent picture quality it really only raises it's "purchase worth" only a tad. Yes, now it looks better but it still has no special features. I hate to say this but it's like the distributors forgot all the lessons they learned for why people switched from VHS to DVD. People want the better picture quality and audio clarity yes but they also want extras and bonus materials... something to justify the near double cost of the new media. After a while the outstanding picture clarity and audio quality will become second nature, and at that point you have to rely on your fall back gimmick: special features. It's just sad when some releases mess up even the most basic reason to buy something on next gen media...

I'm torn between getting the HD DVD or the Blu Ray. If they both have the same picture and audio quality then I'll get the BD version.

Source would be the horse's mouth: Take 2 Delays GTA4 Until 2008

Scott answered that question in an interview a long time ago if I remember correctly. I think the correct question would be if he sticks to his original answer or will he "change his mind"?

Well, you also have to think that Betamax was the forerunner of Betacam. Betamax may be dead as a dodo but Betacam is still the "industry" tape media of choice around the globe. Sony may have lost the consumer market in the '80s with the failed Betamax format but they won the professional market and held it with a near monopoly for decades. Many folks who like to tote the Beta versus VHS battle forget that.

Well it is a noir movie, and a hallmark of noir is stark contrasts and dark shots. But Blade Runner has a lot of color and detail to it if you look close. The regular DVD has a pretty average picture quality but there's a lot of detail in the movie as it is. I got the urge and watched it a few days back. My normal Blade Runner DVD played back upscaled to 1080 in my PS3 looks pretty darned good for as poor of a picture transfer as the DVD has. You can make out textures, hues, color shifts and patterns... all sorts of stuff in the framed shots. They are blurry and jaggy and there is a good degree of grain in the blacks, but there is a lot of detail there. The movie has a remarkable level of texture and complexity to it. I personally can't wait for a high def version so I can see all that stuff in a crisp, clear and hopefully grain free format.

Well, I picked up my Xbox 360 HD DVD player from Best Buy last night and it is turning out to be quite the score. I managed to capitalize on the BB.com price faux pas and got my player for $149.99... and to top it all off it was one of the ones that came with King Kong and the remote. So if you tally that with the 5 free HD DVDs to come by mail in 8 to 10 weeks I will have paid $160 (cost plus tax) for a HD DVD player with remote and 6 movies. Not too shabby. While I am no fan of King Kong I picked up Hot Fuzz on HD DVD and wanted to get Shaun of the Dead but aparently Saint Louis Best Buy stores forgot to order them as none had them in stock... not even the nearby Circuit City had it. Anyway... I got it home and hooked up and watched Hot Fuzz last night. All I can say is Daaaaaaaaaaaammmnnn. Hot Fuzz is not really an "HD" kind of movie but the picture quality and sound quality were out of this world. It was only this morning when I popped over to HighDefDigest.com did I discover that Hot Fuzz is their one and only FIVE star rated HD movie. It's the king of the hill in their eyes and to be honest, they're right. Hot Fuzz on HD DVD put my Blu Ray movies to shame. The picture was perfect... PERFECT. Zero grain... zero bleed. It was, to date, the best HD movie (picture quality wise) that I have seen. The sound mix, while not quite "HD", was superb as well. A lot of stereo separation, surround elements and choice usage of multichannel sweeps the audio really put you in the movie experience. Too add to it all the HD DVD has something along the lines of EIGHTEEN HOURS of bonus material on the disc. This is the first time in a long time that I feel I have without a doubt got my money's worth in a purchased movie. If Shaun of the Dead is even close to this good of a presentation I'm going to crap myself. What makes me giddy even more is that HD DVD has no real region coding yet... thoughts boggle my mind of a Spaced HD DVD release that I can just buy and play without a special player or adapter. Blu Ray may be winning the war but the Hot Fuzz HD DVD single handedly slaughters the lion's share of the Blu Ray movies on the market and makes me glad I bought the HD add on for my Xbox.

Do like I used to do: Buy it, take it apart, smuggle it into the house in pieces, hide the stuff you know she'll freak out about and when she sees you with something simply say "Nooooooo I've had this for YEARS". It also helps to hide things in your basement or attic inside the boxes of other things. I used to hide Macross toys in power tool boxes.

I'm not sure why your search didn't show this thread. Typing in "Blade Runner" in our forum search engine returns a ton of threads with this one being #2... then again this thread was still on page 1 of this section for me even before it got bumped up.

Dupe police. Place your thread on top of your head and slowly back towards my voice. MW Blade Runner DVD thread

I found the right form: Microsoft Xbox HD DVD Perfect Offer Form Also BB.com is showing "SOLD OUT" on the HD DVD drives... I guess they got rushed. Glad I decided to buy mine when I did.

By my understanding, and from what Microsoft has said, the 5 free movies are going to be part of the Toshiba "Perfect Offer" special. I'm still waiting to see an online form that lists the Xbox HD DVD player but the original Toshiba offer is listed here: Toshiba Perfect Offer As soon as I get the right form I'm going to put in for Apollo 13, Casablanca, Sky Captain, U2:R&H and We Were Soldiers. ... and as far as I know the HD DVD player still comes with King Kong and the media remote. The Best Buy SKU and model number listed on their website is the same as the King Kong/Remote pack in set. I guess I'll find out when I pick mine up tonight.

News for the crews to those who are interested. The Xbox HD DVD price drop took effect today along with the 5 free HD DVD mail in offer... and you can get the drive for even LESS at Best Buy if you jump on it fast. Best buy online currently shows the HD DVD drive for $149.99, $20 less than the MSRP drop stated by Microsoft. I bought mine online about ten minutes ago for store pickup and I just got the confirmation email. If you think of the 5 free HD DVDs as costing about $30 each (which is usual list price for almost all of them) it's like getting the player for FREE.