CES 2006 News & Announcements

[wco81]

Yeah none of these first gen players sound appealing.

The Pioneer and Sony will be too expensive and they don't even record.

And the Toshibas are interim models. Toshiba has already said they will have newer models for the Holiday season.

Makes the PS3 look better, if the pricing is right, not just for the console but also the movies.

 

[Hardknock]

Reports are saying that according to unspecified sources it MAY happen. A bit sensationalist on your behalf?

The first players are scheduled to be released after BD-J is finalised. So ? at this article. Drives are being released earlier but they will rely on software installed to PC anyway so yeah...once again ?

Hey take it up with the author, I don't have anything to do with the article. They state they talked to one of the manufacturers of blu-ray players that wanted to remain anonymous. This may or may not come to pass. But if it does I'm sure plenty of people would be pissed that they bought a $1000 player that was obsolete after a couple years. Like xbd said I'd just wait for the PS3 if I was someone who wanted one.

 

[expletive]

Hardknock, good find. That article is *quite* interesting. Hmmm... I'm sure PS3 will be able to circumvent the 'interactive' layer issues due to Cell and a firmware upgrade, but it doesn't bode well for the purchasers of first gen blu-ray players otherwise.

Truly, PS3 is the way to go blu-ray early adopter.

Ack, but this Ethernet connection talk is back again. That's really not my style... I mean those features sound cool, don't get me wrong. Seemless movies and menus? Cool. Downloadable content and commonplace burning? Cool. But I don't know about *needing* it connected to the Internet to unlock that; that's a little aggravating.

Well then unless its a hardware thing, all the players should be fine then, i've upgraded firmware on DVD players ive owned a few times, its defintiely not unheard of.

Why does the article rule out wifi as a means of being connected to the internet? It says you MUST use ethernet? I've never heard that before.

 

[Hardknock]

I'm certain these players don't have built-in wi-fi capabilities.

 

[Carl B]

Well then unless its a hardware thing, all the players should be fine then, i've upgraded firmware on DVD players ive owned a few times, its defintiely not unheard of.

Why does the article rule out wifi as a means of being connected to the internet? It says you MUST use ethernet? I've never heard that before.

Yeah I agree, one would think the firmware of other blu-ray players upgradable. Still, the way they're writing, it seems like there's another twist in there somewhere. I only assume the PS3 can surmount it because I know the chip in this case (as do we all) and know it'll all be done in software. I think it's a safe bet for PS3, but leaves a big question mark over some of these others. The Wi-Fi connection is viewed as non-secure. I do hope they reconsider that aspect, but hey whatever - we'll know more as things get finalized.

 

[scooby_dooby]

Are you sure it only supports mpg2? Would you mind providing me a link to this information? To carry the BD logo a BD-player must be compliant to the white papers AFAIK.

" Samsung today pledged to ship a Blu-ray Disc (BD) player ahead of rival manufacturers, getting its BD-P1000 machine to consumers in the "April timeframe", according to Jim Sandowski, head of Samsung USA's digital product marketing.
The player will pump out HD content at 720p or 1080i resolutions, Samsung said. Supported audio formats include 192KHz LPCM, Dolby Digital and Dolby Digital Plus, MPEG 2, DTS, and MP3."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/05/samsung_blu-ray_first/

 

[Carl B]

Here's a good EETimes article on the format war BTW, basically says no one's launching until AACS is finalized anyway, which eats into HD-DVDs first-mover advatage daily, and touches on some of the complexity implementing BD+/BD-J as well.

Article

Meant to post it much earlier today actually, but only remembered after Hardknock posted that TGDaily article.

@wco81: Thanks for the link and clarification below on BD-J and 'full-profile'

 

[wco81]

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=6858333&&#post6858333

BD-J won't be the problem the TG Daily article alleges.

And Wifi is an AACS thing so it would affect HD-DVD players.

Oh and I saw a spec. list of the Samsung player. It supports all mandatory Blu-Ray codecs.

EDIT: Here you go - http://www.samsung.com/PressCenter/...0106_0000223502

Main problem with this player is it's only 1080i output.

The Register...

 

[Titanio]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/05/samsung_blu-ray_first/

That refers only to audio codecs.

Ack, but this Ethernet connection talk is back again. That's really not my style... I mean those features sound cool, don't get me wrong. Seemless movies and menus? Cool. Downloadable content and commonplace burning? Cool. But I don't know about *needing* it connected to the Internet to unlock that; that's a little aggravating.

Well you obviously NEED an internet connection to access internet features/functionality on the disc. But as far as I can recall from recent Blu-ray press conferences, you won't need to it to be connected to the internet for DRM purposes, as previously suggested.

Also, I was arguing earlier with Shifty about the value of 1080p in PS3 versus the lack of it in other models, and it struck me latterly that a lot of HDTVs actually have funky resolutions higher than 720p - for them, 1080p scaled down is going to look better than 720p scaled up. That's if they have the right video connections (whether that be HDMI/DVI or component or whatever they end up allowing).

 

[Shifty Geezer]

This is cool:

authored in full high-definition 1080p resolution

I can't see where this is announced. Is this in reference to Buena Vista BRD movies? How can they be authoring 1080p without a 60 fps source? Is this just PR talk, but the actually res and frame rate is no better than 1080i?

 

[London Geezer]

Also, I was arguing earlier with Shifty about the value of 1080p in PS3 versus the lack of it in other models, and it struck me latterly that a lot of HDTVs actually have funky resolutions higher than 720p - for them, 1080p scaled down is going to look better than 720p scaled up. That's if they have the right video connections (whether that be HDMI/DVI or component or whatever they end up allowing).

The LCD Panny 500 has a native res of 1366x768 therefore it will look better when downscaling a 1080p signal than when upscaling a "normal" 720p signal. In theory anyway.
The Plasma Panny 500 has a native res of 1024x768 so there won't be much of a difference, if any.

 

[London Geezer]

I can't see where this is announced. Is this in reference to Buena Vista BRD movies? How can they be authoring 1080p without a 60 fps source? Is this just PR talk, but the actually res and frame rate is no better than 1080i?

Like we watch normal DVDs today at 480p? Or 720p...

 

[Titanio]

I can't see where this is announced. Is this in reference to Buena Vista BRD movies? How can they be authoring 1080p without a 60 fps source?

Why does it have to be 60fps to get 1080p?

edit - Haha, london-boy, I couldn't quite put my finger on what had brought me round to thinking about that, but there it is

 

[Phil]

^^ london-boy,

aren't they more likely to have black-borders rather than be upscaled?

 

[London Geezer]

^^ london-boy,

aren't they more likely to have black-borders rather than be upscaled?

On some panels you can choose (whether to have borders or whether to have the image scaled to fullscreen). Either way, 1080p downscaled to 1366x768 will always look better than 720p upscaled or 720p native, unless the panel is crap and messes up the image, which is possible i guess.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Because if it's only 30 fps, it'll look no different to 1080i (60 fps, 2 alternating fields), surely, so why limit yourself to 1080p when there's more TVs that support 1080i? If they just want to confirm 1920x1080 resolution they only need mention 1080 lines without an i or p appendix. TO me, the addition of the p is there to confirm this is higher framerate stuff than 1080i.

 

[Phil]

Oh I definately agree. Could you clear one more thing up for me: With this talk about upscaling and downscaling, is it likely that HD-DVD will only support 720p while Blu-Ray 1080p or are they both going to be 1080p? (I thought it was the latter, but now I'm not that sure anymore). Thanks! :smile:

 

[Titanio]

Because if it's only 30 fps, it'll look no different to 1080i (60 fps, 2 alternating fields), surely, so why limit yourself to 1080p when there's more TVs that support 1080i? If they just want to confirm 1920x1080 resolution they only need mention 1080 lines without an i or p appendix. TO me, the addition of the p is there to confirm this is higher framerate stuff than 1080i.

I would have thought if it was encoded, for example, at 1080p/24, you'll get 24 frames a second regardless of how you are viewing it (720p, 1080i, 1080p), but with the progressive formats, you get a full frame, not a "half-frame"? So it certainly would look different..

A picture encoded in 1080p can obviously be shown on a 1080i display, just not to the full benefit. If you want to support the broadest range of displays, in fact, 1080p is the way to go, as you can scale from the top down.

edit - and yeah, I'd also love to know what HD-DVD movies can or will be encoded at. I've seen no specific mention of resolution amongst their press releases, unlike the common references in Blu-ray releases.

 

[London Geezer]

Because if it's only 30 fps, it'll look no different to 1080i (60 fps, 2 alternating fields), surely, so why limit yourself to 1080p when there's more TVs that support 1080i? If they just want to confirm 1920x1080 resolution they only need mention 1080 lines without an i or p appendix. TO me, the addition of the p is there to confirm this is higher framerate stuff than 1080i.

Sorry but it doesn't work like that. a 1080p image will always look better than 1080i, more stable, cleaner, free of interlacing artifacts, whether the video is running at 30 or 60fps.

Much like PS2 games running at 480p always look better than 480i ones, whether they run at 60 or 30fps.

It's the same situation as the 480i/p with current gen consoles, i don't know why people are getting so worked up with 1080i/p now...

 

[London Geezer]

Oh I definately agree. Could you clear one more thing up for me: With this talk about upscaling and downscaling, is it likely that HD-DVD will only support 720p while Blu-Ray 1080p or are they both going to be 1080p? (I thought it was the latter, but now I'm not that sure anymore). Thanks! :smile:

Personally i don't see any reason why HDDVD wouldn't support 1080p, it's perfectly capable of that.