Who do you think will be the first users of HD-DVD or Blu-Ray media in the market?

Will it be the Television companies or film studios?

I'm sure they won't just launch it on the public and hope for the best!

Chances are that the movie studios will initially make the most out of the next generation DVD formats, much like how DVD was mainly used for movies when the DVD first launched.

Standalone Blu-ray and HD DVD recorders on the other hand will likely be slow to take off, at least in the beginning, much like how DVD recorders are only just starting to take off now. However once HDTV takes off, I can easily see a big push for recorders that are capable of handling HD content, especially since DVD recorders and most PVR's will not be able to cope with HD content, at least not without first converting the picture back to standard definition.

PC Blu-ray and HD DVD writer sales will also likely be slow to start of with as did the first DVD writers, however I can easily see prices drop within a few years as well as speed increases, like with how DVD writers started off at well over €1,000 and now can be got for around €50.

What are "PVRs"?

LG's RT-4800 is PVR/HD Set-top/DVD Recorder.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PVR

The personal video recorder (PVR), also called digital video recorder (DVR) or digital personal video recorder, is a consumer electronics device that records television shows to a hard disk in digital format. Since first introduced by TiVo at the Consumer Electronics Show in 1999, PVRs have steadily developed complementary abilities, such as recording onto DVDs.

D-VHS has been on the market longer than HD-DVD and Blu-ray. So the early adopters of HD video primarily have used JVC D-VHS. Some of the luckier users have used Blu-ray.

So it's a wrong question because there have already been at least thousands of Blu-ray recorder users for years. It's easy to find Blu-ray media in East Asia. Of course, I don't buy one because HDD is far more reasonable.

If you meant pre-recorded media, it will be the movie industry because both HD-DVD and Blu-ray were born for 2-hour movies in HD 1920*1080 movies. The first Compact Disc specification was made for music album to replace SP/LP. DVD was for Digital Video (which later was renamed to Digital Versatile though) and since the movie industry has grown a lot more powerful and richer, it seems they have power to influence other consumer electronics and computer industries. It would have been much earlier if Intel and Dell were the leaders instead but it's always the application that matters most for driving technological cycles.

However, since HDTV appeared before some of us average consumers got first DVD recorders, recordable blue/violet laser technologies are often associated with HDTV which wasn't the same with previous analog TVs of NTSC/PAL/SECAM. Some people view Blu-ray and HD-DVD merely THE MEDIA to capture and backup HDTV in 1920*1080 MPEG-2 because it requires about 6-7 times more capacity than DVD-Video. And HDTV has already been available to end users for years.

Personal Video Recorder

[hint] Look 2 posts above yours. [/hint]

from the looks of things, hd-dvd and Blu Ray are going to have too may restrictions, including having Internet connection in order to play HD movies. They're over doing it with all kinds of protection and DMR. I've also read somewhere that HD movies will not be allowed to be played in PC's and laptops. I hope both formats die a miserable death like dvd-audio and sacd!!!!

LONG LIVE DVD

Is that true?

In this case i think i'll wait the HVD!

Yep, DRM and all that crap makes the future look horrible.

Check out this story Seán published a day or so ago. It's quite the hot topic at the moment on the main page. The article goes into detail about swiftys concerns and the phone home mentality that is coupled into the AACS. This is the content protection being designed for the next gen formats (at least HD-DVD). But, please bear in mind that these new discs will contain what amounts to a digital master of the original film and this has studios nervous about piracy. We can't expect the next gen formats to take off without this content so the process has begun on how to go about protecting the content providers.

basically they want us to pay full price for leased movies....no more ownership!!!

read this:

http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/12153

Hi Kenshin
When you indicate the LG rt-4800 recorder as HD recorder, do you mean it is able to record real HD quality or it just have a HDTV tuner to record HD programs, please?

In the UK I wonder as to how well these Hi-Def formats will do

They could presumably be released, intially, as normal Rez 3-in-1 discs.

Of course, trouble with that, is I'd be owrried that losing that one CD would mean you really have lost your 6 disc TV series!! Or imagine you manage to scratch it up....

Equipment here is moving so slowly in the direction of Hd anyway. only recently did the horrendous NTSC LCDpanels give way to proper PAL-centric or true "HD-Ready" LCD sets. Plus I'd like to see if they ever do a CRT/Plasma form for 'proper' visual accuracy.

Anyway, with these DRM laden players (apparently loading a piracted movie into your drive could render it useless) and with Windows Vista incorporating explicit support for DRM** I really will stick to DVD with resolution enough for our PAL sets.

Finally, isn't the MPEG4-10 they're using in HD formats unable to run smoothly on anything but the highest spec PC?!?! Hurrah!

**including on audio outputs and internal data buses....whatever the last one could affect I can only guess at.

Ownership of what?

WiseJoeyD, You can bet on it: HD will be quite demanding on system requirements. For instance mpeg4/Hd.264 (maybe this name is not 100% correct) will require systems as 2 processors Mac G5 or AMD 2 Opteron processors with lots of memory and graphic power. Some people talk about dedicated boards with hardware decoders/enconders. Then you have HDDs (larger capacities and higher speeds). And, 64 bits O/Ss.
DRM is in the cards for new hardware/software (at least with Mac and MS O/S) and the new protections base on discs "finger prints".

If the video is in 1920*1080 MPEG-4, the CPU requirement will ask something more powerful than most Pentium 4 processors used today. But it's safe to say you don't have to pay for G5 or Opteron at all. Dedicated HD PCI or USB boards are not expensive either. Up to US$100 or US$200 now. I'm not sure if this Pentium M 735 (1.7GHz and 400MHz FSB) with ATI 3xx can display even 1920*1080 MPEG-2 video.