I wonder if HD Stuff will have the same success as DVD?!
In USA HD-TV is a reality, but here in Europe we have only one HD satellite channel.
What i suspect is that HD-DVD/Blu-ray will have the same fate as SACD/DVD-Audio. With SACD/DVD-Audio we have to buy everything new to enjoy the HD sound, if we buy a SACD player and plug it into a normal Hi-Fi there´s no significant emprovement. We must buy a SACD Ready Amplifier.
With HD-TV is the same. We have to buy a big screen tv HD ready, HD player, etc... if we play HD to a normal tv there's no difference from DVD, and if there is, is minimal. With DVD, we could just buy a cheap dvd palyer with €50 and we could see diference from vhs, even without 5.1 sound there's an improvement. We all can see that CD is still the king of music support. Will it be the same with HD-DVD/Blu-ray? Don't forget that the entertainment market takes more time to change than computer market. Peolple change computers really often, but only buy one tv set or two for a lifetime!!

I believe the format that will support the current DVD standard AND the higher definition standard will win. A HD DVD could carry the old DVD stream and the higher definition stream. Most people are not going to dump their old DVD players with the promise of a better picture. You need a big screen HD monitor and a deep living room to fully realize the benefit of HD video.

DVDs will rule for next 3 to 5 years.

HDTV is the law in the USA, and enormous amount of money is being spent to upgrade the system, and the old standard will eventually be phased out. It's not going to go away for a very long time. The system does allow broadcasters to opt for sending several standard-deff digital channels instead of one HD, but the system is still the same, which is to say all-digital. There's really no correlation between the broadcast standards and consumer video products.

I wonder what happens (in US & Asia) when MPEG4 is finally introduced into HDTV transmission& providing...

Both of the formats will support the current technologies (CD and DVD) and both sides have developed hybrid disks. HD-DVD integrates a single 4.7GB DVD layer and Blu-ray managed it to integrate a 8,5 GB dual layer disk.

The reason DVD's took off was mainly because of the already existing mass market base of SD TV's. Anyone could just hook up the DVD Player to their existing SDTV and watch a DVD movie which was clearly superior to anything otherwise available, at about the same price as a VHS movie.

Given that the number of people in N. America who own HDTVs is still relatively small, and that HDTVs are still too expensive for the average person to buy, it is likely that HD-DVDs (if brought out next year) will linger in limbo for years before it finally gains a foothold.

I doubt that HD-DVD will end up like S-VHS, or even worse D-VHS, both of which are dying quickly, as HDTV is the future of TV ... but we're talking about 5+ years from now before there is a sufficient base of HDTVs around to provide a signifcant market for this technology. Just look at VOOM ... quickly going into the tank. There just isn't the mass market needed for HDTV to take off at the current time.

Like grimes says HDTV is the law now in North America. I read somewhere that the government wants to free up the exsisting SD frequencies for other purposes like emergency response sectors. The feds wanted to pull the plug on analog when 85 percent of the country has HDTV. The original deadline was 2006 but only about 10 percent to 12 percent of households has gone HDTV as of a couple months ago. So now, the government is saying 2015.

But, these HDTV's are selling like mad! Yes - they are expensive but, they are taking over the showrooms here. Best Buy is a good example. The big screen, be it Rear projection or Plasma is front and center with the old SD CRT shoved in the corner. Actually, EDTV is pretty darn reasonable in price and 480 p ain't bad. A lot of sports fans are probably chucking their behemouth RP SD TVs for one of these as the price is about the same, <2000 bucks.

I was just thinking the other day, how when I first got into computers, Best Buy the whole center of the store was software. Now I think there are a couple (short) aisles turned sideways. The DVD as you say is dominant. The cool thing is, you can take these DVD's - put them in an upscaling DVD player and voila! You are watching a damn nice picture! So, there are people trying to help us take the plunge and not throw our money away. I love my new Panasonic 7UY plasma and you would have to pry it from my cold dead fingers. Can't stand to watch the 32" CRT upstairs any more. HDTV will take off big time in no more than 2 years! That is my prediction. GO VOOM!

HDTV may not be that much benefit here in the UK, as europe might go for the 720 variety instead of 1080, we already have tvs with a resolution of 620 (or there abouts), so the difference between that and 720 is small, less than 100 lines.

Have you ever compared a "normal" signal and a HDTV one on your screen?

I can only say that I can see the DIFFERENCE clearly.

There's a whole lot more to HDTV than the lines of resolution. One comparison would be like the difference between a composite input and a component input. Color, contrast and black/white levels are all impacted. The absence of analog artifacts in the picture compared to digital, and the list goes on. It's one of those "you have to see it" kind of things. It's also good to note that most people/monitors can't see the difference between 720p and 1080i. But even if you're watching traditional broadcast quality video, a HDTV broadcast will look better than analog.

i watched some hdtv videos from the microsoft site on my pc, maybe i should watch them on my xbox and see then.

KBS (K for Korea) started HDTV news broadcasting in this month. Even on conventional analog or non-HD digital TV, they should look better.

damn it, i forgot, i can't play HDTV videos on a tv that isn't an HDTV.....ah now i understand the meaning of life...

Blue Ray all the way

Hm. They should be compatible. I can watch HDTV videos from KBS or SBS or MBC on a conventional analog TV. Since quality is best on a computer LCD monitor, I often download HDTV-ripped AVI/WMV files that mostly have 720*480 resolution.

Correct me if I'm wrong - but I very much doubt people will start buying in the nearest future these Blueray or HDVD disks to put their home videos on it. Just doesn't make sense to go for $5 or $10 (or even more) blank media and trash all your current DVD hardware in order to support those greedy hollywood moviemakers to beat the piracy. I guess, that is the prime reason why they're pushing it now when the market is not ready for it yet. I'm not supporting these freaking standards until HDTV camcorders, blank media and HDTV TV's are going to be in the same price range as the current hardware and media. It should take 'em few years when they get there - so I have time to wait. Just my 2 cents.

People have bought Blu-ray recorders and media since a few years ago. Millions of peole are daily enjoying HDTV including myself. (I have access to literally terabytes of HD contents, thousands of hours video of news, drama, movies, documentaries, etc.)

It took much less time for DVD to have more than 10 million home-recording users than for CD. It will take even less time for Blu-ray and HD-DVD to pass 10 million. Prices will also fall in an even more aggressive pattern. We are already witnessing at this stage both Blu-ray and HD-DVD talking about 15-50GB media getting as cheap as the current 0.7GB and 4.7GB media. So it's just all a matter of when you become ready to adopt the newer technology standards to meet your needs. For me, conventional DVDs are too outdated when US$100 HDDs have more than 200GB space. It's so much easier for almost anyone to order and connect a few 250GB-500GB SATA II HDDs than to have a DVD recorder/burner and burn hundreds or thousands of DVD recordable media. Thus, the biggest effective competitions for both Blu-ray and HD-DVD come from the HDD and flash memory industry. For people whose backup needs go on a much smaller scale, simple 52x CD writers and 52x CD-R media should do. They cost under US$20 per drive and under US$0.1 per media in volume and just a little more in retail. Some of the people her have owned DVD writers for a few years to several years when DVD writers costed more than what HD-DVD and Blu-ray writers will cost by the end of 2005 or early 2006. They also paid like US$10 for a simple 4.7GB "2x" or "2.4x" media.

that may be true in Korea and Japan (and other parts of Asia) but it's definitely not true in the US. in addition, the technological know-how to "connect a few 250GB-500GB SATA II HDDs" is not posessed by the majority of people...nor will it ever be i suppose.

the ubiquity of HDTV/Blu-Ray/HD-DVD will not appear in the US until 2006 at the very earliest and probably not until 2007. i'd put money on it...

You'd put your money on which?

I said it's easier to put a few SATA II HDDs than to burn hundreds to thousands of DVDs. Especially for external HDDs, it could be as easy for the majority of people to connect a few SATA HDDs just as SD and CF cards.

And this is already 2005, just 6 months from 2006. And US is the largest HDTV market in the world even now. All South Korean HDTV-related manufacturers sell a lot more in the US market than South Korean home market (or China or Japan for that matter.) On June 20, US FCC passed a law that says all 25- to 36-inch digital TVs have to have built-in digital TV tuners by March 2006. Previous law was limited to digital TVs with over 36-inch screen size. Both LG and Samsung agree that it will accelerate market expansion and cost reduction but while Samsung welcomes the new policy, LG is more like "wait and see"-ing because profitability is getting to nearly zero already. From what's happening in June in China, large flat-panel HDTVs are going to cost like US$500 or less by 2006-2007 and by that time, digital TVs will cost just as much as analog TVs of the same size.

i'd put my money on the fact that if you walked down any street in the US right now and polled homes, 7/10 would not have HDTV nor even know what blu-ray/hd-dvd is...

your HDD example IS easier for people who know anything about computers...but that is far from the majority...

interesting PowerPoint presentation on HDTV and its market penetration:
http://www.hdtvforum.org/HDTV-Forum/...uroconsult.ppt


http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/digitaltv.html
i'm simply saying that we, as CD Freaks, are typically early adopters and we think of technology and its timeline fairly liberally...when in fact we represent 25% of the market (if that) and the ubiquity of HDTV/Blu-Ray/HD-DVD (read: 85% market penetration) won't happen for at least another year if not more...

But I wasn't talking about 70% of the US households or population. Even 5% of the total US households is significant enough to justify billions of dollars of investment. It was an answer to this:

Actually, even 1% of the US households is a large market for HDTV development, surely not for GM or IBM, but it was enough for LG, Samsung, and many other small South Korean companies. It's surely better to have 100% market share than 1% but if CDFreaks doesn't represent the United States, it doesn't represent the world, either. By saying "... US is the largest HDTV market in the world even now...", I actually meant just millions of units, not 100 million or 100 billion. I was mainly saying about people who dare to burn hundreds of CD and DVD blank disks just for personal entertainment. Over 99% of the world's population hardly care about such things. None of my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles uses a PC, and never used a PC, but I still say 100Mbps home internet has been in South Korea for years for practically everyone.

85% HDTV market penetration doesn't exist in any Asian country by the way. In South Korea, currently most of the big and small cities have HDTV but digital TVs here are yet expensive compared to China and US (like 2x more) and there are too few HD channels. In general, US is still leading the world regarding HDTV because that's where more movies and TV programs are produced and more people consume and entertain. And it's really the decisions from the executives of Dell and HP that finally made Sony and Matsushita to start Blu-ray seriously and Dell and HP only act on the account of their domestic US customers.

AVKorea.co.kr is one of South Korea's HD-related websites and most people who post there are relatively rich people who gladly spend thousands to tens of thousands on audio and video that most South Korean workers can only envy.

The broadcast DTV in the US is severely hampered by being on UHF bands. Weak signals, weather fade and loss of signal are commonplace, especially for HDTV channels. The future of HDTV depends on the cable and satellite providers, who are seriously dragging feet on implimentation because 1: they don't have to do anything, and 2: the needed bandwidth is too costly and would force them to give up hundreds of channels of profitable crap like shopping channels and specialty channels. The US govt's attempts to force broadcasters to switch to DTV will fail as it is currently planned. Something like another 5-10 years will be needed.

The vast rural landscape here is served only by a huge system of thousands of small analog VHF and UHF repeaters that cannot broadcast DTV, much less HDTV. Add to that the fact that many people only buy a TV when one breaks, and lifespans of 10-15 years are common for TV's.

So all things considered, the real problem here is the failure of cable and satellite providers to invest in HDTV. It will eventually happen with innovations like MPEG-4, but the process will be slow, much slower than expected. HDTV will remain a high-end specialty market for several more years.

Low cost HDTV sets will help, but until the broadcast problems are resolved, there's won't be any switch to an all-digital system. It's also important to diferentiate between DTV and HDTV. Even now, some stations are broadcasting "EDTV" in 16:9, not HDTV. The difference is obvious, but it takes less bandwidth so it may well be the chosen format in broadcasting.

That sounds like why FTTH internet isn't used widely in the US even though it costs practically nothing (well, compared to buying fighter planes and oil...) But even then, there's no place like the US yet. Most digital TVs sold in South Korea are still SD. I have to pay over US$20 per month just for one HD channel. People with the largest HD collections here usually get theirs downloaded via VDSL and FTTH, not satellite or cable or air. They also "distribute" among themselves using D-VHS and HDDs. Imagine a lan party where people exchange HDDs full of HDTV contents.

kenshin, i think we're in agreement...

this was the point of my post:

That's straight to the point and I hope til the WM2006 here in germany this will beome finally "the standard" for HDTV in europe >>> HDTV as mpeg4 transmission.