Blu-Ray Wins

[bdgbill]

As strange as it may seem, I may be buying an HD-DVD player.

A friend of mine reminded me last night that most HD-DVD players are also excellent upconverting players for standard DVD's.

Circuit city has a deal on the Toshiba HD-A3 with 7 free HD-DVD movies for $99.00.

We may see even better deals than this as the stock gets cleared out.

[Deusxmachina]

That's the same deal they were back in December at multiple places. The free DVDs are ok but nothing great. Must... choose... Hulk... as one of the... choices... though... or else... Hulk... get... angry.

Besides playing whatever HD-DVD one may already have or will buy, the A2 will also most likely be the best non-Blu-Ray DVD player a person will ever buy. So in that sense, yeah, $99 doesn't sound so bad if one needs a DVD player right now, especially since Blu-Ray prices are still crazy-high.

The upconversion is nice, but that can also be done and I'd bet better with FFdshow through GBPVR. So, just depends if someone needs a DVD player or not.

[bdgbill]

I despise my current DVD player. It's a Phillips "home theater in a box" setup. Has very nice sound and decent picture quality but it fails on those little things you can never notice at the store.

It takes 10 seconds for the DVD tray to open. I have no idea why it would be so slow. How many clock cycles does it take to say "eject button pressed, eject disc"? Also when the eject button is pressed the sound input cycles over to "DVD". This screws up my Harmony remote and shuts the sound off for the tv if someone is watching it.

It baffles me how things like this get into finished products. Nobody in engineering, prototyping, marketing, test etc at Phillips noticed these issues before finalizing design??

[bogyver]

Well from the standpoint of the engineers at phillips why would you eject the dvd drive on the system if you wernt going to watch a movie?

If you think 10 seconds is a long time to wait for the disk drive to open, my hddvd player takes about 60 secs to open and another 30 sec to start.
Dont let me talk you out of getting a hddvd player, the 3rd gen (what they have at circuit city) is better but not great.

It kinda sucks that it takes that long, but I have just learned to press the eject button and go do something else while I wait. Go make some popcorn or get a beverage

[nbarsley]

ROTFL thats exactly the reason i avoid everything from apple. no ipod, no itunes, no iphone. it's not really hate.

Hey I love my IPOD! I've had it for 4 years and it still works great! Itunes on the other hand.....

[bdgbill]

Well from the standpoint of the engineers at phillips why would you eject the dvd drive on the system if you wernt going to watch a movie?

Well for one, I may be removing the movie we watched last night, so I can return it. Or, I may be putting the DVD in place to save me a trip off of the couch later (requiring a trip off the couch to insert a DVD may mean no movie tonight).

It just does not make any sense to me that it would take that long to eject a disc. You can almost hear the thing chewing away at hundreds of lines of code trying to execute the very complex "eject tray" command. Whats wrong with a spring loaded mechanical release?

I expect this type of thing from engineers but someone should have gotten all "Steve Jobs" on their asses before the product was released.

[K.S.]

Hey I love my IPOD! I've had it for 4 years and it still works great! Itunes on the other hand.....

that's fine, enjoy
but i never had one, in fact i've never needed an portable mp3 player. it's just funny how they can get away with their general methods (i.e. iTunes & iPhone). but m$ also does
what's even funnier: they make their product smooth to use, they put some brains in the UI, maybe at last they do deserve the asked price, at least if compared to others (i.e. waiting 60 sec to eject a disc )

The top of the line HP has GPS, Bluetooth, touchscreen, etc....

yes, they all have the same features in the specs. but they are not the same to use... i have a degree in engineering & i'm often ashamed of all the engineers out there, in particular when i come upon a product which has some functions & it's impossible to use them in an easy way (sadly, that happens on a daily basis). i.e. my samsung mobile: i can set 4 different buttons for direct functions. well, at least a short list of the functions available (i.e. the address book is not an option)... the same phone, bluetooth: i've set one of the 4 custom functions to bluetooth. fine. that searches for bluetooth devices, if bluetooth is deactivated i get the question "do you want to activate bluetooth", thats fine. if i want to deactivate it again or change visibility (or any other settings regarding bluetooth), i have to navigate the whole menue, because it's not accessible through the direct button. WTF? why not make the menue really easy usable? won't have cost them that much money to arrange the menue in another way from the beginning?

[fender]

Hate is a strong word.

I don't "hate" Sony - but I do dislike many of their company practices. They (and they are obviously not unique in this approach) go out of their way to make things as proprietary as possible.

Of course I've also had the unfortunate displeasure of having to service Sony desktop and laptops in the past. Bleh Glad I don't have to work a service bench for a living anymore

[Fatman_do]

Proprietary connectors and motherboards is why I don't buy Dell/HP/Compaq/Sony PC's.

I just build them myself. Makes incremental upgrades easier.

[K.S.]

I know what you mean, but there probably is a 'shortcut' it's just not obvious.

after some RTFM action... sadly: no, or as samsung must think:
<SARCASM ON>
why would anybody want to enable/disable bluetooth easily? we have built that wonderfull HW into the phone, everybody should use it!
</SARCASM ON>