Toshiba HD-EP30 HD DVD Player. £119.99

gromituk

MORPH3US wrote: »

Are you on the same planet as the rest of us? You asked two questions in post 108...

Erm, post 108 is the one you're quoting! Do you mean post 106? I dunno - perhaps it's post 108 on your planet?

Oh yes, I asked questions, and nowhere did I say I didn't ask questions - I said that the answers given were not to the questions I asked. And one of those questions was rhetorical anyway. Do you know what a rhetorical question is? No, don't answer that...

reaper200

Don't play the fool. You know what i mean. In the grand scheme of things 400 is nothing especially when you consider most of them aren't worth buying.

EDIT: Just read that woolworths (apparently the UK's biggest HD seller) will stop stocking HD DVD's come March.

http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/news/news.phtml/12494/13518/Woolworths-backs-blu-ray-drops-hddvd.phtml

jayok

reaper200 wrote: »

Don't play the fool. You know what i mean. In the grand scheme of things 400 is nothing especially when you consider most of them aren't worth buying.

Now now, I cannot be held responsible for you stating a few titles when you actually mean 400 titles. You may not like those 400 but they do exist. I fail to see how this machine will stop playing HD-DVD's, DVD's and upscale them in 2 months time!

L.S.D.

If HD DVD was dead & Blu-ray was the winner, you wouldn't get all these Blue-ray gamers coming onto a bargain HD DVD post trying to convince us they've won.

reaper200

jayok wrote: »

Now now, I cannot be held responsible for you stating a few titles when you actually mean 400 titles. You may not like those 400 but they do exist. I fail to see how this machine will stop playing HD-DVD's, DVD's and upscale them in 2 months time!

Ok, maybe i should have been a little more specific. I apologise. What i basically meant was that if Paramount and Universal switch then there will be no further releases (of any note) on HD DVD as that WILL be the final nail in the coffin as Blu Ray will control like 99.98% of the film market. They already control 75%.

The 400 titles out are only a drop in the ocean, with quite a few of them being films that aren't very popular (this is the case with Blu ray as well) and most of them you can get on Blu ray and also IF the switch occurs then all the rest will appear on Blu Ray too.

And about upscaling i did not say it would stop!!! All i said was upscaling is not HD, however you try and put it. Frankly you can get much cheaper upscalers than the one listed.

All in all i stick with MY analysis. If you can afford to spend the money then go ahead as it is a good deal. But if you can't afford to dish out the money for this as well as possibly another one during this year AND your buying it so you can experience HD then your better off waiting for a few months until things become a bit clearer so that you can be sure your getting a HD player that will continue to be supported.

p.s. I am not a Blu Ray fan. All i know, from what i have read is that Blu Ray is winning and HD DVD in response are slashing their prices to get their units sold. What i don't want happening is people buying this thinking their buying in to HD and (maybe) finding in a few months that they brought a dieing format and that if they want to continue experiencing future HD releases they have to get a Blu Ray player as well! I think your average person would feel really p*ed off by that. This is the same thing staff at stores all over the country have been told to warn their customers about but obviously some sales representatives tend to be of the less helpful kind.

richto

gromituk wrote: »

Could I suggest that you don't clutter up this bargain thread with answers to basic questions which I didn't ask?

But you did ask.

gromituk wrote: »

In which case, the moneysaving thing to do if you want these improvements is to buy a much cheaper standard DVD player which has a progressive output. I sense that claiming there aren't many around (there are more than there are HD-DVD players I'm sure) and saying that people don't know how to use progressive scan DVD players are rather desperate attempts to justify this one instead.

But this thread is about buying an HD DVD player. Upscaling is just an added benefit. You can get cheaper upscaling or progressive scan DVD players if that's what you wanted. But they wouldnt play HD DVDs.

gromituk wrote: »

Incidentally, you will only get the improvement on progressive source material, such as films. It won't help with interlaced stuff like TV series.

Again you are incorrect. I refer you to my previous answer. The DVD player has access to MPEG metadata for each frame of video (interlaced/progressive etc) which allow a better deinterlacer and chroma upsampler (these steps are part of the scaling process) than the TV which no longer receives this information.

Also when the television deinterlaces an analog video signal, it first has to digitize the signal (A/D), send it through a deinterlacing chip, and convert it back to analog to feed to the screen. That process inevitably loses some resolution. With a progressive or upscaling DVD player running at the screens native resolution you dont get that loss.

richto

reaper200 wrote: »

They already control 75%.

That is potentially misleading. As of June they might control 75% of new output. Until then its much more even.

However the back catalog of Universal is much larger than any of its competitors, so even with just Universal left if that happened, HD DVD is not dead.

reaper200 wrote: »

The 400 titles out are only a drop in the ocean, with quite a few of them being films that aren't very popular (this is the case with Blu ray as well) and most of them you can get on Blu ray and also IF the switch occurs then all the rest will appear on Blu Ray too.

Its pretty even with Blutamax, except many of the best and popular TV series are only available on HD DVD e.g. Heroes, Star Trek, etc. The Blu Ray secret weapon could be Disney - who seem to have released hardly anything.

reaper200 wrote: »

But if you can't afford to dish out the money for this as well as possibly another one during this year AND your buying it so you can experience HD then your better off waiting for a few months until things become a bit clearer so that you can be sure your getting a HD player that will continue to be supported.

Blutamax players out now are already obsolete as they dont include all the features of the latest 'profile'. At least with HD DVD it is not for definate that the kit is obsolete. And it is much cheaper of course.

reaper200 wrote: »

they have to get a Blu Ray player as well! I think your average person would feel really p*ed off by that. This is the same thing staff at stores all over the country have been told to warn their customers about but obviously some sales representatives tend to be of the less helpful kind.

Or have to get another Blutamax player because the one they purchased is already obsolete. I hope that they warn customers that the BLu Ray kit that they sell is already outdated.


nb - I note that HD DVD has purchased advertising slots during the SuperBowl. I know no one watches it on most of the planet, but apparently it is important to Americans.

gromituk

richto wrote: »

But this thread is about buying an HD DVD player. Upscaling is just an added benefit. You can get cheaper upscaling or progressive scan DVD players if that's what you wanted. But they wouldnt play HD DVDs.

So we agree all along, and I don't know why you laid into me in the first place. My point is that you shouldn't buy this player just because it upscales, because the benefits of "upscaling" are dubious. If you read this thread carefully you will notice that, right from the beginning, quite a few people are placing quite a bit of emphasis on the magic word "upscaling", treating it as simplistically as megapixels in digital cameras. But because your TV almost certainly overscans, upscaling may have no beneficial effect. (I would go further than that article and say that there's no reason why it couldn't more than negate the advantages and actually make the picture worse.) And even if the display didn't overscan, just because there are theoretical advantages to upscaling in a DVD player doesn't mean that these theoretical advantages will be translated into a practical improvement at all.

It's fine to talk about the theory, but unfortunately the real world just isn't like that.

Simon_Wallace

For an unbiased opinion on who'll win and how long it will take, this may interest you:

http://www.strategyanalytics.com/inbrief/insights/200801mxn1.pdf

Personally I wan to wait until there's a HD broadcast system worth a sook that isn't extortionate (as Sky HD is) before I upgrade my TV. At that point I'll look at getting a disc player or see if the next gen PS3 is a little better value.

Cheers
Simon

richto

gromituk wrote: »

My point is that you shouldn't buy this player just because it upscales, because the benefits of "upscaling" are dubious.

Go read any respected AV Forum. They are not 'dubious' at all.

gromituk wrote: »

But because your TV almost certainly overscans, upscaling may have no beneficial effect.

For the vast majority of users it would have. Especially if your DVD player outputs at the native resolution of your screen.

gromituk wrote: »

(I would go further than that article and say that there's no reason why it couldn't more than negate the advantages and actually make the picture worse.)

Highly unlikely. TVs that have better deinterlace units than current HD DVD players are very rare indeed. And for the reasons already discussed have an inherent resolution loss.

gromituk wrote: »

Just because there are theoretical advantages to upscaling in a DVD player doesn't mean that these theoretical advantages will be translated into a practical improvement at all.

Yes it does. Not as good as HD DVD of course but the improvement is easily noticeable.

gromituk wrote: »

It's fine to talk about the theory, but unfortunately the real world just isn't like that.

It is in this case.