Recent Comments:
LG's BD300 Netflix / Blu-ray deck ships on October 10 for $349 {Engadget HD}
Oct 3rd 2008 4:24PM Currently Netflix does not offer HD but plans to soon in the future. LG has said that this will support that also. So... jump in.
Will Sony's PlayStation 4 have Blu-ray? Someone thinks not. {Engadget HD}
Sep 16th 2008 5:16PM No way are downloads going to overtake DVDs any time soon. No way is Blu-ray going to die off any time soon.
Consider the music industry and mp3s and the iPod. This amazing little device has been on the market for six years? Napster, iTunes, piracy, and CD burners have all contributed to the downfall in sales of the venerable CD. But in 2007 the music industry sold over 300 million CDs. In fact download music is not expected to overtake CD sales until 2011 at which point CDs will still account for over 40% of music sales. This is with a product where the file sizes are minuscule in comparison to video. An entire album can be downloaded for less than 50 MB.
Now consider DVD quality video and audio. Now we are talking about nearly 100 times the file size. But lets assume really compressed video and sound and we are at 2 GB file sizes for a single movie. The time to download a movie that size is unacceptable to a large majority of the population.
If you step on up to full size games then you are talking file sizes in excess of 10 GB now. In another five or six years the average size might be 40 GB per game. No way in hell is bandwidth going to support that where I live within the next decade.
One last thing. The idea that digital downloads will replace physical media is pretty silly. It will exist side-by-side with physical media. But until someone figures out how to allow me to swap, loan, and buy used downloads then I will keep my optical discs.
Ask Engadget HD: What's the best graphics card for my HTPC? {Engadget HD}
Sep 10th 2008 5:47PM This is a great card but the specifications say:
"Integrated HD audio controller with up to 2 channel 48 KHz stereo or multi-channel (7.1) AC3 enabling a plug-and-play cable-less audio solution. Maximum supported audio stream bandwidth is 6.144 Mbps."
So, I am not sure which of Blu-ray audio codecs it will support.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102792&Tpk=hd%204670
The image that Newegg has for this product does not show HDMI outputs but the specifications on ATI's website claim HDMI and HDCP support. Also, the specification list upscaling of 1080P content to: "upscale video display to 2560x1600 on dual-link monitors".
Looks like a very intriguing card.
Funai's DivX-compatible B1-M110 Blu-ray player gets outed {Engadget HD}
Sep 9th 2008 1:48AM mntwister,
Well some of us were certain it would happen:
http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/21/benq-hacks-33-from-its-br1000-blu-ray-optical-drive-in-taiwan/
Best Buy's Insignia NS-BRDVD Blu-ray deck falls to $229 {Engadget HD}
Sep 8th 2008 11:30AM Well, I would not purchase this product/brand myself but people looking for the cheapest product often will. This does show that predictions about $200 blu-ray players for xmas is spot-on. Further I suspect $179 now may be a real possibility over the holidays with possibly lower prices on Black Friday.
Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending August 3rd, 2008 {Engadget HD}
Aug 13th 2008 3:19PM squig,
"1. Standardization. All players need to play all Blu-ray discs and access all features of those discs. This means Profile 2.0 support, support for writable media, etc."
I have a first generation Toshiba DVD player. Know what, it does not read any burned discs! This idea that all players need to support every feature is hogwash. I have yet to use any of the whiz-bang features on either blu-ray or hd dvd that made the features worth having. As long as the picture and sound are top notch then you can keep the rest.
"2. Reliability. All players need to play all Blu-ray discs. This, in practice, means the deprecation of BD+."
Please provide information on this rash of players that do not play blu-ray discs. Especially any that have not been fixed in firmware.
"3. Upgrades to integrate cleanly into a future that's clearly going to be online. This means, initially, standardized download-and-burn discs, with standardized media stores following shortly. It also means mandatory managed copy, no "We'll leave it off some earlier disks", if a disk doesn't have it right now it should be officially withdrawn."
The whole download-and-burn issue is a question for the studios. This has been implemented on DVDs for a couple of years now and there is almost zero interest in it. The studios don't trust it and the average Joe does not want to bother with it. The price for a d&b DVD is often more than the packaged media.
Managed copy is also a question for the studios. It is their IP and their choice to allow you to copy it or not. It is still not 'legal' in the US to copy DVDs. As long as the studios can get congress to back them up on this idea then you should not expect the right to make back-ups.
So, out of the three points you made, only the first one is with the format. The second one is with the CE companies and the third one is with the Studios.
Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending August 3rd, 2008 {Engadget HD}
Aug 13th 2008 11:16AM ateneum,
We go through this almost every week but here it is one more time.
The pie chart showing 10% for blu-ray is the percentage of sales for only the top 20 titles. You take the number of discs sold in the top 20 for DVD and compare against the top 20 for blu-ray and you get the 10%/90% percentage. This is UNIT volume and not revenue. This is considered important as the vast majority of sales for movies come from the top 20.
The dollar figures are revenue numbers and can be compared directly to each other.
VIA ditches motherboard business, focuses on processors {Engadget}
Aug 11th 2008 12:26PM So, Nvidia and now Via both have dropped out of the chipset market. That must really be a tough market right now. Who is left AMD, Intel, and SiS? I have not liked anything I have gotten from SiS in a very long time.
Consumers delaying Blu-ray purchases, can't find value proposition {Engadget HD}
Aug 1st 2008 1:30PM So much for analysts...
It is pretty clear that Blu-ray's adoption is tied directly to HDTV adoption. As HDTV sales increase so will Blu-ray's. They will not be tied 1-to-1 but rather, Blu-ray will always be some percentage of the number of HDTVs. This is pretty simple to understand.
The second thing that is easy to realize is that Blu-ray will be adopted by more people as the price comes down. The price is dropping, pretty quickly in fact, to the point where it is a no-brainer add-on to any HDTV purchase. I imagine the following spiel happening thousands of times per day in electronics stores everywhere.
"You are getting a great new high definition television. Don't you think you should get a new high definition disc player too? I mean you do want to take full advantage of you new TV and the best way to do that is with a Blu-ray player. We have them on sale today for as low as $xxx"
As the percentage of the price of the player drops in comparison to the price of the TV more and more people will pick them up. This is logical and expected for Blu-ray but by no means guaranteed to happen.
Sony introduces another hot China-only PMP, the PMX-M80 {Engadget}
Jul 31st 2008 11:26AM Well, I would argue that it is overpriced for the average American too; however, China now has about 300 Million people that are considered middle class or better. Then when you compare that to America's total population of about 301 Million you see why China often gets these cool little devices first.
