BLU-RAY DVD PLAYER

Next Generation Wars

New electronic technologies seem to always produce the next generation wars. Consumers end up being the losers should the pick the underdog. Like the format wars of the 70s with Sony Betamax and the VHS formats being in the business back in those years. You would think Betamax would have been the clear winner. It was the better format because of many reasons like less ware and tear on the cassettes, the slow and fast play modes gave a clear picture. It was ten times better than the VHS it was also a standard for the commercial markets.

It worked out to be a numbers game ten times more companies got the VHS format and flooded the market with cheap VHS recorders and tapes. The VHS recorders had tons of technical problems but there were many more in the hands of consumers. The movie makes saw this and put the lion's share of movies on VHS. This kind of made the Betamax die a slow death.

Today the new technology wars are starting up with the ne Blue Ray and HD DVD formats seems like old times. The times have changed and the players are bigger this time it will be very interesting to see what the outcome will be in the new conflict of Blue Ray and HD DVD.

High Definition TV Sales on the Rise

February 17, 2009 being the deadline for the national cutover to the new digital Hi-Def TV format is helping to fuel the fire. Popularity of Hi-Def is going up all the time with the new plasma and improved LCD formats with bigger screen sales are taking off. The demand for TVs with the new formats 720p and 1080p are on the rise. But like the old days with Betamax being the better format today's HD DVD with its more feature rich format is falling behind because of numbers game. Blue Ray is flooding the market with DVDs and players at lower prices. And they have improved the format with some recent updates that have given them a leg up.

It is still hard to say what will happen with some companies making the players in duel formats. The HD DVD is easier and cheaper to reproduce than the Blue Ray. Blue Ray has had to play catch up to get the prices down and this time around Sony is looking like it winning the war. Aside from flooding the market with Blue Ray DVDs Sony has gotten another leg up with the success of its Play-Station 3 that can play the Blue Ray DVDs. The competitor is the X-Box 360 the only has an HD DVD player. The HD DVDs are not required to play the X-Box 360 but the player costs a lot more money. Since the Play-Station 3 has the Blue Ray build in sales are soring past HD DVD. The Blue Ray DVDs hold 50 gig of information compared to the HD DVDs 30 gig. With HD DVD only getting about 30% of the new movie titles it could be they will fade away over time. Blue Ray keeps getting the Major Movies to put out and the Blue Ray DVDs are being sold everywhere. There is no doubt that the clear winner here is Blue Ray but with duel players and the profits involved it may take many years or we could end up always having both formats to select from.

Blue Ray Player

As the deadline for Hi-Def transmission over the air approaches February 17, 2009 the sales of Hi-Def TVs are going through the roof. It is also fueling the drive of better technologies. The industries goal is to provide quality that is unparalleled home entertainment at the cinemas and in our homes.

Some May Think DVD is High Definition?

Standard DVD is not Hi-Def although much better than the old poor resolution of the VCR and VHS tapes it is still far from Hi-Def. What makes it hard to understand today is the new technology of Hi-Def is 50% better than the resolution of the older DVD standard definition. The output of the new Hi-Def Blue Ray players will rival that of what you see in the cinemas right in your own homes.

Up Scaling DVDs What Does it Mean?

It is a trick done with standard DVDs to match the signal required for your HDTV. A higher bandwidth signal is provided in an HDMI connection converting the signal to 1080p. This improves the picture quality and sharpens the image consistency and detail.

True Hi-Def Sound and Video

Blue Ray DVD player will provide a true Hi-Def picture and sound no up-scaling required. It is by far better than the up-scaling trick done to get the old DVD to play in the 1080p format.

Play Station 3 by Sony

One of the more popular game players by Sony and a best seller is the Blue Ray Play-Station 3. It delivers much more than expected by the consumers demands. More quality and better prices when compared to other models on the market.

Sony Now Offers a BDP S1 Blue Ray Player

What is unique about this new player is it uses the up-scaling so you can use all your old DVDs so they do not need to be replaced. Plus you can use the new Blue Ray DVDs also, a nice option for consumers.

There are a lot of HDTVs being bought up this year. You can overhear the buzz everywhere about Hi-Def, HD DVD, Blue Ray Standard Definition, High Definition and converted to Hi-Def. In the USA we now have a new HDTV standard instigated by the ATSC(advanced television systems committee). They have worked up 18 different standards, not all will be used in common.

There are standards you will recognize and may be familiar with For HDTV like 720p, 1080i and 1080p. What these numbers refer to is the number of vertical lines in the resolution of display. The designation letters I and p refer to progressive scan for p and interlaced for the i.

The new wide screen format has an aspect ratio of 16:9 in HDTV formats 720p, 1080i and 1080p. One of the older formats EDTV (enhanced definition) in standard definition TV that had some interpolation. The old TV format was SDTV (standard definition) before we got HDTV. EDTV was superior to SDTV making use of the progressive scanning. Some of the early EDTV used the aspect ratio in the wide screen format of 16:9.

The old format SDTV has only 480 lines of vertical resolution and the aspect ratio was 4:3. The SDTV signal in the USA was always transmitted interlaced. What this meant was each time you get a picture on your old TV the frame was drawn in two passes one for horizontal and once for the vertical. Most of the time the 480 was not met VHS reached only 240 vertical lines and the broadcast SDTV reached only 330 lines of vertical resolution. The only place you got the full 480 lines of resolution was from SDTV was from a DVD playback.

Beginning in February 17, 2009 all over the air TV will be transmitted in the new HDTV formats. The Satellite TV providers have selected the 1080p to broadcast there signals. The p for the progressive scan is the preferred format because of the higher numbers of lines of vertical resolution. The two big networks Dish made the switch in August 2008 with 150 HDTV channels and later in the year Direct TV with about 130 channels of HDTV programming.

The major TV networks (ABC,ESPN) has announced support for the 1080p. The PlayStation 3 and the X Box 360 use the 1080p formats for their games.

The higher number in the resolution is better. The 1080i has a higher resolution technically, but it's not the obvious selection. The 1080i has 1080 vertical lines of resolution plus 1920 horizontal lines of resolution. 720p has 720 lines of vertical resolution but has 1280 lines of horizontal resolution. The 720p format is progressively scanned. This makes up for the lower level of resolution. The 1080p signal is the best of both, more picture information and in the progressive format.

So if all you have is a standard definition satellite receiver that new 1080p TV will not give you a better picture. You will need the upgraded satellite receiver also to get the 1080p signal to the TV.

There are some networks that selected the 1080i format unlike ABC, FOX, ESPN and National Geographic Selected the 720p. CBS and NBC broadcast in the 1080i their HDTV programming.

The 1080i and 1080p HDTVs will seem sharper than a standard 720p TV on a 720p transmission.

1080p HDTV System

The 1080p HDTV displays all inputs signals at 1080p. The reason for this is it's the normal resolution of the unit. If the HDTV is less than 1080i or 1080p, then a special purpose chip in your HDTV scales the signal. It will interpolate, like the EDTV does with a SDTV signal. If the signal is 1080i, the system will combine the odd and even interlaced frames and display the full signal as 1080p. The resulting performance should be similar to a true 1080p video source.

Cable HDTV

More than 100 million U.S. homes can receive HDTV from their cable system, and all of the top 100 cable markets in the country have available HDTV programming. The sad part, most cable providers carry only a few of the 50+ available HDTV networks.

Satellite HDTV

While HDTV local channel selection is generally better on cable than satellite, the major satellite companies offer more national HDTV channels than all the cable providers. DirecTV and the Dish Network have promised to offer more than 130 HDTV channels by the end of the year.

Which Home Theater to Choose

HD DVD and Blue Ray formats are not the same formats, they had different storage capacities. We are starting to companies build units that will play both formats. This may prove to extend the life of the now underdog and better format HD DVD. The reason for the new formats is the greater storage requirement needed for the new Hi-Def movies of today.

The two new formats plan is to replace the older standard definition DVDs. We are seeing the industry players switch their games and movie players to one or both formats in favor of the next generation technologies.

Panasonic and Sony have flooded the markets with Blue Ray movies, players and games. They are starting to look like the clear winner in the new technology wars just by the numbers.

The underdog has the better technology more features cheaper to produce and the big players are Toshiba and NEC. They are going with the HD DVD format in their players and games. It looks like they will be a big player for a while because of their profits with the technology. They may not go by way of the Dodo Bird of the 70s called Betamax. Its technology and quality was by far better than the VHS but still failed.

What Technology is in the Games?

Sony Play Station 3 has the Blue Ray format and Microsoft is using the HD DVD format in their X Box game consoles.

The manufactures of both games provide the backwards compatibility to play the older format standard definition DVDs. One catch is they are not offering the ability for them to play the other manufactures formats. So this means X Box HD DVDs will not play in the Play Station 3 and vice versa.

Some other big players jumping into the fray are LG and Pioneer has announced they will produce a duel format Blue Ray/HD DVD. This will also serve to keep both formats alive and well for many years to come. NEC is jumping into the pool with a chipset to run another universal player to play both formats.

So it may be many years if ever that we see the death of either of the HD DVD or the Blue Ray technologies.

DVD Home Theater

With today's technology, almost anything is possible. From VCRs to CDs then to DVDs and now Blu-Ray and HD DVDs, no one can predict what the next greatest invention or gadget will be. But quite possibly, the DVD home theater system is at the forefront when it comes to affordable entertainment.

Back in the early 90s, VCRs were the craze. We could watch movies in less than a year after they are introduced on the big screen. But today, we could watch movies with our DVD players within months or even weeks. DVD or also known as Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc is now the most popular media player of the century. DVDs are of equal size with CDs (compact disc) but they can store almost six times as many files.

A DVD player's function is not merely to play DVDs but they are packed with a whole lot of features, such as compatibility with audio CDs (you can't do this with your VCR players, right?) and VCDs (video CDs). DVDs are now formatted in a way that surround-sound and picture formats can be played in its original aspects. Unlike before, DVDs are formatted such as to match the way they are screened in a movie theater and presented to capture the way it is aired in TV.

DVD models of today are distinguished by its recording capabilities. Where we had VCR recorders before, we now have DVD recorders (though a little more expensive than conventional DVD players). This is, of course, ideal for those who are fans of regular TV show series but can't always watch every episode.

DVRs put unprecedented control of your favorite TV programs at your fingertips. It stores your favorite shows on its hard drive, letting you keep track of them in an organized manner; no clunky VHS tapes needed! DVRs are so popular, in fact, that many cable companies offer them to their customers as an additional service.

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