Is Warner’s Hybrid “Total HD” Disc Dead?

[JerryDelColliano]

I agree with you on format wars.

The powers behind HDDVD and Blu-ray needed to have looked at the potential damage and the past success of DVD and tried to keep the party going. But old hostilities and new players from the computer space made that impossible thus we are where we are...

j

[HT Junky]

I have a friend of mine that has a DVDO iScan VP50 and a high end Denon player with SD-SDI output. He has them connected with the SDI connection, which I understand is the cleanest digital path. This is far and away the best picture I have ever seen from standard DVD. He was sceptical there would be a difference as well.

We hooked up my Sony BDP-S300 ($500) straight to the other HDMI input on his projector. We watched Pirates of the Caribbean on the Denon/DVDO combo, then on the Sony Blue-ray player.

When you do this you can clearly see the difference. It isn't one those "switch it ten times to find the nuances" kind of differences. It is clearly a difference that only a better format can display. There are, however, Blu-ray releases that are not transfered to full potential. In some cases, where the DVD transfer of a movie was exceptional, but the Blu-ray was poor, the difference may not be as drastic.

When the BD transfer is done right, and you have a good 1080P projector, there is no comparison.

If you are that happy with the picture, then don't switch. You, however, don't know what you are missing..

[J.J.]

[quote=HT Junky;1307]I have a friend of mine that has a DVDO iScan VP50 and a high end Denon player with SD-SDI output.

You and your friend should join in on the VP50 Thread. I, myself, would love to hear first hand reviews and thoughts on the VP50. Would you buy it again? What kind of display are you running it on?

I'm considering buying the VP50. Love to hear your input!

[wazzzup]

I think i heard today that they are going to scrap the flip disc and just are going to issue one sided hd discs. If I can find the source, i'll post it here.

[TheMoose]

Originally Posted by wazzzup

I think i heard today that they are going to scrap the flip disc and just are going to issue one sided hd discs. If I can find the source, i'll post it here.

I heard the same thing, it said something about them being delayed indefinitely.

[Westcoaster]

Originally Posted by Stokestack

Hybrid discs and combo players merely perpetuate this asinine war. The hybrid format should be DVD/Blu-Ray, not two HD formats.

It's unfortunate that Toshiba floated its lame "lower capacity but cheaper to produce for the time being" format. The result is that the entire industry has missed the boat; the most likely outcome is that we will now never have a higher-capacity physical medium. We'll go directly to downloaded, even more highly compressed material.

A sadly uninformed statement, With regards to movies and disc capacity there has always been enough capacity on either HD format. Now that the HD-DVD specification includes triple layer dics, they exceed the curently available capacity of Blu-Ray... so what!?

I agree that the format war doen't help anybody, but to quote storage capacity as being the reason to choose Blu-ray is just poor logic.

We certainly didn't need any additional HD disc formats and maybe downloadable media is the future, but for now we are stuck with yet another try by Sony to dominate the market...