I was reading through the previous post, but decided to start a new thread. FYI - the first High Def DVD players are due out soon. The chips' firmware is pretty much finalized, and there are 3 manufacturers initially building players - that's V Inc., Apex Digital and Kiss Technologies.
The players will play Windows Media 9 720p (in addition to SD - although I don't know if they'll up-res SD to HD), and will carry the signal over DVI.
Now in a way there are already millions of High Def DVD players out there: PC's w/ a minimum configuration. About a 2.4GHz PC (or less - I've been able to play out from an XP2000 w/ no problems) and a reasonably good video card (ATI or NVidia recommended with at least 32Mb w/ dual output, including DVI if you want to view on your external HDTV) will do the trick. I find NVidia's a bit easier to deal with for 720p playback on a secondary monitor - they have a full screen video option and the resolution is already there. With ATI I've had to do some tweaking.
Media Center PC's are kind of built for this, depending on the model. The only thing they're missing, in my opinion, is High Def recording capabilities. TIVO has, I believe released or at least announced a model that will do so, so I know it's possible.
There are some few titles in this format already available. www.wmvhd.com mentions a few - documentaries and such; www.highdefxxx.com has a few adult (with another dozen coming within about a month).
By the end of the year, there will probably be about a dozen indie features as well - but it's unlikely that the major studios will make the move any time soon. I'm guessing a couple of years, although there may be exceptions to the rule within the year.
I'll post something more when these players are available.
The players will play Windows Media 9 720p (in addition to SD - although I don't know if they'll up-res SD to HD), and will carry the signal over DVI.
Now in a way there are already millions of High Def DVD players out there: PC's w/ a minimum configuration. About a 2.4GHz PC (or less - I've been able to play out from an XP2000 w/ no problems) and a reasonably good video card (ATI or NVidia recommended with at least 32Mb w/ dual output, including DVI if you want to view on your external HDTV) will do the trick. I find NVidia's a bit easier to deal with for 720p playback on a secondary monitor - they have a full screen video option and the resolution is already there. With ATI I've had to do some tweaking.
Media Center PC's are kind of built for this, depending on the model. The only thing they're missing, in my opinion, is High Def recording capabilities. TIVO has, I believe released or at least announced a model that will do so, so I know it's possible.
There are some few titles in this format already available. www.wmvhd.com mentions a few - documentaries and such; www.highdefxxx.com has a few adult (with another dozen coming within about a month).
By the end of the year, there will probably be about a dozen indie features as well - but it's unlikely that the major studios will make the move any time soon. I'm guessing a couple of years, although there may be exceptions to the rule within the year.
I'll post something more when these players are available.
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Los Angeles
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Re: High Def DVD players
Sun, September 12, 2004 - 4:45 PMTivo's unit out for a while was blocked by media interests here in the States. Cox Communications is now offering (In San Diego) a cable box that records Hi Def. I will get that soon, I hear good things about it. I ave also heard it has an output so that I could tranfer to my computer. I haven't independantly confirmed this though. -
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Re: High Def DVD players
Sun, September 12, 2004 - 6:26 PM"The players will play Windows Media 9 720p"
What type of discs will these players run? Just regular DVDs?
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Re: High Def DVD players
Mon, September 13, 2004 - 6:01 AMI'll remain the old grump on this subject. I don't think HD-DVD will find swift or easy market acceptance.
Yes, you can do an HTPC, but frankly, that's for the enthusiast and not the general public - not enough people to make a difference in the market. Just take a look at how many people insist on purchasing full screen versions of movies? I've been in stores where people get abusive and irate because they "don't want a movie that's cut off"! (yes, they think that the black bars on their tv means the movie is cut off).
I'm betting that HD-DVD will take 3 to 5 years (closer to 5) to get enough market penetration so that all movies come out in that format. -
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Re: High Def DVD players
Mon, September 13, 2004 - 5:57 PMI totally agree, my ex-girlfriend still only has a video casette player for crying out loud, because she said the sound is better. -
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Re: High Def DVD players
Sun, October 17, 2004 - 8:53 PMI still dont understand how these "upconverter" DVD players work?! How can you take video that only has 480 lines of resolutions and create 720 out of it? Where did the extra resolution come from?? Magic??
I work with photoshop a lot, and in terms of resolution, you can't take a crappy 72 dpi image and convert it to 300 dpi and make it look better. it will still look like crap. You can't create information that was never there to begin with.
Can anyone explain this to me? -
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Re: High Def DVD players
Thu, November 18, 2004 - 11:38 PMTo answer specifically how 480 becomes 720, it's more than simple enlargement. The good upconverters will intelligently add interpolated data derived from looking at the nearest pixels on all axes and calculate the in-between pixels on the larger image.
However - High Def DVD's at 720p are not upconverted - they are native 720p (although sometimes derived from 1080i or 1080p footage). -
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Re: High Def DVD players
Sun, November 21, 2004 - 10:12 PMThanks Grand. That makes more sense than having pixels appear out of magic. hehe
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