Toshiba Introduces U.S. First HD DVD Players

Roy R writes "Toshiba America Consumer Products unveiled today the market launch details for its line-up of the first High Definition DVD players for the U.S. market. The new HD DVD players, models HD-XA1 and HD-A1, will take advantage of the superior capabilities of the HD DVD format. The players will output copy-protected HD content through the HDMI interface in the native format of the HD DVD disc content of either 720p or 1080i."

Who care's? I want a recorder

[Jason Straight]

I don't care about being able to play a media there is nothing to play, it would have made more sense to release recorders first so there would actually be some media for the players to play, plus I want to use them for backups. :)

Re:Call me when...

[iainl]

Back in '97 the cheapest DVD player was over $1000. This isn't like consoles where they sell the hardware at a loss.

But by all means wait until they hit a price you're prepared to pay. Here in the UK my first DVD player was £500. My supermarket now sells players with more functionality for £20.

Re:How many DRM will you need to understand...

[Don_dumb]

Well it is really more of a 'lease with conditions'.

Re:Who care's? I want a recorder

[BushCheney08]

I assume you will be using this with the plethora of original HD content you have produced yourself? If not, the only thing this gets you is the ability to store an entire season (or two or three) of a show in H.264/DivX/XviD/whatever format on a single disc. Then there's always the assumption that it will have the appropriate codec to play it (well, it'll definitely do H.264). I'm sure that more rampant piracy is exactly what they media producers want.

Cant wait for the workarounds

[Lumpy]

The players will output copy-protected HD content through the HDMI interface in the native format of the HD DVD disc content of either 720p or 1080i."

Cue the surge in sales of HDMI to non encumbered output dongles.

A buddy of mine was showing me the unit he bought to hook his older HD plasma to his new DVD player with HDMI... how long until these older units start going for high $$$ or a company like lite-on or APEX starts creating units that bypass this stupid DRM?

Re:I really hope...

[Darth Maul]

If both fail I can assure you it won't be because of DRM. The average Joe doesn't care about DRM. If they hook up their new-fangled HD-DVD player to some old TV that doesn't support the right HDMI copy-protection scheme, and it doesn't work, they will just scratch their heads, blame the generic "technology", and return the player perhaps.

If both fail, it will simply be because the average Joe will only see a slight incremental improvement over current DVDs. Remember, average Joe thinks that watching a DVD on his new HDTV is "high-definition". I'm serious. There have been polls done, and most people think it's HD. Given that current DVDs are good enough, there is not a significant reason to buy the new HD-DVD. The improvement from VHS to DVD was a huge leap; form factor, no rewinding, no degrading, better detail in the image, better sound. From DVD to HD-DVD I'm afraid the improvement is just not noticeable to the "consumer". Just look at the new CD and audio DVD formats; sure, they have superior sound quality, but they are just a niche market for the few audiophiles that can appreciate that improvement.

Re:SUPER!

[CastrTroy]

This is stupid. The only reason that DVD players caught on is because you could hook them up to any old TV. There's still a lot of DVD players hooked up to the old coaxial or RCA (component) sockets. Not a lot of people have the component hook ups. And even a lot of people who have them don't end up using them. If they limit HD DVD players to only hook up to the brand new shiny TVs, then nobody is going to buy the player. I'm sure there's a lot of people who will want to buy these, but if it means buying a new TV on top of that, you will see that it will only fill a niche market.

Re:I really hope...

[leomekenkamp]

But if Joe returns the player because it will not connect to his TV, then it will fail because of DRM.

I do agree with your point that the difference in quality will probably be lost on Joe; except maybe for bragging rights, there is no difference for him.

New DVDs

[hey]

So now I gotta buy all new DVDs? ;-(
Also one word: porn.

Looking forward to it!

[limabone]

Watching high def television content on my 60" Sony makes me drool at the prospect of true high def dvds. Right now I use an Oppo upsampling dvd player which does a pretty decent job of converting a dvd to 1080i, but the quality depends on the quality of the original dvds, so for example Attack of the Clones is gorgeous (the quality of the movie itself is another topic :) ), but my Predator dvd is awful.
That beging said, upsampled dvd's don't hold a candle to true high def. It's not quite like from VHS to DVD in terms of quality improvement...but it's pretty close!
The quality difference is masked on a smaller screen but on a large screen the difference is pretty significant.
I'm a little disappointed with HD-DVD's storage capacity, as blu-ray seems to be technologically superior, but from what I have read blu-ray's drm scheme is crippling to the consumer and should not be supported in any way!

They will love it just like DAT, SACD, DVD-A

[guidryp]

"..to me it just doesn't matter that much, but I am in no way representative of the public at large..."

You are probably more representative than you know. This is not a VHS vs BETA type BATTLE.

This is DVD-A vs SACD vs CD type battle. Tell me who one that one DVD-A or SACD? CD of course.

Same formula, improve quality, add more DRM (Deny Rights Management) and they will beat a path to your door.

Re:New DVDs

[jswinth]

I think each person with a new HD drive will buy about one porn movie, and it would be their last. The ability to see the blades of grass on the soccer field is one thing, but being able to see every pimple on a porn star's behind is probably not going to go over well. Of course, if they bought a porn compilation full of older DVD movie scenes then they only need one.

HD-DVD could be short lived w/ Holo Storage Comin

[fedrive]

According to a company working on this nanotechnology. . Atomic Holographic Optical Storage Nanotechnology will dramatically improve applications like 6,840 raw uncompressed high quality Video/TV hours, or 2,100,000 chest x-rays, or nearly 10,000,000 high-resolution images, or 30,000 four-drawer filing cabinets of documents, or 20,000 DVD'S Worm's , or 4,000 BLU-Ray Worm disk's, or 100 - 100 gigabyte disk drives or 50 Inphase Holographic Disks on ONE 10 Terabyte 3.5 in. removable disc.