OK so I have been sitting on the sideline on the Hi Def field for the duration now (1.5 years or so?) and been extremely hesistant not only to "pick a camp" but also whether to bother enter the field at all!

I had a 720P 30" TV that was running SD DVDs fine at 10 feet. Recently upgraded to a 40" 1080P display and reconfigured my viewing distance to be more optimal (5 feet). Honestly the reason I was sitting so far away before was because my living room is rectangular and the big ass CRT I had wouldnt let me configure the couch and the CRT to be the shorter distance, but now with the LCD, I have walking distance between the couch and TV on that angle.

Now I am noticing that my DVDs look like crap compared to even OTA local HD stations with a $10 non-amplified bunny ears antenna to the internal ATC(?) tuner.

Heres my problem. I have already "invested" a lot of money into my mac "HTPC" setup being a Intel Mini plus a 1.5 TB RAIDed NAS. I have ripped my entire movie collection onto the NAS and watch it from there as I hate having to get up and look for a disk and then on top of that bulls$it FBI warnings and forced advertisements on some discs. I havnt watched a real DVD in 3 years and as soon as I buy a DVD, it gets ripped and then warehoused in the closet permenantly.

I dont mind paying $25 for a HD/BD Disc, but if on top of that, I have to pay $600 for a player, and wait 60+ seconds for it to load, and then 60+ seconds for FBI warnings and 60+ seconds for forced movie ads/trailers, I would be extremely upset at the money wasted on inconvienance.

I suppose I would be willing to wait the 60 seconds DISK load time if there was a firmware hack on a player that allowed UOPs (?) to bypass FBI warnings and forced ads.

I am also considering that possibly online places like ITMS might offer HD movie downloads as purchases in the future - which might be another 6 months to a a year out, but thats really what I want - downloadable HD Content from my computer. I would (no lie) pay $50 each for a good to great quality 1080P transfer in the form of a computer file that I can run from my HTPC even if its 25 GB each. I only really "need" about 10 to 20 HD movies like LOTR, StarWars, Terminator, etc everything else I can run at upscaled SD and be happy. that might sound like a lot but if I only buy 20 movies at $25 and a player at $500 even, then its still $50 per movie considering the player (which I already have in the form of a HTPC if the video file could be downloaded to my NAS.

I hope the big movie studios dont miss the boat on this too and drive this market into illegal bit torrenting.

I bought both a BD player and an HD DVD player at the same time I bought a 1080p LCD, and I have never regretted any of those purchases. I wish I could have had high def discs years ago. SD discs truly look horrible.

Heres my problem. I have already "invested" a lot of money into my mac "HTPC" setup being a Intel Mini plus a 1.5 TB RAIDed NAS. I have ripped my entire movie collection onto the NAS and watch it from there as I hate having to get up and look for a disk and then on top of that bulls$it FBI warnings and forced advertisements on some discs. I havnt watched a real DVD in 3 years and as soon as I buy a DVD, it gets ripped and then warehoused in the closet permenantly.

I dont mind paying $25 for a HD/BD Disc, but if on top of that, I have to pay $600 for a player, and wait 60+ seconds for it to load, and then 60+ seconds for FBI warnings and 60+ seconds for forced movie ads/trailers, I would be extremely upset at the money wasted on inconvienance.

I suppose I would be willing to wait the 60 seconds DISK load time if there was a firmware hack on a player that allowed UOPs (?) to bypass FBI warnings and forced ads.


Better players will be coming in the next 6-12 months......meaning improved boot times.

I think that you may have to wait a lot longer to get HD's ripped to a hard drive system, the HD space requirements are much larger (obviously) and I don't think we will see a 'kaliedescape type player for a couple of years.

I have a question? How would you have ever lived in the 80's without a remote control and HDD/computer systems? :p

OK so I have been sitting on the sideline on the Hi Def field for the duration now (1.5 years or so?) and been extremely hesistant not only to "pick a camp" but also whether to bother enter the field at all!

I had a 720P 30" TV that was running SD DVDs fine at 10 feet. Recently upgraded to a 40" 1080P display and reconfigured my viewing distance to be more optimal (5 feet). Honestly the reason I was sitting so far away before was because my living room is rectangular and the big ass CRT I had wouldnt let me configure the couch and the CRT to be the shorter distance, but now with the LCD, I have walking distance between the couch and TV on that angle.

Now I am noticing that my DVDs look like crap compared to even OTA local HD stations with a $10 non-amplified bunny ears antenna to the internal ATC(?) tuner.

Heres my problem. I have already "invested" a lot of money into my mac "HTPC" setup being a Intel Mini plus a 1.5 TB RAIDed NAS. I have ripped my entire movie collection onto the NAS and watch it from there as I hate having to get up and look for a disk and then on top of that bulls$it FBI warnings and forced advertisements on some discs. I havnt watched a real DVD in 3 years and as soon as I buy a DVD, it gets ripped and then warehoused in the closet permenantly.

I dont mind paying $25 for a HD/BD Disc, but if on top of that, I have to pay $600 for a player, and wait 60+ seconds for it to load, and then 60+ seconds for FBI warnings and 60+ seconds for forced movie ads/trailers, I would be extremely upset at the money wasted on inconvienance.

I suppose I would be willing to wait the 60 seconds DISK load time if there was a firmware hack on a player that allowed UOPs (?) to bypass FBI warnings and forced ads.

I am also considering that possibly online places like ITMS might offer HD movie downloads as purchases in the future - which might be another 6 months to a a year out, but thats really what I want - downloadable HD Content from my computer. I would (no lie) pay $50 each for a good to great quality 1080P transfer in the form of a computer file that I can run from my HTPC even if its 25 GB each. I only really "need" about 10 to 20 HD movies like LOTR, StarWars, Terminator, etc everything else I can run at upscaled SD and be happy. that might sound like a lot but if I only buy 20 movies at $25 and a player at $500 even, then its still $50 per movie considering the player (which I already have in the form of a HTPC if the video file could be downloaded to my NAS.

I hope the big movie studios dont miss the boat on this too and drive this market into illegal bit torrenting.


The PS3 boots almost instantly. It is just as fast as a regular DVD player.

I can give you the perspective from a PS3 and HD-A2 owner.

The PS3 boots up instantly and takes about maybe 4-5 seconds from when I insert the disc (which powers up the PS3) to when it starts playing. The HD-A2 takes about maybe 10-15 seconds to start up, not that big of a deal to me since I've gotten used to power it up first so by the time I pick my movie or open the netflix envelope it'll be ready.

The only thing that's NOT skip-able is the FBI warning ad, which is about another 7 seconds. Other than that there's no long "60+ seconds" wait for anything. Perhaps with the first gen Toshiba HD players there was a much longer and agonizing wait for the machine to boot up, but that problem is essentially non-existent with the newer Toshiba players and the PS3. I say go for HD if there are movies you like, you won't regret it.

Also, there are ads on some discs but all of them can be skipped, which equates to maybe a 1 second "loss" on your time. It's not all gloom and doom as you think. The forums here(HD and Blu-ray) have unfortunately turned into internet flame-war cesspools similar to such places as gamefaqs/ign/gamestop forums.