Fox's opinion about early adopters

I do not read it that way at all. What he said is true and does not mean that he or Fox feels that early adopters are stupid. Look on here and see how many forum members switch video projectors every year or two, when some new feature is available. Even among Blu-ray or HD DVD owners, how many of them have already owned more than one player?

Early adopters always want the latest and greatest and usually know that buying early means that one lives with problems and frequent upgrades - they do not call it "the bleeding edge" for nothing.

/carmi

GOD... English is not even my first language and I don't see anything that says early adopters are stupid. Could you be more bypassed? Besides what he says is true, early adopters buy more than one player, and they are well aware of the risk of being early adopters.

How exactly did you come to the conclusion that he felt early adopters are stupid?

I don't believe the FOx rep said anything to that effect. At least not on that interview. However, it is interesting that they will now be implementing BD+ on their up coming titles...

That was one reason they went with BD in the first place (as he says).

So you don't even own a BD player, yet you decided to get all indignent anyway? Is that about the size of it? You wouldn't be an HD DVD supporter pis*ed at Fox for not releasing on your format by any chance, would you...

Early adopter will always "suffer" because they are early in the game. But, that's life. They will probably buy new system anyways because of increased quality/new features/ what ever.

-P

1. It's already been repeatedly discussed on the forums.
2. It's the nature of being an early adopter.....sometimes you miss out on features, sometimes you don't. If it weren't for early adopters, many products wouldn't be successful today. There's a certain risk involved.

Early adopters are scr*wed by the BDA changing their specs to keep up with HD DVD capabilities. This guy is more or less stating: It's your own fault, you should have known better.




Fox is going for BD+ and rom mark due to the recent BR hacks.
BR spec is going to change, again, to implement this additional layer of security. Several Fox titles will be delayed until the BD+ 'spec' matures.
There is a good chance that future titles will not play anymore on current generation BR hardware.

Blu ray isn't even a finished format but it is already marketed as 'better' and 'the winner'.
It would be a sad day when HD DVD is done in by the BDA marketing blitzkrieg.

So you don't own a BD player. Don't intend to buy one until the prices come down. And are still incensed enough to re-interpret a Fox exec's statements to fit your views. Impressive.

Where are you getting this stuff from? There is no reason why current players won't play all future BD discs. Current players simply won't be able to access all the extra features on the disc. Disc security is transparent unless you're trying to copy.

Why should they? They bought players to take advantage of those features that were available when they bought them. As technologies progress, new features become available and sometimes they are not backward compatible. The player I bought does what I bought it to do. Just as new Fox discs that include BD-Live features will still play in current generation players (just not taking advantage of these new features).



You must never buy any technology products or must be angry all the time. My laptop had a CD-ROM drive and later one came out that could write CDs as well. Apple even included software that took advantage of that feature. It did not do anything on my system, until I upgraded my hardware. Is it your argument that companies should never upgrade technologies? Will you be angry if Toshiba releases triple layer discs that are incompatible with current players? If so, do you feel that they should not release them if that is the only way they can be made to work?

/carmi

As an early adopter of both formats I know changes are possible and likely, I would just hope they were not substantial. It's one thing to mention the nature of the early adopter in passing and another thing to count on in it as if it is OK to come to market too soon and make the early adopter pay the price. Personally, I appreciate that HD DVD took defining the specs more seriously before launch than BD.

Yup, they took the specs more seriously. That is why Toshiba is now pushing to band-aid TL-51 into the HD-DVD spec, with no real word on whether the legacy players will be patchable to support it. I'm guessing probably not.

He's right though. If you skim through any forum or blog the number 1 thing is always PQ and AQ. And on this very forum we have several people buying multiple players. How many people who had the HD-A1 bought the HD-A2? How many Samsung buyers bought a PS3? I myself have owned all four.

Both specs were a bit rushed, which is why I strongly disagree with those that claim that this competition is good for us as consumers. Had Toshiba not gone forward with HD DVD, Blu-ray might have taken a bit longer but finalized BD-Live before shipping. As for poor transfers, Sony would not have felt they had to rush to release The Fifth Element and might have done a better job. There is enough competition among studios to ensure quality. If no one buys a title because it is a low quality transfer, studios will get the message.

/carmi

That's why I got the PS3, hehehe!

I have 84 BDs and have never one been shorted by my Samsung. I dont care about special features or the idiotic idea of having them play video over the movie Im trying to watch. You are missing out on a great player and great movies. The 500 dollars I spent on my Samsung have been well worth it.

Actually, what they would have to say is: "This player is only guaranteed to do what it says it will do today, and may not support new features that may be introduced in future systems that will play these same discs."


You do not like that comparison? I will give you another. If you bought a PC before Vista (or before Mac OS X.3) with a fully supported video card, you might discover that it would not support Microsoft's Aero or Apple's Quartz Extreme as these required a certain level of 3D acceleration that was not required of earlier systems. These features do not yet exist. They are being proposed and will likely be added, but they did not exist when Samsung's first player was sold. Just as many early CD-ROM drives were not able to read the 700MB discs that became available later whose specifications were added to the Red Book.

At best, you are arguing for stagnation, requiring a completely new format to be introduced every time a new ability is needed. Your solution would be much more expensive for consumers and would never bring about mass adoption.


You need not worry about this as it is unlikely that Toshiba will actually release their triple layer format, just as it is unlikely that HD DVD will survive long term.

/carmi

BR+ and rom mark security layer is not protecting only the additional content.
It's there to protect the movie content. Fox's intentions are to use this additional security layer.
Do you realy think that current playback devices will ignore this security layer and allow playing back the future BD+ protected discs? Think again, allowing current players to ignore the BD+ protection makes BD+ protection useless.

Two seconds of research would have revealed that you are wrong.

http://www.physorg.com/news5725.html

This is a new standard, Blu-ray Profile 2. It does not yet exist.



It seems that you will discount everything that does not have a set standard. NTSC was an improvement to RS-170 (monochrome video). VHS added Hi-Fi sound. NTSC added stereo audio. AM added stereo. GSM added Push-to-talk over Cellular. Etc.

If you dislike those, I can come up with many more. How about HDMI? In order to support transmission of Dolby TrueHD, one needs HDMI 1.3. Just as there were changes between HDMI 1.0 to 1.1 to 1.1a to 1.2 and so on. These are all standards. All systems evolve or die.

/carmi

TL-51 might end up being a nice upgrade on the media side. But it is not needed to play any of the current discs and their interactive features. There also is no need for it currently as a movie of just about any realistic length can be put out on a dual layer HD DVD without any notable loss of quality. Instead of presuming that Toshiba will not support their early adopters I'll just wait and see what happens. IMO, they've done a nice job so far.

He is pretty much right about early adopters. Lets be honest, most of the early adopters have more money than sense. No offense to those who took offense to my comment.

USB is a standard. Should USB have been stuck at 1.0 because all of the devices stuck at 1.0 cannot take advantage of the increased speed of USB 2.0?