Quick Hits

By Shane Buettner • Posted: Oct 30, 2007

News worthy of comment has been slow. So, here are some quick shots. Chime in if you have anything on any of these quick shots to the solar plexus.

$199 HD DVD Players- With the HD-A3 about to hit stores, Toshiba is clearing out the HD-A2 for just $199. Is this the magic price point, as some suggest? Or does the wild success of the iPod, iPhone, the Nintendo Wii (just to name a few) and other $250 and up CE devices mean that $199 isn't what it used to be?

x.v.Color- Awesome. I loved it when I heard this was coming. Another set of color standards for display manufacturers to completely ignore.

Lousy HD catalog releases- Are we already at the point at which Mobsters is worth putting on HD? Glad that one beat Citizen Kane to HD. Ok, I know one man's flop is another's cult hit, but damn, this movie isn't even a has been it's a never was.

(In related news, those who are looking forward to this can only hope that December's HD DVD release of Time Cop is just the beginning of a re-examination of the phenomenon that was Jean-Claude Van Damme. I treasure his entire catalog.)

HDMI 1.3- How glad are we that we waited for this? The jury's still out, but so far, we've got non-existent video features and audio features that are currently of dubious worth. Nothing like holding the industry hostage over, well, nothing much so far.

Fox and DTS-HD Master Audio- After a hiatus, Fox is back in Blu-ray. While the image quality is constistently spectacular, the only hi-res audio tracks on Fox Blu-ray Discs are encoded in DTS-HD MAster Audio. That might be be cool, except there are no players that can decode DTS-HD MA at full resolution. A few AVRs have shown up with onboard decoding, but so far there are only one or two players spec'd for bistream output. What the heck would be wrong with doing TrueHD for now and catching up with DTS-HD MA when there's actually hardware??

Season 2 of Heroes- Wow, how quickly the mighty fall. My wife and I got hooked on season 1 on HD DVD like we haven't been hooked by a TV show since Sopranos season 1. Like, "honey, can you watch one more" at 1am hooked. That was brilliant, especially for network TV. Season 2, not so much. Boring trips way backward in time, bigger plot holes, new forgettable characters, and powers that are well, a little too familiar. I hope this picks up soon.

Spider-Man 3- Proving the universal truth that the better the transfer is, the worse the movie. Spidey 3 is technically brilliant on Blu-ray. But on the movie, superhero flicks live and die with their villains. This has Topher Grace as Venom. Nuff said.

OK, not quite enough. There's enough of the emotional grounding and exhilirating Spideyness that made the first two Spider-Man movies so unique in the superhero pantheon to remind us of what this could have been. But Kirsten Dunst sings.

Comments

Submitted by David Vaughn on October 30, 2007 - 3:47pm.

Shane, I couldn't agree more with you about Heroes. It's about 6 weeks in and absolutely NOTHING has happened thus far in the season. They must be building up to something spectacular, but hopefully something much better than the Season 1 finale, which was a big letdown for me in what was otherwise a great first season. I guess the sophomore jinx has hit the show. On a bright note though, only a little over 2 months until the final season of Battlestar Galactica!

Submitted by Shane on October 30, 2007 - 10:29pm.

Since Dave brought it up, here' just one of the things that pissed me off with Season 2. Peter Petrelli is stuck in Ireland and can't remember who he is. I know it's Ireland, but what, no one can hook the dude up with a computer for a quick Google on himself?

Submitted by Shane on October 30, 2007 - 10:32pm.

I mean, it's not like he's Hiro- he's not stuck in 15th century Ireland for chrissakes!

Submitted by Tom Norton on October 31, 2007 - 6:17pm.

I just read recently that (apart from the special late Nov ember two-parter or "movie") the next and last season of Battlestar Galactica is not starting now until Apr il 08! And that's only a 10 episode half season run. They haven't decided yet whether to run the second half season in fall 2008 (!) or hold it off until early 2009 (!!). Well, hopefully before then the first three seasons will all be available on HD DVD. A lot has happened on Heroes so far this year when you think about it, just not a lot to each of the (now many) main characters. But maybe I'm just easily amused. Hopefully they're laying the groundwork for something interesting to happen--soon, we all hope.

Submitted by Luis T Puig on October 31, 2007 - 9:05pm.

Well, its begun...! Today also Kmart said it is going to sell HD DVD players only for the holidays, then we have the Black Friday story of HD DVD players for $169.00! This may be it, the time were HD DVD players take the lead on Blue Ray and they won't look back. Like I said here before, once the real mass of the population starts buying either one format or the other in mass this war will be over. Up to now HD players sales have been nothing compared to numbers of conventional DVD players sales/owned by the general public. Percentage wise. So the HD format that first makes that happen, which as a consequence will tide up consumers into buying HD movies in that format will be the winner. It is that simple. HD DVD is, as of now, looking like it is going for it. And if Blue Ray wants to stay alive after these announcements they better drop those players prices before HD DVD is so far ahead in real big players sales numbers that it will make it impossible for Blue Ray to survive for long. Just my opini

Submitted by Chris on November 2, 2007 - 9:12am.

Today only - Walmart and Best Buy have the A2 for $98. !!!!!!!!!1 oh yeah, US only... you'd think it was the Berlin Wall...

Submitted by Justin on November 4, 2007 - 11:34am.

I see the yamaha RX-Z11 will do DTSHD MA. Of course I guess my question would be if I where to get this reciever would my ps3 pass the audio over to it for the receiver to decode, or is it just going to send over pcm? Just wounder because I am getting ready to retire my denon avr 3801 after 7 years of great service I want to move over to the new sound choices. Is DTSHD MA worth getting on a new receiver or a mute point (don't know that current hardware can pass dtshd ma) and look at other receivers with different reasons in mind (like a receiver that total kills on the options that are out now)?

Submitted by Paul on November 5, 2007 - 7:59am.

My HD-A2 is showing up tomorrow from Crutchfield. I got it for $120 shipped after a $20 coupon. After the 5 free movies it basically pays for itself. I'm picking up Transformers for it tonight. This is the perfect option as my seven year old Mitsu is 1080i. The only drawback is no upconversion over component.

Submitted by Shane on November 5, 2007 - 4:57pm.

Justin- Nothing is official or guaranteed, but I've been told off record that it's a question of when not if as far as the PS3 getting a DTS-HD MA. The PS3 has the processing power, but I'm guessing getting it ready for BD-ROM Profile 1.1 is taking priority. Moving forward DTS-HD MA will start to become more and more common in next-gen players. We need more time to experiment to try and determine if there are any sonic advantages to decoding in the pre/pro or AVR compared to losing secondary audio for interactivity. More AVRs and players are showing up so we'll be reporting on this more as time goes on here.

Submitted by David Vaughn on November 5, 2007 - 5:43pm.

Paul, Don't worry about the upconverting. Your Mits displays 480p as 480p without any internal processing. The upconverting players are really only a benefit to displays that don't show 480p natively and will process them to 1080i, 720p or 1080p and most "cheap" upconverting players do this better than the internal scalers in the TV's. In your case, this is the best of both worlds and you will be [b]VERY[/b] impressed with the picture quality that the Toshiba provides at both 1080i for HD DVD and 480p for DVD. Don't sweat it, enjoy your new toy!

Submitted by fred on November 7, 2007 - 7:15am.

shane, monday night's gyros didn't totally stink, but you might want to check out journeymen and life and for a new comedy, chuck.

Submitted by Justin on November 12, 2007 - 5:43pm.

Shane- Sounds good for the PS3 then I think your right about the unit having the processing power. Any word on the hd-dvd add on for the xbox 360? Now the ps3 does make me wounder about another question. I have my video system running to a DVDO VP50. Then I have my sound all going straight to the reciever. On the ps3 the hdmi goes to the dvdo put I pass the sound with the fiber cable to the reciever(unit has no hdmi). Unless I upgrade to a dvdo vp50pro to get hdmi 1.3 I don't have the ability to use hdmi 1.3. Will you still be able to pass dts hd ma by fiber or is it an hdmi only deal. Much like yeah you could do 1080p via component but no one really let you. Also since I have an older x box 360 without hdmi even if they add that ability if it's hdmi only I am still stuck. Granted I guess I buy a new receiver and take the dvdo out but it makes a really nice picture out of anything. Your thoughts?