LG made waves at CES 2007 by announcing their combo Blu-ray and HD DVD player. Lots of people like the idea of a combo player, thinking that it’s the solution to the format wars. Personally, I don’t think the war will be over until a winner has won. But that’s beside the point.

The LG player was only announced at CES, and already it’s been seen in the wild. Crave/CNET is reporting that the LG player is already available for $1,199 at a few CompUSA locations. One small problem - reports indicate that the player does not support HD DVD’s iHD spec, but it’ll still play the movie itself.

LG’s Super Multi Blue HD Player spotted in CompUSA

[Edit: It looks like the player isn’t supposed to be available however. According to IGN, the official release date is February 4th.]

From Gizmodo:

Netgear’s new Digital Entertainer HD device has been caught in the wild. It is said to be able to support 1080p video, which it can do since it also sports draft 802.11n wireless networking. Features include DVR capabilities (though additional requirements are substantial), a possible content deal with BitTorrent, as well as the ability to scale all video to your HDTV’s native resolution (including the aforementioned 1080p). This looks to be a really interesting device, especially at the reported $349 price point. Streaming devices were all the rage at CES this year, so in order to stand out, the devices must pack some serious functionality. This box from Netgear seems to fit this description. I am looking forward to seeing what the production model can do.

Device information

Video of the Netgear in the wild

CES 2007, from the reports I’ve seen, was basically a Blu-ray love-fest. It showed very well, and nobody defected from the BD camp over to the HD DVD camp (there are currently more BD supports). Onkyo and Meridian have announced HD DVD players, but Thompson/RCA has said that they won’t be selling their re-badged Toshiba HD DVD player anymore.

But Toshiba’s not going to take this lying down. Toshiba will be releasing new HD DVD players this year. Plus, it plans to ship an additional 1.8 million HD DVD players to the North American market this year.

But will that be enough? Sony will sell at least triple that many (a conservative estimate) PS3’s alone. Add to that their BD player. And Panasonic’s, Pioneer’s, Samsung’s, Philips’, and Sharp’s.

We’ll see…

Toshiba Readies Millions of HD DVD Players

One of the advantages the BD camp always had over the HD DVD camp is that it had a lot more consumer electronics manufacturers making players than the HD DVD camp did. Hmm. I said “had” and “did” like that was about to change, which it’s not. But the HD DVD camp did get another manufacturer onboard - Onkyo.

At CES 2007 Onkyo announced that they’ll be selling an HD DVD player in the North American market first, and in 2007. Other details are a little more sketchy.

I’ve never owned an Onkyo product, but the company has long held my interest. It’ll be interesting to see what they come up with.

Onkyo to Launch HD DVD Player in 2007

There is lots of Blu-ray stuff happening at CES. Here’s a quick rundown.

Sony’s moving away from MPEG2 for their BD releases, and towards AVC. Casino Royale will be an AVC release.

Some more interesting facts:

• Blu-ray has 96% of the HD player market in Japan. “In terms of Japan the game is already over there.”
• Out of 10,000 registered PS3 owners surveyed, 90% have tried and will buy Blu-Ray discs. 75% plan to use their PS3 primarily as a Blu-Ray player.
• On December 20th, Blu-Ray sales finally surpassed HD-DVD sales (note: no word on if this is players or software)

Fox plans to release 7-10 BD titles per month, most being 50GB titles. Buena Vista is big on BD as well. They will release Cards on BD this summer, and the Pirates of the Caribbean movies sometime this year.

CES 2007: Blu-Ray Fights Back!

Edit:

Casino Royale will street on March 13th.
The Pirates movies will debut in May.

The HD DVD group has announced a new triple layer version of the disc for recording, and that each layer will be able to hold an additional 2GB. Previously an HD DVD could hold 2 x 15GB = 30GB. Now it’ll be 3 x 17GB = 51GB! Hmm. One GB over the 2 layer BD’s 50GB. Coincidence?

The new disc format will be proposed to the DVD Forum for standardization this year. Products might make it to market by the end of the year.

Interestingly, the HD DVD group has also released some sales figures. As of January 5th, 2007, 150,000 HD DVD players (including standalone, HD DVD add-ons, and laptops) have sold. 28 HD DVD titles have been sold per player, which I think is a lot.

HD DVD Unveils Plan for 51GB Disc

We heard last year that Warner Brothers patented some technology to do with creating a hybrid HD DVD and Blu-ray disc. It looks like their hard work is actually going to amount for something, because Warner will introduce its new “Total HD” disc at CES this tomorrow, according to the NY Times. Warner’s Barry M. Meyer says that Warner came up with the Total HD disc when they concluded that neither format would win the format war anytime soon. Warner Brothers is also working on a disc that will include the DVD format as well.

Any more details will have to wait until Tuesday. The biggest question of course is: how many layers? How many HD DVD layers will Total HD support, and how many BD layers? It is vital to the HD DVD camp that the format supports at least two layers, for 30GB of storage. The BD camp would like to see two layers as well, for 50GB of storage, though this is not as vital. Many 25GB BD discs look quite good, and it quality in 25GB discs seems to be more related to the authoring process than to space limitation.

So I eagerly await tomorrow’s announcement from Warner Brothers, and hope to buy some Total HD discs soon.

New Disc May Sway DVD Wars

Surprisingly enough, at least to me, LG’s dual Blu-ray and HD DVD format player has been resurrected, and will actually see the light of day. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t think it would happen. But here we are.

LG will be launching the player at the CES show this week. Of course, launching a player and selling a player are two totally different things. LG hasn’t revealed when the player will go on sale outside of a vague “early 2007″.

LG has set the price for their BH100 combo BD and HD DVD player to be $1,199. Not bad considering that these are two new formats and that I just saw a new Rotel DVD (not HD DVD, just DVD) player announced with an MSRP of $300 more.

The player will support 1080p, which is expected. But it will also support DTS HD, which is more rare. Nice to see.

LG to Launch Dual-format Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD Player
LG’s BH100 hybrid Blu-ray & HD DVD player: $1,199
LG’s Dual HDTV Player: The War Isn’t Over

Pictures:

Best Buy LG BH100 Page

On a side note, LG also unveiled a BD burner for the PC that also reads HD DVD discs. That’s an interesting combination. It will record at 4x speed at will retail for less than $1200 in the first quarter of 2007.

LG Unveils New Super Multi Blue Dual-Format Burner

Samsung has announced their second-generation BD player, the model BD-P1200. Remember that Samsung was first to the market with their original BD player, the BD-P1000, which had an MSRP of $999. This new player will support HDMI 1.3, DTS audio (by which I assume they mean DTS HD Master), and will launch in March with an MSRP of $799.

If I remember correctly, you can already get the previous-gen BD-P1000 pictured here for that much if you go deal hunting. But this is the new-and-improved version, of course, so you might like all the new stuff they like to cram in there.

Samsung unveils the first second generation Blu-ray player: BD-P1200

So I was doing some research yesterday on HDMI and DVI. This stuff is good so listen closely.

So DVI came first in about 1998 mainly as a means to change people from the VGA (analog) interface to a DVI (digital) interface. Basically, HDMI is DVI with a different connector. This is from a cable standpoint. You already know that HDMI can send audio as well as video.

Another thing I learned was that DVI has a parallel channel in place for very large resolutions and refresh rates. This is to support computers with multiple monitors and people with heavy graphic capabilities. HDMI didn’t use this parallel channel, but because it piggybacked on DVI the cable had the capability. That is where HDMI version 1.3 comes in.

HDMI version 1.3 added a bunch more capability. More color depth, lip sync, and bandwidth for lossless audio, but essentially in the same wrapper. How did HDMI find all this extra bandwidth? That parallel channel on the DVI/HDMI cable that was just sitting there. This is where it gets important.

HDMI supports some things that sound cool, but you need to know how this all fits into the big picture. First, HDMI 1.3 adds color depths up to 16 bits (billions of colors). Sounds cool? Sure but remember most home theater and TV displays can’t show that many colors (even if they support the connection). Also, DVD and HDTV DVDs have a 8-bit color depth (or 17 million colors). So lets get some understanding here.

The biggest reason YOU need HDMI 1.3 for is two things. Lossless audio and lip sync. Color depth should only be considered if you are using the display for a computer, personal video, or a console game that supports bit depths higher than 8.

Almost all Blu-ray, digital cable, DVD, HD DVD, console games, and satellite providers are 8-bit today.

So this year when looking at our CES coverage remember that HDMI 1.3 is not very important for the Home Theater display, but is vitally important for receivers and processors because of the lip sync and new lossless audio formats. That is where you will get the most bang for your buck this year.

Also, remember you shouldn’t need to upgrade your cable to get HDMI 1.3 compliance. Those you have today should work just fine. So save your pennies, and if you must buy a cable look to someone like monoprice. Monster cables will just make you bend over and grab your ankles.

Connecting systems to displays with DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort: What we got here is failure to communicate

Why today’s best HDTVs aren’t worth buying

Seems that the competing press releases are starting to come out of the woodwork. Warner Bros. is expected to announce that they have a new disk that will have both (yes both) Blu-ray and HD DVD on the same disk! Also, LG is suppose to announce a player that will play both formats and come out in early 2007.

Warner Readying HD-DVD/Blu-ray Hybrid Announcement for CES DVD HD-DVD Blu-Ray at TheManRoom The Man Room
New Disc May Sway DVD Wars

Dreams Do Come True! LG’s Makes World’s First Blu-ray/HD DVD Dual-Format Player