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- Toshiba BDX2000 Blu-ray player coming November for $250, gives HD-DVD the final cold shoulder
- PS3 Slim bitstreams Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA audio, at last
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
DVD4ME @ Jul 31st 2008 3:20AM
This actually sounds excellent,finally a player worth owning, a BR player with next generation features, a player that potentially is finally living up to the promise, finally the justification why profile 2.0 should be mandatory ! (all though personally I would not buy LG)
There you go Mr.Ben Drawbough, this is exactly why ALL BR players should by this stage of their life cycle be profile 2.0, this and other features is what next generation DVD should be, how's the unwary consumer going to feel now when this becomes the new standard.
Harmin C. @ Jul 31st 2008 3:46AM
Are you kidding? LG has the best customer service around. They actually answer questions you ask them. Personally, based on my and my friends viewing preferences... Profile 2.0 is overrated. No one (except the few) actually hook up their player to the internet just to download some backgrounds or get additional info or play games. The average consumer cares about the movie, a few extras such as deleted scenes/bloopers or commentary at best.
I got my bh200 for about 329.99 new. However, it was severly underpriced. Not only does it have Qdeo processing (as good as reon HQV, believe me I used my HQV reference disc), it is one of the few players to be profile 1.1 and be able to do truehd and dts-hd ma properly. I emailed LG a while back and they said that they had a big firmware update in the works. Im hoping its profile 2.0 just for the sake of having it. Though i never once used hd-dvd's internet capabilities.
Mark @ Jul 31st 2008 5:27AM
Profile 2.0 will have nothing to do with this feature, although in theory it could provide something similar. Maybe one day Netflix will send out a BD which enables any 2.0 player to become a streamer if you boot the player up from it. It sounds feasible.
But for now I see no reason 2.0 should be mandatory. Like it or not, the number of people who would hook up a player to the internet even if they could would be a small fraction of the total. Why should manufacturers be burdened with adding hardware or cost for a feature only a small number of people are going to use? Give it a few years and there might be a reason for a 2.0 player. For now there is practically none at all.
squiggleslash @ Jul 31st 2008 9:45AM
The issue right now with Netflix, as with all the other downloads systems, is that it's a proprietary closed system tied to a specific distributor. So this doesn't really make this player "next generation", though it does help shape what constitutes "next generation" by helping one possible model get field tested.
I'm very curious to find out what Download/DL will end up being. If it's just the kiosk system it was originally explained as (idiots at Engadget claiming it's upscaling aside...) then it's not terribly interesting. If, on the other hand, it constitutes the first component of an open downloads system based primarily on DVD Forum standards, with the first implementation being "Download and burn directly from your DVD player", then it could conceivably be the real kick forward downloads need.
For downloads to work, there has to be open access: players need to standardize on a single set of open access standards. Issues that also need to be addressed are substandard Internet connections (it should be possible to download before watching, buffering the entire movie so it can be watched without interruption), quality (it needs to be at least DVD quality, and HD really should be available too), and the fact people do not want to "rent" everything they watch also needs to be addressed. Netflix has addressed the last point, but it's early days with most of the other issues, and a service operated by Netflix is by definition not open-access.
Mr_Fizzlepop @ Sep 22nd 2008 6:20PM
Yeah, in the future I could see a Tivo like player that had a list of movies you were interested in and knew your favorite genres and downloaded in advance and asked if you wanted to watch that movie.
The content would be locked/encrypted in the box and would just delete it if you weren't interested, but if you were, it had already downloaded it in the background/past when the content was available so you didn't have to watch it streamed and could see a full 1080P movie.
You'd have to have some major HD space to be able to store multiple possible movies the average consumer might want, but it could be done, it's just the security that would be the issue. I could see Studios unwilling to even try this based on worries that the box could be hacked and people could just being downloading without purchase every new release.