Anyone know where to find a good/reliable internal Bluray Burner for a great price? Surely some labor day sale should include a good price on a great Bluray writer right?

j razz

If you can wait, around mid September there more announcements coming with great prices is the current word from IFA07/ Most BluRay products are expected to be available in the US sooner than later, if the "money market" stabilizes. A large of movies and tv series are expected to be release as well. Rumors in the hallways are hinting about a BR media price drop, no actual price range was given,-guessing it maybe similar to promotional discounts on DVDs.

Sorry apit... I was just going to keep my mouth shut and let this go by.... but THIS is EXACTLY what is wrong with this war.... waaaaay too much truth stretching!!

This is not a "player"... it's a drive and you know it.

Ya gotta be careful. Blink3x's is always waiting to ambush you.

Dude, get a girlfriend already.

he's right though. It was the same thing with DVD vs VHS when DVD came out. Every disk would have lots of commentaries, multiple camera angles, hours of "special features", you could see behind the scenes all the time, etc.

Most DVD's had no more then a VHS does in regards to content. Most still don't.

"Dude, get a girlfriend already."
=======================================================
I have a wife, 3 kids, 2 dogs, and a cat.... what the heck am I supposed to do with a girlfriend!?

Although I will say that to a certain extent you do have a point... 3x is quite the gray area... but this.... come on.

Traditional single-layer DVDs allow consumers to watch movies in 720x480 (NTSC) or 720x576 (PAL) resolution with Dolby Digital audio. The blue-laser discs, such as Blu-ray and HD DVD, provide consumers 1920x1080 progressive (1080p) resolution as well as DTS or Dolby Digital Plus audio along with some additional interactive features. I need a girlfriend to put "Disk2" in the player because 'You know who' will be asleep :()

My question is, do i wanna watch 1080 video encoded at 8Mbps? Wouldn't that be like watching SD encoded at about 1.78Mbps? Ewwwww.

I have to admit that if professionally encoded they have to look better than "Crash" & other Blu-Ray releases. Some Blu-ray releases at first weren't very good. Much better now. The Blu-Ray movies I've been renting are nice to watch will all the previews of other movies also in HD Content, 8 languages & 8 language sub-titles to choose from on-the-fly during playback. A person can watch the movie with French as the vocal track & spanish sub-titles (selectable on-the-fly). There are alot of extras on the Blu-Ray movies I've been renting via Net-Flix.

The 1440x1080i hd-mpeg2 that I've been encoding to AVC 8Mbs look very good. The more motion the higher the bit-rate required to retain quality. As far as I can tell AVC requires very good or excellent source video to work properly. I'll use 12 or 14MBS, lately staying with 14MBS.

For standard definition encoding in the AVC format I think the recommended is 1/2 the original bit-rate. I re-encode my higher quality 8MBS+ Standard Def to 4MBS. When converting the High-Def to AVC Standard Definition format I use 2MBS because the source is much higher quality.

I don't think a 3X DVD encoded in AVC will play on the toshiba A2 will it?
None of the Tosh's in the stores will play my avchd disks, maybe the AVC or V1 format has to be on a hd-dvd disk to playback in the toshiba players.

The last HighDef Movie I watched on Blu-Ray was encoded in AVC 1920x1080@20MBS-25MBS Average. Going by all the previews & extras this would probably take about 4-3X dvd's if encoded at the same bit-rates.

Blink, If I stated "standalone BD player for 199" then your crying would have more meaning, I stated that it was PC in the post and detailed out the source. There was no grand plot against HD DVD, just at the IFA07 a lot of BD products are being released, HD DVD crowd had their news flash earlier.

PS edited to reduce comments. ;-)

I said it 2 years ago and I will say it again. In marketing the "name" is everything. HD DVD mean a DVD that is in high-definition. The name "Blue-Ray" just does not connect - it refers to a technology and not an application. To Blow Joe it's confusing, sound unfamiliar. A DVD that has been upgraded is a comfortable concept to the buying public, especially the Wall-Mart crowd where these things are often decided.

MH, I agree, sort of. Originally I thought HD-DVD was really missing out on some easy marketing, because, the thinking went, it was just a new cool twist on DVD whereas BluRay was new and unknown. But now I think that if, IF, the BluRay camp was smart, they'd use the newness of the name as an advantage. You know, like, implying that this isn't just souped up DVD, it's a whole new "format of the future."

At this point, I think either format could make a strong case to the public with their name, but I think BluRay has, possibly, a farther distance it could run.

"In marketing the "name" is everything. HD DVD mean a DVD that is in high-definition. The name "Blue-Ray" just does not connect"

I agree with MH in principle, but not the example - I believe the exact opposite is true. Blu Ray sounds sexy and is remember-able. HD-DVD is another goofy acronym. (I personally don't care who wins, btw). Kids and their parents know that the PS3 "has Blu-Ray" and they buy into that, not caring a whit about HD-DVD. The same goes for "a Mac" vs. "a 486" back in the day.

...........And here is another reason to help HD DVD gain momentum. We (the USA that is) are heading into a big depression where cheaper gives a big advantage.

fwtep is right about the potential to make the BluRay name "a new and exciting technology" but no one is spending the advertising $s to do that. I think they have lost that opportunity because if you stop and ask a stranger what BluRay is, he will likely not know or will say it's just another for of High Definition DVD - see he said HD DVD without even knowing it. The difference as so slight to the consumer its all about image and cost and BluRay put all their money into technology and not marketing.

Well, the HD DVD crowd firmly believes that "HD DVD" is the superior marketing angle. For all customers that believe that probably has bought a player and the remaining is on the line wanting for pricing down. The "HD DVD" name implies better than SD DVD but without big brand names, I think the average customer is not sure its really a good product. Many customers remember the questions over HD TV claims, ranging from 720p to 1080i, then 1080p. I believe that BD is superior but also believe HD DVD can exist in the market too. I think anyone agrees the SD media is not disappearing today, but in a year or two it will fade slowly as less and less new releases are on put DVD.

apit say he thinks Blu Ray is superior (to HD DVD). I'm sure we all agree with that. Technically Blu Ray is way ahead and I wish it was there alone but it has competition that is much cheaper. Beta was better than VHS - remember that?

The Beta/VHS war was fought in an entirely different world and has practically zero relation to this war. I've given plenty of reasons before, but just as a refresher I'll mention one: No one had collections back then; it was all new, so people were hungry. Now it's different, no one's clamoring for anything, while the high def discs are better than NTSC or PAL, they're not as much better as the difference between *nothing* and VHS/Beta.

OK, one more difference: the porn industry was a major player in the video war, but they're sitting out this war.