People complain about the war between Bluray and HD DVD, but as far as I'm concerned, it has really been to our benefit.

For instance, both Bluray and HD DVD have flags which can prevent HD material from being shown in HD over component connections. This is due to the fact that Component connections can't really be copy protected whereas HDMI can. Anyway, no releases in either Bluray or HD DVD have yet taken advantage of this "feature". I'm really glad because I have an older (but extremely expensive) component only HDTV.

Currently my HD DVD player will not uprez my SD DVDs but my PS3 will. This could be because my PS3 firmware is more up to date than that of my HD DVD player though. Either one will play HD discs at full resolution though.

HD DVD doesn't have region codes enabled. I guarantee they would never have been this generous if it wasn't for Bluray. The price of players in both formats is a fraction of what it would be if it wasn't for the competition. I'm sure that both my PS3 and my HD DVD player together cost less than a single player of either format would be currently without the competition.

I'm hoping that the war continues long enough that dual format players become the norm. That way neither format will be able to get to greedy with licensing fees and small time content producers such as many of us will be able to produce content in whichever format suits us best.

I'm pretty sure you can play HD content on a regular SD TV with either format player, but I'm not sure why you would want to.

So let me get this straight: the Sony BDP-300 will play BD-R discs if you install the latest firmware update? That would be very good news for the Bluray format.

Currently my HD DVD player will not uprez my SD DVDs but my PS3 will. This could be because my PS3 firmware is more up to date than that of my HD DVD player though. Either one will play HD discs at full resolution though. I think that the PS3 can only do this on the HDMI port and not the component. I'll have to try it out. Although I have no complaints with 480p, looks fine.

I have only component ins on my PS3, and it definately looks like it is uprezzing SD DVDs over component. On my HD DVD player, if the content includes Macrovision I get a message saying that the uprezzing is disabled over the component outputs, and the content is only showing at 480p. Unprotected discs don't give me this message. Like you said, 480P looks pretty darned good.

Has anyone tried playing back a disc that is Bluray format on regular DVD-R on the BDP-S300 with the new firmware update?

How about this cutie?

I have only DVI input on my HD TV. The BluRay player has only HDMI out.

I bought an HDMI to DVI cable.

The Sony BluRay player refused to play commercial BluRay movies. No overlays. On screen buttons not there. Very strange.

I had hooked the BluRay to the TV via both the YRB and DVI inputs so I could compare quality. (By the way, even my wife could tell the difference between the digital DVI input and the analog YRB signal. The HDMI signal is crisper and deeper. But I digress.)

I rebooted the player (which takes about three minutes--the thing is the slowest to come on of any piece of video gear I've ever dealt with!) and reset everything. No joy. Thinking there was something wrong with the BluRay player or the disk, I was about to pop a gasket.

Then I reached behind the player, unplugged the HDMI (leaving the YRB still plugged in) and turned on the player. It came up fine.

Here's the cute part: if, after booting to the BD movie hooked via component YRB, then plug in the HDMI and change inputs on the TV, the player will continue to play the disk without limitation.

I believe it has something to do with copy protection. If the HDMI output of the player does not see an authorized HDMI input on the TV, it won't play.

This workaround never failed. I could always fake the player out and get the player to output digital to my DVI input.

Sounds like an HDCP handshake problem.

Pretty interesting!

I don't have the Sony player. I have the Toshiba A1 and I run a HDMI to DVI... and it works fine on both commercial disks as well as home burned.

blink,

This thread is about Sony BD player.
Why do you have to post all this crap about your HD DVD and Toshiba in every thread about Blu-ray?

You are definitely an HD DVD troll like those on AVS forum.

According to the Sony site, they are only upgrading firmware for the BDP-S1, not the BDP-300 or BDP-301.

We, of course, have the BDP-300, which still will not be able to play BD-R or BD-RW media.

http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/model-home.pl?mdl=BDPS300&LOC=3

Sidecar,

If you go to the BDP-S300 page you gave, then click on What types of media or discs are compatible with the Blu-ray disc® player?

The table there says that it can play already BD-R and BD-RE discs, although in BDMV format only after firmware update, with a link for this update provided below the table.

Is this not sufficient?

I had hooked the BluRay to the TV via both the YRB and DVI inputs so I could compare quality. (By the way, even my wife could tell the difference between the digital DVI input and the analog YRB signal. The HDMI signal is crisper and deeper. But I digress.) I think if you had BOTH the component & the dvi connected at the sametime this may happen.
I playback Blu-Ray Disc's on a Dvi port (hdmi to dvi connector) and they playback from my BD disk player.

Yes, when I first saw the Sony take 3 minutes to boot I thought of my first 8088 processor, or maybe that was 5 minutes.....

"blink,

This thread is about Sony BD player.
Why do you have to post all this crap about your HD DVD and Toshiba in every thread about Blu-ray?

You are definitely an HD DVD troll like those on AVS forum."
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Actually there is a reference to HD DVD above previous to my statement.... yet it is quite interesting how you single me out. Don't worry... I don't take it personally.... I know your angry at me.... the question is why. I have done nothing more than state what HD DVD can do.... both in this thread, and in the other ones.

As for the Sony BD player playing BD-r.... if it is in fact true then it most certainly is a step in the right direction anyway.

If someone gave me a Sony Blu-Ray Burner & the software to create a BDMV (navigable disk, menu's,chapters etc) I doubt that I would even burn my own home videos to blu-ray because the Blu-Ray Media itself is to expensive. At $20.00 a pop per disk for 2 hours of hd-video sure is expensive, plus I can't share it with anyone at this time due to the fact that most persons don't have hd capability anyway. Even at 1/4 the present cost ($5.00 a BD-R disk) would still be expensive to me.
I just burnt another AVCHD which gave me an hour of 1440@14MBS w/Dolby 5.1 Audio to a DL-DVD. Plays great in my Sony Blu-Ray player. So the dl-dvd cost me about a $1.00 I think. The video converted from hd-mpeg@25MBS to AVCHD@14MBS is very good (single pass). Menu's,chaptering & everything. I like this format, can change some playback options on the fly while playing, it's nice.
I feel this will be the format for dvd movie disks played in a BD player that supports the avchd format.

The directory BDMV structure appears to be written to these disks is the same as a avchd camcorders.
Something else I'm beginning to like is at any time in the future I can extract or import these h264 videos back into the computer, similar to importing a dvd, or I can just copy the videos directly from the STREAMS folder. It's very similar to making dvd's.

What software did you use to burn the AVCHD?
JJK