Hmmm very interesting & very very nice prices.

$199 & $249 are approx £102 & £137 at todays rates.

Hmmmmmm, I wonder if they have the sense to be just about the first to wise up & go for a UK/EU price in line with the US level, they'd sell by the boatload easily.

If these players can handle all the SD, DivX, XviD & high def codecs originally claimed they will make a very useful and versitile replacement for the regular SD DVD player & a very handy stop-gap until the other high def players get down off the silly prices and on to a sensible level (and go dual format).....which is likely to be a year or two off, if not more, here in the UK.

Let's face it it's going to be many years until high def (HD-DVD or Blu-ray) overtakes 'ordinary' SD DVD sales.

All these guys need to do now is let us know about the PC burners & media for the full functionality.

At last - now I can watch Bollywood films in HD without paying a premium.

Looks like someone finally got it right. I'm in.

Originally posted by hughjars:

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Let's face it it's going to be many years until high def (HD-DVD or Blu-ray) overtakes 'ordinary' SD DVD sales.

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As a reply to this I'm quoting some words of wisdom from avsforums:

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DVDs are cheap and lossy, but they look fine on Joe Six Pack's Standard definition Sylvania DVD combo TV that he bought at Drug Emporium.

Content over quality. I mean, so many American's not only eat at McDonald's everyday...they love it! Let's go 5 steps back and make MP3 an exciting technology!!

I will never buy another DVD unless it is something like a pirate of an import rare master of a 1930s independent film that will never make it to HD in the next 8 years. You get all that?

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As a reply to this I'm quoting some words of wisdom from avsforums

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- Well ok, but you're really missing the point here.

I'm certainly not saying 'ordinary SD DVD' looks like high def DVD.

But genuine high quality high def DVD encoded to a regular SD DVD media is perfectly possible & practical (esp looking at the bitrate they're talking about - 20mbit/sec?).

With just this one player hooked up to my HD TV I can play all my existing HD DVD downloads
(which btw look great on my HD TV) right now
and I can continue to enjoy all the HD goodness I can find
(including the growing numbers of those very excellent and very high quality DVD5 & DVD9 HD-DVD & Blu-ray rips out there).

I can also continue to play all my existing SD DVDs.

I already have 'regular' HD-DVD via the inexpensive XBox 360 HD-DVD add-on so I'm very happy.

That's my take on this and as far as I'm concerned that'll do me for now.

If you want to fantasize that there's a whole heap of "quality" you'd be missing out on then go ahead.

In fact go ahead so much and spend several hundred on the minuscule difference you imagine there is in this if it makes you happy.

I've seen retail Blu-ray & HD-DVD and I've seen rips of both on DVD5 & DVD9.
There's nothing in it - if the encoder knows what they're doing.

Frankly I think you're only kidding yourself if your argument is that there's a huge difference.

(Good grief, wake up.
There are enough 'regular' people who wonder what all the fuss is between high def & standard def DVD as it is never mind trying to make a mountain out of the tiny differences between a good rip from a good quality source and the source itself)

Where's the content for HD VMD? All I can see on their website are Bollywood films, Chinese films and curiously "Western films - for the Chinese Market." Will any of the major studios jump on this?

@error5: You do know that you're a snob right? ;) LOL! Just kidding buddy. I know where you're coming from and I know you appreciate "the better things in life."

Originally posted by eatsushi:

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Where's the content for HD VMD?

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- There's a a ton of HD content out there right now.

In any case it might just work out the way DivX on SD DVD did.
No 'official studio content' actually needed, people can and will just like with Divx/Xvid, quite happily, download everything they need.

A real 'ground up' demand for something 'we' can use without having to necessrily worry about studios etc.
This makes for a nice solution.

.....but if this takes off watch them come running.

sound interesting I actually think HD-DVD and this can co exist. Nice price point.

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With just this one player hooked up to my HD TV I can play all my existing HD DVD downloads

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I just store all my HD content in external drives. Per gigabyte costs are so low right now and dropping constantly. I have more than a terabyte of downloaded and recorded HD content available at the click of a mouse. There's no need to encode or burn anything and I get smooth 720p or 1080i playback and 5.1 DD sound from an "older" 3.0 GHz P4 with an ATI 9700Pro and SB Audigy. Now with AnyDVD HD even BluRays and HD-DVD's are played back w/o a hitch even with a non HDCP compliant video card. If your PC has WinXP MCE then you can stream HD content directly to your 360.

I guess you could go the HD VMD route but I don't see the players having any streaming capabilities. If your HD content will come from downloads you will still have to burn them to discs and in some cases encode them. The PC solution is pretty straightforward - just download (or record) then playback.

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I just store all my HD content in external drives.....

.....The PC solution is pretty straightforward - just download (or record) then playback.

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- Generally I agree, but burning to DVD is a nice straight-forward and safe solution (with the amount of film I have now a dying or dead HDD, especially a big one, would break my heart!)......plus the portability is nice and sometimes very useful, it just makes for an easier life generally, I like the tangible disc as storage.

I don't have the XBox 360 (but the new black media version - if it's as described - has me feeling very tempted).

Besides the DVD player for SD DVD I usually rely on my PC for everything HD and stream to my TV via a cable (which my wife hates).

So an all-in-one DVD player solution would suit me fine and if the prices are really going to be this low with this kit and the HD capability is there it would just mean selling off my existing player & slotting in one of these in it's place.
Really, I'd be very happy with that for now.