Michael Dolan Dot Com

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

Buying an HD video player? Looks like Sony is the best bet…

I recently acquired a Samsung 50″ Plasma which has full 1080p resolution and I must admit… I’ll never go back to SD television. Even for what little I watch, the picture is just unbelievable. Now, keep in mind my prior TV was a 25″ Sharp CRT from back when I was in college… Yeah, I was long overdue for an upgrade. However, I chose to go with the 1080p, top spec sheet model for a number of reasons, but the top being it’s ‘near futureproof’ (famous last words, right?). Well, as far as resolutions go, 1080p should be around for a while and honestly, I can imagine a TV with a higher resolution as it looks amazing right now. I have a 1080i HDTV camcorder that I acquired last year and an Xbox 360 which does native 1080p and DVD upscaling. You could say within the last 12 months, I’ve gone from home media antique museum to MoMa.

However, I have two pieces of my setup that are still a generation behind. First, there’s the home theater. I have a cheaper setup that my wife bought me years ago and it serves its purpose and until the HDMI systems come down in price, there’s not much to gain from an upgrade. The other piece is the whole High Def video player. The HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray battle has been raging on and it now appears that Blu-Ray will win out (I *think* this is the better of the two, but it’s hard to tell – Microsoft vs Sony is like a computer virus vs a rootkit – which is less evil?).

Putting the standards battle aside, I’ve been waiting on the sidelines waiting for the future proof answer for high def video. The first Blu-Ray player I noticed on the market at sub-$1,000 was the PS3. It still is a competitively priced Blu-Ray player today (some newer models are ~$300). And guess what happens to all those who ran out and bought a Blu-Ray player for $1,000+, or when they dropped to $800 or when they hit $500 and then ~$300… they’re already antiquated: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080118-new-nlu-ray-2-0-spec-makes-ps3-the-most-future-proof-player.html

Who loses out in these standards wars? The consumer who’s willing to pay too much. But, I guess if you have $1,000 for a high end DVD player what does it matter anyway… just buy another.

So I guess I’m waiting again this time for a Blu-Ray v2.0 system (or PS3).  It’s quite a shame that HDTV has come along so poorly for consumers. First it was 720i, then 1080i and then 1080p was the end game. Then you need to upgrade your cable, upgrade your DVR, upgrade your camcorder, upgrade your video player, upgrade your home theater system… if you bought any of those components at 720/1080i, upgrade again to 1080p. I have to wonder if HDTV will ever get to being “simple” and easy for consumers? I’m fairly knowledgeable, I can’t imagine some of my less than technically inclined friends of family buying all the right components in a future proof progression – it’s been hard for me I’ll admit… good luck to anyone looking to make a future-proof HDTV decision.