Blu-Ray and HD-DVD round-up from IFA
By Kevin C. Tofel 
posted Sep 16th 2005 6:24PM
posted Sep 16th 2005 6:24PM
For some reason, we couldn't get out of the country without a passport and attend IFA Berlin. Go figure! Luckily, there are plenty of good sources that got to attend. Since all is quiet in "The High Def DVD War" this week, we thought we would give you a round-up of who's got what goods coming for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD.We'll start with Sony's player in the pic above, since we've been cuttin' them down for losing so much television market share lately and work through the five manufacturers that demonstrated their high-def DVD players and recorders.
Sony showed off their Blu-Ray player, but didn't provide any details on a release date. Their prototype player has this funky, football shape to it, which is interesting from a design standpoint. Sony also demonstrated that they have various media formats: BD-ROM, BD-R and BD-RE.
Hitachi has a Blu-Ray player as well and it's likely that this general design will appear on the market. Again, no word on when that may be. This picture of their combo Blu-Ray and Hard Drive recorder shows a fairly large device. I have to wonder why is this so big? It's sleek and reflective, which is always good from an "ooh" and "aaah" perspective.Yamaha is next up with their Blu-Ray \ DVD player and recorder combo. Not much on the details here and not even any pictures of the output, which we're sure, is stunning.
On the HD-DVD side of the house, Toshiba displayed their player which appears to be delayed in the United States, which we expected. The backside of the Tosh shows all of the usual suspects in terms of input and output jacks, although I'm surprised to see component and S-Video outputs. Won't an HDCP connection be required for playback?
Rounding out the exhibits was NEC with their computer based HD-DVD drive, the HR-1100. We should see this unit available here in early 2006, but you'll likely need some good horsepower under the hood to decode and watch HD-DVDs on your PC.All in all, this is an exciting, but early time, for this technology. DVDs were great when they arrived, but my expectation is that high-def DVDs will gain market adaptation quicker than any media format prior. HDTV sales are picking up steam and that's what folks will need for these units when they arrive. With more HD sets in the homes, people just won't want to view those 480p DVDs for long.
For more information and photos, stop over at Blu-Ray.com.
HDCP only affects connections that can deliver HD signal. When the TV set does not support it the signal is scaled down to DVD quality.
Then again, you talked about component too and the only thing that comes to mind is the fact that practically, only a few HD players will sport analog outputs of any kind and if so, only at the beginning of their respective format's life cycle. If that is indeed true and it's me talking instead of booze, I think it won't really matter if there's one or two analog outputs on an HD player that should otherwise natively support HDCP.
Why buy one of these players if you don't have an HDTV or have one that doesn't support an HDCP connection? I wouldn't spend big bucks on a machine that's going to downconvert everything to standard DVD, I'd just buy a DVD player! ;)