Engadget HD Podcast 074 - 02.27.2008
By Trent Wolbe 
posted Feb 27th 2008 11:00AM
posted Feb 27th 2008 11:00AM
So Toshiba called it quits, and the format war will end, but it as long as there are movies being released and everyone isn't behind Blu-ray, there will be plenty left to talk about. So this week we get started with the aftermath, and we start up by talking up the new Sony Blu-ray players and why we can't wait to try 'em out. Next up, we talk about the after affects of Toshiba's announcement and what questions are left unanswered. Finally we morn over the 42-inch Kuro, but understand that many CE companies are merging products, which doesn't mean the products will be identical. Finally, we once again discuss the DTV transition and wonder how many people know what's going on.Get the podcast
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Hosts: Ben Drawbaugh and Steve Kim
Producer: Trent Wolbe
01:08 - Comments from Engadget HD Podcast 073 - 02.20.2008
11:00 - Sony announces BDP-S350, BDP-S550: first new Blu-ray players since the fall of HD DVD
16:37 - HD DVD players become DVD upscalers in format war fallout
18:31 - Analyst says consumers didn't end format war
21:39 - Two years of battle between HD DVD and Blu-ray: a retrospective
27:02 - Paramount officially Blu-ray (again)
27:11 - Nearly half of Paramount's Blu-ray titles are in stock at Amazon again
28:40 - Universal's HD DVD release slate "currently in flux"
30:31 - Warner still releasing HD DVDs until May 31st
34:39 - Warner's $400 mil payoff rumor rides again
39:18 - Pioneer to stop making 42-inch plasmas
43:35 - Yamaha beefs up AV receiver line with five newcomers
46:56 - Sharp and Sony tie the knot on LCD HDTV production
50:53 - Poll: Have you seen a DTV transition commercial?
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The MP3 link is t3h broken.
Thanks Venk, everything should be fixed now.
Hey I work at Best Buy and I've been wondering the same thing about the pioneers. The 42" is indeed a closeout but I think there was just a shortage on the 5080s. I have one so I sell the shit out of them and when we were running out of stock it was killing me. The last two truck have had 5 on them. Maybe there is hope, or I'm just wishful thinking but I think they will be sticking around for just a little longer.
Ben,
Warner didn't switch because the consumer chose Blu-ray over HDDVD, Warner switched because the consumer chose "none of the above." Warner needed to kill one or the other, HD-DVD was the easier format to kill.
Ben, which format did your your mother-in-law choose to support?....exactly. 98% of the rest of the world still doesn't give a flip, or even know about our nerdy little HDM. A half a billion talks, BS walks. When a player costs as much as a car payment, the "people" didn't choose it. Great show, keep it up.
PF
It was just a bad joke... You know when chicks get dumped and/or depressed they gorge on ice cream and start wearing sweat pants. Like that scene in the nutty professor.
Oh and Pana is something some family members call me, apparently it meant gang leader, but when I looked it up I only found the definion, "slang for friend." I never even noticed that it could mean Panasonic.
LOL, when he didn't understand what that meant, it popped into my head that Ben's a nerd that's never had a girlfried LOL!
LOL, when he didn't understand what that meant, it popped into my head that Ben's a nerd that's never had a girlfried LOL!
@Prey521
Well that's not very nice...but I it is a pretty old cliche/joke...
I guess he just never had to worry about it with his wife, so congratulations Ben.
darn I though I changed my s/n to just my real name...
You guys don't make editing our comments and profiles vey easy. I know...damn IT...
:)
It was just a bad joke... You know when chicks get dumped and/or depressed they gorge on ice cream and start wearing sweat pants. Like that scene in the nutty professor.
Oh and Pana is something some family members call me, apparently it meant gang leader, but when I looked it up I only found the definion, "slang for friend." I never even noticed that it could mean Panasonic.
Pana is a spanish slang term for friend.
Thanks for the podcast! I like to listen to it with my favourite music playing in the background.
You know, listening to you guys talking about players, audio equipment, and plasmas....I think all these companies should talke a cue from Apple and just have one name for a product, and have a "consumer" version and a "pro" version. And when they update the hardware just replace the old one.
'Cause all this ahjdk89-78 stuff most of time confuses the hell out of me. I feel like I'm in calculus class. Don't you guys think that consumers will be more likely to buy something if they can easily differentiate products. I don't know just throwing it out there.
Word on AVS is that all Pioneer's 768p displays are no longer in production. A few of the dealers claim there is still a reasonable amount of Elite 768p displays in the wild, but the stock of standard Pioneer 768p models is dry. It looks like Pioneer senses that they can no longer sell 768p plasmas at the same price Panasonic sells their 1080p models.
Love the podcast guys.
We're treated to more arguing/debate! Wii versus ps3 as a successful launch... consumers versus companies ending war...
Do you know the secret? Ben asks "so steve... what do YOU think?" before he gives his own opinion, so that steve doesn't have anything to agree to. ;)
You mentioned RS-232 in the podcast, but after a search of this site, there isn't a whole lot of info on it. From what I understand it makes your receiver compatible with home automation software. What else is compatible with this? Do you need to have a huge multi-room control everything uber-expensive rack system to even use it? Are universal remote systems easier to use if your components have it?
RS-232 is real old, and all you need to use it is a computer with an RS-232 port.
I have a multi-video system all racked mounted and I control as much as I can with RS-232 including; My 60-inch plasma, 32-inch Sharp LCD, Insteon Lights, Elk Alarm system and a KeyDigital Matrix switch.
What I want to replace because the IR (I have a IR transmitter for my PC) is troublesome my Pioneer Elite AV/R, TiVo Series3 and a BD-P1000.
Ben 2 points: 1) Consumers didn't choose the winner of the format war, the studios did by lining up on either side of the aisle. They chose based on payouts, drm (including region coding), and whatever factors they looked at. The fact of the matter is that consumers bought more blu because there were better movies available almost universally. If there had been some hot new movies that Paramount or Universal had besides Transformers and Shrek, HD-DVD would have won.
2) There are 3 different kinds of manufactureres when it comes to pricing. Some give you an MSRP and let a retailer decide how and at what price to sell it. There are manufacturers that give you MAP (Minimum Advertised Price) pricing which is the manufacturer telling retailers that they can sell it for what they want but the cheapest they can advertise an item at is X price. Then there are MAP manufacturers that are even more hands on and tell you that not only can you only advertise it at this price, but you can't waiver from that price on in-store non-advertised pricing by X amount. Sony is a Type 2/Type 1 manufacturer. On most items they set the minimum allowed advertised price. On a lot of items they simply don't care, so it depends. Canon is another example of a type 2 maker. Apple and Pioneer would be a Type 3. They tell retailers for instance that they have to sell the Ipod Nanos for 199.99 but usually give them a $2-5 leeway to advertise the item as sale items. Of course with all of these agreements if the item goes into a discontinued status then all rules are set aside for the most part and the retailer is allowed to get rid of it's old inventory any way it sees fit.
I'm not disagreeing with you but the titles that where on both formats, from what I recall, sold better on Blu-ray.
But I do agree that maybe that wasn't the biggest deciding factor for the studios when they decided to support Blu-ray, since overall the sales where pretty anemic.
For those that also chose HD-DVD:
http://www.slate.com/id/2185365/pagenum/all/#page_start