I dont know why you guys even comment on high end gear when it is clearly something you dont understand. Its very high priced for sure, but saying its overpriced means nothing if you havent used the product. The best of the best always costs alot of money, maybe this is overpriced and isnt very good, I havent played with it. But I can say that the Marantz Reference SACD player I heard was one of the nicest cd players I have ever heard. Sure way more money then I could afford, but I could certainly here a difference and if I had lots of money I would have no problem buying one. Just because we cant afford one doesnt mean we need to hate on these guys.

With all the debate, I thought I would pitch in. It doesnt really matter what the resolution is, as long as it looks good. I have seen lower res games look better than higher res games. Sure in a perfect world it would be max resolution and along with everything else that goes into making a game look and play good. But I was fine with how both Halo 3 and COD4 looked on my box, no maybe not as good as some games on my pc, but my video card is worth more then my box. Given the cost of consoles, these games look great, and I am sure they will both play great.

Unless you have alot of bright light in the room, forget LCD. Plasma is simply better technology for viewing angles, black level, colour accuracy, motion, etc. Get a Panny 800 or 850 series set and forget the Sony, the Panny will give you a much better picture and they have better customer service. Also if you want to spend big bucks get a Pioneer Elite Kuro.

I love the uneducated comments here, guys who think they know something about audio. Most LPCM Blu Rays are at much lower resolution than a SACD, but thats not what is important, it plays CDs guys, many audiophiles will have thousands of dollars in CDs, and this Marantz system will destroy many system for sound. You guys are probably the type who think that a $5000 HT system is hi-fi, complete joke, I would rather have a stereo system where you get quality sound rather than quantiy of speakers.

How many times are we going to see this put up, we get it, the format is dead, lets move on. So whats new on the Blu Ray horizon, will we see players stop going down in price (for the moment anyways) letting some manufactures make some money, will the price of the media start dropping or will they continue to be overpriced, will Blu Ray kill DVD or will we have a split market (bad for us, no drop in prices if this happens). Can movie downloads kill the HD market, people dont seem to mind losing quality for the easy access of downloading. Come on editors I know this is the slow season but we need some new topics, if you want some credibility stop beating the dead horse.

I would expect Toshiba to start doing combo players, I dont know if they will drop HDDVD completely, this way they stay in the good books of many people who bought an HDDVD player and their movies.

the watch dog sub is also very nice, Wilson makes the best speakers on the planet in my opinion, the Maxx 2 were the best sounding speakers I have heard, they were also hooked up to the levinson 51 and 33 amps but hey they sure did sound nice. You do get much better value out of the paradigm signature stuff for home theater. But you could also look at Wilson Sophia's they hold their own. Also Sonus Faber Cremona stuff is really nice, I got to hear this stuff hooked up to some Classe gear, very nice.

Yeah the Warner titles give the best indication of what format people want, hard to say what will happen, though Warner always denies reports, you can bet both camps are probably throwing the bank at them, they may stick around with both long enough to take the potter sales and leave after that. Warner will most certainly make the most out of the position they are in, whether it be keeping both or switching to one. I am more interested to see the sales of the players over the month, movie sales only tell us what is happening now, but player sales give a good indication of the future sales.
Cheers

Still over priced in my opinion, you still need a 360, and HDVD players have already sold for less before, this thing should be like $79 not more then 99$ and MS should have a great combo deal for those who want the player at the same time of purchase as a PS3, the PS3 is still the better deal. Dont get me wrong I support the red camp over the blu, look at my previous posts. But this drive should be alot cheaper. The only problem, the PS3 has been a diaster in terms of a gaming system and MS has no reasion to lower its prices, unfortunate for us movie watchers.

Yeah both versions of 300 or identical in quality, same video, and DDTrueHD, DTSHD MA, and PCM (it just takes up more room and in general it is more likely your reciever can decode it) all have the same quality, you cant get better than lossless so if its lossless its as good as it gets period, no matter the format. Blu Ray probably took it because it sold more not because the disc itself was better or those reviewers dont know what their doing. I have the BD version myself, got it as a bday gift but would of rathered the HDDVD combo so I could play it anywhere in the house. The whole quality debate is dead, both offer same quality period, BD has more capacity so more can be put on the disc, but if 51GB HDDVD become reality then we can call it a tie as 1GB doesnt really make a difference. I am most excited about the HD/SD on a single side disc, 30GB is enough room for great quality minus extras for any movie (look at kong it was a pretty long movie, LOTR extended maybe the only exception, but one movie shouldnt be the deciding factor of the format war, plus just put it on a 51GB disc and you get the same feature as BD), put extras on a second disc, or sell it to me cheaper and forget the extras completely. I just dont see why more people arent more happy about the SD/HD one sided disc, think of all the players people wont have to upgrade, such as in the vehicle, portable players, laptops, kids bedroom, that sort of format gives a future to something that will surpass DVD, at the moment while I see red or blue winning the HD war, neither is close to taking the throne from DVD. There just not enough people at the moment who see any value in replcing their DVD collections.