For many months now, analysts have been saying that HD DVD will get a big boost when Chinese manufacturers unleash a $199 or cheaper HD DVD player. There were rumblings that Wal-Mart was seeking out just such a unit, but those rumours were quickly squelched, and then we had only silence on this matter.
Venturer Electronics of Canada comes through to herald the long-awaited moment by announcing the $199 (or lower) SHD7000 HD DVD player for North America. It essentially sounds like Toshiba’s base HD-A2 player, and features all the mandatory HD DVD specs such as ethernet, internal storage, Dolby True HD, etc. Like the HD-A2, this puppy only does 1080i, but that doesn’t matter one iota to the tons of people with 720p and 1080i HDTV sets, and is to be expected in a low-end unit.
I’m sure there will be lots more to say about this machine, and this important day in the week ahead. For now, go straight to the company’s site and read for yourself: Venturer Electronics
UPDATE: (10/1) The Venturer is now available at Target online, at a list price of $249.99.
August 28th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
I’m sure blu ray could offer cheaper players too if they didn’t want to release full HD quality. Once again, something that is “cheaper” generally does not offer the same quality of a more expensive player, i.e all of hd compared to blu ray. As the saying goes…”you get what you pay for”
August 28th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
Do you remember when DVD players used to cost $300? And now you can pick up name-brand models for around $50. At some point, the technology ends up all fitting onto a few chips, and the basic features are easily delivered by even the most inexpensive models.
The usual things that get skimped on are things like lack of a decent remote, cables, proper manual, etc. But the basic device ends up doing its job reasonably well. We’ll see what this SHD7000 ends up being like soon enough.
August 28th, 2007 at 8:06 pm
Yes, I do remember when DVD players were that expensive, and like all technology, it comes down after time. When I think about the whole High Def world that we’re going to, or that some are already in, lower price is but a small reason in choice of product. I think most people are going for quality, they’ve already spent thousands to get a high def picture and sound, what’s a hundred dollars more if it means better quality to come for years? While it’s true I only follow hd dvd on this site, and occasionally other links I find on blu ray sites to see where the sales trend is at, I haven’t heard of hd dvd making movies with fully uncompressed audio, and I’ve heard it’s because the 30 GB is insufficient. Pravin, since you appear to be pretty knowledgeable on the whole subject, I was wondering if you could shed some light.
August 29th, 2007 at 1:49 am
What you’re alluding to is that HD DVD and Blu-ray support the exact same audio formats, but because Blu-ray discs can hold more data, it’s more likely that the Blu-ray version of a movie will come with multiple audio tracks to pick from.
Since HD DVD has about 1/3 less maximum disc capacity (30 vs 50 GB), a movie will tend to come in only two audio formats, instead of 63 or 81 of them.
PCM (uncompressed audio) is definitely going to be the best audio, but it doesn’t leave lossless Dolby True HD in the dust. Take a look at this audio review at HighDefDigest.com where we find out that Warner attempted parity on The Departed by giving Blu-ray a PCM track vs. Dolby True HD on HD DVD. Did it matter much? Read for yourself: http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/departed.html#Section4. Here’s a link to their testing gear http://www.highdefdigest.com/gear.html. They had a similar experience with 300 which had even better sound design.
PCM is awesome. It’s undisputedly the best. But it has only appeared on a few movies from Warner, and none from Paramount. It’s primarily been used on titles from Sony, Disney and less than half of Lionsgate movies. The rest (which is the vast majority) have all used compressed audio, often times on par with DVD. See for yourself here in this list sorted by audio format: http://www.blu-raystats.com. While you’re there, you’ll even see that 61% of Blu-ray movies are on BD25 discs (whereas most HD DVD are on 30GB discs).
Even though the space is there, it’s not even being used on the majority of discs. If it’s not going to be used, or is not needed, then what happened to the supposed advantage?
August 29th, 2007 at 6:19 am
I think the whole point is to get the cheaper player to market. Get the customer using your particular hardware and sooner or later they will upgrade. 1080p is meaningless to people who have HDTVS with a max resolution of 1080i. Why not target those people with a cheaper model? Most people can’t distinguish the difference between the two resolutions unless they are right on top of their TV anyway. Remember these companies are not ultimately targeting enthusiasts. They are going after the mass market. The average person wants it good but also as cheaply as possible. Enthusiasts (us) are not going to turn the market. That will be done by the mass market customer as it always is.
August 29th, 2007 at 11:29 am
I was meaning DTS-HD Master Audio. A lossless codec for blu ray. http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=440
August 30th, 2007 at 12:53 am
The term “lossless” is just a way to draw attention away from the fact that it’s a compression algorithm. Since it’s a compression method, HD DVD would fare pretty well since the soundtrack is likely to need less space than PCM would have. I was looking around on the German Amazon site to find examples of discs that are supposed to feature DTS-HD, because I had seen something about this on the AVS forum a few weeks ago, but I didn’t have enough time to do a thorough search and dig up a title.
As nice as DTS-HD may be, the bigger deal will be for studios to actually use this on a disc. As my earlier study of Blu-ray titles shows, studios have barely jumped at the opportunity to provide Dolby True HD, much less PCM on Blu-ray.