Some of you may have heard this neat little technology called HD DVD that has just launched in the US. We’ve left it to simmer for a few days and have had a look over a few reviews to give you a brief summary of the first impressions.
First of it all it seems like Toshiba has delivered on its promises as the HD-A1 produces some amazing picture and sound quality. Colours are rich, images are impressively deep and detailed – just as you have been led to expect. The new menu system, which doesn’t require the movie to stop playing as current DVDs do, is supposed to be pretty novel too.
Now on to the gripes. The HD-A1 is… well, huge. Its PC-like architecture leaves it towering over your ordinary DVD player like a kind of digital ogre. But, seeing as you aren’t going to be carrying it around the place very often, that probably isn’t a big deal.
More worrying is the news that it takes about 30 seconds (some reports say even more) to boot up. It’s a real shame that we’re still going to left waiting around for the discs to load up. Those of us hoping for slick, instant results are going to be disappointed. The delay is apparently caused by the player faffing about with some anti-piracy checks.
Read more here:
When will we get HD DVD players in the UK?
Toshiba has confirmed that it is bringing the HD DVD player here soon, and well before any Blu-ray chaps get a look in, no precise date has been set yet.
Can I urge people to boycott buying this or any other HD/BD drive and instead register your disgust with the manufacturers at their so-called anti-piracy measures. Only by steering clear of these products will the industry (hopefully) have a major re-think and allow us law-abiding consumers to use the technology in the manner we want (i.e. make backup copies for personal use, transfer contect to portable devices, etc.)
I agree that this whole anti-piracy thing is becoming a joke. Basically these measures now take the assumption that every consumer is a would-be pirate, not someone who wants to enjoy quick and easy entertainment. As someone pointed out to me the other day, when you watch pirated content you don't have to watch a) trailers b) anti-piracy warnings c) crappy DVD loading screens - you just double click and, holy-crap, it's there! If the big companies could make their systems as convenient as that then surely people would choose to pay for the better quality retail copies rather than be strong-armed into it.
I hear where your coming from regarding the DRM. I don't think that a boycot will make much difference. What would be more effective is to hassle your MP. What we need is proper fair usage laws that allow you to do whatever you want the content you have purchased. If it were Law then there would be a natural standard that all CE companies & Music/Movie companies would have to adhere to.
A friend and I dismantled an HD-A1 in order to find out what made it tick, and were intrigued to learn that inside is a USB flash drive on a daughter card:
http://geekswithblogs.net/lorint/archive/2006/04/21/75795.aspx
6 minute video of the experience available from the site.