There has been plenty of discussion, debate, arm-waving, confusion, and FUD thrown around since the HD-DVD/Blu-ray format war really got going less than two years ago, so much so that I rarely give much of it a second glance these days. This blog post by Fred Manteghian caught my attention moreso than most, though (and only partially for the well-used Monty Python reference). It touches on the principle reason that I haven't felt compelled to seriously shop for a Blu-ray player yet (even though I think the format still has the potential to win the format war, assuming the wayr ever has a winner): lack of hardware support for all of the planned format features. I'd really like to start seeing profile 2.0 (or at least profile 1.1) players crop up before I spend money on a Blu-ray player. Fred also puts what I think is a pretty realistic spin on the most recent group to "pick the winner" (specifically the Home Theater Specialists of America's choice of Blu-ray).

This business of the Toshiba HD-A2 is precisely why I lept in. I paid $230 for it. I would never have taken a side in this oft-swaying war. I don't believe in resolution differences between the two formats. the way I see it, if HD-DVD loses, I have a good upconverting DVD player and a snazzy looking piece of equipment that I didn't mortgage the house for.

Thanks for posting gonk.

Like many of us, I've been sitting on the fence seeing how the format war will play out and how much lower the players will go. As Fred pointed out, if Blu Ray players do not come down soon, I think they may start losing any edge they had nudging out HD DVD.

But let's say they do come down by the holidays and you can pick up a Blu Ray player for $250 or less. Would you do it?

At this point, I probably would NOT, as the movies themselves are still VERY expensive compared to standard DVDs and the number of titles is pretty limited.

So from my perspective, the cost of the player is only part of the decision making process. Until I can get more high-def movie choices at reasonable prices, I'm comfortable with my Oppo.

If a Blu-ray player shows up at near the $300 to $400 mark, is at least profile 1.1 (although at this point I'll probably try to hold out for profile 2.0), and supports bitstream output of the new HD formats, I might pick one up. So far, the only players I've read about that I might want cost more than I want to spend, and the BD profiles make me a bit hesitant.

I've been very slow to buy HD-DVD's (mostly just NetFlix), and would likely not be much different with Blu-ray if I had a player - at least in the short term.

Gonk -- There also is an article at UltimateAV Mag by Shane Buettner that discusses the failure of Blu-Ray manufacturers to make devices that fully comply with BR interactivity specs (both 1.1 and 2.0):

http://www.ultimateavmag.com/features/907bdint/

I'd love to get high-def DVD player, but until the format war dies down and someone makes a machine that has full interactivity (or the ability to achieve it through a firmware upgrade) and decoding for lossless HD sound formats through analog outputs (so it can hook into the 990), and does it all at a reasonable price, I'm happy with my Oppo 981.

Yeah, I saw that one. Manufacturers are pushing to get the next generation of Blu-ray players into production before the profile 1.1 deadline. I wonder if we'll see a similar wave of new players before the inevitable profile 2.0 deadline...

Speaking of interesting commentaries, here's one that someone e-mailed to me this morning: Junk in a box . It's a commentary on stability and reliability (or the lack thereof) in modern electronics, focusing in the end on HDMI's version stew in particular.

Stability and "consumer beta" situations certainly have become issues to a degree that they never were before, partly because of companies sometimes pushing products out the door too soon and partly because of the level of complexity and sophistication in modern technology. I don't know that I'd give bad printer drivers much leniency on the latter point unless you toss a wild card into the mix like a new operating system (*cough* Vista *cough*), but it does hold true for much of the gear winding up in our equipment racks these days. And of course HDMI and the features that are arriving alongside it today are only magnifying that complexity challenge...

I have a hard time deciding whether I'm more bothered by products that don't work right, standards and formats that are put into the marketplace prematurely, or one that Guttenberg didn't mention: consumer education. That's one that the CE industry has largely ignored while rolling out one new technological marvel after another (DVD, Dolby Digital and DTS, HDTV, and any other acronym you can think of). We have consumers walking into stores like Best Buy and getting their only education on modern home theater equipment (and in many cases computers and car audio as well) from employees who rarely have the training to even know the right answers in the first place, much less present it to consumers effectively. Tech support (which never got enough attention to begin with from many companies) gets outsourced or otherwise budget-limited, and while training and good call center scripts can cover some things (assuming that good training and scripts are provided) there are still some egregious sins committed. Case in point: I got an e-mail from a guy recently because Samsung tech support told him that the reason his HDMI v1.3 Samsung DVD player wouldn't send video to his HDMI v1.2 Samsung HDTV was because he had a v1.3 cable instead of a v1.2 cable! And all the while, many consumers (who often deserve some of the blame) wave their hands and say "I'm not good at this technology stuff, just give me the simple answer." While it shouldn't be necessary to learn enough to start designing speaker crossover networks or bench-test amplifiers, there needs to be a willingness to at least seek out a minimum level of knowledge. Forums like this one and companies that make a point to provide complete, clear documentation are two examples of how companies can address the "consumer education" gap - and how consumers can seek out that education. I do sometimes find it a little curious that the most reliable ways for consumers to learn about the industry-standard technologies is to track down smaller companies and online forums. Just think where we'd be if technologies like HDTV and HDMI and formats like DVD-Audio, SACD, Blu-ray, and HD-DVD had entered the marketplace without the internet to help consumers make sense of it all.

Gonk,

As always, your comments are right on the money. I would just add to your post that who knows where we would be without patient people like yourself, who have the knowledge and respect but who also have such wonderful typing skills. I am always amazed at how well you can condense technical information into very untechnical speech. Are you sure you don't write technical manuals for a living...

I do produce plans and specs for a living. Specs, however, are sort of the antithesis of untechnical speech (or, with MasterSpec, anything remotely "condensed").

While the 1070's manual was really well written, I nominate Gonk to write its successor.

Gonk raises consumer education as one of the real downfalls of manufacturers and retailers and I couldn't agree more. Retailers are responding with "Geek Squad" services but unfortunately most folks use these services after they have made their purchase. I'm uncertain if the CE industry should expect the average consumer to spend time on forums like this one or AVS to try and figure out all this stuff. It may prove a little knowledge is even more of a problem. Maybe the approach is for retailers to market comprehensive help (not full HT design services!) in advance of purchase. That of course would require them to hire folks who are current and know what they are doing.

I'm pretty sure there is a market for these type of services for average (not entirely sure what this term means) consumers. I'm sure we all have family members, friends and neighbors that ask us questions when they are thinking about making a purchase. For example, I spent time recently with a family member explaining flat panel screen resolution and size at various seating distances. I prefer proactive versus reactive.

AvFan, the term would be 'consultant'. just add it to the list:
Financial Consultant
401K Consultant
Insurance Consultant
Travel Consultant
Network Consultant
PC Consultant
"Home Theater" Consultant
Medical Consultant
Wardrobe Consultant
Home decorator Consultant
Tax Consultant
Makeup Consultant
Web Site Consultant
Etc Consultant (ops), etc, etc .....

A little perspective…..
In a short time we went from 2 channel stereo with vinyl, open real tape, good FM, mono TV and Dolby surround movies.....

...To fully automated home entertainment or some form of..... including:
5.1/7.1 surround, cable/satellite, Subwoofers, Tivo, slim box ,PPV, CD, DVD, HD-DVD, HD TV, TV shows for purchase-DVD, programmable remotes, non-brick-in-mortar companies, i-pod, Playstation, XBOX 360, WII, Plasma, LCD, Laptop PC, projector & screens, mp3's, DLP, in-wall speakers......
Now .... connect it all together .... push ‘play’ ….. its easy. if you have a magic wand.

We made this change in 20-25 years. The majority in the last 10 years. Throw in the fact that companies care more for the bottom line than consumer bliss ….

…..confusion abound.

That 10-year period of expanding equipment options generally coincides with the amount of time between upgrades for most consumers. So, those lost soles enter BB or CC and have that "doe in the head lights" look on their faces. Maybe we need HT Project Managers versus consultants!!

The joke in my field is if the "consultant" is located more than 120 miles from his/her client they must be an "expert". lol

I think gonk raises some excellent points.

Regarding the education aspect, I was particularly struck by the comment:

Harking back to my hifi retail days, I think sales people are in an unenviable position of needing both a basic comprehension of the current technology and a deep understanding of how all the components work AND sound that they sell.

In the late 80s, it was almost exclusively a 2-channel game, and even that was tough enough. Customers expected (demanded) you be able to tell them: (A) what every cartridge, amp, preamp, accessory and cable sounded like; and (B) how it worked / what all the features did.

Regarding (A), short of borowing everything we sold and trying it in your own system back home, as a salesman, you really couldn't answer such a question that accurately. I recall a very effective salesman who would wax eloquent on what something sounded like, that he had never heard in his life, based on what characteristics he THOUGHT it possessed. I thought that was disingenuous, but hey, maybe that's one of the reasons he was a better salesman than me!

Because, in the end, it was sales volume that was most important. Sure, being the uber-geek of X, Y and Z had its benefits (at times). Even amongst us true believers, that depth of knowledge did not always sum up to much when the rubber hit the road. And we all made very poor livings.

Regarding (B), beyond basic, shared features, knowing how everything worked on every single item was damn near impossible. There were some things you learned only by reading the manuals, and none of us did that for gear we did not own ourselves. Add to that car stereo, where you had to know that gear and what vehicles it did or did not fit, and it was a lot to keep on top of.

I recall about the time I got out of the business, Lexicon came out with their first surround sound processors. I think there was one guy at the shop who had a very vague idea how to set it up. Most of the time, we had to call the manufacturer's rep back in if someone screwed up the settings!

Fast forward to the present, and I think all of these factors are still present, but magnifed several fold by the sheer volume of technology available, formats and gadgets for sale.

I am by no means justifying complete ignorance on the part of retailers, but I point out what it's like from their end.

Many typical consumers will start their search (and research) at Circuit City, Best Buy, or someplace similar. I can't really blame the low-paid young people wrangled in to sales roles there if they aren't familiar with the intricacies of new video formats, surround processing modes, room equalization, HDMI standards, speaker design, bass management, video scaling, and the like. In an ideal world, they would recognize the limits of their knowledge and not get too deep into the realm of make-believe when answering customer questions, but in the absence of some mechanism for ready access to that kind of information it's inevitable that the situation in "big box" channels exists. It's not really the fault of the 19-year-old salesman standing next to that mis-calibrated DLP set, although he is a visible symptom of the problem.

There are also the dealers of higher-end gear, an area that (particularly around here) has suffered in the last decade. Many of them have shifted their focus heavily to custom installs, and others have simply closed up shop entirely. It may be my experience in a different industry that expects a certain level of general knowledge from a specialty dealer (on par with an equipment vendor who knows about the product offerings, has answers to basic questions, and can pull together details when asked less standard questions on his own or with factory help if given a day or two), but even then I wouldn't expect an instant and detailed answer to any question - and, as with anyone in business to sell something, so I tend to engage at least some "sales" filtering (and when encountering someone who "waxes eloquent" too often, that filter tends to get a bit more aggressive). I'd hope that someone who has been in that side of the business for some time is at least well informed enough to understand those core pieces (disc formats, sound formats, matrix processing, bass management, system setup, and so forth). Of course, that knowledge has to be combined with a willingness to share it in an effective manner - the sort of help that you could get by calling Scott and the crew at Outlaw, for example, and not like the local shop that wouldn't answer even basic questions about a Rotel 1066 that they'd sold to a long-time customer (co-worker of mine who had spent thousands with the store over 20 years or so - even before buying the 1066, a Rotel amp, and three B&W speakers at list prices - and couldn't get any more advise than "read the manual" without paying for setup service).

Unfortunately, that is all too common with bricks and mortar audio / video shops. We did not have the competition from the Internet back when I was in the business, but mail order catalogs that offered the same lines we carried at discount were starting to kill us as early as 1987-1988. I think Audio Advisor was the big kid on the block back then. Things got progressively worse for high end audio after that and into the 90s. That is, until surround sound and the home theater craze hit. By then, many manufacturers and stores had folded.

I think we Outlaws live on a somewhat parallel universe when it comes to basic understanding of the technology and the gear. (Of course, then there's you gonk, who knows more than most manufacturers! ), so we can have meaningful conversations in forums like these.

In the Outside World, in a typical sales / customer interaction, each party has to assess what the other person's level of understanding is and adapt accordingly. There are many customers out there whose eyes glaze over when you start getting into techno speak or explain nuances between components. Conversely, there are other folks who may know as much or more than the sales staff and will often challenge them when their BS detector goes off.