Why Americans don't buy DVD players that record
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Recordable DVD players don't sell well here. Blame Comcast.
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The two movie disc formats that are competing to replace the DVD have had a rocky start, with clunky first-generation players and an audience that's been reluctant to buy them for fear of betting on the losing side.
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Thanks primarily to the DVD, home theaters have come within reach of many shoppers in the last few years. But why choose one over another?
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Don Reisinger is fed up with the high-def format war and has even stopped caring about which format will come out on top.  Are you in that group too?
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Don&#39;t you think it&#39;s time to retire that VCR? You probably have a DVD player or two, so you already know videocassettes are fast becoming obsolete.
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The average American consumer will spend $702.03 this holiday season, favoring DVDs over jewelry, discount chains over department stores and low prices over customer service, according to a survey sponsored by the National Retail Federation, an industry trade group.
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Consumers looking to upgrade their home theaters can now choose between two types of high-definition DVD players &#151; the confusing result of a long-running format war involving Hollywood studios and technology companies.
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We test this next-generation DVD technology, and get mixed results.
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U.S. consumers don't want to pay for low-power, high-performance chip.
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DVD players: Buying a DVD player shouldn&#39;t be a problem these days, but understanding all the features crammed into it may be.
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It may not be exactly possible for high-definition discs to pick up where their lofty goals of 2005 left off. Transmission technology has evolved very rapidly during that time, partly due to the format war's very existence.
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(InfoWorld) - It's an interesting contrast: consumers are fast ditching videotape for DVDs and hard disks, but the people who make TV shows are sticking to tape for some cutting edge applications. When it comes to recording broadcast-quality HDTV, today's optical disc systems just can't spin fast enough to keep up with the video -- but that may be about to change. Current optical disc systems are speed-capped at about 10,000 rpm (revolutions per minute.) Spin them any faster and there's a danger the discs will physically disintegrate in the drive leaving nothing but a pile of sharp plastic splinters and data that is gone forever. And even if they don't break apart the disc can begin to wobble making reliable recording a problem. Engineers at the Science and Technical Research Laboratories (STRL) of Japan's public broadcaster, NHK (Nippon Hoso Kyokai), are working on an optical disc recording system based on consumer Blu-ray Disc technology that can spin as fast as 15,000 rpm without these problems and demonstrated it last week. It's needed because broadcast quality HDTV signals of the type NHK records stream at 250MbpsÂ making a fast-spinning optical disc a necessity. A 1X Blu-ray Disc records at 36Mbps so the new system is equivalent to 7X speed. NHK has gotten around the stress problem by making a flexible disc that is just 0.1 millimeters thick. The disc, which was co-developed with Ricoh, is essentially the recording layer from a Blu-ray Disc without the 1.1 millimeter plastic substrate that is used to give the disc rigidity. It won't break apart at higher speeds but is not rigid enough to be useful in a drive at any speed. To solve this second problem a thick stabilizing plate has been added into the drive. When spun, the disc is kept steady by the stabilizer and can be used up to 15,000 rpm, said Daiichi Koide, an engineer at NHK STRL. The set-up is similar to Hitachi Maxell's Stacked Volumetric Optical Disc (SVOD) that wasÂ introduced in prototype formÂ at last year's Ceatec exhibition in Japan and shown again at Cebit in Germany this year. SVOD packs several 0.1 millimeter thick optical discs into a cartridge and holds them against a stabilizer in the drive to keep them steady while in use. However there is a key difference between the two, said Koide. In the NHK drive the stabilizer doesn't rotate. If it did it would be susceptible to the same stresses that as the discs. The result is that NHK can spin the disc up to 15,000 rpm without any mechanical problems. The system is still under development and there's no word on when it will literally be ready for prime time. NHK envisages cartridges stuffed with a number of the thin discs that can replace videotapes. Â
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Blog: High def radio. Few are buying. But you can tell a lot from the price.
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Despite the disappointing news this morning for over 1.3 million HD DVD customers, they have little to worry about. Here's why.
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For many collectors, owning DVDs is becoming more important than actually watching them.
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Diamond jubilee This month marks the 30th anniversary of the agreement that means legitimately purchased DVD/video owners everywhere have to sit through a minute of footage warning them about piracy.â¦
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Punches continue to be thrown in the fight over which next-generation DVD format will be established as the industry standard. (And there will be an industry standard, right corporate bigwigs?