First of all, it means that you have to fuss with putting the right type of disc in the right player with a combo deck, you can just shove any disc in and hit Play.
Sure, you save $200 or so, but that approach is a royal pain.
For example, you could buy a Toshiba HD-A3 and a PlayStation 3 game console (which can play Blu-ray movies) for $530.
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It also offers another high-end feature that the LG lacks: the ability to switch on something called 24p movie playback, which is supposed to offer smoother movie playback on TV sets that accept that special signal.Īnd now, the inevitable price comment: For the price of one combo player, you could buy both an HD DVD player and a separate Blu-ray player. The Samsung ($800 online) has both of those jacks. For example, the LG lacks jacks for coaxial digital audio cables (which can carry the signal long distances in your home) or multichannel analog audio jacks (which are prized by purists with high-end gear). It does not, however, show the same respect, to high-end audio gear, which has caused some grumbling among home-theater aficionados. The new LG model gives HD DVD discs first-class citizenship. (One of the joys of both high-def DVD formats is the way its menus pop up without interrupting playback, so you can summon or dismiss subtitles or director’s commentary without going to a separate screen.) Super Blu BH200 from LG ($750 online) is the successor to last year’s BH100, which was a true-blue Blu-ray deck with profoundly crippled HD DVD playback for example, it couldn’t display any of the menus on an HD DVD disc, which is something of a drawback. If it’s an HD DVD movie, you have to resume from the beginning. If you press Stop during playback of a Blu-ray movie, both decks remember your place. It takes that much time for the player to figure out what kind of disc you’ve inserted. Both machines are slower to handle high-def discs than regular DVDs, however for example, you’ll wait 30 seconds for either machine to turn on, and another 20 or 25 for a high-def disc to load. Both decks handle advanced features, like the picture-in-picture commentary of “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” and the Web-based trivia tracks on “Shrek the Third,” without batting a pixel.īoth players “upconvert” traditional DVDs, making them look extremely sharp and crisp on high-def screens.
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Both are sleek, shiny black boxes that provide an absolutely stunning high-definition picture (a so-called 1080p signal), sharper and better than anything cable or satellite can deliver. These two rival decks have more similarities than differences. If it turns out you’ve backed the wrong horse, a combo player means your early investment in movies won’t be lost - and you won’t have to buy a new player to accommodate the winner, either. They should also appeal to anyone who’s already started buying movies in one format. True, they may not be the world-changers they might have been before Warner made the battle tip in Blu-ray’s favor.īut they should still be attractive to anyone who wants to dive into the high-def DVD game now without worry.
Which brings us back to the new dual-format players from LG and Samsung. Therefore, the war isn’t over, and it’s still a bad risk to buy a single-format machine. But as long as there are movies issued only in HD DVD - and in the next few months, that list will include “Bee Movie,” “Beowulf,” “The Kite Runner,” “Atonement” and other popular titles - then HD DVD still has a pulse.