Plextor Announces New Internal Blu-Ray Drives

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Shane
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Plextor Announces New Internal Blu-Ray Drives

Post by Shane »

Plextor® LLC, a leading developer and manufacturer of high-performance digital media equipment, today announced two new multifunction disc drives that combine next-generation Blu-Ray and HD DVD technologies.

The internal PX-B920SA drive features...

[url=http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/news/2008/03/plextor_announces_new_internal_blu-ray_drives.php]Read Bulletin[/url]
hharris4earthlink
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At the Risk of Stating the Obvious ...

Post by hharris4earthlink »

I suppose this makes some kind of sense, but surely HD DVD owners are going to ask themselves the following question: Which is cheaper, buying this product as a transition machine to Blu-ray or buying a Blu-ray-only player and replacing their HD DVD discs with Blu-ray discs? And they must consider that, unless they take the second option, they'll eventually have to replace their HD DVD player which may not be manufactured in the future.

Henry
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Re: At the Risk of Stating the Obvious ...

Post by allargon »

I have to ask who these people are that break CE devices every few years? I have a Sharp VHS player that I bought in 1997 that still works. Yes, VHS is pretty much buried. Does VHS still outsell Blu-Ray like it did this time last year? Most CE components should last at least a good 5 years plus. After that, does it really matter, since the next best thing will be out then.

LG is still supporting HD DVD even if Toshiba isn't.
hharris4earthlink
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Post by hharris4earthlink »

Good point. I have a Pioneer LaserDisc player that still works as well as the day I bought it and I'm not about to throw it out because I have a large library of LaserDiscs that I still watch from time to time. I agree. Today's manufacturing standards typically give us long lifetimes.

However, at the time I bought the LaserDisc player there was no talk of an immediate replacement standard. That's different than the case we have here where we have a new product that's being introduced with the knowledge that one of the recording standards it supports is essentially obsolete. I can see buying one if you already have a large library of HD DVD discs, but I'm suggesting that it might pay to consider the cost tradeoff of simply replacing the HD DVD discs with Blu-ray to guard against the eventuality that one day your player will fail and a replacement HD DVD player will no longer be offered. You're right; it may take a very long time to fail, but it will fail. Moreover, there is a small but finite possibility that it will fail much sooner.

A good counter argument might be there will be a new standard one day anyway, so what's the big deal? Here again, it's like Las Vegas. You're just playing the odds. :D

Henry
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