And like all things I guess they charge what they think the market will bear... If you want 1080P from HD DVD or Bluray the admission price is $1000 plus. Based on our recent exchange maybe it is all about creating more margin for the retailer so HD DVD does not get pushed into the retail background like it has recently...
Except for the PS3... hmm... will it really do 1080P for $600?
I emailed Mark Knox as soon as I saw Scott's reply. I will post the answer here once I receive it. I know Mark is here at CEDIA and if I happen to find him at one of the Toshiba displays I'll ask him directly.
My hunch is that it does not, or they would have said so.
Note that 1080p is not the only advantage of the XA2. It also has HDMI 1.3 (vs. the 1.2a on the A2). Granted, there are no 1.3 displays yet ... but eventually ...
I did receive a reply and it does not support 24 frame output. The primary reason is that there are no (or few) compatible display devices. He did say they were considering it once 24p display devices began to appear on the market ... so maybe 3rd gen
There is a Sony projector that supports 24p input.
Even if there wasn't (24p display support coming out now), It would seem that the drive manufacturer should be the first to support all the different formats. Most movie disks will be recorded in 24p, outputing that without pulldown should add about a nickle to the cost of manufacture. Waiting for displays to support seems pretty rediculous to me. Just when did supported features get driven by the end of the chain rather than the front?
Think about it from a manufacturing point of view:
They started the 2nd gen planning probably 4-6 months ago at least. They have a certain number of dollars and a certain numbers of days. Which features do you think they will work on? 1080p and HDMI1.3, which were already coming to market, or 24p, which had absolutely no devices on the market (that I know of).
You are absolutely correct in demanding it, for tht is what will drive it into future products ... but from a manufacturing point of view, the timing did not align for adding 24p.
Personally, I'm glad they focused on 1080p and decreasing the disc load time ... I would much rather have those two things than 24p.
They added 1080p... 24p is still 1080p, just another flavor it.
It should be the easiest flavor by far. Same as every other flavor of 1080p (thought I can only think of 60p), just bypass the pull down circuitry that does the synch rate conversion.
And again, display manufacturers generally support what is availabe from source devices. Not the other way around.
If Toshiba can do 1080p at all, I would actually be quite surprised if 24p couldn't become available through a firmware update.
