Ok, all you home entertainment dudes.
I have a nice collection of regular DVD movies.
Will I be able to play them in the future, or should I buy a few DVD players and stash them away for future use?
Are they going to work on this new HD stuff coming out next February.?
jb
JB,
I wait until I’m forced to go HD, standard DVD suits me just fine. The HD is supposed to by backwards compatible with the standard DVD in any case. Not buying any more “hi-tec knickknacks” to take up extra room.
John,
Sure they’ll work, but you have to wire them to an 8 track player, then take the red wire with the green strip on it and put it through the vedio port of a Betamax video player, top load is the best to work with. After you do that then you have to get some jumper cables and jump the audio outlets from the back to your 2 head VHS player (4 head will work, but you’ll need checkered board coded wire) to the inputs on the front of your DVD player. Now what is really neat, you set your tender or battary car on top and then you program your AirWire to broadcast the signal to your HD DVD player, now you can injoy your standard DVDs. Oh wait HD DVD are out, every one is going to Blu Ray. Hope you didn’t buy and HD DVD player. Screwed once more.
You mean I don’t need my old WW1 hand crank dynamo thingy to power the whole thing?
Perhaps I ought to use it on you! 
Let see: One lead on your wet tongue, the other on your…
jb
Hans-Joerg Mueller said:
JB,I wait until I’m forced to go HD, standard DVD suits me just fine. The HD is supposed to by backwards compatible with the standard DVD in any case. Not buying any more “hi-tec knickknacks” to take up extra room.
Please note HD as in HighDefinition, not as in HD-DVD.
John Bouck said:Ouch!!! I try to help and this is how you treat me. Thanks Pal.
You mean I don't need my old WW1 hand crank dynamo thingy to power the whole thing? Perhaps I ought to use it on you! :) :) Let see: One lead on your wet tongue, the other on your................... jb
John, you’ll be able to read DVDs on your Blu-Ray player, but not Blu-Ray discs on your DVD player.
Now that the standards war between Sony and Toshiba has been resolved in favour of the former, it shouldn’t be long before reasonably-priced Blu-Ray players incorporating the capacity to read DVDs are on the market.
DVD players use red lasers, while Blu-Ray players use violet. Hence, Blu-Ray players require an optical compatibility device if they’re to read DVDs - it’s not something they can do natively.
At home and work, we’re using PVRs more and more these days. A PVR (Personal Video Recorder) is a card that fits into a free slot in a PC and connects to the TV via coax. The software that comes with the card projects a simulated VCR on-screen. Choose the show, set the timer and the show is recorded directly to a hard disk or USB drive in, or attached to, your PC.
There’s low-cost editing software (e.g., VideoReDo) that can manipulate what you’ve recorded (e.g., automatically splice out the ads). You can even copy your DVDs to a hard disk and edit them.
Since no one knows the shelf life of DVDs (CDs aren’t anything special), any particularly valuable DVDs you have (e.g., family) are better off stored a couple of ways (i.e., back up your DVD onto hard disk).
Tell me about it John! I have been looking at a 40 to 46" LCD TV for a few years now and still haven’t purchased one. Boy am I glad I didn’t buy the Grand Wega when it came out a few years ago for what $2500? Honestly I’m afraid to buy anything electronic (home entertainment) anymore.
David, afraid is bad, very cautious is good. 