DVS - New Media and Technologies

Engineering firm uses HD-DVD to look Best in Show

Michigan based engineering firm FTC&H needed a solution for making their tradeshow presentations stand out. With an LCD display and a standard definition DVD for tradeshows, FTC&H wasn’t happy with what they were seeing, “It looks blurry."

To start, DVS suggested having their design team build their presentations in a 16x9 aspect ratio using a 1280x720 pixel resolution or in HD terms 720p resolution. By designing in a 16x9 aspect ratio and using the pixel resolution suggested, the presentation would match the resolution of their LCD display.

Although DVD can handle 16x9 content, the resolution is very low in comparison to HD, only 720x480 pixels. The standard definition DVD was the source of the blurry images FTC&H was seeing. Our only solution was to remove the standard definition playback and replace it with an HD device. Although Blu-Ray was an option, HD-DVD was more of a fit to replace the standard definition DVD player - primarily due to cost. The Toshiba HD-A2 HD-DVD Player was an inexpensive way to replace the existing technology.

Armed this knowledge, the FTC&H team went to work on a revised presentation. With the presentation complete, we were handed the files to begin encoding and authoring to the HD-DVD format.

After the show, FTC&H followed up with us, “Our presentation looked a lot better than before – it was crisp and clean. The HD-DVD helped us stand out.”

Myth: “HD-DVD’s dead, Blu-Ray won the Format War.”

We shouldn't even call this a format war. In our opinion, both formats will co-exist and be played in a single player. In fact, electronics manufacturer LG has a player that does just that. The LG BH100 is an HD-DVD and Blu-Ray player all in one. It’s available on Amazon.com for $799. The price of these “combo” players will come down to sub $200 and the format issue with be a non-issue. Consumers do not care about Blu or HD, they just want their movie from Netflix or Blockbuster to play.

HD Player for $99

Wal-Mart will offer Toshiba’s HD-A2 HD-DVD player tomorrow (Friday Nov, 2) for $98.97 as part of a “pre-Black Friday” promotion.

The price point represents a dramatic new low for Toshiba’s entry-level model, which was recently reduced to hit a suggested $250 retail and is currently being sold by Amazon.com, Circuit City and Costco for just under $200.

HD-DVD for under $100.  And so many thought Blu-Ray won the war...