[mythtv-users] MythTV and HDTV future

[Brian Wood]

On Mar 5, 2007, at 7:26 AM, jason maxwell wrote:

>
> Ahh, now I gotcha. It's been so long that I forgot there actually were
> days you couldnt watch your boughten DVDs in Linux. If the HD DVD
> encryption has been cracked, all we're waiting for are inexpensive
> optical drives that can read the disks. hooray. now I can buy star
> wars again :)
> -J

Sort of depends on what you mean by "inexpensive". You can get a Blu- 
Ray player for under $500 with a cool case that includes a Cel  
processor, RAM and other assorted electronics that allow it to run  
Linux (I think it can also run some sort of games but I don't know  
who would care about that).

I suspect the movie vendors will subsidize players, as they do with  
standard DVD units, in order to have a market to sell movies to.

But the "format wars" continue. Some disks are apparently being  
released with HD-DVD on one side and Blu-Ray on the other, and drives  
that can do both formats are already starting to appear.

I think an HD drive that can only do one of the HD formats will soon  
become as rare as a DVD burner that can only do -R or +R, and the  
"protection" will be ignorable as it is now with CSS.