XMS-888 is here, what is next?

[redbears]

DVD players that allow DivX playback are starting to hit the market.

Obviously the XMS-888 is available and since being released has dropped in price to below the magic $200 mark.

But what is next, are the major brands going to release something soon or are the Taiwanese/Chinese brands going to dominate the market.

Thoughts? News? comments, flame away... just post here

[jokiin]

Originally Posted by redbears

DVD players that allow DivX playback are starting to hit the market.

Obviously the XMS-888 is available and since being released has dropped in price to below the magic $200 mark.

But what is next, are the major brands going to release something soon or are the Taiwanese/Chinese brands going to dominate the market.

Thoughts? News? comments, flame away... just post here

I think the brand names will play sit and wait for the moment and if they feel that they are losing market share they will come on board. Remember it took a few seasons before they thought it important enough to add support for cdr, mp3 and a couple of the other things that we take for granted now as being standard. The Chinese will own the market in the short term at least.

[redbears]

I know what you mean, my Pioneer DVD player doesn't support any of that, but the Nintuas 9808 I used on the review suits the job just fine.

The Chinese/Taiwanese are pretty good with electronics, witness the computer industry from the late 80's onwards, the stuff just got better, cheaper and more compatible over time.

[jokiin]

Originally Posted by redbears

I know what you mean, my Pioneer DVD player doesn't support any of that, but the Nintuas 9808 I used on the review suits the job just fine.

The Chinese/Taiwanese are pretty good with electronics, witness the computer industry from the late 80's onwards, the stuff just got better, cheaper and more compatible over time.

And if you look at a pioneer player of today it does almost everything (no divx yet of course) for under $200, my first pioneer was $2200 and did bugger all by comparison

[bwg]

Originally Posted by jok11n

I think the brand names will play sit and wait for the moment and if they feel that they are losing market share they will come on board. Remember it took a few seasons before they thought it important enough to add support for cdr, mp3 and a couple of the other things that we take for granted now as being standard. The Chinese will own the market in the short term at least.

There's another reason the brand names are sitting back atm, as always, and that's to let the cheapies iron out the bugs and get a fully compatible 100% working product (set the standard as it were), then they can swan in and dump their "high quality products" on the market for instant success with 90% of the population, who think "it's a [insert grossly overpriced product brand name here], it must be good".

Me thinks that most brand names won't seriously enter the market until a some sort of common standard has been set as far as mpeg4 format / container / encoding parameters. Which means that most enthusiasts who like to "fiddle" and experiment with different encoding techniques and formats won't be entirely happy with them because it will limit their choices

just my opinion

[jokiin]

Originally Posted by bwg

There's another reason the brand names are sitting back atm, as always, and that's to let the cheapies iron out the bugs and get a fully compatible 100% working product (set the standard as it were), then they can swan in and dump their "high quality products" on the market for instant success with 90% of the population, who think "it's a [insert grossly overpriced product brand name here], it must be good".

Me thinks that most brand names won't seriously enter the market until a some sort of common standard has been set as far as mpeg4 format / container / encoding parameters. Which means that most enthusiasts who like to "fiddle" and experiment with different encoding techniques and formats won't be entirely happy with them because it will limit their choices

just my opinion

Agree with the comments on the brand names swanning in and doing their thing, but I can't see the standards getting tightened (unfortunately) I think chipset manufacturers will be working overtime to try and produce a chip that can deal with whatever it finds on a disc and get it to play.

[davidf]

Originally Posted by jok11n

Agree with the comments on the brand names swanning in and doing there thing, but I can't see the standards getting tightened (unfortunately) I think chipset manufacturers will be working overtime to try and produce a chip that can deal with whatever it finds on a disc and get it to play.

If the MPEG4 "standard" doesn't stabilise that may result in it be ignored in the future. If the chinese get their way with EVD, which is highly probable with some of the major movie studios getting onboard with the EVD standard you will see the MPEG4 standard get even less recognition by the big players than it does now. Considering that MPEG4 is not being used for streaming with HDTV or SDTV and still has no formal audio support within its specifications I can see that what ever the chinese come up with will end up being the standard.

And remember EVD is a full concept standard which encompasses, compression, distribution media, streaming media etc.. etc..already as what was only a proposal several months ago EVD is miles in front of MPEG4. The fact that the chinese hold about 65% of the DVD player global market would suggest that they do have the power to force the EVD issue on everyone. (evd players that are backward compatible are already available).

EVD players will be the next 'big' thing and I think that will happen sooner than most people expect. MPEG4 will hold its place for the internet streaming that it was originally designed for. The 'piracy' market, which is largely responsible for the move to having MPEG4 domestic units, will see the benefits of EVD type compression for higher/faster compression and no licensing issues and all of a sudden all those torrent files will be *.evd

[Peterpack]

i think the next gen players will have a much much easier method of Flash upgrading

The key to compatibility really is constant upgrading. Just like you are always installing new codecs on your computer, the same is necessary for a divx player

[jokiin]

Originally Posted by Peterpack

i think the next gen players will have a much much easier method of Flash upgrading

The key to compatibility really is constant upgrading. Just like you are always installing new codecs on your computer, the same is necessary for a divx player

I don't know how much easier it can get really, it's certainly not hard. For the hobiest the upgrades aren't an issue but for the average consumer they just want it to work, constant upgrades, no matter how easy to do are not desirable.

[Guest]

I, for one, admire how the chinese's products entering the market.
They do not care the brand name. They would just be happy other re-brand their products to be aa, bb, cc, etc. It is not uncommon nowdays to find a dvd/divx player for USD.80 based on the latest ESS chipset ES6688 or MediaTek MT1389 with full blown features (DTS out, coax / optical SPDIF, Component video / SCART, S-Video/Composite)

I have noticed that it is also the same true for DVB receiver, I just bought one cost USD.50 which has a "blind search" feature likes Coship or Powtek.

I could not figure out how these chinese product can be so cheap. And if you open the box, you will find a high quality electronic design with all surface mounted components and multi-layer pcb.

Those price mentioned above is including distributor and reseller' profit which can easily take 50% out of the sellling price. So, go figure what is the basic cost to the manufacturer.

[Jack Tan]

With the introduction of the DivX player market emergence, it really provided us with the first convergence product, putting computer data on the television for the first time however with that, there's another genre of products paving the way in the MPEG-4 playback market.

Saw something on CNN about Bill Gates and the future of the media centre concept. Data transmission to a box decoding information and putting it on your telelvision and stereo. Cool. Then your hard drive acts as a storage device.

Situation: Your PC is in your study upstairs. It communicates wirelessly to the media centre. Data is still encoded. THe Media Centre then decodes the information, within half a second. Takes the burning out of using the MS player and neustons DVX.

Two products ive seen include the Pinnacle Show Centre and the neuston VIRTUOSO MC-500. Check them out. Dont know Pinnacles link cos i saw it on the shelves in SIngapore but the neuston one is at www.neuston.com.

This is what is next.