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[maao]

QUOTE(ferrari_rulz_02 @ Mar 4 2006, 03:01 AM)

thats why hd dvd will win. it is accepted by the public and teh movie industry. it should win

Actually, neither is accepted by the public since they're not out yet, and currently the majority of the movie studios only support Blu-Ray.  MS wants HD-DVD to win because it doesn't use Java and it doesn't support Sony.  Sony wants Blu-Ray to win because they made it and will make lots of money from royalties.  Bottomline is it makes no difference who "wins", since it's what I get for my money that matters the most.  As far as I know, they both use similar compression for the HD video, so it's not really about quality.  It's really only about quantity of material, cost, and whether I can burn onto blanks for cheap!  In the latter two cases, HD-DVD seems like it's got Blu-Ray beat from all reports.  But who knows.  Betamax lost to VHS because it didn't get enough outside support (ie. licensees, content, etc.), and its capacity (only 1 hour).  Looks like Sony's got both those fixed this time.  Besides, Betamax vs. VHS was about users being able to record video.  BD vs. HDDVD is really only about who's got the most desired content available.  Recording will pretty much be secondary for a while, especially with hard drive based recording being much more convenient than manually recording TV, and the majority of people will only be burning regular DVD quality video for quite some time (due to media cost and burner availability).

[zX_Storm]

QUOTE(VinnySem @ Mar 3 2006, 11:01 PM)

Also keep in mind, if MS does go forward with HD-DVD support, will it be for games only? Any HD movie requires HDCP over HDMI or DVI, neither of which the 360 has 'yet'. Or will there be some new "HD Movie Pak" which will also have either HDMI or DVI hookup and a HD-DVD drive? I could see that costing damn near $250.

During M$ crappy conference a couple months back (posted here at X-S), they demo'd a "sample" HD movie. The features seemed pretty cool and all, but then I also would like to point out that DVD's support different "angles" viewing and what not, but barely any movie actually ended up supporting it. I don't think many movie companies care about the features of the hardware. As long as its popular. BTW, sony does own a big majority of DVD publishing. Think UMD.. Even if HD-DVD does goes well over, I dont' think Sony will give up, they're too big.

[ChronoZaga]

DVD VIDEO FOREVER!

I'll eventually upgrade my PC to HD-DVD or Blu-ray for the high capacity of the disss, but I'm not playing the format war crap for movies.  I'm sticking with DVDs till there's a decided winner and the security features are broken, so I can "backup" movies.  

DVDs still look awesome on my HDTV, with an HD conversion player.  HD-DVD or Blu-ray would have to offer more than I've seen to change my mind, cause "backing up" DVDs if cheap, and I already have the prerequisite hardware.

[ferrari_rulz_02]

QUOTE(ChronoZaga @ Mar 4 2006, 01:45 PM)

DVDs still look awesome on my HDTV, with an HD conversion player.  HD-DVD or Blu-ray would have to offer more than I've seen to change my mind, cause "backing up" DVDs if cheap, and I already have the prerequisite hardware.

thats a good point. a lot of people will stay with dvd because they can pirate them. even when the securitie features of hd dvd or blu-ray are broken, you then have to get burners and blank discs. while the technology is new, neither will be anywhere near cheap enough to pirate.

i still get the feeling that hd-dvd might just come out on top

[puppydg68]

QUOTE(blackchild1101 @ Mar 3 2006, 11:20 PM)

I concur. But I kbelieve that BR is the superior format.

I've been following the format war for a long time, and it's well documented over at the digital bits..

The marketting guys keeps spinning HD-DVD to being 30 GB with Blu-Ray only 25..  But they keep comparing a Dual Layer HD-DVD (30GB Dual/15GB single) to the single Layer Blue-Ray (25GB).. Blue-ray has a higher capacity per layer no matter how many layers you want to stack..   Additionally out of 8 Major Hollywood studios, Blu-Ray has 7 of them signed on board. Last I've heard HD-DVD only has strong support from 3 major studios so far.   There is no denying wethere you love or hate PS3, there will be an explosion of them in the market place, there is no way that on a standard consumer level sales they could distribute hd-dvd stand-alone players as fast as they will ps3.   20th Century fox has outright said "NO" to HD-DVD which means all fox titles will be blu-ray exclusive, as well as all of Sony/Tristar/Columbia pictures.    The consumer market can't bear to have another format war for movies, in the end the winner will be most number of players and the ability for a complete library.   Honestly would you buy a player that will never have a chance at any sony/columbia/tristar or fox hi-def movies..  That also means for the star wars fans, when lucas finally gets off his ass to make a hi-def release it will be Blue-ray.  The biggest plus HD-DVD has is the brand, it's so simple everyone knows DVD, most do not know what the heck blu-ray is..  Everyone thinks that HD-DVD is just the natural progression of DVD and is therefore better.   At one point they were having talks on combining the formats, but the talks fell apart, and now us the consumers will suffer until the winner is clear.

You don't need to take my word for it, do some reading on http://thedigitalbits.com/   they don't give a hoot about the console wars, and write everything based on consumer movie playback only.  They were there for the whole DIVX(originally a circuit city - pay as a play) player and DVD player war.  They prediced and watched the whole DIVX standalone sink, leaving only the codec behind to satisfy home encoders everywhere.

I also recommend reading the interview with Pioneers rep on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/ces2006/parsonsinterview.html

[zviper]

ok but really for dvd movies what the HELL! are you going to use 25/30gb for just for one dvd movie?
but for games hd-dvd seems to be my choice

[Mikeizzle]

Way to be biased when writing a review on each type of media. IMO, i know Blu-Ray will cost way more to produce, but its Sony. People know Sony, people have seen their products on the market, and honestly i think that here (In The US) if they see Sony backing up Blu-Ray, the people will follow. But either way, its a 50/50 chance for either format. In 10 years we'll just be arguing about another format, so whats the point?

10 years from now:
Dude in store: "hey dude, hollodisc is so gonna beat that gehy reddisc."
Other Dude: "No way man, reddisc is so much better"
Me "Hey, both of you shutup, i remember back in the day when we had to use friggin VHS!"
  .

[gg22mm]

How can such a biased article be considered information? I am honestly surprised that it was posted on the front page as news. I respect everyone's opinion as long as it is presented as an opinion and not as a piece of news...  Anyways I think, based on this article, that they are supporting HDDVD for all the wrong reasons     If they were supporting it just because Sony makes BlueRay, that would be one proper reason...

[puppydg68]

QUOTE(zviper @ Mar 4 2006, 04:19 AM)

ok but really for dvd movies what the HELL! are you going to use 25/30gb for just for one dvd movie?
but for games hd-dvd seems to be my choice

Well the whole point is that neither HD-DVD or Blu-RAY are DVD, they are next generation formats.  The true HD Spec is 1080i (1920x1080), although many will support 1080p now.   The Average bit-rate of a high quality HD stream at 1080i is 25-30Mbit/sec  compared with 2-8Mbit/sec for standard DVD which is 720x480.  It's approximately 3X the resolution and bitrate, for a stunning quality presentation.

While there isn't anything released yet, a transport stream pulled from Open Air HD or Satellite HD is on the average about 20 GB just for "Return of the King" and thats just with an AC3 Audio Track.  These transport streams are much more compressed than what they wish to have on the next generation format.   So yeah the numbers make sense for the movies.

[explosive2]

Price is a big factor when choosing formats which HD DVD has in its side along with the name since most people that know nothing about technology would recognize HD DVD as being a High Definition DVD instead of the Blu-ray term.
I prefer HD DVD since it is cheaper so that I don't have to pay a lot when buying movies as I would if buying Blu-ray disks.
Plus, that Hybrid disk seems an awesome idea since movies could come in both DVD and HD DVD format in only one disk which is extremely convenient for all people in the world since some may not have a HD DVD player yet so it would suit everyone.
 

[Gamester17]

QUOTE(lowendfrequency @ Mar 3 2006, 11:39 PM)

The ONLY advantage that Blue-Ray has ever had in the format war is that it supposedly stores more.

More DATA-storage yes, but not video (at least not for the first generation Blu-Ray HD-movies). The Blu-Ray players does support newer MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) video-compression format just like HD-DVD, but Sony and its allies has decided to use the 'old' MPEG-2 video-compression format at first and then later move over to MPEG-4 AVC (maybe in a couple of years!?), however the HD-DVD camp will use MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) from the beginning in the first generation of HD-DVD HD-movies. MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) video offers approximently a 1:10 compression-ratio compared to MPEG-2 (in theory), meaning a MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) should be able to fit 10-times the lenght of same quality video per GB (GigaByte) of storage, making the Blu-Ray's 50GB disc size no advantage compared to HD-DVD's 30GB disc when the video is compress from the same source.

Now this does not mean that you could take a 50GB Blu-Ray movie in MPEG-2 and compress it from there to 5GB keeping the same quality, what it does mean that if the movie-studio/producers take the original uncompressed high-deffinition video (lets say 1,000GB for the sake of the argument) and compess that with the MPEG-2 format they might end up with a 50GB video, (you will loose some quality in this process as with any transcoding), but if they take original uncompressed high-deffinition video (of 1,000GB) and compress it directly to the MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) format they migth end up with a 15GB movie (if they use a higher-bitrate to keep more quality) and that 15GB MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) movie will have better quality than the 50GB MPEG-2 video which was made form the same source, simply beause the MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) has a much better compression-ratio than MPEG-2.

[Pheidias]

Sony has already put a price tag on it's bd movies they will be 20-25$. Just like the dvd was in the beginning. And my first dvd standalone cost 700$. So neither bd nor hd-dvd will be more expensive for the end consumer, then the dvd was when released.

[ferrari_rulz_02]

i dont think its even worth discussing at all.

after all, its the big companies that will make or break the formats.

[banchiau]

Why do people keep comparing HD-DVD blu-ray to VHS betamax, why not try comparing it to DVD-A and SACD. As these High Res sound formats claims that they're superior than current cd, but up till now sales on both front is not even worth mentioning. Does anyone around here ever bought any of these hi def audio CDs, . . .  same goes here. Seems consumer prefer and can live with the standard audio resolution @ 44.1kHz. So keeping that in mind, I wouldn't be a supprise if both bluray and HDdvd ends up just like their high audio resolution siblings, more advanced but with less faith. Maybe just like DVD-A and SACD a unified player can be made later, both are physically round (maybe), by then no one'll be arguing in here which is better.

[sunnyd71]

There was also an article that said to manufacture Blu-Ray companies will have to spend millions to upgrade facilities and technologies, with all new equipment. But HD-DVD requires minor upgrades costing only a few hundred thousand dollars. That can make a huge difference in disk cost. Sony said Blu-ray disks will be $20-$30 in wholesale, which means the consumer will be paying much more. DVDs in wholesale are roughly $10 or less I believe. Also M$ can make windows only support HD-DVD or if they really want to please consumers make the upgrade for the 360 also be able to connect to a computer though this might create problems with encryption.

I'm not buying either for at least another year and then will probably just go with Blu-ray since it will come with the ps3 I'm probably going to buy.