From a post I made on a previous thread...

Nov 29: VideoScan: Blu-ray Commands Thanksgiving Week Disc Sales
http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/news...isc_Sales/1218

Nov 28: Blu-ray smashes HD DVD in European sales
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/st...ectid=10478814

Apple's the first organisation listed as member of the Blu-ray board here:

Sony spearheaded Blu-Ray. HD-DVD by Toshiba.

I'm kinda hoping HD-DVD will win, Sony just seem way to smug about the whole thing. Plus I like that HD-DVD is region free! So we can buy movies from Amazon and avoid getting poorly packaged releases with fugly classification logos on the cover.

How long will either of these formats last for do you think?

With many recent titles being sold between $8 and $13 on DVD at jb, I can only guess that movie companies are looking at ways to extract more value from their products. Is blue ray /hd dvd it?

I imported a Japanese PS3 for $520 from play-asia.com, so I've backed Blu-Ray. The PS3 plays BD really nicely, actually.

If HD-DVD ends up winning, so be it. The PS3 still plays games rather well.

Only just, and not for long.

A triple layer HD-DVD is 51GB, whereas currently Blu-Ray dual layer's store 50GB. A dual-layer HD-DVD disc is only 30GB.

While both formats support the same maximum video bit rate, you need space to store it, so it's more likely that studios will be able to use the very high bit rates for video on Blu-Ray discs.

Blu-Ray also supports conventional Dolby Digital audio, which needs only 600kbit/s or so. HD-DVD requires Dolby Digital Plus, which takes up more space (up to 3Mbit/s). So that's less room again for the video. Blu-Ray also supports Dolby Digital Plus, but at least if they choose to use it they still have another 20GB of space to store the video compared to a HD-DVD.

Curious - Blu-Ray supports 24p video with it's native timing, but HD-DVD uses 24p with 60i timing...the player just inserts 'repeat flags' to fill the gaps. The result is exactly the same, but I never understood why they chose to go down this route.

As for region coding, HD-DVD doesn't have it, Blu-Ray does. Obviously you and I like the idea of region-free discs, but the studios don't. With Blu-Ray there are only three regions.

Interestingly, Warner Bros. has been working on THD discs, which have Blu-Ray content on once side (dual layer 50GB) and HD-DVD on the other (dual layer 30GB). I don't think there are any titles yet.

Lastly, I hear that the theoretical maximum storage for HD-DVD is 60GB (four layers), versus 200GB for Blu-Ray (eight layers). That makes Blu-Ray much more valuable outside of the movie industry as well.

My problems with Blu-ray early on stemmed from the fact that they hadn't finished their damn product when they released it. Look up HD-DVD and Blu-Ray comparisons - poor old HD-DVD with less capacity has been found to no only have far more special content (some BD have next to none), HD-DVD also had mandatory dual decoders for video commentaries, etc from the original, *complete* draft. These comparisons also noted, oddly, that Blu-Ray seemed to have a slightly inferior picture quality (and they often have the photographs to prove it) - blacks were less black, whites were dull, etc. Tested on several movies on several players on several TVs, almost always the same issue, whereas HD-DVD had consistently good picture quality.
Many of these comparisons have been made by individuals or organisations that have been known for backing Blu-Ray very strongly. The worst part? The PS3, with all the 'infinite' power of the CELL and its GPU with 300,000,000 transistors can't play back BD-Video at the highest current spec, as it falls short in the RAM department. But then again, that's the same thing game developers are crying about too - the memory is so limited they are having trouble porting 360 games over to look equal to the 360 in terms of graphics, let alone the thousands of times better Sony claimed.

Don't buy Sony's lies. Heck, don't waste your money at all ideally - avoid the HD format wars until they're over.

the problem here is display panels in the market are only going up to 1080p. there's new ones coming out with much higher resolution, but it'll be years before they're common place. its kind of like Crysis....there's virtually no graphics cards to run it. and so there may be discs coming out with much much higher resolution than current panels can display at, and it'll be years before we're able to experience them properly

thats not what i have heard

read this article.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...an-market.html

Blockbuster are favouring Blu Ray both here and in the USA. If you rent movies then this should be a consideration.

Yep, but I'm sure they'll switch to HD DVD if it "wins"... or dual format drives, if they exist and are needed.

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Don't buy Sony's lies. Heck, don't waste your money at all ideally - avoid the HD format wars until they're over.[/quote]

thats the summary for all of this , we can debate tech specs all day.... but anyone who has bought Blue Ray or HD DVD has been premature and will pay the price... If you bought a PS3 for blue ray you just got duped! Enough said!

In my experience, particularly with Warner Bros. movies... The HD DVD version always gets at least the DD+ track, and the Blu-ray version of the same movie only gets DD5.1. Only on rare occasions does Blu-ray get PCM (Uncompressed) tracks from WB (notably the recently released Harry Potter movies and 2001: A Space Odyssey).

Linear PCM is supposed to be a required audio track on BD, I thought... nevermind, early days.

Regarding the Region coding on Blu-Ray, yes it exists but not many people seem to be worrying about it, I bought Spider-man 3 here and it works in all regions and have bought the Blade Runner collection from Amazon which works in all regions and the recently released Harry Potter set works in all regions. So it's not as big a problem as we had with DVD.

I did and I can categorically state that I haven't been duped because the quality is excellent and Uncharted kicks ass (I also own a 360 so I'm not a sony fanboy)