HD-DVD versus Blu-Ray

[Nate the Great]

I can find all kinds of specs on Wikipedia and such, but they still don't answer the fundamental question: If you can only buy one overpriced movie player and you don't have the most advanced HD TV yet, which do you get? Personally, I'd have thought that by now the industry would've looked at the two formats back when they were in the experimental phase and say "that one looks better, let's stick with that." The industry should've known better than to create a new editition of the VHS vs. Betamax war.

Of course, the thing that really irks me is the two ways of "solving" the conundrum that they're coming up with:

1. Put HD-DVD on one side, Blu-Ray on the other side of the disc.
2. Stick the guts of both machines into the same player.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the major pros of the two seem to be that Blu-Ray has a lot more potential for capacity, and HD-DVD is a lot easier to make backward compatible. Does that about sum it up?

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone's seen both players in action and can give me objective advice.

[Chancellor Valium]

I prefer Blu-Ray, based only on the fact that I like the colour blue.

[Gatac]

DVD.

Seriously, screw the next-generation formats.

Gatac

[AKAArzosah]

I personally think that the new and advanced stuff is overrated.

Why back in my day we had a playstation 2 and we could play DVDs on that and we were happy... OMG I am 19 and I can say this?

[Nate the Great]

Yeah, it's only literally THIS MONTH (that is, the last thirty days) that I've had a DVD player good enough to place confidence in (on my computer, the one I've had for years with my TV is a piece of trash). Thus it's only this month that I've started the progression away from VHS, which I still love.

[Celeste]

Eh, I ain't paying twice as much for a movie just so I can get it in "hi-def." DVDs are already way to expensive as they are.

[Nate the Great]

Depends on the movie and when you get it. For example, just by waiting six months or so after X2 came out, I got both of the X-Men movies on two disc DVD for only ten dollars apiece. Look back at the older VHS advertisements from the eighties. Twenty-five bucks for a videotape!

[ijdgaf]

Sony is the one who starts pretty much every one of these format wars. And they almost always lose it. But so far, it seems to me that Blu-Ray is the exception.

I don't really have any preference at all, as I'm not really *that* schooled on the specs and I don't really have any use for either anyway. Yet. I do think it'll be a year or two before high def content really takes off. And I'm honestly pretty excited about getting an HDTV and a 360 at some point. Probably the latter a bit sooner than the former.

But there's a lot of cost stuff in the way. And hopefully the industry will make things cheaper and my disposable income will increase at roughly the same point.

[Nate the Great]

Of course, the really annoying bit is the studios that only support one or the other. So what are our options, really? Buy a dual player, I suppose. Stupid stubborn studios.

[ijdgaf]

There's actually a better solution, as far as I can tell. And I hope it takes off (but not really sure how likely it is).

There's this Total HD format being developed by (I think) Warner. Sort of the opposite approach as a dual player, really. Instead, the discs themselves work for either type of player. So effectively, such a format would make the whole format war obsolete -- you could instead focus on getting the cheapest player.

[Nate the Great]

Yeah, but what does that solve? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The only way that would make the slightest sense is if the two formats actually had some quantifiable difference to them. Like, one works better if you have a kickbutt huge-screen HD TV and the other works better if you have a kickbutt surround sound system. But I doubt that's the case. I return to my original wistful plea that the industry would've chosen one or the other and stuck to their guns.

[ijdgaf]

Well the discs themselves have slight edges in storage space and read speed. Not sure how the Total HD will faire on that.

But whatever. I'm content with the notion that this silly format war is pretty much obliterated by a format that allows everybody to win. Except the petty execs who stand to gain by their respective format's staying power. Assuming of course the studios can get behind it. Here's hoping.

But really, who am I kidding. It'll at least be a year or two before I buy any of 'em. Perhaps longer.

[Gatac]

Seriously, both formats are so close that I wonder why they even bothered. It's sorta like the CD Minus and CD Plus split for writeable CDs - i.e. makes everything complicated in the first few years and gets totally ignored once good, cheap Multiformat drives are on the rise.

For what it's worth, Sony does appear to be winning with BluRay, but the fight isn't over...the market for either BluRay or HDDVD is still vanishingly small. Sony's between a rock and a hard place - the most available player for their format is the PS3, but it's expensive, they're taking a loss on it - really, not having the expensive and experimental BluRay stuff in the PS3 would have helped the console be much cheaper, but then of course they'd have sunk their disk format...the few people who do have BluRay are mostly the guys who bought the PS3 despite the price.

Hence, my advice is to ignore the HD formats for now. If you're really aching for quality, buy Superbit DVDs.

Gatac

[Burt]

Nothing to see here.

[Burt]

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

Depends on the movie and when you get it. For example, just by waiting six months or so after X2 came out, I got both of the X-Men movies on two disc DVD for only ten dollars apiece. Look back at the older VHS advertisements from the eighties. Twenty-five bucks for a videotape!

hehehehehehehehehe

'Twenty-Five Bucks'.
I forget sometimes that some (most) here aren't British.
American slang is cool.
Question: How much is a Nickle?

Blu-Ray sounds like a doomsday weapon. Which is cool.

[ijdgaf]

I dunno if that was a serious question, but a nickle is five cents.

Blu-Ray is indeed a cool name. Sony pisses me off often, but occaisionally they do awesome things. Like name formats after rayguns, or make a device as marvelously multifaceted as the PSP.

Seriously, I'm a Nintendo geek. But I loves the PSP.

[Nate the Great]

What, you Canadian types don't use the word "buck" to refer to a dollar? How about greenback, simoleon, or clam?

The best name for a doomsday weapon. There's a topic for a fun thread.

[Nate the Great]

And the Winner Is!

[Zeke]

I've always been with Gatac on this one, so the result is of little importance to me -- except in that it will affect the console war, which I do care about. Sony overreached with the PS3 and it hurt them badly at launch time, but since then, they've been slowly gaining on Nintendo. The Wii's novelty is starting to wear off. The PS3 has it beat on graphics and sound (always strengths of Sony); neither console has enough great games yet, but Metal Gear and Final Fantasy will definitely help Sony, and I don't think any comparably big names have been announced for the Wii lately. Now a hypothetical positive for the PS3 -- Blu-ray support -- has become a definite one. If HD DVD had won, it would have been a heavy blow; the Blu-ray hardware is a major reason the PS3 costs so much, and who would be willing to pay for it then? But now things are really looking up for Sony.

[MaverickZer0]

Originally Posted by Zeke

and I don't think any comparably big names have been announced for the Wii lately.

Brawl.

/Nintendo fanboyishness.

I personally couldn't care less about HD/Blu-ray either.I don't even think it should affect the consoles (though it will) but then again, I miss the days where game consoles just, y'know, played games.