English is a terrible language. Experts on linguistics agree. Very few other languages have as many rules, exceptions to those rules, exceptions to those exceptions, and so forth. Verbs need to be conjugated, according to whether it's addressing first or second or third person, singular or plural, past or present of future tense. Meanwhile many other languages have ONE word for each verb, regardless of the subject/plurality/tense. The correlation between a word's spelling and its pronunciation are more consistent in many other languages than they are with English. For example, "dough" and "cough". There are words with different meanings that sound exactly the same, like "blue" and "blew". While most nouns are pluralized by adding "s" ("dog" to "dogs"), some need "es" ("hippo" to "hippoes"), some use an "i" ("octopus" to "octopi"), while others have totally different rules ("goose" to "geese", "mouse" to "mice") and some require no change at all ("fish" to "fish"). English is really THAT bad.

So, why do we speak it? Everyone knows how bad of a language it is. Everyone has seen/heard ESL people struggle with it, while they learn other languages with relative ease. The reason is: Many of us were born into English speaking countries. At some point in time, the land we live in was populated, conquered or assimilated by English speaking people, and as a result, we are all doomed to speak this terrible language. In the end, what it boils down to is:

Whatever criticism you may have for the English language matters very little. If you live in an English-speaking country and find verbal/written communication is worthwhile, it is logically in your best interest to speak English. For better or for worse, English is how things happened. There's no point in resisting it, so why not embrace it?

Why is this being brought up in this forum?

Well, some of my friends/acquaintances, as well as many people all over the internet are home-theatre enthusiasts and are huge fans of the concept of being able to watch movies in High-Def, yet the adamantly refuse to watch Blu-Ray because they feel that HD DVD was the superior format all along. They refuse to support the inferior, more-expensive format, and would rather watch up-converted DVD's than purchase a Blu-Ray player.

Maybe I'm the one who is delusional, but this makes absolutely no sense to me. These people are WAY more into high-tech home theatre than I will ever be. They've been ranting and raving about how awesome watching movies in 1080p will be, and this was long before I even knew what 1080p was. They've dumped twice as much money on their home theatre than I have. However, they refuse to be a part of the whole Blu-Ray generation. I'm genuinely baffled. Even if someone does think that HD DVD is vastly superior to Blu-Ray (the differences between the two seem pretty minimal to me), should they not be more than happy to settle for the next best thing and "go purple" or whatever people call it these days? They've already spent this much time obsessing over movies in HD and they've already spent this much money on having the best HT equipment. It would make a whole lot of sense to me if they just swallowed their pride, bought a BD player and enjoyed movies in 1080p and lossless audio, like they had planned on doing with HD DVD. Who cares which is better? Whichever format wins, wins. What it boils down to is:

Whatever criticism you may have for Blu-Ray matters very little. If you are a HD media enthusiast and find watching movies in 1080p resolution and lossless audio worthwhile, it is logically in your best interest to get a BD player. For better or for worse, Blu-Ray is how things happened. There's no point in resisting it, so why not embrace it?

In case you've missed the analogy, if you're boycotting BD solely because of its alleged inferiority to HD, you may as well refuse to speak English while you're at it.

In case you've missed the analogy, if you're boycotting BD solely because of its alleged inferiority to HD, you may as well refuse to speak English while you're at it.
Isn't there a part of Canada that already tries to do that? ;)

You might mention to them that 1) every encode that will fit on HD DVD will fit on Blu-ray, but 2) there are encodes that will fit on Blu-ray that cannot fit on HD DVD (bandwidth and space issues).

Therefore, in principal, Blu-ray has to be at least as good in terms of AV quality, and may well prove to be better.

I think that the difference may be rather marginal but, nevertheless, noticable. Some of the Disney and Sony titles look like they may be as good or better than anything HD DVD can offer. The Warners titles are mostly completely identical.

I am not trying to get into a squabble here about codecs etc. I am just saying that there is a case to be made that Blu-ray is at least as good and maybe better.

Isn't there a part of Canada that already tries to do that? ;)

I'm from Canada and I'm ashamed to admit that it is true. :(

So what is considered the "best" language? Or the best few?

I'm seriously curious.

English is a terrible language. Experts on linguistics agree. Very few other languages have as many rules, exceptions to those rules, exceptions to those exceptions, and so forth. Verbs need to be conjugated, according to whether it's addressing first or second or third person, singular or plural, past or present of future tense. Meanwhile many other languages have ONE word for each verb, regardless of the subject/plurality/tense. The correlation between a word's spelling and its pronunciation are more consistent in many other languages than they are with English. For example, "dough" and "cough". There are words with different meanings that sound exactly the same, like "blue" and "blew". While most nouns are pluralized by adding "s" ("dog" to "dogs"), some need "es" ("hippo" to "hippoes"), some use an "i" ("octopus" to "octopi"), while others have totally different rules ("goose" to "geese", "mouse" to "mice") and some require no change at all ("fish" to "fish"). English is really THAT bad.


I don't know from what you base it, but as a French, speaking quite fluently English, German and Spanish (and having tried Vietnamese et Japanese with no success), English is by far the easiest language I speak especially when talking about conjugated verbs ! In French and German there's at least as much as 3 times (in fact even more) more tenses than in English and any different subject has its different conjugated verb.
This is not really the place to debate this and count the points, but it's notably false, it's more like very few languages are easier than English, at least in the Europe/America area of languages...

They refuse to support the inferior, more-expensive format, and would rather watch up-converted DVD's than purchase a Blu-Ray player.

Maybe I'm the one who is delusional, but this makes absolutely no sense to me. These people are WAY more into high-tech home theatre than I will ever be.These people may say they are into high-tech home theatre, but I can tell you for a fact that they are NOT into watching movies.

You're not delusional - that is nuts. The reason myself and many others preferred HD DVD was, amongst other reasons, the better picture quality of many of the exclusive titles at launch. That's now disappeared - BD has come up to speed and while it's not perfect, I'm happy for it to be the closest thing we have to a single format.

I don't know from what you base it, but as a French, speaking quite fluently English, German and Spanish (and having tried Vietnamese et Japanese with no success), English is by far the easiest language I speak especially when talking about conjugated verbs ! In French and German there's at least as much as 3 times (in fact even more) more tenses than in English and any different subject has its different conjugated verb.
This is not really the place to debate this and count the points, but it's notably false, it's more like very few languages are easier than English, at least in the Europe/America area of languages...

French and German are two languages that suffer from the same problems as English. I've never actually tried to learn German.
Vietnamese and Japanese don't have these problems and are great languages to learn. I'm glad you brought up Vietnamese. No Vietnamese word is more than one-syllable. It maintains a diverse vocabulary by using varying pitch in their vowels (20+ total variations of vowels). There are no "special rules" when it comes to pronouncing them. You know how it sounds by how it reads, even if you've never seen the word before. No conjugation, no pluralization. Plurals and tenses can be accurately assumed solely from the context of the sentence.

I think English is easier to learn by those whose first language is similar, when it comes to verb conjugation, pluralization, etc... English speakers learn French relatively quickly, and vice-versa. Perhaps you found English easy to learn because your native tongue is French, and perhaps I found French easy to learn because English is my first language.

Anyway, to get back on topic, I just used English as an analogy to prove a point: If you're a diehard HDM fan and a supporter of HD, shouldn't you be among the first to support Blu-Ray if it emerged victorious, and among the last to adamantly refuse to buy anything that has to do with Blu-Ray?? Regardless of what you may think of HD vs BD??

English has the most words of any major world language. It wins because you have more options for expressing exactly what you are thinking in English than in any other language in the world.

English has the most words of any major world language. It wins because you have more options for expressing exactly what you are thinking in English than in any other language in the world.

I find it ironic that someone who boasts about the massive vocabulary of the English language and its ability to help the speaker articulate his thoughts can use the words "It wins..." to begin justifying his claim.

Very interesting read :)

What a strange analogy you've made.

I don't know what's worse. The post or the sig.

You won't last long here.

ohhhhkay.....
If an analogy is made where the analogy doesn't really make sense, is it an analogy at all?

English is the "mutt" of the languages. Part German, Latin, Greek, etc., etc.. And then there's the difference of written english and spoken english. Add to that the many dialects of the US alone. English is not just English. So it could be reasoned that English is actually a superior language as it is flexible to assimilate all other languages. Span-glish, Germ-glish, Mander-glish why has the other languages gotten "lazy" to have the inclusion of English pronounced words?

To try to make the OP's analogy work, If English is actually feature-rich and Blu-Ray is technology feature-rich then English equates parallel to Blu-Ray. Opposite conclusion of the OP.


Why is there a massively growing populous that insists that there is only two positions to "something"? Right-Wrong, Black-White, Left-Right, HDDVD-BR

My decsions to not even look at BR has more to do with my bad experiences with Sony's products. Over the past 20 years (2005 was the last one, PS-2), I have had 7 Sony products. All of them have failed within 30 days of purchase. Bad customer service on those 7 failed products. Then there is the general history of Sony taking a left turn with other standards consortiums and trying to market proprietary formats, Mini-Disc, Memory-Stick, etc. Those too, on paper, had far superior specifications, but Sony delivered late and short. When even partially delivered, version 0.8, if it had any sort of media attached, the media costs were ridiculous and were never time reduced.

IMO, specification wise, HD-DVD was the better bridge from SD to HDM, for if only the reason to speed the appeal, acquistion, transition to HDM by the "common" wage-earner. Optical is really at it's end, reliabiltiy/costs. SSD (Solid-State Devices) card would be the better longer-term solution. Ultimately on-demand service delivered content will be the closer to ideal. But the latter is decades away, at least in the US, as the infrastructure is currently not even at 5% of what would be required. Add to that the end-user cost to have that to their homes is sheer esoteric.

I'm just waiting for the VHS .v Beta II to be over. And then I will only jump when the media content is $20-$25 and the player is ~$150 (and not a Sony).

Octopi aye, nice. I thought it was octopuses.

ohhhhkay.....
If an analogy is made where the analogy doesn't really make sense, is it an analogy at all?

English is the "mutt" of the languages. Part German, Latin, Greek, etc., etc.. And then there's the difference of written english and spoken english. Add to that the many dialects of the US alone. English is not just English. So it could be reasoned that English is actually a superior language as it is flexible to assimilate all other languages. Span-glish, Germ-glish, Mander-glish why has the other languages gotten "lazy" to have the inclusion of English pronounced words?

To try to make the OP's analogy work, If English is actually feature-rich and Blu-Ray is technology feature-rich then English equates parallel to Blu-Ray. Opposite conclusion of the OP.


When I said that English is a terrible language, I was specifically referring to how easy the language is to learn and use. The fact that the English "assimilated" other languages is attributed to the power and influence that english-speaking countries have had in recent centuries, and not to the language itself.

The analogy was only used to illustrate that, sometimes you have to just go with the flow, whether if it's speaking a language because it's the most reliable way to communicate to the people around you, or adopting a format because it's the most reliable way to watch HDM. There's a point when it doesn't even matter which is "best" or "most efficient" anymore, because it just simply wasn't meant to be for the "better" option. If your country speaks English and your favorite movies are in Blu Ray, just go with the flow!


Why is there a massively growing populous that insists that there is only two positions to "something"? Right-Wrong, Black-White, Left-Right, HDDVD-BR

I wonder the same thing every day. It seems that if you support one, you MUST shun the other. HD vs BD. PC vs Mac. PS3 vs 360. Sony vs Toshiba. Yankees vs Red Sox. The list goes on.

My decsions to not even look at BR has more to do with my bad experiences with Sony's products.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to avoid a company due to bad experiences or its bad image to you, but nonetheless, it's a shame that you will miss out on the BD experience because of it.

If your country speaks English and your favorite movies are in Blu Ray, just go with the flow!

For me, by far, more of my favorite movies are on HD-DVD not Blu-Ray.


think it's perfectly reasonable to avoid a company due to bad experiences or its bad image to you, but nonetheless, it's a shame that you will miss out on the BD experience because of it.

I suppose this comment is assuming I have never seen Blu-Ray. Contrary, I have a friend whom is format neutral. He has PS3 and Xbox360, Sony BDPS2000ES and Toshiba HD-A35, viewed on a calibrated 65" Panasonic 1080P plasma. He has even purchased Bladerunner in both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. I have viewed both copies with him, along with a Blu-Ray copy of Incredibiles along with an SD copy. His own conclusions is that Bladerunner looks the same with an audio quality nod to HD-DVD. Incredibiles looks identical. I found them to be the same as well. So, with just those samples, I can only tally that with players at $1100 Sony and $450 Toshiba, Sony apparently still doesn't deliver what they promise and they over price their product, thus, IMO, giving a heavy advantage to HD-DVD due to cost.

BTW FWIW, my friend's opinion of using the PS3 or the Xbox for viewing HDM, is noticeabliy inferior to the standalone HDM players.

along with a Blu-Ray copy of Incredibiles along with an SD copy. His own conclusions is that Bladerunner looks the same with an audio quality nod to HD-DVD. Incredibiles looks identical. I found them to be the same as well.

Surely you jest....

Thank you