Is Blu-ray taking the cake in new releases?? - Page 3

Originally Posted by HDKing

No more comedies please. Don't know many people who purchase a comedy for a visual upgrade.

Originally Posted by eightninesuited

I own both, but the PS3 Stomps all over the 360 addon. The PS3 is infinitely faster, better connectivity (HDMI 1.3), way better sound with True HD decoder, and the kicker - it ejects when I press the eject button on my Bluetooth remote.

The stupid addon doesn't open - instead the 360's tray opens. You actually have to scroll to "Open HD DVD tray" to open it. What the heck is the point of the remote then?

Being a video game developer (I develop for both, Playstation 3 and XBOX 360) people ask me almost daily which platform I think is better. These are my personal feelings, in no way does this reflect my employer.

Short answer: XBOX 360.

Long answer: Price, performance, visual quality, game selection and online support. I think the XBOX 360 wins in every category.

Price: This is obvious; the XBOX 360 core is only $299. The PS3 is around $499 for the 20GB version. It comes with a hard drive, but you don't need a hard drive to enjoy a lot of great games on the 360 so I think it's fair to compare both core systems.

Performance: On paper, the PS3 is more powerful. In reality, it's quite inferior to the 360. Without getting into too many details, the three general-purpose CPU's the xbox360 has are currently FAR easier to take advantage of than the SPU's on the PS3. I suspect a few years down the road some high budget, first party PS3 exclusive titles will come out that really take advantage of the SPU's and do things the XBOX 360 can't, but I don't think the console is worth buying based on this speculation (for some it will be though, we'll have to wait and see how these games turn out).

Graphics: The XBOX 360 is a clear winner. The GPU is more powerful. It has more powerful fillrate, and far more pixel and vertex processing horsepower. Part of the reason is their choice of memory, and architecture of pixel and vertex procesing. I can't get into details but the same vertex shader will run much slower on the PS3 than the XBOX 360. The 360 also has a clever new way rendering high definition anti aliased back buffers. To accomplish the same effect on PS3 is prohibitively expensive. For this reason I think many games will have no choice but to run in non-HD resolutions on the PS3 version, use a lower quality anti aliasing technique, or do back buffer upscaling. The end result in all cases is going to be noticeably worse image quality.

Game Selection: The XBOX 360 has a huge head start here. 1 year is an eternity in gaming. Almost all multi-platform developers have made the XBOX 360 their primary platform due to timing of release-to-market, this means the games will look and perform better on the 360. The PS3 versions will be ports of the 360 versions. (The opposite was true for XBOX 1 vs. PS2). The XBOX 360 is also far faster to develop for due to better development tools (massively popular Visual Studio .NET vs. proprietary, buggy PS3 compiler and debugger), better documentation, and easier architecture (3 general purpose CPU's vs. 8 specialized processors that require DMA). Timing has also caused all next-gen middleware developers to make XBOX 360 their primary platform, and they will add ps3 support' as needed. This support will probably be inferior to the XBOX 360's due to manpower and more importantly, demand. It's this catch-22 now that will continue to drive the 360 forward and hold PS3 back.

The other obvious point here is that right now the Xbox360 already has a very impressive line-up of titles on store shelves; the ps3 just launched, and has virtually nothing of interest. Also, many 360 games are already discounted ($35 for Fight Night 3 on Amazon). PS3 games are all full price since it just launched.





Live: Microsoft's online support with XBOX1 was phenomenal. They built in-house experience, user base, facilities, $$ commitment from executive level (since it proved successful), and most importantly, feedback from 100,000s of XBOX Live subscribers. Playstation 2's online support sucked. They are now playing catch-up, trying to emulate Xbox's model. But they had their hands tied just trying to make the PS3 work, it was incredibly ambitious (blu-ray etc.). I haven't seen it yet, but I seriously doubt the quality will be anywhere to the level of XBOX 360.

HD Content: The PS3 comes with one built in (blu-ray). The XBOX 360 offers HD-DVD as an add-on for $200. You probably don't care about HD-DVD right now. But you will soon (The quality between DVD and HD is comparable to VHS vs DVD, if you have the right TV) so I suggest paying attention to the war that's begun. There are two formats: HD-DVD and BLU-RAY. Basically if you rent a BLU-RAY DVD from Bockbuster, it won't play in your XBOX 360 HD-DVD, and vice versa with the PS3. The implications of this format war would require another article on its own. But as far as the consoles are concerned, the XBOX 360 wins because the DVD player is a separate unit. Playing movies is very taxing on the DVD reader, and let's face it. In 3 years when your PS3 DVD drive goes out due to playing lots of movies (PS2 was notoriously bad about this) you will have to go buy another PS3. With the 360, you'll just chuck your HD-DVD player, and go buy another one at the store. In 3 years standalone units wlil probably only cost about $99-150. Another point for the XBOX 360, is that I don't know who will win the format-war, so I would rather wait with purchase of a HD player. The PS3 doesn't give you this option.

PS3 controversy: Shootings, Wallmart fights, $15,000 Ebay sales etc. My advice is ignore it. It will pass soon.

Originally Posted by Fettastic

I would love to see their "100 plus 2007 HD DVD release schedule", but that hasn't been released anywhere. In that talk all they did was reaffirm a couple of titles we already knew were coming.

Originally Posted by jared701

the war is going to be over for one very obvious reason that i havent seen anyone in this thread post (i did not read every post, however) the porn industry will be releasing 95% or more of their films on hd dvd, NOT BLURAY. laugh if you will about that, but considering its a 30 billion a year industry that can have a huge sway on who wins. in time disney will come over to hd dvd.

Originally Posted by jared701

the war is going to be over for one very obvious reason that i havent seen anyone in this thread post (i did not read every post, however) the porn industry will be releasing 95% or more of their films on hd dvd, NOT BLURAY. laugh if you will about that, but considering its a 30 billion a year industry that can have a huge sway on who wins. in time disney will come over to hd dvd.

Originally Posted by HighDeff

Is Blu-ray taking the cake in new releases??

HD DVD = a lot of A movies

Blu-Ray = a lot of B movies

The choice is obvious to me............

Originally Posted by jaewon

I think HD-DVD fanboys are worse than blu-ray.

Originally Posted by dandaroy

Just bought a Toshiba HD-A2 and been stunned by the PQ on HD-DVD. However, I am a bit frustrated on the availability of new releases on HD-DVD. I have Netflix and seems like 90% of the new releases are coming out in Blu-ray only!!@%#! What gives? Did I choose a wrong format?

Originally Posted by SimpleTheater

The porn industry clearly helped push VHS over Beta, but during the 1980's consumers of porn only had two choices - 1) Go to a seedy XXX Cinema or 2) Watch on a VCR.

Today, with high speed internet connections and porn available within a click or two, physical storage of porn will NOT decide the winner of the hi-def format war.

Originally Posted by jaewon

A lot of A movies? What is your definition of a lot because i hardly see any new quality movies being released from HD-DVD. Actually, they hardly have any movies being released at all! Blu-ray is backed by every movie studio except for 1. I find it hard to believe that you can't find any A movies. Half baked? Mummy returns? Scooby Doo? You call those A movies from HD-DVD? Give me a break. I think HD-DVD fanboys are worse than blu-ray.

Originally Posted by BTBuck1

Over the last three weeks at Best Buy I've watche 9 BDP-S1's and 2 BDP1000's move off the shelf. to TWO HDA2's. The software section for HDDVD is full and ripe, the Blu_ray area looks dimished and picked over. Not to even mention we can't keep ps3's, or the Blu-Ray remote in stock.

This has been the state since about the first week of December, and it's not looking to get better for HDDVD anytime soon.

HDDVD really needs a few (not just one) bigtime player to cross over if they want to stand a chance, Not only in Hardware, but software as well. The general perception among customer in my store is that HDDVD is "That upconverting thing" that it's not "Real HD like Blu-Ray" I've overheard customers say this. I also heard a customer say to his wife when she pointed to HDDVD's as he was looking at Blu-Ray's "Ahhh...thats a sinking ship, we have these...the blu-cases"

I own both formats, and I really enjoy them almost equally. If it weren't for the fact I can rarely watch a movie on my A1 without some sort of a problem, I'd consider them equal. But Because of the hardware limitations I'm experiencing from HDDVD, coupled with the lack of release announcements, My Blu-Ray collection has out grown my HDDVD library 60-35 and I had HDDVD 2 months longer, alot of the titles are warner and paramount, but I prefer them on blu-ray because i know they wont skip, stutter or lose audio.

I have alot of money tied into HDDVD, and I'd like to see it thrive...but it's tough to remain optomistic when you see how much harder the Blu-Ray companies seem to want my $dollars!

Originally Posted by Fettastic

Not according to this:

Originally Posted by alluringreality

These "content is going to kill HD DVD" type comments are absurd. As long as Blu-Ray player prices remain sky high, it only makes sense that HD DVD will be able to hang around. Of course $500 retail for HD DVD isn't cheap either, but at least it beats Blu-ray pricing. Personally I ended up selling my A1 to a lawyer, he wanted HD but apparently didn't care to pay retail for either format.

Originally Posted by polyh3dron

How in God's name are you HD-DVD zealots still holding on to the whole price argument? The 20GB PS3 costs $500 and is very easy to come by now. You can purchase a remote to go with it too. No one says you HAVE to play games on it. It's also among the best BD players out there right now.

Originally Posted by polyh3dron

How in God's name are you HD-DVD zealots still holding on to the whole price argument? The 20GB PS3 costs $500 and is very easy to come by now. You can purchase a remote to go with it too. No one says you HAVE to play games on it. It's also among the best BD players out there right now.

Originally Posted by mrsmith

In event you havn't seen it, here's the starting point:
http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htf/...d.php?t=250887

Please refer specifically the last section of this post, including wherein HTF is promising to obtain the entire 100-plus list, in addition to those given by Universal at time of the interview. I have no doubt that whatever is published right now is subject to change(as they always have been) but there also is little reason to believe they would deliberately distort a release schedule upon which much of their business model is based. I assume further that this is no different than the release schedule as posted by the BluRay consortium, and why should it be any more or less reliable? I can't tell: are you suggesting that Universal or hometheaterforum is somehow bending the release schedule in some fashion or other just because Universal is exclusively a HD-DVD backer? If so, how and why? Seems to me a release schedule is a release schedule is a release schedule, whether it comes from Sony or Paramount or Universal or Warner Brothers or . . .

Now it's just a matter of checking with thedigitalbits and HTF to follow up for the rest.

Enjoy!

Milt R. Smith
mrsmith2002@yahoo.com

Originally Posted by SyHD

I find it hard to believe the HD DVD supporters would call such movies as Silence of the Lambs, , A Few Good Men, A Bridge Too Far, The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Graduate, Platoon, Bull Durham, Finding Neverland, Dances with Wolves, Casino Royale, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Glory, The Princess Pride, Winged Migration, Requiem for a Dream, The Prestige, The Usual Suspect, etc crap, and still have a straight face. All studios have their share of good and bad movies. To deny this is pure fanboyism.