October 26th - HD-DVD and Blu-ray, A Comparison

They list Buena Vista as a studio supporting hddvd. That would be great if true. Maybe a sign of things to come.

i dont really understand what debating the 'specs' , or sticking to a format is good for since a very important part is played by the QUALITY OF THE TRANSFER (video & audio)
if you have a poor transfer you can wipe with that format in any way it wont bring out more quality.

Both formats have some very high quality disks and both formats have some poor ones. If either format had consistantly high quality you might have a winner. Blu-ray should have higher quality but HD DVD has several reference disks in terms of quality.

The format war largely revolves around the players; its not just about the media. Blu Ray has tremendous problems in this area and will continue to do so until their final spec for the media matches what is distributed as a player. Obviously any player without an ethernet connection isn't ready for Hi Def DVDs of any format which basically means look at a play station three or a dual format player on the blu ray side or forget about it. HD-DVD players just keep hummin along doin what they say they can do, and you get working ethernet connections with interactive features on many of their discs curently unmatched by Blu Ray.

Why would an ethernet connection be relevant to playing a movie? Why would my media player need to call home to play a disc that I've bought/rented?

It's for extra content relative to the particular movie:

http://www.electronista.com/articles...rnet.features/

Not to mention it comes in quite handy for firmware updates, which are fairly frequent.

Holy crap, do you really need this answered at this stage in the format war???

I am wondering what the war has anything to do with the poster question?.

WTF??? No mention of uncompressed PCM and the lack of hddvd titles with them.


Not neutral. Just look at all the new releases this year and Blu-ray has this advantage hands down.


I haven't taken math class in years, but I do see more companies next to blu-ray.


There are more blu-ray titles. Look at neutral retailers and you'll see that.

Uncompressed PCM is a joke and a waste of potential space, but I guess that doesn't matter since there is nothing else for Blu ray to use it on. PCM is an archaic format and isn't actually HD, both HD DVD and Blu ray supports it anyway so it doesn't change the advantage of supported audio formats.



Really? All I've seen are promised releases, until they actually hit the streets I won't believe them, with companies like Fox you can't take anything they say as factual, as for Disney and Sony well they will probably release on time, but personally I don't think the new release movies are all that good in comparison to some of the older movies which still haven't been released.


I think that's based on opinion of customer service there, and none of those companies are known for it.



Oh ya, let's see... 375 BD vs 362 HDD, not a big difference there, and those numbers jump back and forth weekly, and some of those on both sides aren't even real titles at all.

Uncompressed PCM is the master/original track before it gets compressed or remastered in other formats. There is nothing archaic about an original. You might as well say film is an archaic format.
HD-DVD supports PCM, but rarely use it because of their disc space inefficiency. Even Transformers was limited to Dolby Digital-Plus 5.1 Surround only, no TrueHD, no PCM.


That's just plain denial there. Fanboy denial. I can admit I liked Transformers, I bet you like some of the blu-ray exclusive movies.


Toshiba has crap customer service. I had a Toshiba dvd recorder die within months of purchase and they expected me to pay for their crap to be fixed. And fyi I did use it correctly. All other products I've bought have lasted years.

People are more inclined to buy products from Samsung, Panasonic, Sharp, and especially Sony. Sony has a huge fanbase.


Best Buy:
BD: 437
HD: 378

Circuit City:
BD: 446
HD: 397

Amazon:
BD: 504
HD: 461

That's about or more than 40 title difference. And Best Buy is the leader in high-def media sales and most of their stores have alot more blu-ray shelf space than hddvd space.

Like the HT guy's say who cares as long as your watching HI DEf....
Blue and HD have great stuff .........period!
But again I agree it will come down to meeting consumers needs.
With Christmas coming up and HD DVD players dipping under the $200 mark......I'd say Blue better do something fast.
I'm in the HD camp but that's because Toshiba met my needs by giving me a way to enjoy Hi Def with out breaking the bank............

As far as I've heard, there's already an approved 50G HD-DVD disc format, so that advantage will soon be history.



I have a Toshiba SD DVD player that's about 7 years old and never had any issues with it. "People are more inclined to buy products from ..."? Let's go out on the street and do interviews asking "Hey, who would you rather buy from, Toshiba, or Samsung?" Do you honestly think the masses would have an opinion about that? Come on, that's just silly. Sony, maybe, because of the brand image. But the image I have of Sony is what keeps me from supporting them. They are always trying to force proprietary formats onto consumers (memory sticks and mini-discs, anyone?), and are ALWAYS OVERPRICED! (Priced a Vaio lately? Are you going to tell me a Vaio PC --made with the same components as other brands-- deserves to be priced at a huge premium?) This doesn't mean they don't make good products. But other companies do, too.

Sony thinks their s*it don't stink, and wants to charge a huge premium for equipment that's matched or exceeded by other brands. I put them in the Bose category for that reason.

Here's where I feel you can't go wrong with HD-DVD right now. Toshiba has priced these units much lower than comparable Blu-Ray players. If I buy an HD-DVD player now for $200 vs. a PS3 for $500 (or even 400), and two years from now Blu-Ray emerges as the so-called "winner", there will no doubt be much cheaper Blu-Ray machines available at that time. So, my cost for transitioning --if need be-- would still most likely be at the least revenue-neutral with the cost of PS3's today. I don't buy DVD's. I rent, so no worries there. Plus, the HD-DVD player (A2) has outstanding upsampling, so it wouldn't be worthless. This scenario is worst-case, of course, and doesn't even factor in the state of play if HD-DVD becomes the de facto standard.

Let's face it, by the time this "war" is over, optical discs might be supplanted as a preferred medium for movie distribution.

I'm always amazed at people shilling for companies like they are some kind of sports teams. Why would anyone care whether Sony "wins" a format war? It's so absurd. I'm looking at things pragmatically. If Sony didn't have such a ridiculous pricing structure, I'd be more than happy to support them. Any clear-thinking person would have to agree that these competing formats both provide excellent vehicles for HD movie viewing. Toshiba's managed to do it at a much lower price point. Sony supporters will say "but they're selling them at a loss". I've got news for ya, Sony is taking horrendous losses on the PS3 alone right now. See here: http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/49638

what?

no one with speakers costing less than $5k will be able to hear a quality difference between PCM and TrueHD. It's bad enough right now with TrueHD's reputation vs. high bitrate DD/DTS.
You apparently didnt read any Transformers reviews where it was stated the DDP track was excellent. It's about real world performance, not performance on paper. Funny you have all this "space" yet still can't get your titles to look or sound better than HD-DVD.



As if you're not a fanboy. LOL. At least his screename doesn't totally indicate it.

>>no one with speakers costing less than $5k will be able to hear a quality difference between PCM and TrueHD<<

But TrueHD IS PCM! It's just 'packed' for transport - the bits that go in come out EXACTLY the same. If the outputted PCM bits on a Blu-ray PCM title and a True-HD title are different, then it's because something was done BEFORE the encoding to make them different.

For consumer formats not requiring precise frame editing and such, TrueHD is a MUCH better format because it delivers the original PCM bits, 100% guaranteed, without taking up huge amounts of space to do it like Linear PCM does. It's not lossy in ANY WAY. Blu-ray is simply wasting space by using linear PCM.

i see no one read my post, and there is some kind of a joy in uselessly debating standards and formats... whatevar... i'mma go watch my 8mm childhood on my 100ft screen you lewzerz.

Why would an ethernet connection be relevant to playing a movie? Why would my media player need to call home to play a disc that I've bought/rented?

Both formats have some very high quality disks and both formats have some poor ones. If either format had consistantly high quality you might have a winner. Blu-ray should have higher quality but HD DVD has several reference disks in terms of quality.

Some people just like to endlessly debate things - they have some kind of inferiority complex and always need to feel "they are right" - now, I like talking about things like specs and the differences between formats, but as for getting into fights about it or trolling - no way - life is too short for that kind of childish nonsense. I really feel that readers who constantly fight about that kind of stuff are mentally flawed.

I learned my lesson about quality transfers back in the days of the RCA VideoDisc - I had both RCA CED and LaserDisc and was often chagrined to find that the RCA disc might have much better picture quality than the corresponding LaserDisc release - the movie GREASE is a good example - now, in every way and every measure, CED was clearly inferior to LD - the issue can't even be debated - but the movie GREASE on CED was clearly superior to its LaserDisc counterpart! I was flabbergasted by that - I didn't realise, at the time, that spec's were only part of the story - the fact was, RCA had used a low-contrast Inter-Negative to create the master for GREASE, a practice in the industry that RCA started, whereas the LD was created from a worn theatrical print - as a result, the CED of GREASE was noticably sharper than the LD and had better color with lots of detail in shadows - and without the blown-out whites of the LD either. Later, RCA reissued GREASE on CED in Stereo and that version's sound, like the picture, stomped all over the LD issue. It had silky, sparkling highs with less leakage of mono dialogue into the surrounds - and nice, smooth bass too. In every way, it was superior to the LD.

Anyhoo - sometimes specs are not the end-all and be-all of a format!