Bought Dual Player - HDDVD or BD?

Having read tons of reviews and bought lots of movies on both, I don't know if there are any titles that are significanty different from each other when available on both formats. Mostly you're picking the movies you want, and the studio that makes it will dictate which format you'll have to get it on. Warner is now the only large studio realeasing on both formats, and they seem to put identical video on both their blu-ray and HD-DVD discs. Occasionally there are SLIGHT audio differences between the two like on "300" but aparently the differences are minute, occasionally better interactive features on the HD-DVD versions. The beauty is you don't need to stress about it much though. Enjoy them both!

Greg

You are going to get a few different types of anwsers to this question. Some are Pro Blu-ray in which case they will say always get Blu-ray, same goes for HD DVD. In the end though take a look at the releases and see what the differences are (most of the time there are differences) and then pick the version you will be most happy with. Being purple has it advantages .

Heres a few ways you can decide which to pick.

1) Feel like giving your money to the BR camp or the HDDVD camp today

2) Do you feel like blue box or red box today

3) And finally... Eeny Meeny Meiny Moe

Just a thought, and 'scuse me while I don my asbestos longjohns, but given the choice of both, I'd personally go Blue whenever possible.

Why? Because while the video quality may be identical now due to the dual-purposing of the HD encodings, BluRay has POTENTIAL for higher bitrates in the future, whereas it's my understanding that HD-DVD is just about maxed out now. Therefore, if only one will eventually rule the marketplace, I'd prefer it be BluRay.

If there are features that only HD-DVD offers that you'd like to see become the standard, then you ought to support HD-DVD.

I'm fairly new in this neighborhood of the forums, so if the HD-DVD people would like to persuade me into the other camp or just tell me I'm a misinformed luddite, now's your best chance. I'm still reading and learning. But keep in mind - I have not even a teensy interest in interactive features. With me it's all about how good the audio and video are.

MentalDragon raises a good point, though. There's no such thing as true purple when you purchase software that's available in both formats at the same price. At that moment, you have to decide to be either bluish-purple or reddish-purple.

On Nature's Journey apprently there is a SLIGHT improvement on the PQ on the Blu-Ray release that you may, or may, not notice. I would buy whichever is the cheaper option when titles are available for either format. Congrats on being format neutral! Go get some titles and enjoy your HDM! I hope to join you in 2008!

if the titles in question are from Paramount/Dreamworks, they are better on HD-DVD in every case.

Why? 1.5Mbit Dolby Digital Plus is better than 640K Dolby Digital any day. Also, the paramount titles often have different encodes for each format but the HD-DVD comes out ahead (Italian Job, MI3, Coming to America, Trading Places) or dead even (Shooter).

As far as Warner titles go, most are comparable across both formats unless the HD-DVD one gets TrueHD while the Blu-Ray doesn't (Superman Returns, Training Day).

The only cross-platform title that is better on Blu-Ray is Sopranos 6.1. That has PCM. 6.2 got lossless audio on both formats.

I am not sure sound format will matter at all in his case. He has the dual format PC drive and will be using PowerDVD or WinDVD most likely, and they both down sample all sound formats other than original DTS and DD+. All PCM, TrueHD, and DTS MA tracks are down sampled because the path to the sound driver is not secure. There is a thread in the HTPC forum about this.

Bluray also has a scratch-resistant coating on their disks that HDDVD doesn't.

But HDDVD have often more interactivity.

I personally have made a list of movies available on both format and ensured that there aren't missing audio features or extras on one format that the other doesn't have, then if both are equal I typically choose Bluray.

HDDVD's data layer is much deeper in the stack so the scratch coating is not as necessary. HDDVDs that get scratched can be resurfaced, like a CD or DVD. A Blu-Ray disc's data layer is very close to the bottom surface of the disc hence it is less durable overall.

The BR camp likes to tout the 'hardcoating' as a feature but it is really a necessity considering the physical media design.

See the diagram in this article.

Update: I also forgot all about the "track pitch" differences of the media as well. The smaller size of the pits means that the same size scratch on the surface of a Blu-Ray disc does more damage than on a comparable HDDVD. In most cases when optical media is scratched the data is not actually damaged though. The scratch deflects the light from the laser making the area underneath the scratch unreadable. That is why resurfacing can 'repair' damaged discs. The commercially available resurfacing kits usually use a micro abrasive to grind away a small portion of the plastic down to the deepest portion of the scratch, basically eliminating it. Looking at the diagram you can see how this would present a problem for Blu-Ray.

Since Disney is in the BluRay camp, I suspect we'll find out about BluRay's durability (or lack thereof) soon enough. Agree with HyPike, though . . . it is something that concerns me.

It all depends on your prefrences, audio vs. interactivity. Most dual releases (usually just Warner these days) will always have more interactivity on the HDDVD, but may have a better audio option on the BD. Other times they may keep them identical. Paramount/Dreamworks is now a mute point because the existing stock is dwindling of BD (meaning you'll probably need to get say MI3 on HDDVD) and of course for the next 18months no new releases from them will be on BD. New Line is in the game now (but under Warner) and the Pan's Labyrinth release is identical except for the last line of the specs saying HDDVD will have "web enabled content" whereas BD won't. See the specs for both here.... http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/1185/panslabyrinth.html http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/1181/panslabyrinth.html

The nice thing is both are getting the DTSHDMA 7.1 channel audio track but right now most people on BD or HDDVD will only be able to take the 1.5MBPS core out of it. IF the PS3 gets HD-MA decoding by XMAS as has been stated by a Sony source, then a lot more people on the Bluray side will be able to enjoy the DTSHDMA track. ON the HDDVD side only A35, Onkyo or hopefully soon to be XA2 owners will be able to hear it and then only if they have a brand new 1.3 receiver. The PS3 may very well decode it to allow pretty much everyone with any type of HDMI receiver to hear it. So you can see how its really down to the individual disc. The one thing that we have seen won't differ anymore is picture quality, this seems to be identical on major studio releases from Warner.

Netflix rentals are the way to go for now. Both formats generally look and sound awesome, but buying anything other than "must own" titles is too expensive at this time. HDM discs will drop dramatically in price eventually. Until then... rent and enjoy!

I coudn't agree more.