[Frank Stein]

Just flipped to UHD (Universal High Definition channel) via Dish. There was the HD DVD commercial with that guy from the Sopranos. OK, not a bad commercial. Kind of short, but OK.


Then immediately after is a Disney BD commercial promoting Pirates of the Caribbean. Wow. Just a gorgeous commercial in HD, showing scenes from Pirates in OAR. It was a much longer commercial than Toshiba's commercial. I have both formats. But if I had nothing and saw these two commercials back to back, it would be a no brainer that BD was the way to go. HD DVD just isn't going to make any progress if these two commercials continue to be shown as they just were.

 

[Rob Tomlin]

The BD commercial for Pirates was very cool. And looked great!

 

[amillians]

It's hard to shy away from the fact that Blu-ray commercials are up to 66% longer than HD DVD commercials. Not to mention the extra peak consumer information they can deliver--notice how that Sopranos guy had to talk kind of fast and it got a little slurry at points? That's a real limitation to HD DVD's advertising architecture in my book.


That said, I have to admit I'm impressed the HD DVD commercial managed to squeeze so much into what they had to work with--it just goes to show you what a little TLC in production can achieve. Still, they apparently spent weeks doing the HD DVD shot, hand tweaking all the shots, so maybe that's cheating.


P.S. If you think the commercial was impressive, just wait until they start the nationwide rollout of the new dual deck end caps for in-store display of Blu-ray discs...they can show twice as many discs in the same space. No matter how much the Toshiba reps for Best Buy poo-poo this innovation (one went so far as to say it broke the laws of in-store presentation with it's oh-so-thin cardboard), I think it's going to be a crushing blow to HD DVD. And there's word that they are working on a quad deck version--HD DVD can't even stack more than 2 high without toppling over!