Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD

Two great new technologies will hit the market this year. Time for us to explain and to compare these new blue laser technologies.
Those of you who are interested and want to know more can simply read our article by clicking the image below.


Table of content

• What are the technologies?
• Differences
• Formats & Protection
• The pros and cons
• Conclusion

Feel free to discuss this article and/or to ask your questions related to this technologies here, in this thread.

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This article is an outstanding piece of work. Something to be proud of and it's bound to become an important and often-linked resource. Take a bow you guys.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and vote for HD-DVD as the format to support. I don't believe that the media makers will be able to supply BD media at reasonable prices and high quality for a LONG time, if ever. HD-DVD is more or less ready to go and will be cheaper by far IMHO.

Considering divx compression or any other more advanced and superior algorithm than mpeg2 the REAL INNOVATION would have been to KEEP the DVD format and use better compression.
The price of media is important for most of the people and at current prices of 0,40 Euro for a high quality ricoh DVD+ disk it might take years until prices for blueray are equaly low.

My private opinion about the main, if not the ONLY reason for the industry to introduce this new format: New and way better copy protection system.

No doubt that DRM is part of the push for the HD formats. DRM has been part of the HD technology from the start. We may well be looking at the death of recording and duplication as we know it. But I also seriously doubt that you would ever get high quality results from compressing a HD mastered movie into 4.4 GB of space. There will always be limits to compression.

I refuse to support the new format. The best format is the current DL DVD standard, with better video compression algorithm.

I find it hard to support any of the new formats as well, i don't think its the best way forward. I think its being pushed way too much (probably as stated because of DRM issues). Its not been long since DVD became a mainstream format, only recently everyone i know has a DVD player in some form (laptop or standalone etc), and the industry wants to push a new format yet again when DVD is just starting to reach everyone. Not only that, its expensive, as i yet again have to buy a player and since the industry can't agree on a format i'll have to buy a player that reads everything, and to get the benefits from it i'll have to buy an HDTV, currently theres only 1 HDTV channel in the whole of europe. Not to mention yet again i'll have to buy all my films again. I just don't see the benefit at all in the short term, maybe when theres no more SDTV channels and my current tv breaks. But i suppose its different in the states, but here in the UK we get everything last and the most expensive.

I vote for Blu-ray because of it's capacity.
Most articles about these formats fail to mention computer users who archive a large numbers of files.
Currently on a SL DVD, I can store 1260 files from my karaoke collection.
A Blu-ray, (at 50GB), could store 14,600 of these files.
Instead of having to use 14 DVD's, I could only use one.

Back in the old days, I had my collection on CDRs and one DVD holds about 7 CDRs

Jon

Here in the States, HDTV is starting to take off (I just bought one this week), cable companies and satellite companies offer about 10 HD stations, with one satellite co., VOOM, that specializes in HD offering 35 HD stations. We are starting to see more HD DVD players on the market. There's no stopping progress, I expect more markets opening up in the next year. So, HD-DVD and Blu-ray will make it here, which one is better or wil be more successful, we'll have to wait and see, but it seems HD-DVD has a little jump on Blu-ray at this point.

I'm getting bored of discs!

Where're those holo-matrix wafers they were showing on Tomorrow's World 10 years ago damnit?!

With DL DVD, you can put in 2500 karaoke files...more than sufficient for 99% of the users out there. It's much safer and cheaper to have several backups on DL DVDs. Heck, you may damage the Blue Ray DVD before you can fill it up to capacity.

It will be another Beta vs. VHS fiasco. But Apple has come out in support of Blu-Ray and that may be what it takes to push things that way, and before anyone gets on the Apple vs. PC thing, Apple pulls a lot of weight in the "creative" community.

288Mbps 8x Blu-ray is very nice. However, time to market is more important. Even 200GB and 36MB/s aren't promising enough for Blu-ray to compete well against HDD and flash memory technologies. Which is why the same companies that support Blu-ray and HD-DVD are also into other technologies.

Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD isn't like Betamax vs. VHS. Betamax had very little share in consumer market. Both Blu-ray and HD-DVD will have some shares in consumer market. Both started with a lot of industry support for each. Standard wars are not going to die in one day. New technolgies will most always mean new wars over standard.

Betamax was a marketing failure, not a technological failure. Both Betamax and VHS, in the early days, had an equal share of the market. I still own an NEC Beta Hi-Fi VCR that, approaching 16 years of age, works well. The ultimate direction the market takes will not be decided by technological superiority, ease of use, or features. It will be decided solely on price and availability. The adoption by Apple will, as I posted, give Blu-Ray a definite advantage within the community making the decision on which format they support with software. They will both be commercial products, but the "average" consumer will support the product that supplies them with the greater amount of software titles and is compatible with their existing base of discs.
Time has proved that the consumer is not the best person to make a decision on technological matters, but that's how it works.

Yup, that's true, true, true.

if i had to support any of the next generation formats, then i would have to support blu-ray. I would have said HD-DVD before but i heard that they removed that stupid plastic case from blu-rays and gave it a strong coating to prevent scratches. Thats what tipped the balance for me.

Once some of the early Blu-ray supporters said that was Blu-ray's strongest advantage.

Even if Sony hadn't gone with Bluray for their PS3, Disney deciding on it is a deciding factor.

Do you guys have any IDEA how many gazillions of Disney kack gets sold every year to mom&pops everywhere? From watching my little brother grow up with VHS, I can tell you, it's a LOT. Every home with a kid will have a Bluray player.

Microsoft alone has more influence than Sony and Disney combined. "A lot" could mean anywhere between several to trillions or quadrillions or quintillions. I prefer exact statistics (or at least some marketshare data.)

Just for the interest by me, myself and I - is that a "regular" english word??? In german it means something like crap, dump, shit...

Sorry for going OT here.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Kack

1. Kack
Australian Slang. To describe how someone laughed at something.
"He absolutely Kacked himself when Darc fell down those stairs".
"What a Kack!"
Source: Eamon Hale, Aug 9, 2004

3. Kack
Combination of Fucking and Crap.
Another word for excrement.
Kackhead!

I nealy kacked myself back there.
Source: Jay, Sep 22, 2003

Thanks man.

Sorry again for the OT thing.

I think the article nailed it on the head by stating we need BOTH Blu-ray and HD-DVD. The logical thing to do would stroll into the HD-DVD realm with hopes that in the next 10 years we'll all be using it, but its doubtful.

When the industry pushes a format, they really need to have a "hook" for the public. The switch from CD's and VHS wasn't that hard, the sheer space and combining of formats (audio and video) into DVD was nice. Is space the only hook they have to prompt us to give up DVDs? Maybe I'm alone in this, but I don't have enough media to store to warrant an upgrade at this point. My guess is that when high def programming becomes more common, the new format will emerge out of necessity. What do you think?

I don't think many are ready to buy a Blu-ray recorder at at least US$2,000 per unit. Most of us are waiting for a PC Blu-ray or HD-DVD burner for under US$500. It's not giving up DVD, but just adds the capability to use HD-DVD (and/or Blu-ray) in addition to DVD and CD. As VHS/DVD recorders that are able to record to either VHS or DVD media, I hope there will be VHS/Blu-ray or VHS/HD-DVD combo recorders as well. About what will happen between Blu-ray and HD-DVD, perhaps even the chairman of Sony don't know for sure. HP once bought Compaq but Sony is not going to buy Toshiba.

I don't see myself buying into the HD-Bluray market any time soon. I have a 50" HDTV and an LG HD upconverting DVD player that I am very happy with. It really is very close to HD, even on my backups at %70. I compare the quality to the regular network HD broadcasts but not as good as the really good HD channels (PBS, ESPN and INHD). The point I'm trying to make is, there are probably some business applications that could use the extra storage space, but I don't think it is there for the average consumer. Who wants to spend the the kind of money they are going to ask for the players, recorders and media for a minimal improvement in picture quality. As it is I don't buy DL media anymore because it still costs $5+ and the media quality is somewhat iffy. What do you think HD or Bluray media will cost, remember DL started at $15 per pop? I don't think the demand will be there, how many people are buying DL media nowadays? It hasn't been a huge success. Just my 2 cents.

Compared to DVD DL media, it is cheap to produce HD-DVD disks. Is there anybody inside the industry indicating it would be more costly to produce blue laser disks than double or dual layer red laser disks?