Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD (Update) - Page 2

Given ~45 million or so consoles have shipped with DVD players in the US compared to 90 million DVD players their numbers are hardly insignificant, especially when Bill Gates and co want to sell even more this time around.

I'd be willing to bet a lot more people will early adopt game machines than DVD players too. If you really don't think Sony packaging it with the PS3 will have an effect then you're crazy. They aren't subsidising that cost at this stage to lose.

As an aside the big loser though in all of this is the Xbox 360 games as its games get larger they are going to whack straight into the constraints of DL DVDs or rely on compression. Sony's partners really have a lot of disc space to play with.

We'll see, I don't doubt the influence that PS3 will have but I doubt that it'll cause a shit in power to Blu-Ray. HDTV isn't required for PS3 thus it'll still be hooked to plenty of Std Def TVs.

I looke for HD-DVD to get MS Media Center support soon with Microsoft's partnership. War is inevitable...moving to Defcon 2

This is the weird thing with all the 'we might release a version of Xbox 360 with HD-DVD support later' indications from M$. How on earth will they ensure compatability with the existing base if games start shipping on HD-DVD (something Sony doesn't have to worry about from the start)?

Will it be another example of the Megadrive/Genesis CD add-on experience?
(Imagine all the new FF FMV sequences in HD though...)

And hmurchison, I don't see that the HDTV issue is that much of an issue. It is a chicken and egg scenario. The HDTVs with HDMI are now becoming reasonably affordable, so it is not inconceivable that people do upgrade the TV over the life-span of the PS3 console. It is more of a subtle market penetration (but nevertheless not trivial). I don't expect anyone to specifically buy PS3 to play HD movies from the get-go (unlike they did with the PS2 and DVDs), but it has the capability. I don't think Sony should be underestimated here.

I doubt game companies will be allowed to switch media. It'd just destroy Microsoft's reputation with the market and would be seen as gouging the market. Why buy Microsoft when they build in planned obsolescence early? No they'll be stuck with DL games for the life time and in 5 years I'd expect game sizes to grow a decent amount. Whether that'll make a huge difference remains to be seen but the same people who care about HD are going to care about compression artifacts so aren't likely to choose the Xbox over the PS3.

HD-DVD was designed as a bridge from DVD. The NA and disc structure is almost identical between the two. I'm sure Microsoft has added support in the chipsets to handle more than just DVD media because Xboxes have hard drives as well.


I don't see any problems with a bifurcated line. Xbox360 for basic gaming and online play. XboxHD for gaming, online play and multimedia(Media Center).


Exactly it's something that is going to happen over time. However Blu-Ray fans seem to think that one year after the PS3 ships there will be 3 million PS3 users and Blu-Ray movie purchasers. This isn't going to happen. It'll be spread over months..years even and I really believe the Xbox will have a HD-DVD player sooner rather than later. MS is going to be first to market, they have time for a second model in the future.

We differ here. A bifurcated line will cause confusion and frustration with those who buy the console at launch. It is not just about the deliverable content (in terms of movies etc) but what the storage capacity is for games (unless they stealth in drives and upgrade them later with firmware, but this is highly unlikely). (Nearly) All PS2 games were on CD-ROM at launch time, but within a year or so they were mostly on DVDs. I understand what you are saying re; the 'normal' vs 'HD' version of things, and HD-DVD is definitely the way to go for this, but I think it will hurt M$ if the early adopters get a lower quality experience.



I agree with the first rationale, and I don't think the penetration will occur as quickly as some believe. But it is important that the capability is there. Certainly some of those people will have HDTV and will buy movies to watch on their console. If only 5% or so, that is still all to the good for the BDA. If the movies are there (and this in itself is quite an important caveat) I cannot imagine somone spending another $1000 or so on a device to play the same quality of content that they have paid $500 or so for (and I would lay money on the fact that the PS3 will not cost more than that).

Microsoft has to go here or they'll leave themselves wide open.

I just read(no links though) that the PS3 is rumored to be $399 and cost around $499. That's only a $100 premium over the Xbox 360 for the pleasure of playing ALL PS games and Movies(for those with capable HDTV) and other features.

Microsoft is going to have to do something in this regard. Perhaps a trade up, rebate or what have you.

Exactly. I cannot believe that Bill Gates has even hinted that they might add functionality to the console further down the line. What will this do to initial sales, if people think they might get a better version later? A very strange tactic indeed.

(I read on Joystiq a while ago Sony were looking at no more than $450 or so, $399 sounds superb.)

As an aside, I wonder if Sony are going to try something similar to the PS2s 'smoothing' of PS1 games. That would be awesome for HD...
...maybe

[Edit: And it ain't over til the fat lady finishes singing and dodges the flowers...]

Ballmer's being vague. Engaget interview

Yep. Actually the interview kind of indicated to me that M$ maybe are looking to stealth a HD-DVD type drive in there before it is done...

Hmmmm.....?

(And there goes Ballmer again, insinuating that all iPod owners have majoritively illegal songs on them. What is this guy's problem?!??)

He misses his hair.

As long as they insist on HDCP, and no one cracks it, they will sell absolutely nothing to me. My one-month old HD computer monitor doesn't support HDCP and it would be far too expensive to switch again.

Who cares?

The PS3 v XB360 argument is entwined with the question of HD media of choice, but in the end the format that gives the best (affordable) access to film/TV content will win. Consumers will sit on the fence till then. There's plenty of DVD content, which is good enough for many, and lotsa of Cable on demand too.

People still like the idea of owning their favorites, so a medium will emerge, but I don't really care which one it is.

I think that this strategy was to get the early volume up to help drive producion costs down. I don't think that the numbers that Sony is shipping will not have that much of an effect but it does give their production facilities a volume customer, even if it is internal, and that may help begin to drive down the production costs. A kind of jump start, if you will. This may help influence the market, even a very little is a win for them. It does get the product out in a market, for hands on tech review. It is somewhat closed in that Sony can help to design games that show the strengths of BluRay, they can influence the wow factor. I will not say that this is a win for Sony, far from it. I will say that it appears to be a very smart move.

Come on, you know the fanboys will be lining up at midnight to buy the 360 when it comes out.

One thing is for sure, a format war is an idea so bad it's amazing that we are going to have to go through another one. It's bad for absolutely everyone, it will be a disaster.

That Blu-Ray is slightly higher spec is a total irrelevance. All that matters is price of the players and availability of software. Last time I checked HD-DVD had more studio support and the discs were going to be cheaper to manufacture. (which is rather important for the studios)

Add to that the name of the thing, - it's the natural successor to DVD, and that it's not another Sony 'standard' and I think it will win this battle. Frankly I'm sick of Sony always trying to invent and control their own standards, why can't they just play along? From betamax to mini disc, memory stick, UMD and now blu-ray, their arrogance really irritates me.

What about Toshiba's arrogance? It's pretty much them against Pioneer, Philips, Sony, JVC, Panasonic, etc. They are the ones pushing a boulder up a hill. At least the BluRay disc structure has a future. HD-DVD is all about cost cutting. Capacity is limited. Recording is an afterthought. Give them less for more seems to be the theme.

Think of HD-DVD as Windows XP and BluRay as MacOS X. You can either take the easy way out and simply add/patch what you already have for a mediocre product or start over from scratch to create a great product. It's the same line of thinking.

It would have a huge effect, even if compared to DVDs. DVD players ship 22m/year PS3 will be 14m/2006.

When compared to DVD the effect is substantial, and when compared to HD-DVD, the effect of the PS3 will be staggering.

You will have 14 million PS3s in the first year, compared to maybe 100,000 non-PS3 Blue-ray and HD-DVD drives. Saying that PS3 will not have much effect is like saying that Microsoft has no effect on computer operating systems.

A few interesting links -

http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/gossip/...yer-110785.php

Xbox 360 HD-DVD from the start?


http://www.dvdtown.com/article/hd-dv...oftitles/1582/

HD-DVD titles announced.


If 360 shipped with HD-DVD, and PS3 with Blu-Ray, we really would be in for an interesting, if utterly pointless format battle.

One much neglected fact is which will win in the PC space. Dell, HP and Apple have all signed on with Blu-ray, as has EA games. I can't see Microsoft turning to Dell and HP and saying sorry only HD-DVD support either. If you have a Blu-ray writer on your computer which player do you go out and buy?

In the end it just seems like there are too many big players supporting Blu-ray for it not to be a success though. Pioneer, Philips, Sony, JVC and Panasonic, between them that's a very large fraction of DVD player/recorder sales and people will buy on brand alone.

Those 22m DVD players are just that DVD players. Those PS3 Blue-ray drives will mostly be just that, drives for PS3 games. While Sony will have most of players out there they are in the wrong market, they are stuck in gaming consoles not in DVD players. While PS3 will be able to play Blue-ray movies/DVDs, just like my PS2 can play DVDs. The problem is that while all of the PS2s can play DVDs do you count them as DVD players or as gaming consoles. The numbers will be large but the impact on the DVD player market will be small, but those numbers will help manufacturing drive down the costs associated with manufacture.

If you were going to publish a HD movie, would you ignore those 14 million PS3s? Of course not - you would either forget HD and publish a regular DVD, or publish one that would work on the PS3.

Publishing a movie for 100K high-end players while ignoring 14 million PS3s would be foolish. I have a high-end theater, and my primary HD player will be a PS3, and the same with everyone I know. I doubt that high-end home theater people will even bother with HD-DVD players.

We're going through another one because all the manufacturers (rightly) perceive that whatever format emerges has the potential distribution lifespan of CD's.

Think about it.

So long as it holds the highest quality broadcast resolution (1080i/p) there will be little reason to re-jig it for as long as HDTV is the standard broadcast medium. At least 25 years. More advanced storage media will appear almost immediately after the market has settled this debate, but it won't matter, just as it didn't matter that CD's were quickly eclipsed -- they're still selling, where is SACD or DVD-A ? Computers will have ever more advanced media, PVR's and On-demand service will satiate much of our personal recording needs, but for those who want to own their copy, a cheap, reliable, stable medium that also happens to extract as much performance as can be expected from the (essentially static) display parameters we've agreed upon? Gold.

Actually Toshiba is far from arrogant. Ever notice how Toshiba/NEC's AOD disc was approved by the DVD-Forum and thus can have "DVD" in the name? That's because the DVD-Forum looked at proposals for the nextgen disc and then chose the best format that would carry on the DVD name. Sony never submitted their Blu-Ray proposal and struck out on their own. If anyone is arrogant here it's Sony. There's nothing wrong with HD-DVDs disc structure. Triple Layer discs bring up 45GB of data which is going to be fine until we move on to 2k or higher recording resolutions. Blu-Rays future 4 layer discs are superfluous for movie content delivery.


What people tend to forget is that there are plenty of companies that are members in both groups such as Apple. Thus they are well positioned to move in either direction. Apple is listed as a Blu-Ray supporter based on the fact that they joined the BDA BoD when they've been a member of the DVD Forum much longer and today ship HD-DVD authoring in DVD Studio Pro 4. Sounds like a fence straddler if I ever saw one.


That's laughable. No one with a high end theater buying into HD playback is going to purchase only one unit. Initially certain movies are only going to be available on Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. Thus if you want a decent collection for your theater you'll need both players. I'm hearing a bunch of whining and moaning but those who will buy in to the 1st and 2nd generation realize that they'll likely need both players.


I'm constantly amused by the attempts of some people to make these formats seem so different. My official positioning is that we're going to see a format battle because neither side really offers a significant overall advantage over the other. Neither has a large amount of "exclusive" partners and thus you will see vendors move from one side to another and ship both formats (LG)until they've decided on who they think will win over all.

I'm not a Blu-Ray detractor but I generally fight for HD-DVD because Blu-Ray fans tend to use idiotic logic to support why they believe Blu-Ray is some "can't miss" tech. I realize that I'll need both drives and if I could get an Xbox360 HD and PS3 I'd gladly do that. I'm interested in content moreso than flogging some playback device's marketing tripe.

That doesn't make it any more official. The DVD-Forum does not set the standard. They only decide what they want to see as a standard and push it. They are like political lobbyists. Go to their website and see what it says in the upper right hand corner under announcements. Talk about arrogance.

You need to look beyond prerecorded movies for a next-generation format. You have to take recording HD content off TV into consideration and you need to take computer storage into consideration. HD-DVD is severly limited in these respects. BluRay is the one format that does it all.

I've spent 60K on my stereo, and 40K on my home theater - so I think that I am pretty representative audiophile and home theater buff.

I have no plans for a HD-DVD player. You say that movies will be available on both - but I think that the currently planned HD-DVD movies will be cancelled, I just can't see the market being worth entering for HD-DVD.

With so few players, you are not going to be able to make any money selling HD-DVDs. Blue-ray, maybe, since people with PS3s will buy the blue-ray disks even if they don't have an HDTV set, because they won't want to re-purchace the same movie later.

HD-DVD will be a much smaller market than even laserdisk was, and it will die as a result. The only think that can save HD-DVD is Microsoft (if they launch the 360 with a HD-DVD drive).

They do if "DVD" is to be in the name legitimately. Although it really doesn't matter. Blu-Ray breaks the format started with DVD which allows for more space to ooh and ahhh geeks but it comes with it's own issues as well. Hence HD-DVD is further along in the game.


Typical Blu-Ray fanboism. HD-DVD Recordable is 20GB for a single layer and has already been announced and is on the HD-DVD Promomotion Group website. Neither format will really make significant strides as a backup medium at 8MBps speed(BD 2x) that's too slow. The industry is rapidly moving towards NAS/SAN/D2D backup strategies. There's really no room for Blu-Ray as a viable backup medium beyond the typical low volume consumer.


While your system greatly exceeds the price and capability of mine I can assure you that many if not most over at AVS don't support your idea of boycotting one format. In fact most either will buy both initially or hold off and see how the market goes. I feel your decision to boycott HD-DVD seems to be coming from emotive reasons rather than logical. Content in HD is the endgame to most. They'd just rather it not require two players to do so.


Then Time Warner, New Line, Universal and Paramount movies will not be in your collection. Seems rather daft to spend 60k and not be able to watch half the movies out there doesn't it?


It is not known how the PS3 will handle Blu-Ray discs on a standard def TV. It certainly won't be HD so I doubt the impact will be that great. HD-DVD just got a huge proponent in Microsoft so their survival just got some insurance.

Don't get me wrong...both formats will survive for the time being and we'll see if universal drives crop up. However I'm frankly tired of reading how Blu-Ray is superior and how the public is being hoodwinked into HD-DVD when the information available publically has the race as a dead heat.

I surmise that

45/50GB- is going to be fine for a while. At that size 8 hrs of HD content can be stored easily with excellent audio as well. Muliple discs will be used for series.

Authoring- Consumers don't really care about the menus and all that but both formats will improve on DVDs rapidly aging menus

Cost- This is where the debate still rages on. Not a factor to consumers really but it will decide what format is more profitable to studios. HD-DVD seems to have the initial lead. Blu-Rays need for additional protection is going to increase costs...how much is the question.

Nice AVS Thread on the processes for both HD-DVD and BD

Check this quote

The physical structure of TL HD DVD is idential to DVD-14, which is a dual layer DVD9 on one side and a single layer DVD5 on the other.

The only difference with TL HD DVD is that the bonding layer is part of the optical path, so all three layers can be read from one side.

Panasonic claimed that because of this, the bonding layer's precision needed impossible tolerances.

However, this claim is incorrect, because the middle spin coated bonding layer in TL HDDVD is sandwiched between the two 0.6mm polycarbonate cover layers. This means that guaranteeing the spin coating thickness is trivial, as long as you maintain contant pressure across the surface of the disc as the bonding layer is spun in and UV cured.

Regular dual layer HD DVD requires 10 microns tolerance, and it's estimated that TL requires tightening up the tolerance by only about a micron or two.

In BD if you try spin coating, there is nothing forcing the comformity of the spun cover layer, which results in thickness variations due to the variable centripetal force applied to the resin as you spin the disc (centripetal force is greater the closer to the edge you get).

This ruins the disc by creating something called a "ski jump", where the thickness of the cover layer increases as you get closer to the outer edge. Worse, dual layer BD requires tolerances on the order of 1 or 2 microns.

There is a special process to compensate for this problem in the works, but it's complicated, multi-step, and tricky to implement, which is why BD duplicators are still using thin film application instead of spin coating, resulting in BD manufacturing being both slow and expensive.

This is all summarized from the article in the CED. The credibility of articles published in the CED is up to you to decide.


What he's saing is that the Triple Layer 45GB HD-DVD disc is no harder to make than the DVD-14 discs of today although DVD-14 is a rare format that consists of a dual layer side and a single layer side. In this case they have cleverly made the bonding layer see through so that there is no need to flip the disc.

Who cares about the name if it's a weaker format? I'm not going to base a buying decision on something because it has a prettier name. Plenty of people use DVD+RW even those the vaunted DVD Forum considers it an abomination. I guess being able to fit more recorded tv programs on a disc is a "geek" issue to you but I would think most people buying HDTV equipment would consider this to be an important feature. Maybe even more so for computer use. Files and media are always getting bigger. Isn't it best to have a format that can handle the future as opposed to a format that will need to be replaced over and over again?


You seem to be just as big an HD-DVD fanboy as you apparently can't see past your own needs. If you have no need or interest in recording HD content or backing up your home computer data that means no one else would either? No one has even suggested that BluRay should become a backup medium for anything other than consumers and small businesses. I would rather have a BluRay drive in my laptop than lug around some bulky and expensive backup system with me. Having a recordable 100GB or 200GB BluRay disc sounds like a good idea to me considering what the average hard drive size will be by then.

Well if your "pitch" on HD-DVD being weaker is limited to total capacity I think you'll find your arguement falls on deaf ears. People care about the move. We don't buy DVDs by the size we buy the content. Neither format has any instrinsic limitations that make them unable to provide the movie as consumers expect.


Optical media is a backup tool for consumers. Although I think consumers will mirror what the SMB markets are doing by backing up to disc. Optical media fits in here but remember the recordable media is single layer and only 5GB seperates HD-DVD-R and BD Recording (20GB vs 25GB).


No my point is inertia is with hard drive backup. Even 2x Blu-Ray is rather slow. I think consumers will start using Disc image software with snapshot compatibility. Thus you need to restore just load up the last disc image. Optical backups cannot give you this speed. With low cost RAID 1 and 5 I don't see optical being very big. However YMMV but the computer backup ability of both formats is highly overstated IMO.


Divide 100GB or 200GB by 8MBps and then tell me do you really want to wait this long to retrieve all your data. These drives will likely be 4x but even then we're still talking a slow device. With hard drives and perpendicular recording we're going to see low cost half-terabyte drives for pennies on the Gigabyte.

Thus I look at both formats based on their merits as a content delivery platform and potential home recording solution and I see that the race is a lot closer than people portray. Is HD-DVD leagues better than Blu-Ray ..no and vice versa.

I defend HD-DVD only because Blue-Ray appeals to the natural human desire of "more more more". Most Blu-Ray fans have succombed to this and were hooked when Sony enticed with vaporware ruture roadmaps with 4 and 8 layer discs.

Reality is a bit more humbling. DVDs hold 18GB if you want to use both sides. Hardly anyone uses DVD-18 now because it makes more financial sense to ship two DVD-9s. I don't expect BR to be any different. Two 50GB discs will trump the one 100GB disc for most studios.

I think that our disagreement comes down to this:

1. I think that when those movies studios see the initial distribution of players (98% Blue-ray/ 2% HD-DVD), they will make a financial decision to dump HD-DVD.

2. You don't think that this will happen.

The problem there is

1. The PS3 won't be out for a half year after HD-DVD is already shipping. The focus for PS3 buyers is going to be playing games. Sure some with capable HDTV will buy movies but the advantage is often overstated.

2. I think both formats will slug it out with no eventual winner. I think Samsung and other fence sitters will look towards universal players. Althought the optics are different it's nothing that cannot be overcome with good engineering.

http://www.boersenreport.de/technolo...01660000000000

It looks like there will be no format war, the formats are merging.

Well that was the hope back when this article was created on April 22nd. Since then the merger rumors have died.

Not quite.

See my post above for Toshiba offering the olive branch (new CEO)...

[Here ]

It is the volume that you need to consider when rebutting the first issue though hmurchison. I agree with the point you are making but I am not sure even diehard home theatre enthusiasts will be buying HD-DVD players in the same volume. In fact I will probably lay money that within three months of PS3 launch, it will have outsold the HD-DVD players that had the head-start.

So total capacity denotes superiority? If Lord of the Rings Extended Edition fits on both formats with extras what's the point of a capacity pissing contest. How many people by a movie for the extras? I'd guess that only about %10 of movie purchasers care about the extras. They watch the outtakes or blooper once ...laugh and never watch them again (gross generalizations here but closer to the truth IMO). Interactive has been the mostg overused and tired buzzword. Sony sucks at interaction and I don't want to play games on my movies..I just want to play them and have the picture look good. Blu-Ray is a $100 product when only a $10 solution is needed.

The Olive branch is extended but Sony's going forward with BD endabled PS3 and Toshiba has their lineup for Q4 2005. I don't expect much...this smacks of CYA "We tried to unify but xxx wouldn't go for it"

Yes, and the 800 MB CD-R format is superfluous for album content delivery, because everyone knows that rock albums are only 40 minutes long, except for the two record "concept albums" that are better to to put on two CDs so they can charge for two CDs.

Just as it is better to put TeeVee series on multiple discs so that consumers are willing to pay more. I mean, if a whole season of The Sopranos fit on one disc, it would be hard to charge over 20-30 bucks for it.

What I mean is, the movie industry will prefer formats that compliment the discreet units of video they deal in. The industry wants to be able to sell people movies, not trilogies and definitely not a director's entire body of work on one disc. Consumers are still attached to the idea of buying a tangible "thing" when they purchase a movie, and so by fixing a single movie to a single "thing" that can be purchased, the industry makes the most money. If a consumer could suddenly buy one "thing" but posses many movies, the urge would remain to pay only for a single "thing".

I'd like to see a model where movies are not purchased as "things" but rather as ideas and concepts. I want to walk into a movie store, browse the movies via terminals possessing info on writers, directors, actors, etc, and then go to the checkout, plug in my iPod, and leave with however many movies I want. If I "rent" them, then they self-destruct on my HD after a few viewings, but I can also buy them to keep them on my HD forever (and to back up to a "thing" that will last longer). Of course I will only rent movies under this scheme, because I'll be able to excise the self destruct encryption using a pirate utility found on the web. And I won't care because even if everyone steals movies this way, the directors, writers, and actors still make great money, and the corporate executives make insane amounts of money.

I shall name call my new model of movie distribution, "The iPod That Exploded".

HAHA, that's funny. The porn industry still uses the most cheap crappy beta max cameras and crappy equipment to put a crappy quality video on a crappy quality DVD and VHS and you think they'll be the deciding factor in a format that would cost the porn industry millions to change over to? HAHAHA.

Porn will sell on the crappiest media, the porn industry will only spend money to extend profits and/or to make their process easier. They will not spend more money to make their movies better.

Seen many 16:9 anamorphic big booty sluts from Brazil DVDs with 5.1 DD surround sound? They won't go HD because they don't broadcast HD porn and DVDs can't handle the bandwidth. And once BRD and HD-DVD is out next year, you think these low tech and low key porn companies are going to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on new cameras? New software and new burners?

Playboy might, but they aren't what I consider porn.

It will come down to 1) movie releases and 2) cost and compatibility of equipment.

If Sony puts out their PS3 with BRD at $300-$400 and releases their entire collection while Toshiba uses buggy M$ software on their $1000+ player it's over.

If xBox and PS3 both have their format players under $500 it will come down to movie releases and to the first wave of players from Pioneer, JVC, Marantz, Denon etc and who they choose. The format with more movies and cheapest hardware will win regardless of what the hot blonde is doing with those 3 guys.

The voice of reason, think god, finally!

I don't care technically which one wins - hm, I am not the Blue-ray fanboy that you think I am. I just see the chess pieces lined up, and I can tell who will win.

e1618978

I just want you to enjoy the movies on your home theatre. we shouldn't be in the position to have to chose. The Entertainment industry is developing quite the poor track record consumer friendliness.