[wilko]

So, just to get the new forum off to a flying start, lets have your opinions. Who will win the format war - HD or Blu Ray?

I think HD-DVD - Why? Because:

a) It is cheaper for the studio - Blu-ray needs special burning equipment which costs £1.5Million each. HD burners are about £1500.
b) Blu-ray media is very, very expensive - HD is just an extension of DVD technology so is very cheap to manufacture.
c) HD players are less than half the price of Blu-ray ones.
d) The XBOX 360 HD add on will be released next month. Which means by the time the PS3 comes out, there could potentially be 5 million HD drives on the market. Thats a lot of catching up to do.

So, whats your thoughts?

[smashed]

e. Blu-Ray has problems with reliability. The laser is so close to the disc that small jolts have resulted in damage of the laser / disc . both.

[wilko]

Originally Posted by smashed

e. Blu-Ray has problems with reliability. The laser is so close to the disc that small jolts have resulted in damage of the laser / disc . both.

I heard that. They have to make the coating on the blu-ray disk so hard (because the data is so close to the surfaceit needs protecting), so it is harder than the laser lens, and like you say the disk could damage the laser if knocked. Hardly a great thing if you buy your kids a PS3 for £500 and someone knocks it whilst playing a game.

[Dreamwatcher]

HD all the way

not only will Blu-ray go down the pan but so will PS3

[wilko]

Originally Posted by Dreamwatcher

HD all the way

not only will Blu-ray go down the pan but so will PS3

Blu-ray is just too much of a "forward step". Nobody is denying that it is the more advanced technology, but it has lots of things against it.

1) Blu-ray / DVD combo disks won't be released (at the moment). While it is possible to do this, they do not have permission from the dvd forum to combine blu-ray and DVD onto the same disk. Anyway, it would be too expensive to do this. So while HD-DVD can combine DVD and HD-DVD on one disk, and possibly sell at sub-£10 to encourage take up, Blu-ray is dependant on people buying-blu-ray specific disks.

2) The technology for blu-ray is proving difficult to manufacture. The diodes required for the blu-ray player are in such short demand that sony have pretty much bought all available world stocks for the next 12 months for the PS3 launch. Hence, the price of blu-ray standalones are £1000 as a result. HD-DVD on the other hand use a standard red laser as found in standard DVD players, so they are available in vast numbers immediately. That is why HD-DVD players are half the price.

3) Currently, HD-DVD picture quality is outperforming Blu-ray. This is mainly due to the choice of video codecs - blu-ray initially used a standard MPEG2 codec similar to that used in current DVD's, where HD-DVD opted to use a new video codec that allowed them to fit much more video data on the disk. So althpugh blu-ray has a higher stated capacity, the difference is negligible when the codec situation is taken into account. This will change, however, as blu-ray releases in future are likely to use the same codec as HD-DVD.

[andy8]

HD-DVD
1. It's cheaper :grin:
2. Not made by SONY :grin:
3. The add-on for the 360 is just over £100 :grin:

lol
Andy

[wilko]

And

4) All the studios are gradually drifting towards HD-DVD. Before too much longer, Sony will be the only studio that is exclusively Blu-Ray.

HD-DVD will win easy. I think mainly because of its name, sound less confusing to the un-educated population.

[PS2_Belfast]

HD-DVD all the way - oh how I love my Toshiba HD-A1 - Mission Impossible III has to be seen and heard to be believed!

[DoubleD]

HD DVD

as its a simple name for the public as dem16i also mentioned , you already have high definition tvs, sky high definition.. so keep
it simple for everybody now you have HD DVD ..

DoubleD