Ripped from pcmag.com. A great article for those who were curious, but were afraid to ask.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1982533,00.asp

By Dan Costa
It has been a long time coming, but the battle to replace the DVD has finally reached consumers. The consumer electronics industry is attempting to replace the millions of DVD players and DVD-ROM drives across the globe. The problem is it can't decide which format to replace them with: Blu-ray or HD DVD.

Each format has its own heavyweight industry backing. HD DVD is supported by Toshiba, Intel, and Microsoft, which will offer an add-on HD DVD player to its Xbox 360 game console this fall. Blu-ray is supported by Samsung, Pioneer, and Sony, which will build a Blu-ray drive directly into its upcoming PlayStation 3 game system, also available this fall.

The closest analogy is the VHS versus Betamax contest of the early 1980s, but the stakes may be higher now. PC Magazine has been following the story from the very beginning and can get you up to speed fast on what you need to know before you spend your money on either format.

Why should you care?
The short answer is: You don't want to buy an obsolete format. The two technologies don't work together, and it is very unlikely that both formats will survive. Both kinds of players will work with "old-fashioned" DVDs, but if you want a high-definition video experience on a disc, right now you will have to choose one or the other. The next PC you buy may come with the option to include either an HD DVD drive or a Blu-ray drive. And with standalone players selling for $500 to $1,000, guessing wrong could be expensive.

What is the difference?
Blu-ray has a capacity advantage, offering 25GB of storage on a single-sided disc and 50GB on a double-sided disc. HD DVD discs hold 15GB (single sided) or 30GB (double-sided). Although this would seem to give Blu-ray a significant advantage, 15GB is enough room—just barely—to fit a high-definition movie.

HD DVD players and drives are a lot cheaper than Blu-ray devices. Blu-ray players will cost between $1,000 and $1,500 at launch. Toshiba's first HD DVD player, the HD-A1, is being sold for just $500, and it has been available for more than two months.

Toshiba was first to reach the market with a high-definition video player, releasing the HD-A1 and the HD-XA1 ($800 street) last April. When PC Magazine tested the HD-A1, we found it to be very much a first-generation product, with a few bugs to be worked out. Still, there was no denying the excellent image quality it produced. And being first to market does give the format some advantage.

Samsung shipped its BD-P1000 Blu-ray player ($999.99 list) to retailers this week and will start selling them to consumers on June 25. It will be the first high-definition player to offer native 1080p support.

Sony and Pioneer will offer Blu-ray players in August and September, respectively. Both firms had hoped to have them out this month, but they had to push back their launch because of manufacturing problems.

Sony is also selling Blu-ray drives with two of its VAIO PCs, the VGN AR190G notebook and the VAIO VGC-RC310G. Perhaps the most interesting thing about these systems is that the drives can burn Blu-ray discs too.

Although it has a built-in HD DVD drive, the Toshiba Qosmio G35-AV650 ($2,999.99 direct) cannot record content onto HD DVDs. That and some issues with the video playback led us to be less than impressed with the system as a whole.

What can you watch now?
Right now, not much. HD DVD players have been out for a few months, so there are more titles available, 28 at last count. HD DVD titles list for about $35, but you can find them on Amazon for as little as $20.

The ones on the market now include Lethal Weapon, The Rundown, Happy Gilmore, 16 Blocks, The Perfect Storm, The Chronicles of Riddick, Constantine, Firewall, U-571, The Bourne Supremacy, Blazing Saddles, Van Helsing, The Fugitive, Cinderella Man, Training Day, Unforgiven, Full Metal Jacket, Jarhead, Assault on Precinct 13 (2005), Rumor Has It..., Swordfish, Goodfellas, Doom, Million Dollar Baby, Apollo 13, Phantom of the Opera (2004), Serenity, and The Last Samurai.

By comparison, there are just seven Blu-ray titles on the market now: 50 First Dates, The Fifth Element, Hitch, House of Flying Daggers, The Terminator, Underworld: Evolution, and xXx. Prices range from $20 to $30.

This seems lopsided now, but it will even out over time. "Eighty-four percent of all the movies released last year were made by studios that have announced support for Blu-ray," says Jim Sanduski, senior vice president of marketing for Samsung's Audio and Video Products Group. "That is a huge strike against HD DVD." To be fair, some studios plan to release movies in both formats. But as Sony is one of the developers of Blu-ray, it will not release its movies on HD DVD.

HD DVDs are cheaper to make. Because Blu-ray discs use a very different technology from traditional DVDs, manufacturers will have to retool their production plants, and those costs will have to be passed on to consumers somehow.

Who is going to win?
With just a handful of players and drives on the market, it is way too early to tell who is going to win this format struggle. Of course, that hasn't stopped the speculation. PC Magazine's Lance Ulanoff has a decidedly unambiguous take: In his column "Blu-ray Is Doomed," he argues that Toshiba will parlay its first-mover advantage into market domination. Toshiba did have a two-month head start, after all. He writes: "In our lightning-fast, high-tech world, two months is like the first two lengths of a four-length horse race. Can Blu-ray catch up? I don't think so."

John Dvorak wrote about "Picking a Winner" in his column a few months ago. In his opinion, this contest will take a few years to sort itself out, and consumers will suffer while it does. The best choice for shoppers, he says, may be to wait until there is a clear winner.

That certainly isn't ideal, but at least prices for both players will have come down a lot by then.

 

I don't see Blu-ray winning this one. I don't think there is anyone that I know that will buy a Blu Ray player for $1000-$1500. Also, will the difference in quality of a Blu-Ray machine even be noticeable on an average TV? Betamax vs VHS anyone? I think that mainly based on the fact that HD DVD was out first and costs less, that will be the one to succeed. There will be a couple rich audio/visual snobs who insist on buying Blu Ray, but the average person will not IMO.

 

If HD-DVD can barely fit a full length HD movie, I guess we can say good bye to DVD extras if that format wins.

 

I don't usually watch them anyway. However, if they used the two sided type then they could put the extras on the other side.

 

I don't think those extras take up much space at all. It's not just the movie itself that uses alot of space, it's all the encoding that comes along with it... mostly audio stuff. If you strip that out, you gain hundreds of MB storage back. And I think extras don't take up more than a couple hundred MB at most.

 

Well it depends on if the extras are filmed in HD or not.

SD extras are generally around 400-1100MBs

 

I think most people that remember the Beta vs VHS wars and how expensive players were when they came out and saw the prices drop as an eventual winner was decided will be patient since if you pick one or the other there's alot of mivies that won't be available on the competing system period. I think market control will win out and while HD DVD has a jump and the cheaper player it still will be a long battle and IMO Blu Ray will be dominant to their share of the comitiment of the sutdios to the format. Sony is also very good at marketing their stuff their strategies work;look at how dominant PS is over the console market which at last check was at 70% leaving Game Cube and XBox to get the leftovers.

 

maybe I am just a n00b to all this stuff, but doesn't it seem like if you are goign to brag about how crystal clear your product is, you ought to name is something that looks and sounds just like blurry. Blu-ray? There was no better name?

 

hahahahaha, thats a good one, I like that. I think Blu-Ray will win it out, especially cause PS3 will come with it, while XBox 360 needs an add on to play it. Most people I know, bought a PS2 and never bought a DVD Player, I think this will repeat with PS3.

 

This is the theory im buying into. I know many people that only recently picked up a cheep DVD player after 2 or more years useing there PS2.

Priceing is the bigest problem. If sony can pull it off, they could vault into the lead both in consoles and format war if they were to put a Blu-ray in the PS3 and price it for less than $500.

 

Don't forget that the extras we see today are just add-ons. The hope is to make the new formats more interactive so rather than just forwarding to another menu, you would have the ability to launch an ad during a movie or get an interview w/ the Director during a specific shot.

This type of interactivity takes up a lot of space. This will be one of the selling points for the new formats so HD-DVD is very limited. Blu-ray has the capacity to go even higher when they use multiple layers. I'm pretty sure blu-ray will be the winner...

 

What says that either will win out over the other? I wouldn't be surprised if someone came out with a technology in the next few months that is much better than both technologies.

It brings me back to the days of the first 56k analog modems. We had two technologies: X2 and K56Flex. There were fights over which would eventually be the standard, and what happened? they both died. V.90 became the new standard, and X2/K56Flex were then obsolete. And neither were compatible with V.90, except that on the answering side, you could have a setup that supported V.90 and K56Flex callers.

But, neither actually won. Some modems were V.90 upgradeable, but not any of the early adopters got those. I had an X2 modem, and I never once used it to connect at a speed higher than 33.6, when they came out with V.90.

So, I'll let all the early adopters (rich people ) decide which one is going to win, but if I had to make a choice, Blu-ray will lose. One big reason being its name. I mean, that's one of the main reasons that XM is more popular than sirius. AM,FM,XM, they're all sounding the same, and it makes it obvious that they are all radio signals (to the uneducated consumer) But AM,FM,Sirius.... that's like asing which item doesn't belong in the group. If you asked someone who knows nothing about the new technologies, which technology would they choose, it's most likely going to be HD DVD. Those two acronyms are more popular than the name Sony, so I would suspect that most people would understand that it's a high definition dvd. But ask someone what blu-ray is, and they're going to draw a blank.

Great discussion!

 

i just got DV magazine where they go into the early stages of HD DVD and BD authoring.

neato feature with BD is that it has 4 layers of visual independent layers.

primary video
secondary (like PiP)
presentation graphics (you really gotta see this)
interactive graphics.

subtitles are in the PG layer

another method of BD authoring is called BD-JAVA or BD-J. you can technically increase up to 5 visual layers. and because this is java, you can have more interactive that ever...

now HD-DVD, OTOH is just an extension the DVD standard. so other than HD video, the menus will be like they are now...

there is an advanced interactive versio called "advanced content authoring" which is based on XML, SMIL, XPath and ECMASCRIPT (form of a javascript).

buttons now can have up to 8 commands line per. so one click of a button will do numerous things.

whoever wins, the future of HIGH DEF in a small 5" media is bright...

 

What??? They don't have Betamax anymore??? I suppose your going to tell me next that they dont make 8 tracks either. At least my Commador PC is still going strong.

 

I used to rock the commodore 64.

 

Blu-Ray Just Sounds Sicker. Im going to go with Blu-Ray on the sole basis of the fact that it has a tight name.

 

Check out the latest news and this could really swing in Blu-Ray's favor......

http://www.9news.com/money/article.aspx?storyid=72145

Disney is BR exclusive along with several others and HD DVD has only one studio exclusively on board.

I'm sticking with my original pick which has been BR all along.

 

Not trying to add alot of business to an old thread, but there is a very powerful entity that hasn't been brought up. The porn industry is debating between the two also. What ever they choose, and I believe they are leaning towards Blu-Ray currently, should have a very definitive advantage!!! The funniest thing though is the pornstars crying about needing more plastic surgery because hi-def stuff shows all of their flaws!

Cam

 

I didn't even think of that but yes,the porn industry is a huge factor.

 

Anybody see any updates on this? I'm considering buying one or the other, but I think I'll do like the first article said and wait until the battle is won. I guess I just answered my own question, considering there are still both formats being pushed. Sorry to waste your time, although I could have not wasted it by not hitting the post button

=Ž