So confused... HD-DVD or Blu-ray??

[2099net]

Well, I don't have it yet. And I won't have a HD-TV until the January sales. No point in buying one now.

But my point is, no matter what you think, selling the PS3 for less than cost is anti-competitve. I know most consoles are (apparently the Wii won't be) and I can accept that, because although there is competition between consoles, each has a propriety format.

But its different for the PS3. Sony is effectively "dumping" product, with an aim of making money later on game and movie sales. But how do you think Samsung feel about this? Can they sell their players for a $200 loss? Or LG when its Blu Ray player is released? No, because they don't own the format rights, so will get no revenue from movie sales to make up the difference. You can't run a business loosing $200 or more on each transaction.

Sony's technique is obviously anti-competitive, and there are laws against "dumping" under various conditions. I don't know if this example is covered, but it should be.

[ImTravisB]

I have been closely watching these two formats for quite some time now and the general consensus from what I have gathered (correct me if I'm wrong) is that Blu-Ray offers higher picture quaility and greater storage capacity.

I think perhaps the reason HD-DVD might be outselling Blu-ray is that the name is fairly self explanitory. People want higher definition DVD's and that's exactly what the format is called "HD (High Definition) DVD". The average consumer is going to be extremely ill-informed of the differences between the two and therefore lea weill lean toward the item that states exactly what it is.

However, I think one thing that might turn the tides is the Playstation 3. We can all be quite sure that the new system will sell exceedingly well. Once thousands of consumers realize that they now have a Blu-Ray player, naturally they will buy Blue-ray disc. I can't really see playsation going away and taking Blu-ray with it. Mark my words, this holiday season things will begin to change.

[dvdjunkie]

ImTravisB, you have the nail directly on the head. Once the Playstation 3 is on the market and retailers shelves, and they sell like hotcakes, which they will, people will realize that they can maximize their viewing of DVD movies by using the Blu-Ray player and purchasing Blu-Ray movies. The only drawback I see, is if the consumer doesn't own an HDTV or a HD-Ready Television, he may not realize what he has in his game room.

Education is going to be the secret for the Playstation 3 success. If it to overcome all of the pluses and minuses that are out there, and all the naysayers, they will have to be smart in their marketing, and we know Sony is not know to be bashful in its marketing campaigns.

I am the proud owner of a Samsung BP1000 Blu-Ray DVD Player and I can tell you that the upconversion feature is one of the best I have seen. And the sound is mezmerizing. Go to your local Best Buy or video Electronics specialist and ask for a demonstration of the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, and I am sure that you will agree, Blu-Ray is the way to go.

[JamesDFarrow]

New article here:

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/sci ... 835256.ece

I think I will wait a while yet and see what happens.

James

[2099net]

Well, even though I agree HD-DVD has most likely lost (see my post from Mon Oct 09, 2006 on this thread) I'm pleased to say I have the following HD-DVD discs on order:

Jarhead (I refused to buy the single disc, and was unable to import the double disc so at last I get the release with all the extras)
Impossible Mission Collections Boxset
Batman Begins with IME
Constantine with IME
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with IME
Clerks II
Superman Returns
and I should get King Kong with the unit.

I don't mind spending the money, because they will always work, even if the format fails. In the meantime, £129 is a small price compared to all other HD-Media options.

It may end up a brick, but who cares? People say my Sega Saturn is a brick, but I've had and still get far more enjoyment out of that than most of my newer consoles/games. 2D Capcom fighters rock!

[GOGOinVegas]

I just read today that NEC released a chip to make a hybrid BluRay/HD-Dvd player at a decent price...I cant believe this thread happened to be bumped again, when I was gonna post this.Saw it whilst on Google News:

http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/10/10/nec_hybrid_chip/

[kbehm29]

I just found an interesting article from The New Yorker written two days ago about Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD.

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/a ... surowiecki

It was interesting, but I still hope that Blu-ray wins.

[2099net]

I got my first 2 HD-DVD movies yesterday, Batman Begins and Constantine. I'm a little surprised by the casing though. Its so small and cheap looking. It doesn't really bother me (because they stand up on their own, which is gobsmakingly fantastic) but I was expecting something a little brighter and bigger and "in your face" to sell the new format.

[DarthPrime]

I got my first 2 HD-DVD movies yesterday, Batman Begins and Constantine. I'm a little surprised by the casing though. Its so small and cheap looking. It doesn't really bother me (because they stand up on their own, which is gobsmakingly fantastic) but I was expecting something a little brighter and bigger and "in your face" to sell the new format.

congrats! Batman Begins is supposed to look amazing on HD-DVD.

I agree the cases for both formats are odd looking at first, but they do look nice lined up on a shelf.

[TM2-Megatron]

Go to your local Best Buy or video Electronics specialist and ask for a demonstration of the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, and I am sure that you will agree, Blu-Ray is the way to go.

It's obviously the superior format, and it does seem to be the way to go. But personally, I feel that to go either way so early is ludicrous. Current Blu-Ray players will have poor compatibility with future BD-R and BD-RE media, and perahps even later BD-ROM discs. The same is true of HD-DVD. Plus, the $1200 price tag for a Blu-Ray player that'll be horribly inferior in about a year's time is staggeringly stupid. If I'm going to pay that kind of price for a home electronic, I expect it to last longer than that before being replaced.

Also, there's no ignoring the fact that probably around 90% of movies released on both formats so far are pure crap.

This is ignoring, of course, the almost impossible task of getting a HDTV that's capable of real 1080 resolution.

[2099net]

Today is 1st December, the launch day of the Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on in the UK, and my order isn't being shipped. Looks like I'm in another of those "wait until we get more supplies" queues, even though I ordered within minutes of the add-on being listed on the site.

Looks like I can say good-bye to the free King Kong disc too.

Oh well, I had to wait until Mid-February for a 360 from a September pre-order for the late-November launch, and I can sure wait for this being as I won't have a HD TV until mid-January at the earliest.

I have managed to collect the following HD DVD discs though:
Forbidden Planet Collectors Tin, Impossible Missions Boxset, Van Helsing, Slither, Troy, Batman Begins, Superman Returns, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, V for Vendetta, Constantine & Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Jarhead, Accepted, Clerks II, World Trade Center and Hollywoodland are either in the mail or pre-ordered.

[2099net]

Wahoo! Sendit.com says my HD DVD Add-on has been - er - sent. It's going to my place of work so I won't have it until Monday or Tuesday (and I still don't have a HD TV - that's for January sales) but at least I'll be able to try out my discs and check out some of the interaction (I'm facinated by what the IMEs will look like).

I may still even get a King Kong...

[2099net]

Adventures in HD DVD: My HD DVD add-on for the Xbox 360

Important Disclaimer: As of now, I do not have a HD display so I am unable to give a proper evaluation of the HD DVD add-on. But I can comment on other aspects of the peripheral and its performance.

Packaging:
The overall package was much smaller than I imagined. I'd read numerous times about the add-on drive needing its own power supply and transformer so I was expecting the worst. In reality, the transformer is no different than that found on – say – a laptop computer. Included in the package is the HD DVD drive, an Xbox 360 Media Remote & batteries, King Kong HDDVD, leads and an instruction book. A shiny hologram like sticker on the outer box indicated that this package contains the King Kong HD DVD (for a limited time only).

Set Up

Well, I'd love to say installation was easy, but I encountered a couple of problems. The first and most important was when plugging the USB for the HD DVD drive into the port on the back of the 360, it refused to register anything. This was very worrying and I spent about 20 minutes fishing around at the back of my 360 in an ever increasing state of panic. However, when I removed the wireless adaptor and piggy-backed it onto the drive's back and plugged the drive directly into the back of my 360, all was well. The diagrams in the instructions show either configuration as valid, but I'm not that bothered about having to plug the wireless adaptor into the back of the drive. In fact, in many respects its better at it frees up more space behind my console.

But then there was another mini-crisis. The media remote refused to work! I even changed the batteries and the best I could do is get it to work by pointing it at the receiver on the 360 from about 2 foot away. Oh no! Then, almost by accident I discovered that should I point the remote upwards at the ceiling at an angle of approx 45 degrees it did work. I cannot explain this, as it doesn't use a wireless connection, but inferred like all other remotes. However, I can get it working now, no matter how oddly.

Playback

When a disc is inserted it takes 20-30 seconds to start playing. About 2/3rds of this time is the drive reading and recognising the disc, and the last 1/3rd is the player software loading against a black screen. I understand this compares favourably with the stand alone players.

You can control the playback of the disc with either the standard 360 controller (in a similar fashion to the DVD playback on the machine; a small icon bar appears at the bottom of the display) or for a more authentic experience with the media remote, which is obviously better as all actions can be performed with the touch of a single button.

I have slight issues with the Universal menus – their animations are not smooth, especially when sliding in and out (but I don't know if this is the fault of the Xbox 360's software or if this happens on stand-alone players) but the playback of the HD DVD content is (on standard definition) flawless. Images do look clearer than on standard DVD (I cannot see any MPEG artefacts on any of the scenes I have examined – although Deathie warns me that this could be because the images is downsized for SD display and such artefacts may be visible when displayed at a higher resolution) Also there appears to be no issue with sound being out of sync with the pictures. You can zoom upto 8 times on the Warner discs, and when you do, everything is perfectly smooth and "clean" – not blocky as it is when you zoom in on a SD DVD on the 360.

You can access the menu on the discs at anytime, and it will be overlaid on the film being played. At first I thought this was a gimmick, but it is actually quite useful (if far from essential). Universal have a huge animated menu which slides in from the left of the screen while Warner discs have a smaller menu-bar which just appears at the bottom of the screen. I prefer the Warner approach.

Discs

I've only explored a few of the HD DVD discs that I have but I am happy with the new "interaction" the format offers.

King Kong
Sadly, the pack-in King Kong does not feature the picture-in-picture "U-Control" that is offered on the US retail copy. I don't know if this is because the European disc offers more soundtracks or because it is a cut-down non-retail copy. The disc has "not for resale" printed on it several times.

Jarhead

I got this because I couldn't import the 2 disc release from the US, and they didn't even bother releasing a 2 disc copy in the UK (even though apparently the commentary mentions the second disc). So I flat out refused to buy it knowing the 2 disc set would eventually be re-released. Now I have the HD DVD with all of the 2 disc contents included.

While this release has nothing new, its easy to navigate around the disc and flip from supplement to supplement. Also when viewing the featurettes, like a normal DVD it brings up the menu when finished and moves the selection to the next featurette.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

The big item on this is the IME (In Movie Experience) which is just a fancy way of saying picture in picture "commentary". If anyone has the Tim Burton Planet of the Apes DVD, IME is the same.

I've watched the first few minutes of the IME and it seems to be informative. Anyone bemoaning the lack of commentaries on the Harry Potter releases will approve of this. The IME is introduced by the actors who play the Weasley twins and they also pop-up at random intervals with small comments. But the track doesn't appear to be fluff – in the few minutes I have seen the IME covers:

* The opening titles and how the director wanted the film to be darker and more like a thriller than the other films.

* How the task of composing for the film was given to another composer, and how he approached the score – and how working with pre-written themes helped and hindered him.

While this is going on, we see pictures in boxes on the screen. Sometimes we just see the commentator's head as he talks, and sometimes we see small behind the scenes footage. When discussing the composition of the soundtrack, as well as seeing the composer talking, we saw footage from the soundtrack being performed and recorded.

There is an icon in the top left of the screen when an IME is enabled. You can use your arrow keys to skip to the next IME presentation, useful if you want to find one specific bit or replay what you have just seen. On the Harry Potter there seems to be no more than 30 seconds between each IME presentation, making a pretty packed and informative viewing option (assuming the content is as frequent throughout the film).

In addition, the disc has all the supplements from the 2 current disc release.

Troy and V for Vendetta

Both of these have the 2 disc supplements and their own IMEs. I've only done a quick scan of both, but Troy seems to have very few IME presentations – I used the icon so skip to each and they seem to be spaced minutes apart in the film. V for Vendetta seems to have similar spacing between each IME presentation. I saw the producer discuss the use of media and television, and how the use of the television studio was changed from the graphic novel and Stephen Fry discussing how V, Guy Fawkes and other inspirations. I must stress both of these were pretty much random selections.

Forbidden Planet

This has no IME and nothing over the 2 disc edition released at the same time, but it is presented wonderfully. The whole menu is a joy to use and wonderfully designed, and its amazing to think what's been crammed onto a single disc. The whole Forbidden Planet movie in HD, another movie in SD, three documentaries taking up over 1 hour in SD, small selections of deleted scenes, screen-tests and excerpts from TV shows (another 20 or so minutes in SD) and a whole episode of the Thin Man TV series (in SD).

Yes, the supplements are not in High Definition, but they're only supplements and most HD DVD players will upscale these to a reasonable extent anyway.

Forbidden Planet is my favourite of the discs I've explored so far. It may not make full use of the HD DVD spec, but it just feels "right".

[DarthPrime]

The end of the format war might be coming very soon if this is correct.

http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-ent ... 225924.php

LG is making a dual format player. Although we have heard about dual format players for awhile so I will believe it when I see it. Anyway CES is very soon, so we will find out then if this is true or not. Until then I'm just going to treat this as a big rumor.

Personally I hope it is true. I will be getting into the HD world (finally) sometime this spring and I really want to get into some of these HD discs, but the format war is holding me back. I know it will be more expensive than the $500 HD-DVD players and the PS3, but hopefully this thing want be $1,000+. A decent price on something like this and the HD formats could make some big dents in DVD sales for late 2007 and 2008 in my opinion.

[DarthPrime]

Looks like the LG Dual Format player might be real. Several sources are saying it will be available, but it will be $1199. All I can say is too much. You can get a Samsung or a PS3 along with a Toshiba HD-A2 for less than that.

I was hoping for something in the $700 to $800 range. Well if this thing does get released I'm sure more companies will follow and eventually the price will go down.

Hopefully these players will end the "format war".

[I am the Doctor]

While LG is working on a dual-format player, Warner is planning on releasing dual-format (HD-BD) Total HD discs.

http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/ ... at_CES/413

This is the reason why I've been so supportive of Warner and Paramount over the other studios. Warner and Paramount have been releasing their movies in both formats, whereas every other studio is only releasing in one format. Warner is taking this one step further by having both the HD-DVD and the Blu-Ray version on the same disc. This allows us consumers to decide which format player we want (HD-DVD or Blu-Ray).

Good move by Warner, here's hoping that some of the format-exclusive studios adopt this idea.

[DarthPrime]

Some HD-DVD news from CES...

http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/003423.html

It has been announced that HD-DVD will now have 50 gig discs. What I am wondering is if these will still be playable on current HD-DVD players and drives. Maybe a firmware update could enable support if they don't work on current hardware.

This is good news for HD-DVD, they now have the same space as Blu-ray. The only thing Blu-ray currently has going for it is more studio support.

Also more companies will release HD-DVD players. Alco, Jiangkui/ED Digital, Lite-On, and Shinco will add competitively priced HD-DVD products, and Meridian and Onkyo will create HD-DVD players as well.

Glad to see more companies besides Toshiba and Microsoft jumping in the market for these drives and players. With cheaper players from other companies and the new 50 gig discs I wonder if any studios that are currently Blu-ray only will become format neutral.

The LG dual format player is real. I still can't believe it. LG has released pictures and specs for the HD-DVD/Blu-ray combo player. Its missing some features that standalone HD-DVD and Blu-ray players have, but it does play both formats. It has a 25 sec load time for the discs and can auto detect what type of disc is put in. A demo was shown that used the Batman Begins HD-DVD and then Superman on Blu-ray.

[JamesDFarrow]

Warner Officially Announces Dual Format HD Disc:

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=5659

James

[The Merman]

I dont see the dual disc as a solution. As someone mentioned, now there is no lable on the disc. And second, how can this be cheaper? They now have to inprint two sides of the disc instead of one...

This war is stupid and useless, and only confuses the constumer.

[dvdjunkie]

Having personally seen the new LG dual-format player, I can tell you that it is everything that they are advertising. Watch for its debut in the middle of spring and watch the introductory prices that dealers will be offering. Best Buy is rumored to be offering it for under 1,000 bucks for the first 10 days it is on the market.

This should stop all the harping about there being a format war similar to VHS and Beta.

Remember, these players also upconvert your regular DVD's to near-HD resolution, and that means that you won't have to replace your current collection. And the dual-disc format that Warners and Paramount have announced will not cost any more than the current Blu-Ray or HD-DVD format discs do.

Quit complaining about no disc art on the dual-discs, you can't see it when the disc is playing anyway.