The high-definition DVD format war has been a very long and frustrating one, leaving consumers confused as to what format they should drop $500 on for their respective players.
It would appear, though, as if Blu-Ray is dominating the battle. Many major corporations have switched over to Blu-Ray as their main HD disc format, with others following suit. Just recently, NBC, Warner Bros., and expectedly Universal have all jumped ship from HD-DVD and dumped their profits into the Blu-Ray format. This format war has been much unlike past ones, notably the VHS v. Betamax war, which was quickly resolved when many "unnamable" industries chose VHS as their main proprietary format for entertainment.
That being said, however, the HD-DVD still has a fighting chance, but not much. Toshiba has done their best to swoon competitors over to their format, but it appears as if Sony has a larger market base to work with. All of this is aided by the fact that Sony BMG studios, as well as games for the PS3, are all in Blu-Ray format. Blu-Ray brings quite a bit more to the table than HD-DVD does. It has a startlingly higher capacity, and an amazing resistance to scratches. With Universal being the last major company to back HD-DVD as of now, the format could very well be on its last leg. My personal advice for now is that if you're contemplating between a Blu-Ray drive/player or an HD-DVD player, then you should probably drop for Blu-Ray or a multiformat player such as the one offered by Samsung (but that also comes with a very hefty price tag, 4 digits at launch).
5 comments:
In my opinion, no one should really care. Just buy the cheapest for the best quality. If you do happen to compare both of them, you should get pretty close to the same results and they might be close in proce range or completely off from eachother. So the way I see it, it won't matter the gaming or TV watching experience will still be very close, if not un-noticable. But it's always cool to see the new technology being released.
Yes, people should care. The fact that HD players are $500+, which is even less that it was at launch. The fact that they look the same is nothing to do with the actual disc. It has to do with the quality of the video encoded on the disc. Major industries only care about which has the best capacity, bandwidth, and quality, thus leading to the direct dictation of what consumers will be forced to buy in terms of HD disc formats for years to come. The same happened with the Betamax v. VHS war, and it will continue on. HVD is probably going to be the next advancement in solid state disc storage, and I'm sure there will be a competitor for it.
Bu-ray in my opinion is better because like stated it is more resistant to scratches and the fact that it has higher capacity means you can have all the special features on one disc in stead of a seperate one which makes it easier to manage, i hate having multiple DVD's that look pretty much the same and i dont put the movie and special features discs in the same place every time. As for thee blu-ray players the ps3 is one of the lowest priced players on the market and the fact that it can also play games makes it a great bundle for the extra $50 you would spend in buying the cheaper device.
Yes hd-dvd players are about $100-$150 cheaper than the blu-ray players but they dont have hardly any movies supporting them. Blu-ray has almost every major company, as stated all but universal, backing them now or releasing movies in both formats. There are still lots of exclusive blu-ray only movies though.
hd-dvd players can cost only $200-$300 for a player but they are low quality i.e. the xbox 360.
The higher capacity Blu-Ray has over HD-DVD is a moot point right now considering that most special features for DVD videos can be fit on the original disc with ease. Most videos on DVDs are in uncompressed format, but many companies today are beginning to use dual layer DVDs to allow for a larger capacity to fit even more special features (which, when it boils down to it, I buy a movie for the movie, not the special features).
The PS3 is surprisingly cheaper than quite a few Blu-Ray players, but this all kind of routes back to the fact that Sony loses nearly $200-$300 on every PS3 purchase. The PS3 costs nearly $850-$900 to construct, and with a price tag of $500, you can obviously see where they are losing money. The PS3 will leave a scar that will never heal in Sony's profit margins, but it most certainly won't bring them down.
You also mention that HD-DVD players are cheaper, which they really aren't by much. After that, you say that these players are "lower quality", when in reality at this stage of the format war, it is the content on the disc and the quality of the TV that matters, not the player.
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