TylerDurden_73

I'm just going to wait till the format war is over. hopefully one format will die a quick death

Burnt Thru

Not an issue , just a question . Until now I didn't know that it'd be possible to switch between lasers inside the player . Guess the old saying 'you learn something every day' really is true . Thanks .

Dazed

Anyone got a link to the advantages and disadvantages of each ? I seem to remember initially Blu Rays main disadvantage was it wasnt backward compatible but that is not a big factor if they have two lasers in the unit.

Hasnt Blu Ray got a larger capacity ? Why should people choose HD DVD ?

jough

It's possible that they could both survive, just in different markets.

I.E. HD-DVD for your family films and bare-bones releases, whereas Blu-Ray, with its higher capacity, could become the cinephile's niche format, offering special editions and extra value-added features.

TomOpus

You need the cinephile to start buying the hardware inorder for the price to start coming down. The price has to be low-enough for the "family" people to start buying.

Just like with video tape, there's only room for one sheriff

Playitagainsam

If i remember correctly, one of them is progressive, the other interlaced... one still uses MPEG2, the other some Windows Media codec.... I'm not too keen on interlaced, and really don't know what to think about either MPEG2 or WM...

danwiz

Hello Dazed! Here's one link, although dated November 2003!
http://www.burningbits.com/artman/pu...nter_223.shtml

here's another:
http://www.dvdtown.com/messageboard/topic/10/1243/
and another:
http://www.audioholics.com/ces/ces20...2004_day3.html
here's a July 12, 2004 article from PCWorld:
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/...RSS,RSS,00.asp

I got over 10 pages of links when I typed
HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray DVD
into google.com. Ever heard of it?

Jah-Wren Ryel

It isn't the red laser alone that adds significant cost, it is the mechanism for switching between red and blue. Most modern DVD players actually have two red lasers of slightly different frequencies, one for DVDs and another for CDs (rememer how early DVD players had problems playing CD-Rs - some of that was the result of only having a DVD-tuned laser). Nevertheless, companies are still working on new implementations of dual-laser assemblies (and potentially triple-laser for the blue-camp) to reduce costs.

Backwards compatibility is definitely a necessity to be desirable to consumers, so almost everybody will have it, but it will add different levels of cost depending on who has access to what patents.

aspikes

I heard only one movie "Attack of the Clones" was filmed uses nothing but HD cameras! Anybody watch movies on HDnet or HD movie channel? Or even better yet watch a current baseball game on ESPNHD filmed with HD cameras then watch an older game on ESPNHD not filmed with HD cameras, I have and there is a massive difference in quality! Will it not be the same with older non HD movies? Until major movie studios film with HD cameras then recorded on HD format then watch by us using HD DVD player of whatever kind on a HD TV, we will then have a format that's truly HD. BTW right after that someone else will come out with something even better! That's why I feel safe with my growing collections of DVDs. Just my two cents, I may be way off and admit I haven't been keeping up with new HD technology!

Dan Average

There's quite a few actually. I believe Julia and Julia was entirely HD and that was way back in 1987. Attack of the Clones was one of the first to be shot in HD 24p (which isn't the same thing as HDTV) but even that's not much of a distinction anymore (Vidocq beat it by about a year, for example, and there's been a few other 24p movies since).

But there's not really a need at this point. Sure, movies will still be shot digitally for a variety of reasons (such as cost or to make effects work easier), but 35mm still has a higher theoretical resolution than HDTV so an HD-sourced image transferred to HD-DVD isn't guaranteed to look better than a 35mm-sourced image transferred to HD-DVD. Maybe at some point in the future we'll have an HDTV/HD-DVD format with a higher resolution than 35mm but that's a long way off. Anyway there are other good reasons to shoot on celluloid besides the resolution benefit.

Dazed

Many films so far as well as TV shows are filmed in HD so there is already a growing catelogue of titles. But let not forget that 35mm Film is a higher resolution than HD anyway so films shot on film will also benefit from the new format.

edit: Dan, you beat me by 1 min in your post

aspikes

It took you long enough DAN AVERAGE! I dont pretend to know too much about anything but if you would please inform me on the whole "good reasons to shoot on celluloid besides the resolution benefit"? Am I the only one who thought it was a matter of resolution? Many thanks for the info! How would a HD-DVD be better than DVD current?

Dazed

Another reason to shoot on film is that motion picture cameras allow for a wide variety of film speeds (eg fast speeds for slow motion). HD cannot come near this yet and is limited to either normal speed (eg 24, 25, 30fps) or double that (for the time being).

Its only a matter of time till digital catches up though.

Of course a lot of people still shoot on film because it just looks better.

RoboDad

Sorry about that. I didn't mean to sound like I was singling you (or anyone else, for that matter) out. I just notice this backward compatibility question coming up a lot in discussions about the future of DVD, and sometimes I get too frustrated by it.

jough

Many films have been shot fully in 24p HD Digital now. I believe Robert Rodriguez's last three films (and two current ones) were shot in HD.

In any case, yes, new HD cameras for live television look a lot better than old beta pro cams, but "High Definition" isn't really all that high. My computer monitor, at 1600x1200, is higher definition than HDTV.

And as high resolution as my monitor is, it is NOTHING compared to FILM.

The current HDTV standard is a joke. Europe's been viewing tv at around this resolution for over a decade. We should be at around the eleven megapixel range by this time. But look at how slow the U.S. is to adopt even HDTV.

At some point, roughly 4K scans, which is what Lowry Digital has moved to recently, you'll be able to capture every nuance of the original film stock in digital form (some say 4K isn't enough, though).

I have little doubt that the technology will mature eventually - likely in my lifetime. But it's not there yet.

I think the move to HDTV will be the biggest hurdle, though. Once people already have digital screens and are watching digital media there may be more of an incentive to get even HIGHER resolution. We're still moving from analog to digital and it's sloooooooow going.

Jah-Wren Ryel

And which Europe would that be? Widescreen PAL has been a common broadcast format across the pond for a while now, but they are significantly behind the US in adopting anything that we would call hi-def. In fact, with the possible exception of an asian country or two, the US is head and shoulders ahead of the rest of world in adopting hidef.

Dan Average

I don't know about that. The Japanese have had HD longer than anyone (I think they started working on it in the late '70s) and they're only now beginning to make headway on a 4K HDTV system, even on an experimental basis. The slowness of the general public to adopt HD is probably a factor -- the incentive to develop a higher-definition TV standard isn't necessarily all that great when so many people can't even be bothered to switch to standard HD -- but I imagine there's plenty of good purely technical reasons we haven't seen standards that advanced yet. Even something as simple as storing the video data can become incredibly complicated when you get up into higher resolutions like that (the "UHDTV" they've been working on in Japan currently requires something like 4 terabytes for just 20 minutes of footage).

Mark Carpenter

eek!

Looking forward to the moment I can record 25gb of data to a disc, all that pornography is taking up too much space on my harddrive.

Josh Z

Collateral, currently in theaters, was also shot using HD video cameras.

You're way off the mark here. PAL is nowhere near HD resolution. Even progressive scan is pretty rare in Europe.

needamazing

I'm going to weigh in here because I'm curious.

I have read up some on the differences between HDTV and Blu-ray but I would not consider myself well informed. I have some technical knowledge so I don't consider myself ignorant.

Let me phrase my question. My understanding is that HDTV is primarily a software transition where Blue-Ray also involves a major hardware change due to the blue laser. They are both promising close to the same in the area of minutes of film stored.

Now isn't it just common sense that Blu-Ray will eventually be able to far surpass HDTV is minutes of film stored when they switch software schemes? I understand it is not that simple but it is possible and is why I hope Blue-Ray wins. I feel HDTV is already "maxxed out" when it comes to storage space but Blue-Ray has some space to improve.

Just my two cents. If I am off base please educate me.

jough

I think you meant HD-DVD rather than HDTV there, but no, BOTH HD-DVD and Blu-Ray use blue lasers. They BOTH require major hardware changes.

Your current DVD player will NEVER be able to be software upgradable to play either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray.

Theoretically Blu-Ray is higher capacity than HD-DVD - but that will only likely be an issue for data storage (which is where I think Blu-Ray will win out) - as Blu-Ray's video stream takes up more space than the more highly compressed HD-DVD signal will (provided they use MPEG4 or WMV for the HD-DVD video - otherwise Blu-Ray will be higher capacity).

In any case, the factors deciding which format will "win" are:

1) Availability of key software titles
2) Ubiquity of hardware placement

Which is first to market is almost immaterial, although of course a large lead of one format will cement its success. But if either format comes out with movies that people want to buy in an HD disc format and uses hardware that people use everywhere.

I can tell you that if my next laptop computer comes with a writable Blu-Ray drive rather than an HD-DVD drive I'll be FAR more likely to buy Blu-Ray titles so I can watch them on the go.

So far the DVD Forum (the group that owns and controls the HD-DVD format - and incidentally all of the Blu-Ray group members are also members of the DVD Forum) has stated that they do not see HD-DVD as a computer data format - I guess they're worried about copy protection after CSS was so easily broken for standard-def DVDs - but I think that not aggressively going after the PC market will hurt them, especially since the Media PC will gain ground and usability and the line between computer and home entertainment system will continue to blur.

Home theatres are already becoming more PC like with the advent of PVRs recording to hard disk drives, and PCs are becoming more like home theatre systems with Media Center PCs and such. Eventually the industries will collide somewhere in the middle. By "eventually" I mean in the next 5-10 years.

I'd like to see the HD-DVD format stay in the DVD Forum group, but Blu-Ray has many advantages right out of the gate, and while I'd hate to see a format war, what I'd hate even more is to see the *wrong* format win due to political or marketing pressures rather than technical merit.

needamazing

Thanks for the info.

Everything I heard made me think that HD-DVD used the red laser. Was I hearing wrong? Are you sure this is the case?

jough

You can read a brief overview of the different HD-DVD formats in the unofficial DVD FAQ:

http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#3.13

aspikes

Thanks jough and everyone else for all the info and links! Interesting topic to me.

nismax

Wow theres alot of misinformation going on here. Heres a link to a very lenghty thread about these formats. Indulge....

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...hreadid=411600