cajun_junky

That brings up a good point. Since the current CSS encryption was cracked...I wonder what kind of protection will they use on the new format?

Class316

Not really. All DVD drives run both. If it's an old drive then a firmware upgrade fixes that. And all new players play both. So there's no pro/con in that respect.

jessebo

your guess is as good as mine, but I wouldn't see the difference between that and a dvd/vcr combo.

sracer

Not entirely true. There are still new DVD players being produced that can only play one or the other format. The cheapo sub $100 players all use the same chipset, so they DO play both (because the firmware supports them). So in that respect, you are correct.

But some of the higher quality players don't play both.

Kimiakane

The problem is with this format war is that everyone knows that in the end, everyone loses. Blu-Ray is attractive because it holds a little more data, but is not compatible with current players or discs. HD-DVD is attractive as it is compatible and can hold almost as much data as Blu-Ray. The format wars show cassettes beat 8-tracks, VHS beat Beta and CD beat LPs.

The video retailers, renters and hardware manufacturers all knew that leaving VHS to DVD would be a dramatic upgrade and it far exceeded their expectations. However, the change from Digital to HD is not very dramatic and looking at the evidence of the above (the fiasco with SACD/DVD-A), when a technology upgrade is fairly subtle, it cannot withstand a format war. DVD has become deeply entrenched in the world market in an incredibly short amount of time. Sales of DVDs has been the most widely accepted media of all time as it appeals to all ages, genders, races and attracts all areas of interest. Sales of VHS never came remotely close to what has been and currently is happening right now with DVD sales. The simple fact of the matter is though, even though the FCC is going to force the USA to convert to HD broadcasting within a couple years, and more and more HD TVs will be sold as we go along, a format war will fail miserably if not compatible with current technologies.

The reason is that only a tiny portion of the world's population are both wealthy and technophiles. As industry insiders have been discussing at great lengths, most people will not see an advantage in repurchasing a collection they have already spent a small fortune on. If they do wish to start buying HD DVDs, they will want something that will still be able to play their old DVDs as well. Very few will double dip (as a lot of us here are want to do) just as market research shows very, very few do today. While many of us here at this forum want only widescreen versions and loads of extras, these things are actually not wanted or needed by the world at large and this is why they won't double dip. DVD will continue to be the choice for those whom have already adopted it in to their homes. They won't upgrade again in this lifetime until something is completely and dramatically different. They can't afford it, don't want it or it simply isn't enough to make a difference. If it can't play their current discs, they won't buy a Blu-Ray machine. A case that holds 2 HD-DVDs as opposed to a case that holds 1 Blu-Ray disc will be the same size.

To be a success, Blu-Ray has to become compatible to also play DVD or else it will not do as well as HD-DVD. The problem with Blu-Ray (and other companies like Disney) is that they don't realize the reality of this world. Many executives are both wealthy and technophiles (and are a tiny minority) and have apparently forgotten the majority is the underclass and the ever-shrinking middleclass. My $.02 rant added.

steebo777

Yes. There are SACD/DVD-A players on the market. So as long as the HD/BR player has dual lenses for the different types of DVDs, it should be fine.

JLB

I didn't neglect the recent Pixar stuff. I know those will look "incredible" (no pun intended, right?). However, since these movies are not "real", the cost of double dipping on those titles just isn't worth it for me, no matter how good they look. That's not to say that when an HD format first comes out, if we have dual releases, that cost about the same, I would likely pick up the HD title. But spending on a new player, up front, may be prohibitive for me based on the number of titles intially available that I would want.

JLB

You are neglecting in these two sentences that at the outset, DVD was released as a sell-through media. VHS was initially released as a rental media. With new VHS tapes selling during the rental windows at any where from $50-$100 it's no shocker that DVD blew away what VHS did.

Duality

This is exactly why the HD/Blu-Ray format war will fail to a very large extent. I believe that over the next decade the prevailing High Definition format will be a product adopted by the Laserdisc crowd (approximately 2-3 million people max.) and largely ignored by the masses.

Shazam

Not to mention that the first batch of players are probably going to suck.

BigDan

Here's a site with some comparison chart info between the two formats:

http://www.disctronics.co.uk/technology/hddvd/

And here's a Slate article titled "Why HD-DVD Must Die - Sony's Blu-ray is the better next generation DVD"

http://slate.msn.com/id/2110495/

Just FYI.

And despite what was said earlier in this thread, Blu-ray is apparently backwards compatible (i.e. your Blu-ray player will play your current DVDs). That's not just a HD-DVD feature. The advantage HD-DVD has is on the manufacturing side in that the same factories that current crank out DVDs can easily be converted to produce HD-DVD with little changes while Blu-ray apparently requires different manufacturing processes at a more significant cost.

JLB

If it doesn't support DTS, I'm not buying!

Dazed

Yep, and thats probably one of the more important reasons not to upgrade too soon. Generation 1 (and sometimes 2) usually suck.

So unless you have money to burn and/or love being the first person on the block to have new toys then its best to wait a while.

bunts

The article sounds like a personal opinion not a technical comparison. It is clear that HD-DVD is cheaper to produce as it can use the existing DVD plants without much retooling and also they recently announced they can have both DVD and HD-DVD on the same disc. That's a plus for those who can't affort a HD-DVD player right away and hence at least collect HD-DVD without double-dipping in future. In regards to Blu-ray, only thing I can say that Sony doesn't like to be dictated by competitors and hence they alwasy come with their bull-crap into everything such as Betamax, Mini-Disc, NetMD (no MP3), Universal Disc for PSP, Memory Stick, DVD+R(W). I do not understand why would anyone want to buy Sony products when they do not want to stick to any universal standards or products. It's unbelievable this company can go to any extreme to HYPE things up and have unsuspecting customers pay for their highly proprietry products. The same thing they are doing to Hi-Def DVD and would drive people away for years from buying into Hi-Def players. I can bet next Christmas you will have two formats touting their deals and we would be watching with the same pain as we do today with SACD/DVD-A fall-out.

kms_md

what sracer said.
kms

BigDan

Yeah, it was his personal opinion, but he did put some technical stuff in there in more layman's terms (including his opinion regarding the supposed silence about increasing layers in the future from the HD-DVD crowd).

I just thought it was interesting. Take of it what you will.

As for Sony and their "our way or the highway" approach to many technological innovations, it appears that Sony is approaching Blu-ray a little differently than they have previous products. They've been trying to get other studios involved relatively early on and they've been working on hardware manufacturers for some time so it won't be a Sony-only thing in the hardware department.

I think Sony has learned from their failures for wide acceptance in the past. They may still not be successful with Blu-ray, but their approach seems different this time.

sracer

Excellent observations. Sony even tried to "scam" people with their first generation digital portable music players. They advertised them as "MP3 players" but in reality, they were A-Trac3 players and included desktop PC software to convert from MP3-to-Atrac3.

Sony won't back down from this format war. They won't. That means there won't be a clear dominant format. Sony will muscle its way along.

JLB

So, what is the realtive amount of space necessary to fit 2 hours of movie, with, say a 2.0 downmix, 5.1/x.1 track, and or DTS, etc....????

At 15 Gb, will HD-DVD even be able to fit a whole movie without having to lose a bit of quality??? Basically, does the 23gb that would be on the BR pre-recordeds facilitate single discs, where HD may need multipe discs......If so, wouldn't that increased cost of extra discs outweigh the cost savings of being able to utilize current lines?

Michael Corvin

I don't see it costing more for multiple discs. Look at current dvds, they have the capability of DVD-18 but 9 times out of 10 you will see a two disc set than 1 DVD-18.

BigDan

The individual disc costs are very small once the factory is set up. It's just more expensive to set up the factory for Blu-ray, apparently.

One thing to remember, amongst all the Sony bashing, is that this isn't a Sony alone format. It's a Hitachi, LG, Matsushita, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, and Thomson format (as well as Dell and HP). Those are the companies that signed on to produce hardware.

HD-DVD has NEC and Toshiba. So, to me, it looks like it's Toshiba and NEC being the "lone wolf" companies trying to force a format on the larger group of manufacturers rather than Sony like we've often seen in the past.

(That's according to the first site I mentioned earlier, anyway).

JLB

In reality, at this point, I can't even afford a good HD TV yet, let alone a new DVD player to play HD/BR discs on. I'll just sit tight, let things happen, and see where we are when the dust settles......

Trigger

I won't be getting into HD DVD or Blue Ray for the simple fact that I have over 1000 DVDs and the quality is fine with me. As it is, I can't tell the difference between Fifth Element's regular DVD and the Superbit release. DVD will be around for a long time and I think both these HD and BR formats will just be useless niche things that hardly anyone will own.

supersonicx

I'm all for HD-DVD.
I don't care about the storage space.
We have 8GB DVDs now that can hold the movie and tons of extras.
Some DVDs are even mastered in Hi-Def.

Besides, the quality of DVD is top notch.
How much clearer of a video can you possibly get?

hmurchison

It's obvious that you haven't seen a sports game in HDTV yet. The first time I saw a soccer game being broadcast live in HDTV I knew DVDs days were numbered. For older movies the differences isn't going to be as pronounced but these new movies that are captured in HD are going to be amazing. You really need at least a 40" before you can start oogling at the quality improvement.

I think we'll have Hybrid players...it seems to be the industries answer to format wars involving digital products. This could never happen in tape days because of tape width, azimuth etc. Digital is just 01001010111010. I will damn near guarantee you the koreans or taiwanese will have hybrid lens assemblies and everything within 3 years of launch.

I'm not too worried about the format war. Consumers aren't being hurt too much by the DVD+R vs DVD-R because most of the burners today support all discs. That's just the way the future is going to have to be. Studios may eventually bail on a format but that will be a long while.

jiggawhat

Not sure if this was mentioned or not, but this is not an exclusive deal with Blu-ray. They can still choose to release titles on HD-DVD.