It's not the same master. The Blu-ray has a lot more dirt, speckles and scratches on the film elements than the DVD.

I'd challenge you to put in the comparable "Special Edition" DVD and directly compare. The two discs are virtually indistinguishable from one another. The Blu-ray looks marginally better at most.

Josh, I heard a rumor that you did some reviews of BD stuff. When's that going to be posted?

When I get a chance I was planning on comparing the Blu Ray discs with their DVD counterparts upconverted on the Toshiba HD DVD.

well, you know what they say, "good things come to those who wait". if I have my choice I'd rather wait 2 minutes for something truly remarkable instead of 45 seconds for something kinda blah but thats just me I guess, oh, and you too.

I'm working on them now. I have some family committments over the weekend and the holiday that may slow me down, but they're coming soon.

Anyone watch Digital Life TV? Its a downloadable video show done twice a week by two of the old techTV guys. However, after hearing their handling of Blu-ray I have to question their actual knowledge of consumer electronics.

They did own up to how awful the Blu-ray transfers looked and how much better HD DVDs looked (their reasoning for why was mindboggling and gave no credit at all to HD DVD), but completely skipped mention of the discs being 25GB, of them encoding with MPEG2 and of the fact the Samsung player cheats on its 1080p output. This is really inexcusable as they also promoted AVSforum the week before which could have explained all of this to them.

They also seemed to think the Samsung the superior player due to its 1080p output (even though all the films they watched on it looked awful), its more stylish look (because this really matters to playback quality) and because its lighter. Lighter, really? Anyone with even the most basic knowledge of disc players knows that vibration has an impact on sound and image quality and the heavy player that reduces vibration will be the superior product.

Anyway, it seems that everywhere I look reviewers are sugarcoating the Blu-ray hardware and disc issues (which I can agree will be worked out in time, like sometime in 2007) while at the same time bashing HD DVD for its minor player only related issues (which will also be worked out). Makes you wonder how much leverage Sony and its partners are using to make sure everyone keeps the Blu tinted glasses on. Digital Bits is far from the only offender.

Why are HD-DVD owners SO PISSED?? Why is it hard to see that a lot of people out there actually want BR to succeed for the same reasons you support HD-DVD now. They know at the end of this war, BR discs will be encoded in a better format, with dual and maybe even quad layer discs with unbeleivable quality. They're ALL thinking ahead, and not living in the now like a lot of you are. Thats great that you're enjoying HD-DVD, its your $$$, you spend it anyway you want. But dont think everyone is ready to settle for the lesser of the 2 formats just because there are minor differences at the baby step portion of the process. Every advantage HD-DVD has is short lived IMO.

Price? You'd be silly to think by end of 07 there wont be dirt cheap BR players in stores. More CE companys = more competition = better pricing.

PQ? Again, once DL/QL discs + Better codec are the norm, no one will remember what HD-DVD was.

wait, thats all HD-DVD has. Anyway, i know so many people get hell bent over people supporting blu-ray. A LOT of us dont want to be stuck with inferior space limitations. The best has not yet come.

I guess my problem is HD DVD delivered a product worth the $500 player investment and the price of the discs. Blu-ray on the other hand delivered a $1000 player with a questionable build quality and fake 1080p along with a bunch of discs of sub par quality. All of this while lying through their teeth about what they were releasing and paying store employees and probably reviewers to lie as well.

However, your logic is I should support Blu-ray because it promises to be better some time in the future (no exact "get their shit together" date currently known) instead of the company that delivered a quality product at half the cost on day one. Definitely one to ponder.

for what it's worth. here is my summary of the format war:

Blue Ray: We ARE the answer. Ok, we haven't gotten everthing worked out yet, but WHEN we do, everyone will grovel at our feet. HD DVD your days are numbered!

HD DVD - Ah, shuddup your 30 GB/Audio handicapped/$1000 mouth. We are doing quite fine without you, without a lot of studio support and without making a profit on our hardware! Except our boss seems to be hedging his bets lately......

meanwhile, consumers are wondering if these new discs will play on their new upconverting DVD player which they think is High Def...

and the clocks of millions of VCRs still are blinking at 12:00...

anyone want to buy a piece of coal for 1000.00? if you wait long enough you may get a diamond...

I find your undying faith in the "possibilities" of this format quite humorous.

....and that's pretty much all you have at this point.

"Better codec"? HD DVD and Blu-ray both support the same set of video codecs.

Ugh. People are STILL quoting Blitz.

I didn't realize there were people here who DIDN'T have him on a block.

Like digi, I think Im going to add Blitz to my ignore list...he adds nothing to discussions except blasting HD-DVD and blindly praising BD.

I think you're confused. Some of us are living in reality, but you seem to be living in a fantasyland where everything that's wrong will magically get fixed at some indefinite point in the future if you just close our eyes and chant, "I do believe in Blu-ray. I do. I do." over and over again.

You gotta admit, his posts are so rediculous you have to laugh.

They don't come close to a certain Jimmy poster who seemingly got banned.

His posts sound like some bad 1940's sci-fi black and white serial where some evil-doer spits out threats of world domination and destruction.

A few thoughts...
 

It looks like this thread could use a bit of rejuvenating so I'll give it a shot--

I'm wondering how many people here have actually pegged Blu-Ray as already TKO'd...

There's a lot of support now for HD-DVD, with good reason, but I'm still wary of choosing a side. I've been leaning Blu-Ray since the beginning, also for good reason, but because of the obvious current superiority of HD-DVD, I'm an HD-supporter--but still not sure who I'll choose in the end.

The reason for this is because most of the original reasons I was a Blu-Ray fan have not been silenced by HD-DVD... (I mean, who would've thought that one of the formats would actually look terrible, lol?)

I'd just like to know what people think about capacity issues between the two discs. I don't know a lot about codecs, but is there the possibility that Blu-Ray's (eventual) higher-capacity will be able to support a codec which employs less compression and, therefore, better image quality?

Also, does HD-DVD have any potential for the advanced special features and menu capability that will be possible if Blu-Ray ever does become a high-capacity interactive format? It's not unreasonable to think that with Blu-Ray's greater production clout, this won't be something they try to develop.

And what about Video games? It makes sense to me that a larger-capacity disc would be desirable for game developers... will Blu-Ray take hold there?


I know I'll get flamed for talking only about "potential," but for me, that's what future technology is all about. I'll grant that HD is more impressive right now (BD doesn't even have STANDARD special features, currently), but I believe that Blu-Ray has released an inferior product because even crummy competition with HD is better than nothing, which is what they would've had otherwise.

There are a lot of HD supporters here and I would like to have a discussion about the format's potential for delivering anything more than movies in 1080 resolution. I'm not a Blu-Ray fanboy, but I do see advantages for both formats. I had high hopes for this format war to send us light-years into the future of DVDs and interactive media, and I think that the premature failure of either format would be a bad thing for the consumer in the long run.

What good is "potential" if it's never realized?

Just because you have a set amount of space on a disc doesn't meant it will ever be completely utilized.

I don't think ANYONE has said that BD is TKO'd at this point. To say so would be foolish. "Crippled but not out" is more accurate, IMHO.

Agreed,

But wouldn't it also be foolish to exclusively support a format which has already reached its limitations?

By your line of argument it was only the quality advantage that DVD's had over VHS that should've mattered, and no producers should ever have used the capacity increase to create special features and bundle-in commentary, documentaries, etc.

I'm not saying that HD-DVD has already topped out its potential, but it sure seems like it sometimes. I don't know enough about the HD-DVD side of the technology it to be positive, which is why I wanted to discuss it here.

lets say a studio decides to release on both formats. if they take the same movie and put it on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray with the same encoding(say VC-1) how exactly will the BD version be better?

And how, exactly, does it seem like HD DVD has peaked? What evidence backs up that claim?

Again, who's saying that HD-DVD has reached its limitations? That's absurd.

Again, using current technology and the VC1 codec, you can fit a 4 hour movie with several audio options on one HD DVD. That's DEFINITELY good enough for me.

Besides, as long as the entire film fits on one disc in HD with great quality, that's all i care about. Put the SD extras on another disc or on the other side, I don't care. Switching discs really doesn't do anything to me. There's nothing that BD can do that HD can't as well, at this point. They say BD has a larger capacity but there's no reason to think that the larger capacity will be needed.