Completely agree...

...well....maybe not the "cheerfully" part.

Here, here....very well stated and my sentiments exactly.

Im not loyal to a format, Im loyal to the best quality hd content on disc.

Right now, what Sony is releasing is pitiful. HD-DVD is releasing better quality pq/aq and at least maintaining the special features of DVD releases.

If Sony can produce a better product than HD-DVD, im all for it. They havent proven they can do that by any means.

The recent announcements of things to come this year, have me very excited about the HD-DVD format. Bring it on!

Ok, i enjoy'd a lot of your mature and well thought out replys, so ill make one as well.

I am also all about the movies. That is why i choose to not support HD-DVD. It has more limitations (max bitrate and space concerns, HD-DVD is only certified for dual layer for movies, the 3-layer is for storage only) and i know that i want a kick ass Criterion Collection film done in the HIGHEST possible bitrate and quality. That is why i support BR. I am not concerned with the absolute now, this war just started and rome wasnt built in a day.

I am thinking 2-3 years from now, when we'll be seeing both products at full blast, i beleive strongly in BR's superior technology (the max bitrate being 54mbs, HD-DVD being 34 should be a HUGE concern to you all if you care about quality being unreal later on.. DVD itself looked pretty horrible at first (my Interview With The Vampire disc was sad to say the least)) and thats why i am so dubious as to why a lot of people would want the format that has the most limitations to stick around. Less studio support, less CE support (you guys want options dont you?), and inferior design of hardware (bitrate/size).

Again, i am ALL about the movies, which is why i want the best possible scenerio for them. If the roles were reversed and HD-DVD was the one with the higher storage and bitrate, id be an HD-DVD supporter till the end. That is not the case.

For anyone looking for an A1 in or near NYC, they have 4 of them at the Chelsea BB. They got them in on Tuesday.

Here is the disconnect then.

We are not just early adopters. We are trendsetters (according to me economics degreed girlfriend).

We are not thinking of 2-3 years from now. We are thinking of right now. What is the best way to get hd recorded material on disc? Right now, the best is HD-DVD.

2-3 years from now, or even sooner, if BD is better, then I will buy it.

Trying to argue with people who want to satisfy their immediate wants (im included in that) is futile.

Will BD be better in 2-3 years? Maybe so.

But in the meantime, ill watch my brilliant looking hd-dvds on my dlp set (before end of year, the Lord of the Rings, Batman Begins, The Matrix, Harry Potter and more).

Ill skip the inferior sammy BD player and special featureless, mpeg2 encoded discs that BD is putting out right now. Id rather wait until there are better BD releases or they are released on HD-DVD.

With Sony's track record of introducing a format, the money ive spent on hd-dvd is a small price to wager.

No double standard. Almost every comment that comes out of Blitz's yap is flamebait. I agree that the "fuck BD" stuff is sort of infantile.

My feelings exactly. The bickering happens when news surfaces. If it is good news for HD (which if you are honest, just about all of it has been so far) then the BD people start crying and making excuses, and the HD people gloat. The same happens the other way as evidenced by the reaction to the WB announcement.

Those truly impartial are glad there will finally be titles to compare side by side on seperate platforms.

If I had the extra money right now, I'd buy a HD deck,and enjoy it. If Sony finally gets their house in order, then I would buy a BD deck. If anyone is lashing out from fear, it is the hardcore Sony fanboys. They fear their golden goose is DOA.

But you're going off of what "could be", and we're going off of "what is." Blu-Ray has the possibility, but that doesn't mean it will ever amount to its full potential. HD DVD has the possibility AND it has delivered. Blu-Ray hasn't done squat compared to HD DVD, and given the delays and terribly mediocre software, I really don't see how you can continue to trust in what Sony says. Would you continue to let your significant other cheat on you just because s/he keeps promising things are going to change? You must have Sony on one hell of a long leash.

You mention that DVD has gotten much better since its debut, and that Blu-Ray can do the same. Why, then, does that same principle not apply to HD DVD? It's excellent now, so what's to prevent it from improving even more? Who's to say Microsoft won't come up with an even more efficient compression codec? The door swings both ways, you know, and that's something that the militant Blu-Ray people seem to forget.

Here's another post all about potential vs. current reality. The problem with every point you make is that you assume that BD will get better (and I definitely agree it will) while HD had no improvement potential. You are comparing apples and oranges.

You know what I don't get?

People criticize HD because it can't get any better. Then they look at BD and say "see? We can get sooo much better."

How the hell does that make sense? It used to be that BD would be perfect right out of the gate and now that they're not, we have to wait to see this ungodly potential. HD DVD is absolutely fantastic. And it CAN improve with regards to the VC1 codec encoding better. But really, at what point do we say that it's enough??

When everyone accepts Blu-Ray's superiority and bows down to it. You know you want to, man; resistance is futile!

Bluray is just plain not ready for release. They released to counter HD-DVD and steal some thunder. They really should have delayed again.

It very well might get a ton better if/when they get double layer discs working AND better encoders. Then, developers can pursue the BD-J and so on.

The problem is, the clock is ticking. HD-DVD looks like its gonna have a huge Q4 for releases with big titles. If that comes to fruition, BD might be in a corner by then.

We shall see, but the problems arising with the PS3 cells AND the continuing issues with double layer discs, its not promising for Sony and its fanboys.

So THIS is interesting...according to AVS...
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...&&#post7999043

Apparently some people who bought the Samsung in St. Louis are forming a class action lawsuit against BB because they were charged the restocking fee when they returned their players.

Take a look at what the highly respected Joe Kane has to say about the choice of MPEG-2 over both VC-1 and h.264.

http://www.cinenow.com/us/news-2118.html

Starting around 7th minute:

"It is my personal belief, that Blu-Ray is all about greed" - Joe Kane.

Thanks for posting this. It is so refreshing to see an actual expert talk intelligently about HD video as apposed to all the fake experts CNet, Ziff Davis and others keep shoving out there that don't have the first clue about HD DVD or Blu-ray.

Just called Columbia House to close my account. They asked what they can do to keep me. I said "start stocking HD DVD's." Since she could barely speak english, I don't think she got what I was saying.

Oh...and just another reason to hate sony:
http://forum.dvdtalk.com/showthread....85#post7146185

I don't understand why people assume that HD-DVD can't get better... as if this is the best they can do.

Just like with DVD, the studios will get better with compression - so we'll get even better picture quality than we do now.

Also we still may see HD-DVD TL discs (45GB) down the road. It's not in the current HD-DVD specs, but that doesn't mean they current players won't play them. And if they can't play them, who's to say that 2nd generation players won't? HD-DVD is still in it's infancy and things can improve even further.

There's also the trust factor. DVD is the most successful format launch in history, so I have more faith in the HD-DVD camp. Blu-Ray (even though has multiple partners) is pretty much being lead by Sony, and I don't have anywhere near the level of trust in them. It's been beaten to death, but after history repeating itself so many times can we trust Sony with yet another format when they've had so many fail?
People keep referring to Beta losing out, but we don't have to go that far back when we have SACD, UMD, ATRAC, etc.

Sorry Sony, fool me once... (you know the rest).

I sure do..."fool me once, shame on... shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again."

Based on what I've seen of the best HD DVDs so far, if they got any better, which they're sure to do, I don't think I'd ever leave the house. Bourne Supremacy and Riddick are abso-freakin'-lutely stunning!

A few points:

1. By far, the biggest argument I hear in favor of BD (aside from the erroneous "It can do 1080p when HD can't") is that BD offers higher bitrates. Everyone who argues this seems to be forgetting one thing: Advanced codecs don't work the same way MPEG does. A codec like VC-1 doesn't require super high bitrates to give you a strong image anymore. Look at current HD-DVDs. They look AMAZING. And there is a newer version of VC-1 that can get movies to look at least as good (and perhaps better) as the first crop, but with even LOWER bitrates.

2. It is very likely that two 30GB HD-DVDs will be cheaper than 1 50GB BD. Cheaper to produce on a mass scale, and cheaper to buy. I would not mind multi-disc sets. They're not at all a problem.

3. Your argument presupposes that HD-DVD cannot get any better, but BD can get much better. Both can get better, and HD-DVD has the head start.

4. Sony's decisions have been solely in the interest of making them the most money, even at the expense of quality. Why didn't they go for VC-1 on their first releases? It's in the BD spec, and HD-DVD is already releasing movies with it. But Sony doesn't want to pay Microsoft money. So you get awful looking films. Why does the PS3 cost $600? Because Sony is forcing the games to be on BD, even though that's not only premature for the industry, but will also give them a much higher system defect rate. The worst HD-DVD has done has been combo discs, which are annoying but at least the HD-DVD side of the combo looks as good as other HD-DVDs. Sony has not shown themselves to be a company worth trusting, as they clearly don't care about the quality of their product.

5. You say DVD looked pretty bad at first, but looks great now, and you use that to justify supporting BD. But if those first DVDs came out and a competing format came out at the same time that looked 5 times better and cost half the price, do you think DVD would have been allowed to mature? No. The reason DVD could get away with bad transfers at first is that even the bad transfers looked sharper than anything else out there (with the exception of maybe a few laserdiscs). BD looks bad now, but HD-DVD looks great now. If BD will grow to look great, think about how much greater HD-DVD can grow to look?

6. In the end, you can throw all the numbers you want out about bitrates and max capacity and all that. But then you put on an HD-DVD and a BD, and HD-DVD clearly looks better. And if HD-DVD looks this good now, why would we expect it to look worse later? VC-1 has a 96% transperancy to the master. Even if you made a BD disc with VC-1 that used the full 54mbs and compared that to the same film on HD-DVD with VC-1 at 34mbs, the difference would not be visible to the naked eye. So, at the end of the day, it comes down to price. And HD-DVD is cheaper now. And with Sony sinking so much money into R&D and forging all new lines of manufacture, the price on BD media may not go down for a long time. The player prices will go down more quickly, but if the media remains even $5 more expensive for the same PQ/AQ, then why should people pay it?

I understand you have a lot of faith in Blu-ray, but just remember that Sony has shown very little good faith with this launch.

^^^^^

I think that will become THE defining post of the forum for quite some time.

We're just going to have to refer to it frequently.

Thank you.

Also, I want everyone to please note that I was avidly pro-BD until the actual launch. Digitalfreak can attest to that.

It was Sony's launch and their handling of it (plus some actual time eyeballing films on BD) that changed my mind.

Dude...we were both on the same side.

We should pull up some of our BD posts from 6 months ago. eek.