BluRay vs. HD-DVD

I paid $99 before Christmas for a HD-DVD player. A also didn't pay near $700 for my Playstation 3. You just aren't very savy w/ your money.

 

That too, pity (or not) the morons spending $600+ for either an hd-doa or blu-ray player. There are tons of Bluray players out there that will never be able to play the more interactive picture-in-picture features that will be coming with the adoption of profile 1.1 and profile 2.0.

 

That's what's BS about the entire format war and Blu-Ray "winning". If HD DVD is dropped, then that means that most current consumers wont have compatible machines (supposedly the PS3 will be) for the eventual "standard".

HD DVD should have won this little war because it was fully developed and implemented in its original form. And the hardware was cheaper. Sony just pulled an EA (which Toshiba tried to do too). That's not the way this stuff should be decided. Exclusivity contracts ruin competition.

 

HD-DVD had a chance, it looked like they might pull the upset. Ultimately even though I went with HD-DVD, I'm glad that BluRay won. Even though I hate Sony, I think that Blu is the better choice for both movies and computers as the next (last?) disc-based media.

50 gigs of storage on working discs, potentially higher bitrate for better sound/picture (only potential thus far, we haven't seen the same movie with different encodes to judge) add up to a better disc option.

5 years from now when I'm backing up my PC, it will be a lot easier with 50 gig blu discs as opposed to 30 gig hd-dvd discs. Also, a side benefit to having the hd-dvd add on is that I can hook it up to my pc and rip my hd-dvd's directly to my media server and network my discs throughout the house.

Eventually I'll likely be able to do that with Blu, but their copy protection scheme will make it much more difficult.

 

Storage capacity is a dubious decision basis, especially since Toshiba had already pushed the HD DVD to 51 GB (triple layer).

Basing any decisions on that assumes that the storage capacity is stangant, which history strongly contradicts.

In any case, that ignores my point that anti-compitetion contracts made a decision that the market should have made. I happen to think that HD-DVD would have won in that case, but it's just an opinion.

The only way we lose as consumers in any of these cases is when this crap occurs. These payoffs remove the consumers from the developmental equation. We can always veto the entire format, but that's much less likely to occur.

OD content via broadband could make this a moot point though.

 

Only when it comes to movie distribution (and I don't think the high speed internet infrastructure is there for a long time.) Data backup is just as important a market to me, and I'll take the proven 2 layer 50 gigs vs the up-till now vaporware 3 layer 51 gigs.

I didn't address your point about companies deciding the format war because I agree with it. It was never a fair fight with the studio exclusivity contracts. The public was never shown two discs of the same movie both produced to highlight each format's respective benefits.

 

That would have been nice, wouldn't it have been? And with real price tags on the media and the hardware.

 

Totalc hange of subject, but IMHO disc based media, HDs, CDs, DVDs, are going to be replace by high capacity solid state (e.g. flash) in the coming years.

 

Disagree with you with the exception of possibly hard drives.

Can't see Home video jumping to that market as easy. It was a huge transition to get to VHS to DVD, and a flash chip would be an even larger jump. While I do expect it in the future it would be difficult to market. Because it would be packaged in such a small size convincing older people to purchase it would be difficult. In turn that insures at LEAST a good 10 years + before transition to a flash chip (I know I'm speaking generic in saying Flash) could be possible.

 

I get the top of the line......