Blu-ray/HD-DVD format war discussion thread.......

[Daimyo]

I was a relatively early adopter of DVD and I don't remember anyone saying the additional space wasn't needed! If anything the space was limiting from the start! You don't remember multiple versions of DVDs with different audio tracks (DTS vs DD) because they couldn't both on a disc?

If you want to make the argument that BR has better picture quality than HDDVD, you're welcome to. You won't find a single non-biased person to back you up on that though. *shurg*

[BrianD]

Originally Posted by Daimyo

I was a relatively early adopter of DVD and I don't remember anyone saying the additional space wasn't needed! If anything the space was limiting from the start! You don't remember multiple versions of DVDs with different audio tracks (DTS vs DD) because they couldn't both on a disc?

If you want to make the argument that BR has better picture quality than HDDVD, you're welcome to. You won't find a single non-biased person to back you up on that though. *shurg*

I'll back you up on this one. As another fairly early adopter, I remember movies having to be split across both side of a DVD because the dual-layer technology wasn't ready initially. There were often compromises made on the amount of extras because there just wasn't much room if the DVD transfer was done at all well. The best DVDs were the ones where the transfer technicians took enough time to tweak the compression levels of different scenes for the best outcome. There has never been an over abundance of space on a DVD.

[Neon_Chaos]

HD-DVD = Betamax

[stevew]

Betamax was way more popular than hddvd. HDDVD is more like Minidisc or the Digital compact cassette, or some other stupid format that nobody adopted, at least on the content sales arena.

[stevew]

HDDVD=CDI....maybe a more apt comparison.

[BrianD]

I kind of thought that HD-DVD was like VHS, but this time Betamax won the war. Like VHS, HD-DVD was cheaper to work with, more accessible to the masses, but technically inferior. Blu-Ray was more tightly a product of one company, was more expensive to work with, but a technically superior technology.

[Fidatelo]

HDDVD = Laserdisc

[Synovia]

Originally Posted by Fidatelo

HDDVD = Laserdisc

They sold laserdiscs for 25 years. Thats not going to happen with HD-DVD

[Synovia]

Originally Posted by Daimyo

I was a relatively early adopter of DVD and I don't remember anyone saying the additional space wasn't needed! If anything the space was limiting from the start! You don't remember multiple versions of DVDs with different audio tracks (DTS vs DD) because they couldn't both on a disc?

If you want to make the argument that BR has better picture quality than HDDVD, you're welcome to. You won't find a single non-biased person to back you up on that though. *shurg*

Its got more space. That means less compression, and better picture, especially for longer movies. Theres very little exact comparisons to make because most of the movies that are on both formats were cut for HD-DVD and copied to Blu-Ray, at under 25gb.


Blu-Ray allows higher bitrate, for both video and sound. That means less compression. Less compression is ALWAYS better, especially when you're dealing with movement.

[Fidatelo]

Originally Posted by Synovia

They sold laserdiscs for 25 years. Thats not going to happen with HD-DVD

They sold Laserdiscs for 25 years? Who the heck was buying them? I'm confused

[Daimyo]

Originally Posted by Synovia

Its got more space. That means less compression, and better picture, especially for longer movies. Theres very little exact comparisons to make because most of the movies that are on both formats were cut for HD-DVD and copied to Blu-Ray, at under 25gb.


Blu-Ray allows higher bitrate, for both video and sound. That means less compression. Less compression is ALWAYS better, especially when you're dealing with movement.

Do you also think mp3s sound better encoded at 512 compared to 384?

Most of the Blu Ray discs encoded at high bitrates (higher than HDDVD can handle) are encoded in mpeg2 and not mpeg4 which is not nearly as efficient. Its true that all things being equal higher bitrates are better, but its also true that there is a point at which it becomes academic because no one can actually tell the difference and also that all things are rarely equal. There was absolutely no difference between Blu Ray and HDDVD for video quality. Blu Ray has more storage space than HDDVD, but that doesn't help it have better quality video. It may leave more room for extras, but the DVD market showed that that is meaningless since you can always add a second disc and market it as a "two disc special edition".

[dervack]

Originally Posted by Daimyo

Do you also think mp3s sound better encoded at 512 compared to 384?

Most of the Blu Ray discs encoded at high bitrates (higher than HDDVD can handle) are encoded in mpeg2 and not mpeg4 which is not nearly as efficient. Its true that all things being equal higher bitrates are better, but its also true that there is a point at which it becomes academic because no one can actually tell the difference and also that all things are rarely equal. There was absolutely no difference between Blu Ray and HDDVD for video quality. Blu Ray has more storage space than HDDVD, but that doesn't help it have better quality video.

Doesn't everybody?

[cartman]

It appears that the crack pipe is getting passed around the Sony HQ again. They are claiming that Blu-Ray will be 50% of disc sales by the end of this year. I also don't quite buy their statement that 1 in 5 discs currently sold are Blu-Ray.

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20080407PD201.html

[Synovia]

Originally Posted by Daimyo

Do you also think mp3s sound better encoded at 512 compared to 384?

Most of the Blu Ray discs encoded at high bitrates (higher than HDDVD can handle) are encoded in mpeg2 and not mpeg4 which is not nearly as efficient.

I dunno, most of the big ones I have are VC-1 or AVC. Very few are mpeg2.



"Do you also think mp3s sound better encoded at 512 compared to 384"
Stereo? no. 5.1 channel? hell yes.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by cartman

It appears that the crack pipe is getting passed around the Sony HQ again. They are claiming that Blu-Ray will be 50% of disc sales by the end of this year. I also don't quite buy their statement that 1 in 5 discs currently sold are Blu-Ray.

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20080407PD201.html

That 20% is probably high for worldwide sales. The U.S is currently the lowest percentage of the three major regions, with Blu-ray currently holding between 8-10% of total disc sales in the U.S. Both Japan and PAL territories are much further along in Blu-ray adoption due to their format war being over for nearly a year. Japan is the furthest along of the three regions, with Blu-ray holding 18-20% of the total market. PAL territories run around 15% currently.

[Ryan S]

Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan

Both Japan and PAL territories are much further along in Blu-ray adoption due to their format war being over for nearly a year. ..... PAL territories run around 15% currently.

I am sure that can not be right. HDTV in Europe is some distance behind the USA, and blu ray disks have only recently become readily available in stores here. Quite frankly, I would be surprised if blu ray and HDDVD combined made up 5% of the UK disk sales market.

The first HDTV channels started over here in summer 2006, and I imagine it arrived in the rest of Europe at around the same time.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

SCEE engineers talk about the Blu-ray updates in the PS3 2.20 upgrade........

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread...51#post1145651

[darkenigma510]

Originally Posted by cartman

It appears that the crack pipe is getting passed around the Sony HQ again. They are claiming that Blu-Ray will be 50% of disc sales by the end of this year. I also don't quite buy their statement that 1 in 5 discs currently sold are Blu-Ray.

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20080407PD201.html

Well if you were a BluRay Player owner, I think most of your new purchases would be BlueRay not DVD.

[Ryan S]

Originally Posted by darkenigma510

Well if you were a BluRay Player owner, I think most of your new purchases would be BlueRay not DVD.

I am not so sure. If you have a standalone Blu-Ray player it is likely that most of your new purchases will be Blu-Ray, but the majority of Blu-Ray owners have the PS3. There will be a number of PS3 owners that do not own an HDTV, and an even larger number that do not want to spend $50 (UK instore price) on a Blu-Ray disk when they can get the DVD for a fraction of the cost.

[cartman]

Originally Posted by darkenigma510

Well if you were a BluRay Player owner, I think most of your new purchases would be BlueRay not DVD.

even so, that is a huge stretch to think that it will hit 50% of disc sales by the end of this year, considering the install base of Blu-Ray players is less than 10 million worldwide, and there are hundreds of millions of active DVD players out there.

[Eaglesfan27]

Originally Posted by darkenigma510

Well if you were a BluRay Player owner, I think most of your new purchases would be BlueRay not DVD.

Unless Blu-Ray discs can be played on DVD players, my wife has made it clear that most of our purchases will be DVD's even after she gets me a PS3. She wants to be able to take movies to friend's houses and most of them do not have Blu-Ray players, nor are they getting one any time soon.

[Synovia]

[quote]

Originally Posted by cartman

even so, that is a huge stretch to think that it will hit 50% of disc sales by the end of this year, considering the install base of Blu-Ray players is less than 10 million worldwide, and there are hundreds of millions of active DVD players out there.

There were 10.5 Million PS3s sold as of january 1st, 2008, so I have a hard time there are less than 10Million installed blu-ray players now, in April 2008.


"There will be a number of PS3 owners that do not own an HDTV,"

Seriously? For real? I, for one, have never met one. It seems to be a collosal waste of money. When confined to 480p, the PS3 really doesn't have much over the Ps2, and gets its ass kicked all over the place by the Wii.

[Synovia]

Originally Posted by Eaglesfan27

Unless Blu-Ray discs can be played on DVD players, my wife has made it clear that most of our purchases will be DVD's even after she gets me a PS3. She wants to be able to take movies to friend's houses and most of them do not have Blu-Ray players, nor are they getting one any time soon.

has your wife watched any blu-ray? My mom said the exact same thing, until I let her borrow a stack of blu-ray movies and my ps3 for a weekend.



Since I bought my PS3, I've bought 3 DVDs (Rainman $4.99, Hotel Rwanda $4.99, Matrix 3 $1.99). I think I've bought 10 or 11 Blu-Rays. I haven't paid more than $15 for any of them.

[Eaglesfan27]

Originally Posted by Synovia

has your wife watched any blu-ray? My mom said the exact same thing, until I let her borrow a stack of blu-ray movies and my ps3 for a weekend.



Since I bought my PS3, I've bought 3 DVDs (Rainman $4.99, Hotel Rwanda $4.99, Matrix 3 $1.99). I think I've bought 10 or 11 Blu-Rays. I haven't paid more than $15 for any of them.

No, and it's possible she'll change her tune once we get a few and she sees them. Then again, she often goes to her best friend's house and watches movies there. Her BF is poor and won't have Blu-Ray for a very long time, if she ever does. I'll probably get a PS3 this upcoming Christmas as there finally should be enough exclusives out that I want to make it worthwhile. I guess we'll see if she changes her tune after seeing a few Blu-Ray movies as I'm sure I'll pick up a few of my favorites.

[gstelmack]

Originally Posted by Synovia

Seriously? For real? I, for one, have never met one. It seems to be a collosal waste of money. When confined to 480p, the PS3 really doesn't have much over the Ps2, and gets its ass kicked all over the place by the Wii.

You might be surprised at how many 360/PS3 owners have theirs hooked up to an SDTV until they decide to buy the upgrade...

[Kodos]

Originally Posted by gstelmack

You might be surprised at how many 360/PS3 owners have theirs hooked up to an SDTV until they decide to buy the upgrade...

I own both, but regretably do not have an HDTV yet. Synovia is probably embarassed for me.

[stevew]

I know several people with 360's/PS3's and non HDTV's.

[cartman]

Originally Posted by Synovia

There were 10.5 Million PS3s sold as of january 1st, 2008, so I have a hard time there are less than 10Million installed blu-ray players now, in April 2008.

Ok. The last figure I'd heard was that PS3s were approaching 10 million sold worldwide. Even so, the difference between that number and the number I quoted is a rounding error compared to the number of DVD players in use worldwide.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

New software coming out for the PS3 that will allow the iPhone to be used as both a PS3 Blu-ray remote and will also allow copying of digital movie copies on Blu-ray movie discs to the iPhone for portable viewing. Similar software for video iPods is also expected.

http://www.macworld.co.uk/ipod-itune...pe=allchandate

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by Synovia

There were 10.5 Million PS3s sold as of january 1st, 2008, so I have a hard time there are less than 10Million installed blu-ray players now, in April 2008.

Correct. Current PS3 sales worldwide are just under 12 million units. Stand alone players worldwide are approximately 3-3.5 million units, so a rough total for installed base is 15 million units.

[cartman]

Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan

Correct. Current PS3 sales worldwide are just under 12 million units. Stand alone players worldwide are approximately 3-3.5 million units, so a rough total for installed base is 15 million units.

So, given that figure of 15 million BR units, and a reported 1 billion DVD players sold worldwide, I still don't see how Sony is projecting that BR discs will be 50% of the worldwide market by year's end. Even if 60% of the DVD players ever sold are not used anymore, Sony adds another 10 million to the install base over the next 9 months, and every PS3 is used for BR, not just game playing, that means that for every DVD title sold per DVD unit, there will have to be 8 BR discs sold per PS3 unit. And that is best case scenario, with guesstimates favorable to Sony.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by cartman

So, given that figure of 15 million BR units, and a reported 1 billion DVD players sold worldwide, I still don't see how Sony is projecting that BR discs will be 50% of the worldwide market by year's end. Even if 60% of the DVD players ever sold are not used anymore, Sony adds another 10 million to the install base over the next 9 months, and every PS3 is used for BR, not just game playing, that means that for every DVD title sold per DVD unit, there will have to be 8 BR discs sold per PS3 unit. And that is best case scenario, with guesstimates favorable to Sony.

I don't disagree (they won't have 50% of the market by year-end), but you didn't need to throw out installed base numbers that were off by 50% to prove your point.

[Synovia]

Originally Posted by Kodos

I own both, but regretably do not have an HDTV yet. Synovia is probably embarassed for me.

Not embarrassed, I just think its a collosal waste of money.

[Synovia]

Originally Posted by cartman

So, given that figure of 15 million BR units, and a reported 1 billion DVD players sold worldwide, I still don't see how Sony is projecting that BR discs will be 50% of the worldwide market by year's end. Even if 60% of the DVD players ever sold are not used anymore, Sony adds another 10 million to the install base over the next 9 months, and every PS3 is used for BR, not just game playing, that means that for every DVD title sold per DVD unit, there will have to be 8 BR discs sold per PS3 unit. And that is best case scenario, with guesstimates favorable to Sony.

Well, IIRC, DVD sales have been dropping off considerably over the last 2 years, so I wouldn't find it all that surprising to see people jump ship reasonably quickly.


Worldwide, I'd be shocked. But 50% of the US market? Its a stretch, but I wouldn't be all that surprised.

[cartman]

Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan

I don't disagree (they won't have 50% of the market by year-end), but you didn't need to throw out installed base numbers that were off by 50% to prove your point.

Even if I was off by 100% on my installed base number of BR players, it still supports my point that the difference is still a rounding error compared to the DVD install base.

[gstelmack]

Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan

I don't disagree (they won't have 50% of the market by year-end), but you didn't need to throw out installed base numbers that were off by 50% to prove your point.

Large percentage errors are easy to come by when talking about small numbers.

It's like how people panicked around here in Raleigh (I believe it was) because we had more than DOUBLE the number of murders in the first quarter of this year compared to last. SEVEN people had been killed in the first 3 months of this year instead of the 3 during the same people last year.

[Eaglesfan27]

Originally Posted by gstelmack

Large percentage errors are easy to come by when talking about small numbers.

It's like how people panicked around here in Raleigh (I believe it was) because we had more than DOUBLE the number of murders in the first quarter of this year compared to last. SEVEN people had been killed in the first 3 months of this year instead of the 3 during the same people last year.

Not to go too astray in this thread, but only 7.. Wow. I think we had at least that many people killed in New Orleans in each week of the year of 04.

[gstelmack]

Originally Posted by Eaglesfan27

Not to go too astray in this thread, but only 7.. Wow. I think we had at least that many people killed in New Orleans in each week of the year of 04.

It's a great place to live. Except for the tyrannical school board, I love it here

[cartman]

Some hard figures to support my point:

The 9 millionth BR disc was sold sometime during the week of March 16th, 2008:
http://www.showbizdata.com/news/4644...-9MILLION-MARK

There were 7 separate DVD titles that were released during 2007 that sold more than 9 million copies apiece, and 5 of those titles were released in Q4 of 2007:

http://www.the-numbers.com/dvd/charts/annual/2007.php

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by gstelmack

Large percentage errors are easy to come by when talking about small numbers.

It's like how people panicked around here in Raleigh (I believe it was) because we had more than DOUBLE the number of murders in the first quarter of this year compared to last. SEVEN people had been killed in the first 3 months of this year instead of the 3 during the same people last year.

We'll just assume he was using old numbers. Obviously Raleigh has their own problems.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

More credits coming for those who purchased a HD-DVD player. This time, it's at Amazon.......

Dear Amazon.com Customer, As someone who purchased an HD DVD player from us before February 23, 2008,* you might like to hear about a special offer available from Amazon.com.New technologies don’t always work out as planned. We at Amazon.com value our customer relationships more than anything and would like to support customers who purchased these players by offering a credit good for $50 off any products sold by Amazon.com.**

The code is valid through April 9, 2009, so you have plenty of time to use your credit. Purchases from third-party merchants on our site are not eligible.

[Pumpy Tudors]

Originally Posted by Eaglesfan27

Not to go too astray in this thread, but only 7.. Wow. I think we had at least that many people killed in New Orleans in each week of the year of 04.

Yep, I remember that. I'll admit that that's one thing I don't miss about New Orleans.

[Lorena]

Well, our dvd player busted and we will now be purchasing a PS3. Not for games, but for blue-ray dvd movies.

[Flasch186]

Originally Posted by Dodgerchick

Well, our dvd player busted and we will now be purchasing a PS3. Not for games, but for blue-ray dvd movies.

good idea. I love mine.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Looks like some reasonably prices stand-alone players are on the way. Samsung has a new player coming in June that will be $399 and will be version 2.0 ready with an ethernet port. We'll have to see if this is the stand-alone player that's finally able to match the PS3's loading speed.

http://www.blu-ray.com/players/players.php?id=23

[MizzouRah]

Honestly.. who would pay $399 for a stand-alone player when you can get a ps3 for the same price?

[wade moore]

What is different about version 2.0?

In the next 6 months blu-ray or not to blu-ray will become an important question for me.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by wade moore

What is different about version 2.0?

In the next 6 months blu-ray or not to blu-ray will become an important question for me.

2.0 is also know as BD Live. Basically, it's the ability for the player to download content to your player from the internet. For example, if you're watching Rambo, it would download trailers for Predator and Alien and show them in your menu as options. Also, they have stuff like quiz games about the movie you're watching.

Honestly, most of the options even in 2.0 won't be used by the vast majority of the people, but it's best to make sure you have a player that is 2.0 compatible and has an ethernet or Wifi connection. You'll have all of the options available as long as you do that. The main difference right now to be concerned about is disc load times. The PS3 is superior to any stand-alone players as far as load times right now. When you decide to buy, that should be one of the main things that you look for.

[wade moore]

Is the PS3 2.0?

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by wade moore

Is the PS3 2.0?

Yes. It's considered the best BR player at this point, even better than some of its more expensive counterparts. It's fully upgradable with the internet/Wifi connection and currently has faster loading times than any of the stand-alone players.