What do you think will win the Format War?

[ZeWarrior]

I personally think Blu-Ray will win, it has more storage capabilities, more movie studios support it, etc.. What do you think will win the War?

 

[Taras]

Shouldn't be Blu Ray because Sony is the corporate equivalent of leaky ass. And they have an extra (already broken) layer of DRM. And three profiles already with some compatibility issues. And regional encoding. All this = 100% bullshit.

HD-DVD players running $100-200, lower price point. Still $30 a disc. I couldn't justify replacing my DVD library.

Standard DVD - largest user base. No need to upgrade. Resolution is fine.

 

[Lumstar]

It's still in the air for movies. But, Blu-Ray is far ahead when it comes to data storage. Recorders and media were available for the public to buy online over a year before HD-DVD.

 

[nexus7412369]

Blu-Ray has more quality and holds more than a DVD would. It wins

 

[OG LOCC NESS]

Blu-Ray has more quality and holds more than a DVD would. It wins

Yeah dude those are the ONLY factors considered when choosing a format

 

[Lumstar]

Let's also not forget no commercial video or PC game has ever been sold on HD-DVD, while at least several million have for Blu-Ray because of PS3.

 

[deathfisaro]

For movie's sake, I can't say either is significantly better.
I have 42" FHDTV, and yes there's significant quality difference between DVD and HD-DVD/BD, yet the difference between a 15GB movie and 25GB movie isn't much noticable.
If the quality difference between DVD and HD/BD is 10, the quality difference between HDDVD and BD is like.. 2 or less.

Not all HD/BD movies are good quality, if the source is crap, it doesn't matter wether you put it on DVD or HD/BD. For example, the Transformers (1986) on BD is only a tiny bit sharper than DVD, 2m away from the Tv and almost no difference. 1m away from the TV you realize BD is sharper.

Game wise, I'd have to go with BD.
Putting games on HD-DVD would require a new console, like XBox3, there's no way 360 will support games on HD-DVD, they don't even support HDD install because some cheaper models come without HDD, optional HDD install isn't supported either and some games seriously suffer from torturous long loading.
Most users have HDD but HDD install is out of the question because of the very few who don't have them. Very few people have HD-DVD addon, so very unlikely. Unless MS suddenly needs a boost in HD-DVD player sales numbers.

Sony is in habit of putting all games on BD no matter the size. The smallest game put on BD is Warhawk, just 1GB and yet it's still on BD, I've researched the size of 28 PS3 games and 10 of them have already went over the capacity of HD-DVD.
Also some game demos like Ratchet and Clank demo was put on BD which is also just over a gig.
One last minor thing that really only applies to games area is read speed. BD has uniform read speed throughout the disc, so there's no need for dummies, meaning you can cap 25GB with pure game material and game developers already have done that.

 

[Ace Gunman]

I personally think Blu-Ray will win, it has more storage capabilities, more movie studios support it, etc.. What do you think will win the War?

Storage capabilities mean nothing. Betamax was better than VHS, but VHS still won. It doesn't matter which one is better as it's all about what the consumer chooses to latch onto. There are a ton of MP3 players out there better than iPods, yet everyone goes straight for the iPod (for example). Plus the term Blu-ray is a bit off-putting to the general consumer. Most of them don't know what the heck "t3h blue-rayz" are. Whereas HD-DVD is immediately recognizable as High Definition DVD. However, as Blu-ray has the better studio support it will probably win.

 

[.TakaM]

blu-ray is kinda worth it for games

for movies it is a complete waste of space, what are you gonna do, put the movie on the disc 50 times to justify the size?
Plus the porn industry will only be on HD-DVD

HD-DVD is the winner, I'm sure sony will forge a win with the format, but there is no way in hell HD-DVD is going to lose.

 

[BigX]

HD DVD is the successor of the DVD (its made by the DVD Forum)
function wise BD and HD DVD have the same capabilities, although HD DVD support a lot from the "old" DVD capabilities. So it is kind of backward compatible.
BD is a brand new data structure and in some cases simpler than HD DVD. But I don't want Sony to put a new approach to any new invention made and disregard backward compatibility or compatibility to other structures.
Personally I think HD DVD is the better format.
But I fear as in any war...both sides are going to lose. DVD is still good enough and without DRM and thats the main failure of the HD Formats!

 

[jtroye32]

it depends on what the people demand. simple economics: hd-dvd being significantly cheaper than blu-ray will appeal much more to the average joe looking to upgrade. with more hd-dvd players the demand for hd-dvd movies will skyrocket and motion picture corporations will have no choice but to conform, phasing out blu-ray movies. sony will still have to make blu-ray games for the ps3.. but since the demand for blu-ray technology will be small the prices of the ps3 and the games will likely skyrocket also.

 

[raulpica]

HD-DVD FTW.

A lot of sites of movie-maniacs say that HD-DVD is either equivalent or better than Blu-Ray in most cases. HD-DVD also costs less so it's full of win.

Also the name Blu-Ray is t3h SuXzorZ

 

[Lumstar]

Funny enough... VHS tapes weren't region-locked per se. However you had to make sure your TV, VCR, and the tape were of compatible display format. Like all three being NTSC for instance. This is why I can view Japanese ones if need be.

 

[jtroye32]

Also the name Blu-Ray is t3h SuXzorZ

QFT.

 

[Lukeage]

It's still in the air for movies. But, Blu-Ray is far ahead when it comes to data storage. Recorders and media were available for the public to buy online over a year before HD-DVD.


Anyone I know who would need to store that amount of data these days just buys HDDs. At the current price of blu-ray media, not only are hdds cheaper, but a lot more convenient (Pretty much any PC can read them, more contiguous space, rewritable).

I personally think Blu-Ray will win, it has more storage capabilities, more movie studios support it, etc.. What do you think will win the War?

Storage capabilities mean nothing. Betamax was better than VHS, but VHS still won. It doesn't matter which one is better as it's all about what the consumer chooses to latch onto. There are a ton of MP3 players out there better than iPods, yet everyone goes straight for the iPod (for example). Plus the term Blu-ray is a bit off-putting to the general consumer. Most of them don't know what the heck "t3h blue-rayz" are. Whereas HD-DVD is immediately recognizable as High Definition DVD. However, as Blu-ray has the better studio support it will probably win.

You mention storage capabilities mean nothing, then mention that Betamax was better than VHS, except you forgot to mention that one advantage VHS had was it held more. This was a serious issue in the beginning because Betamax could not hold a feature length movie, yet VHS could.

By the time betamax was pretty much dead in the consumer market, the longest Betamax tape was up to 5 hours, yet VHS was up just over 10 hours. And the VHS was half the cost.

 

[BigX]

and still the longest movies out there was seldom longer than 3 hours...
so if any media can hold a fully length movie its just it.
If you think there is 10 GB or 20 GB of space available for bonus material I hardly think the average movie will have good bonus content...its allways just some gizmos

 

[jtroye32]

for the average joe the storage capacity of hd-dvd will be plenty, i doubt it will be a major factor realistically IMO.

 

[Costello]

I voted blu-ray...

although I hope the HD-DVD will win.

 

[jtroye32]

and in todays digital age storage capacity has a lot more to do with picture quality rather than length when it comes to video. the more storage you have available the less compression you have to use to get it from it's original source into whatever format you're using. unless you have an INCREDIBLY GIGANTIC television then the average user will not notice any difference between blu-ray and hd-dvd. even to the trained eye it's pretty insignificant.

 

[FAST6191]

If I really need a new "HD" film format (swap mpeg2 for something more modern and continue with DVD would be my vote) I would like HD DVD to come out on top.

Can I suggest some of you read up on the three layer HD DVDs that should be appearing at some point in the not too distant future. That way "teh [email protected] space" "argument" is rendered somewhat mute.

Quality: they both use practically the same standards for encoding so speak to your studio.

DRM: both can be circumvented but HDDVD has the edge in my opinion right now (BD+ is not broken but you can still copy the disc). Region coding is also something I am none too fond of so a mark against BD it is (some BD "exclusives" also appear in HDDVD outside of the colonies).

Anyhow both camps shot themselves in the foot in my opinion, there could have been a nice stop gap measure but infighting and stupidity means online and DVD will be where it is at for me until a real improvement comes along.