Blu-Ray Vs HD-DVD Final Verdict?

I've been hanging out for months to shill out the $1000 to buy a new age player but have been holding off afraid I will be wasting my money.

Both players have now been out for a year or so, PS3 and 360 are both out as well.

I want to find out which I should buy and which one is likely to be phased out in time.

I can't wait to buy one, so your answer will determine where my $1000 and countless more $1000's go to for disc's so please don't be bias.

So far im more for HD-DVD (more films that appeal to me).

Which has the more discs in release and the more discs to be released in the future?

Which system has sold more?

Which is better in quality?

 

Neither format is going away in the forseeable future and both will likely coexist for several years. There will be exclusive titles to each format so you may want to consider getting both. I'm format neutral and immensely enjoy both.

If you have $1000 right now you can get the Toshiba HD-A2 with the recently announced price reduction of $400 and a 60 Gig PS3 for $600. If you're really REALLY settled on HD-DVD I'd definitely get the critically acclaimed Toshiba HD-XA2. In fact, with the recent price reduction to $800 I'm upgrading my 1st generation HD-A1 to this model.

In my case I see several future releases that I'd like to own that are in BluRay only and others that are in HD-DVD only. If there's a title I like that's released in both formats I buy the HD-DVD version. There seems to be more titles already released and more titles announced for BluRay. BluRay has also outsold HD-DVD overall since inception.

Quality for video and audio is a virtual tie if you exclude the really early BluRay releases.

 

Thank you very much. I couldn't have expected such a better answer.

I currently own a 360 with a couple games. I guess instead of spending $250 of the hd-dvd upgrade, just sell my 360 and spend $200 to fill the gab and get a PS3 with blu-ray as i've heard the 360 hd-dvd player isn't as gooda' quality as the blu-ray player in the PS3, and also the games on the PS3 appeal more to me.
Thank You Very Much

 

I know LG do a player that will play both HD-DVD and BlueRay, I think there is another brand that does as well.

I can't see a clear winner only losers, us the consumers.

M

 

The LG BH100 BluRay/HD-DVD player is $1200.

The main complaints about it are its cheap build quality and several audio issues. It also has limited functionality during HD-DVD playback - no HDi Interactive Format functionality. Because of this serious flaw the machine cannot use the HD-DVD logo on the box or on the player itself. AFAIK they will not issue a firmware update that will correct this.

 

That is what i plan on doing. Getting PS3 as a Game Console and for BluRay player... and then just get a HD-DVD player down the road a few months after.

I currently only have a 1080i CRT Panasonic.

I plan on getting a 1080p LCD near October. I'll just have to wait it out.

 

Blueray will be better in audio and video in the next coming week. Since it has just been announce that the newer blueray movies will use a double layer bd disc instead of a single layer. This means that it will take over 25 gigs of space per a movie with their new 50 gigs version, while a hd-dvd can only store 30 gigs (dual layer). Also this news also proves that movies has already surpassed the 25 gig and requires extra space to put their content.

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=130

So from this I can presume that Blue ray will include more features than their rival's hd-dvd. This may not be true if HD-DVDs start using tri-layers for their movies, but I highly doubt this since the cost of a tri layer will obviously be much more than a dual layer blue ray disc. Also the tri-layer disc may be more fragile to scratches than regular hd-dvds.

 

will movie material acutally fill up 50GB or is sony trying to do something else...


someone mentioned above the dual format player from LG, please don't buy that, noone wants this format war to last, pick aside.

I personally would go for HD DVD, because that's my predicted winner of this format war. stats indicate standalone BD players sold a very few numbers compared to standalong HD DVD drives, but BD still has a little donminace overall because of the ps3. With Sony's pricing scheme- $1k for stand alone and only $600 for ps3, you know what they want you to do, but dont fall for it. and a major determination of this war is the porn ppl, Bluray camp won't have any of such content yet, which is a bad move if you want to win.

 

@BurningAs: The picture on your sig looks like the back of the Denon AVR-5805CI. It just makes your mouth water...

Anyway, Sony wants the 50 Gig discs because they need extra space for higher bitrate MPEG2 video and uncompressed LPCM audio, among other things. HD-DVD doesn't need the triple layer 51 Gig discs right now because of VC-1 and Dolby TruHD.

Like error5 said the LG combo player has serious issues and probably won't make too much of a splash considering its cost.

 

I see your point and understand where your coming from, but from Amazon the latest Samsung BD-P1000 Blue-ray Player available (US), October 2006 (Europe) will be priced at $499.77. Also I heard that blue ray will support the porn industry from:
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=197000093
and from afterdawn:
http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/7236.cfm
http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/8587.cfm

Anyways it is highly unlikely that HD-DVD can win the format war best they can do now is hope for a tie. Since most of the studios supports blue ray over HD-DVD, IF all the studios went natural, Sony’s own studio (one that made Spiderman) would still be at Sony’s side. Also as of now most of the studios are coming out with exclusives only to blue ray, and Japan, AUS (the west) has already declared that they will not sell any more HD-DVD players.
FROM:
http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/9548/52/

As you can see i have unbiased info to back up what i say do you?
Also if you have time go read this unbiased review from [H]enthusiast.

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTMxNSwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

 

Im in it for the audio just as much as the video. I'm all about hd-dvd.

Hd-dvd may be lacking in advertising but they make up for it in the audio.

Both Happy Feet and Superman Returns for the hd-dvd format have better audio than that of the blu ray versions.

I prefer not to support another market that insist I buy new rehashed blu rays with better audio down the line.

 

Your right, seems like blueray offers the same quality in Video for happy feet and superman returns but falls short on sound.
Heres vid review of happy feet:

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/happyfeet.html
Superman Returns vid review:

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/supermanreturns.html
Heres sound review for happy feet:

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/happyfeet.html
Sound review for Superman Returns:

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/supermanreturns.html
It seems like its Warner's problem that blue-ray is neglected on sound tho , interesting..., because from the reviews on THE DEPARTED says differ...

For Video they both are equal

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/departed.html
BUT for Audio:

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/departed.html

Weird since all three movies came from Warner, maybe it cost more to put in PCM audio thats why warner did not include it in Happyfeet and Superman Returns. Who knows?

 

I suppose this might be more of a Xbox360 vs PS3 debate, but I own both. I think it's too early to call a clear winner... but as far as gaming machines go for high-end display tech... the PS3 utterly dominates, for two unobvious reasons: 1. HDMI, 2. Silent operation.

Ironically, I didn't feel this way until very recently. Last week, in fact, I purchased JVC's awesome 1080p projector and am projecting a 100" screen. Prior to this I had a 720p 32" LCD TV.

First, playing games on both systems looked virtually identical, except the HDMI cable on the PS3 had a marginally cleaner picture. The way I justified purchasing a PS3 was "it's a Blu-Ray player that also plays games." The price at launch was cheaper than a Blu-Ray player, so why not!

So I also casually picked up a couple BDVD's and was amazed at the difference between DVD and BDVD (DVD, not HDDVD). So much cleaner and neater, but on a small TV... hard to really see the maximum potential. But with the new projector, OMG.... incredible! Looks better than any advanced movie theatre I had ever attended... however, size is the enemy for theatres. I have been in director theatres with small rooms for about 50 souls, as they have crisper sound and cleaner projections. However, I have not compared with HD DVD's yet. Nor does it really matter so much. They are effectively very similar, but BDVD has the long term potential to outpace them for both games and movie content.

But while my love for the Xbox360 has been well justified with quality games and a well polished implementation... the PS3 has two major advantages. It is leagues quieter than a Xbox360. In fact, every console is. The 360 sounds like a freaking jet. And the PS3 is the quietest console with moving parts, even compared to the Wii, which I also have. Ironically, the JVC projector is quieter than the PS3. The JVC is virtually inaudible due to the low frequency pitch and with a 100" screen, I can easily run it with power saving mode which projects at 85% bulb strength for virtual running silence.

Now the 360, I find is highly annoying to play movies on (back to DVD days). It's so loud that quiet scenes are ruined by it's howling fans. I also have a quality home theatre setup with 6.2 surround speakers. Quiet scenes on a powerful speaker setup is still... quiet. So the 360 has been utterly destroyed as a potential candidate for getting the optional HDDVD drive.

But until then, I have no reason to purchase a stand-alone unit. The PS3 will suit me just fine and looks phenomenal at the highest resolutions. So I have been and will continue to purchase BDVD disks. One day when things settle down, I'll look to purchase a standalone quality player, whether it be BDVD or HDDVD.

I suspect this advantage will cause other gamers to go the same direction as me, even hard core 360 fans... I'm agnostic there.

As for my predictions of the format war, I confidently choose BDVD. It's got higher capacity, and even though it has had less time in market than HDDVD, the BDVD sales are already higher and are increasing their relative sales lead each month (currently selling 2 BDVDs for every 1 HDDVD sold). While some early comparisons have been in favor of HDDVD, the BDVD has had less time to mature, and when it does, it will have much more room to surpass. The HDDVD looks like it was a practical quick-fix solution to jump to HD material using cheap and readily available technology.

http://www.tvpredictions.com/bluraysales042007.htm

I could argue that it's because of the recent adopters of PS3s building their new collection of next-gen movies... people like me that waited.

Summary:
1. HDMI makes a huge difference compared to Component (+PS3)
2. PS3 is far quieter than Xbox360. 360 is so noisy that it invalidates the 360 and it's HDDVD as a viable movie player. (+PS3)
3. PS3 comes with a BDVD player, while 360 requires a separate purchase (+PS3)
4. Gamers will choose BDVD due to these advantages.
5. Never underestimate gamers. They will vastly influence the market here...

Until recently, I really believed the PS3 would bomb out. As far as games are concerned, the 360 has been virtually equal quality for less the price, and also a much easier development environment. But now I see that 720p games on PS3 will always look better than 360 (except if you go out and buy the Elite... is it still noisy?).

 

Well, I got tired of waiting to "make a choice" - so I got one of each. The Sony PS3 also does double duty with the grandkids for games (they love to come see Grampaw now) and the Toshiba A20 does SD upscaling to 1080P (something the PS3 currently doesn't). It didn't make much sense to me to have a large 1080P LCD TV and not use it for Hi Def DVDs.

So I feed the video of both to the TV via HDMI, and the audio of both as bitstream to my amp via digital optical. I do DD 5.1, since that's awesome enough for me, and all my amp handles anyway.

As far as comparing Blu Ray to HD DVD format quality - I've found the video quality is much more a function of the Hi Def DVD titles's encoding bitrate (higher is better) than anything to do with the two format differences. And there is a difference between upscaled SD and Hi Def video quality, however to be honest, it's really not all that great in a lot of cases.

 

http://www.engadgethd.com/2007/04/17/hd-dvd-is-back-on-top-according-to-amazon/
I thought this was interesting.

 

That's actually pretty cool. But it's kind of like Ford offering fantastic rebates to boost sales temporarily, which works great. But then their sales fall far lower later which compensates.

So they can boost HD DVD sales briefly, but next month, the BDVD sales will show an even greater increase.

 

Blu-Ray sucks. As someone who sells both I can say with confidence that If Sony didn't have the money to advertise so well no one would even know what Blu-Ray is. HD-DVDs players are better built. The certification for their players are more restrictive (which is why they have less manufactures, its a quality thing). All of their players up-convert DVD better than any blu-ray player and their movies look better across the board. Did I mention that there players accomplish all this at 1/4th to 1/2 the cost (and half the disc space)! I'm not just saying this, my customers are telling me this.

If you want the crappier format to win again then support Blu Ray.

I will say that the new Samsung Blu-Ray player (BD-P1200) is pretty cool. HDMI 1.3, Ethernet port, HQV's Reon video processor, probably the best built blu-ray player for the money. If only it supported the new lossless audio formats and paid more attention to audio decoding it would be able to compete with an HD DVD player (HD-XA2 anyone).

Why do you think Blu-ray's largest manufactures are going dual format?
Ced

 

i gotta agree hd-dvd is the way i swing...blue-ray is just crap..i need not to say more...everything is already said here..

 

Well you two haven't really provided any useful info to back up your claims. From what I see, Blu-ray is a superior format and is in fact winning the war, even impressively as the late arrival only out for a few months now. I do admit though, from what Grampaw said about it's all in the bit rate conversion. I have seen some relatively bad and good Blu-ray movies where you can tell they simply took the original footage and remastered it resulting in a soft image. Kingdom Under Heaven however seems to be one of the better looking ones out there. Last Samurai looked poor in comparison.

As for DVD up conversion... I believe the PS3 as a player simply outputs the same 480p resolution as the movie would. Correct me if I'm wrong though. In any case my display -- the JVC DLA-HD1, which has the industry leading Gennum processor, only found in the very best high-end equipment, which also makes my setup platform agnostic. Regardless, compared to 1080p, DVD still pales.

I've never been a fan of DVD players with built in decoders and now Blu-ray/HD DVD players with upconverters. Should be the receiver/display's responsibility, respectively. But again, I'm not sure exactly how that works. Perhaps the PS3 is upconverting to 1080p and doing a crappy job and the display simply outputs that. Perhaps I'll try changing my PS3 display settings to 480p and see if there is a significant improvement.

I actually haven't been watch DVDs, but have a bunch...

 

Search for the truth!!!

Look at this forum alone... The HD DVD thread has over twice the forum posts as the Blu-Ray page.

AVS would be another place to start.

I wish I could find hardware sales figures. Also Blu-Ray has only beaten HD DVD by ~2% in March. Jan., Feb., and Apr. (and the last half of 2006) have gone pretty much HD DVD as far as media sales.

Hardware links too (sound and vision mag.):

HD DVD (HD-XA2)...
http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/archive.asp?section_id=60&article_id=0

HD DVD (HD-XA1)...
http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/archive.asp?section_id=60&article_id=0

Blu-Ray (4 BD players)...
http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/archive.asp?section_id=60&article_id=0


I will post a few links to movie reviews that show a lean toward clean crisp Film transfers and great audio. Some times a Blu-Ray movie will come with a 6 channel PCM track which sounds as good as a Dolby TrueHD track but takes up twice to 3 times the space. Which is why space is actually on HD DVDs side. If anyone can find a title fo HD DVD and Blu-Ray where the Blu-Ray movie was rated higher than the HD DVD version please let all of us know.

Remember all the talk about how Blu-Ray wold win hands down because of storage? HD DVD has always had Dual layer discs that are about 30 GB large while BD used single layer discs for a good 3 to 4 months which only had 25 GB of storage. Not try to pack a 1080p movie using old compression standards (MPEG-2) with uncompressed audio and you have a great waste of space. HD DVD was able to use VC-1 and Dolby Digital Plus (and later Dolby TrueHD) to use up less disc space and look as good or better than BD.

Its hard to find links simply because its not about sales figures it about who is truly better but since I do love links...


These movies have not only the DVD and HD DVD versions of the film on one disc they have the same great video as the Blu-Ray version with world class audio compression. The BD versions only incorporate a dated Dolby Digital sound track.

Superman Returns (HD DVD):
http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/supermanreturns.html

S.R. (Blu-Ray):
http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/supermanreturns.html


Happy Feet (HD DVD):
http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/happyfeet.html

H.F. (Blu-Ray):
http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/happyfeet.html


These early releases show Toshiba's attention to detail over Sony's hype:

Training Day (Blu-Ray):
http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/trainingday.html

T.D. (HD DVD)
http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/trainingday.html


Phantom Of the Opera (HD DVD):
http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/phantomoftheopera2004.html
This is could be the highest rated HD DVD of them all and it was one of the first

Phantom Of the Opera (Blu-Ray):
http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/phantomoftheopera2004.html


What happened to these releases?

Blu-Ray:

The Fifth Element...
http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/fifthelement4.html

House of Flying Daggers...
http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/houseofflyingdaggers.html


Willing to post more,
Ced