Blu-Ray or HD-DVD?

[Stephen Coates]

No, it was only the scenes when they were in the lake district. The scenes that were actually on Coronation street weren't compressed. So they had obviously made the video in the lake district with some kind of compression.

[Harrison]

Maybe the shock of them actually realising the world is bigger than one street distorted the image?

[Sharingan]

Another blow to the HD DVD camp soon to happen?

Financial Times: Paramount poised to drop support for HD DVD

[Harrison]

HD-DVD losing Paramount pictures support is definitely a huge blow, especially if you factor in their parent company Viacom, as they own many other companies too including Dreamworks and the Nickelodeon network.

[Sharingan]

Photos from CES 2008:






Almost feeling sorry for Toshiba/HD DVD

[AlexJ]

Another blow to the HD DVD camp soon to happen?

Financial Times: Paramount poised to drop support for HD DVD

That would definitely spell game over for HDDVD - Universal aren't going to hang round for long on their own. One of Paramount's biggest films this year, the new Indy film, is already scheduled for a dual-format release anyway (Spielberg's films are already exempt from Paramount's soon-to-be-ripped-up HD-DVD exclusivity agreement)

When your forced to hold "BBC Video" up as one of your key partners (With BBC Video a) I can't imagine being that big in the US and b) Being dual-format) you know you've got problems.

[v85rawdeal]

More news from CES.

RITEK HAD one of the coolest things on show at CES, a hybrid BD-R and HD-DVD-R. That was the best, but by no means the only innovative thing it was showing off.
The disc is a burnable Blu-Ray on one side and a burnable HD-DVD on the other. If you are making high def content and want to avoid the format wars, this is a good way to distribute media. They are not out yet, but will be in the not so distant future.

Ritek also has 2x speed dual layer HD-DVD discs out now, and around late Q1 or early Q2 should have HD-DVD-RW dual layer discs in mass production. They were showing them off at CES, but are not ready for production.
Another cool one they had was a HD-DVD-R and DVD-R-DL combo disc. This one is immensely useful for distribution of video content, you don't have to worry which format the user has, just give them high- and low-def on the same little slice of Lexan.
Ritek also has BD-Rs up to 4x speeds and HD-DVD-Rs up to 2x now, so if you want speed, this outfit can supply the media. As you can see, if you want exotic formats, they can supply them too, no need to take sides in the format war, just do both.

Hmmm, now that's a cat among the pigeons, to be sure!

[Harrison]

The only problem with dual sided media is the danger of easily scratching it. Plus with BR now being so much popular, is there really a need for HD-DVD support? And I bet those blank discs are expensive!

[AlexJ]

While Warner Bros were the only dual-supporting studio, they came up with a combo disc (managing to put both formats on one side at different depths) but no-one else was interested. I can't see these combo-R discs taking off now the format war is more-or-less resolved. For starters you'd need both a HD-DVD-R (how daft does that sound?) and a BR-R drive. Ritek have just wasted their money.

[Harrison]

Well to be fair all Ritek had to do was bond an HD-DVD-R side and a BR-R side together to form the disc, and as both technologies already exist it wouldn't have cost them much extra to develop. The real expensive format would be to develop a single sided dual format writeable disc with the two formats at different layer depths. And as you say, now that BR is near to winning outright it is a pointless development path to continue down.

It amazes me quite a lot how quickly this format war has progressed, especially when you consider the the HD disc formats are still very young in terms of worldwide take-up of high definition technology overall. This is great news for us though as it means we won't get stuck buying into a format that could die.

Blu-Ray has always sounded cool compared to the very boring corporate American sounding HD-DVD.

And do you realise something? Since the Walkman, Sony have tried to invent new storage formats but have failed. Mini-Disc, UMD and Memory Stick to name just three have all been great, but have only ever been used in Sony's own products. Sony have finally invented a disc format that has been embraced by the industry and has taken off as the format of choice for the next generation! I bet they are feeling really happy after so many attempts and failures to capture the main market, and this could really be a new turning point for the fortunes of Sony.