Blu-Ray or HD-DVD?

[Sharingan]

It's not just Best Buy and Walmart that have made announcements either recently. Since the 4th of January, around 30 companies which have previously supported HD DVD, including retailers, film distribution companies etc., have abandoned the HD DVD camp.

These include Netflix, HBO, National Geographic, Imation, Woolworths, Sonic Solutions, ADV Films, Manga Films, and so on.

Moreover, sales ratios have been hovering in the 83:17 range in favour of BR ever since Warner's decision (when ratios had been typically 66:36 throughout 2007), in spite of firesale attempts by Toshiba (sub-$150 players) the past weeks.

The writing's been on the wall for a while now. Toshiba ought to do the decent thing and officially pull the plug instead of shoving more hardware into the hands of uneducated customers who think they're buying into a format that will be supported for years to come.

[v85rawdeal]

And in 6 months time, one of the newest Media formats will be totally retro....

From nought to retro in 18 months...

[Sharingan]

Game over.

Finito. The End. Toshiba poised to stop investing money in production or development of new HD DVD equipment. Remaining stock will still be sold.

[LowercaseE]

It's a sad day. An incomplete, more expensive, more restrictive technology will be the next format. Well, at least I have my HD DVD player and I'll be able to pick up discs for next to nothing. I hope consumers are happy.

[sarek2k]

i haven't read all these post on this WAR i've typed my thoughts on osuk, however i'd like to know if anyone here has either format,hddvd or blueray to argue a defense for?

in my honest opinion even today the Playstation 2 was never considerd a true dvd player more something it did as an extra! is the ps3 the same or better as a blueray player? i don't know i don't have one. in 3 years time when a blueray player is less than 50 quid will the ps3's player be so important just like ps2 was.

this time round to me it seems most ppl have backed off this war from either camp be it blueray or hd-dvd! it's not like DVD ain't serving us more than well enough you could understand the need to go from vhs to dvd,is a big difference but dvd to hd-dvd/blueray is not quite so obvious, I mean a good dvd looks just great, the only flaw is scratched disc etc where as vhs was lo-res etc compared to dvd not to mention tape chew up's etc. with VHS was a need to upgrade with dvd there isn't the same urgency.

The only reason i could think of to ditch DVD is HD but even then you have upscalling dvd players! i reckon most of us will dodge the whole question untill it's non avoidable, affordable and worth it! The last thing i want to see is the bad bad old days when vhs thrashed betamax/phillips etc and we where left paying a minimum of 9.99 for a film a bad monopoly at the time rarely did you get any new movie under that price.

[Teho]

in my honest opinion even today the Playstation 2 was never considerd a true dvd player more something it did as an extra! is the ps3 the same or better as a blueray player?

Yes. The PS3 is still considered the best blu-ray player on the market. And not just because there hasn't been a good standalone player released yet, it is a pretty good player. It costs less than an equally good standalone player, and is also upgradeable through online firmware updates so it follows the latest standards. Not all standalone players can do that.

As for DVD being good enough, it is for now. Until you get yourself an HDTV. Unless you have some form of upscaling going on when watching your DVDs, then you'll start seeing its flaws. Compression artifacts, obvious pixellization due to low resolution and such. Incidentally, the PS3 also has DVD upscaling features, so your DVDs will look pretty good on an HDTV if playing them on that.

I've watched a good deal of movies on blu-ray now, and personally I don't regret having upgraded to it. DVDs don't really come close to the image detail and sharpness, even when upscaled. Also you get uncompressed audio on just about all releases if you have the stereo equipment for it.

[AlexJ]

Is the jump from DVD-BluRay as big as the one from VHS-DVD? No, it isn't because the biggest gain with the former was the loss of tape degredation etc. However on a HDTV there is a noticable difference between the two. It looks sharper and more detailed whereas a standard DVD player looks a bit blocky in places. The blockyness is overcome when upscaling but the detail isn't added in.

Does Blu-Ray winning the format war mean that prices will now spiral without HDDVD to keep it competitive? No, not in my opinion. DVD is going to be a much tougher rival so prices will have to stay competitive in order to compete. Having all studios using the format means more films being released in the format and more discs being sold should drive down the cost of producing a disc and prices should start to fall.