Has Bluray won?

shayser

Trying to put together a home cinema setup from scratch. Was wondering which video player to get, upscaler or HDDVD. After reading various articles online, I went into Xtravision this morning to ask about availabilty of titles. The guy I spoke to was quite catagorical that Bluray is the way forward. His points were:

Xtravsion will not be doing any HD DVD rentals, all Bluray
Bluray sales in the US are outselling HDDVD by 2:1. (Not sure now if he was referring to players or disks.)
Microsoft have or will be abandoning the HDDVD add-on for the xbox in favour of Bluray.

Ultimately, he strongly advised me to go Bluray.

In addition, there was the announcement by Blockbusters in the US recently giving their backing to Bluray.

monkeyfudge

There was a long enough thread in the film forum last week on this.

I think it's still too early to tell. I think the players will have to come down in price first.

The catalog of films on HD-DVD is certainly better at the moment though, 90% of the BluRay releases are pure muck.

I have both at the moment... though the 360 and PS3... I prefer HD for some reason... but I'd rather buy a release on BluRay if it was available on both simply because the 360 is so noisy.

8T8

Most of what the Xtravsion guy said is bunk, the competition between both is simply too hard to call at the moment there is no absolute clear front runner though of late things has swinged slightly in favor of Blu-ray.

The biggest advantage Blu-ray has is extra DRM in the system and more movie studios support Blu-ray because of that and don't want to support HD-DVD because it's not as "secure" & is region free.

If it weren't for the PS3 then Blu-ray would be far behind HD-DVD as many more standalone HD-DVD players are bought than equivalent Blu-ray ones so thats really it's killer app.

If the rest of movie studios dont cave & support HD-DVD, the PS3 gets cheaper, standalone Blu-ray players get a lot cheaper then you could say things are looking in Blu-ray's favour in the long run.

Picture quality wise from my understanding is pretty much the same now (early first titles were a little rough) in fact the majority of movies on HD-DVD & Blu-ray use Microsoft's VC-1 codec.

5h4mr0(k

There's also the opinion that because Sony won't allow porno movies to be distributed on Bluray, that HDDVD has won. Like it or loath it, it's a huge industry with a huge amount of customers willing to spend their money.
So, if you think that the adult movie industry isn't going to stop making movies, then Sony has won. If not, then I'd say HDDVD has won (or Sony will change their mind).

Sony dont control everything that goes on blu ray, its a consortium, and porn will be making its debut on blu ray in a month or two.
The studios are hardly going to cave in and support hd dvd. They are selling more titles on blu ray and making more money.
Blockbuster has gone with blu ray because 70% of HD rentals were blu ray discs.
Unless the HD DVD crowd come up with some kind of miracle, then blu ray already has already won this format war.

big_moe

porno blu ray happened AAAAAAAAAAAGES ago...

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-entertainment/debbie-does-dallas--again-first-bluray-porn-231584.php

moe

5h4mr0(k

That was surely just for historical purposes!

shayser

He also said that a complete conversion from SD to HD media will take about 6 years, same time as it took to go from all VHS to all DVD. Said titles will be released in both formats for some time. I'd have guessed it'd be quicker than this...

So it's an upscaler then.

My initial upscaler v. full HD quandry was because I see some upscalers costing more/same as Toshiba's entry level HD player.

8T8

Toshibas entry level HD player happens to be one of the best DVD upscalers out there.

Samsung do a nice one as well {DVD only} that goes up to 1080p.

The conversion time was one thing he was right one, HD movies are nothing but a drop in the ocean compared to DVD sales and it took a very long time for VHS to die off and DVD to take over. It will be many, many years before which ever or both formats are of any significant market share.

monkeyfudge

I've been very impressed with the upscaling on the PS3 so far.

One thing that HD-DVD is doing that BluRay doesn't seem to be doing is releasing flippers with HD-DVD on one side and a regular DVD on the other. My copy of Happy Feet is like that and it's a pretty good initiative... Means you can watch the film in a regular DVD player somewhere else in the house or you can buy the HD-DVD version even if you don't have a player yet....

Saruman

I do not know how accurate the US info he gave you is.
Let me put it this way. I was in "Best Buy" in April in the US (giant chain like currys) and they had shelves of HD-DVD but not a bluray in sight.. though they were selling bluray players so im sure they were hiding somewhere.
The best result might be for both to go ahead and players to be able to read both... but that probably will not happen so one of them will die eventually.

shayser

So, if I did buy the Toshiba HD I'd be ok for a few years? Rentals/sales of HD DVD will not suddenly stop? But then, according to the guy at Xtravision, I won't be renting them from him!

I get my rentals from Chartbusters so I'll see what they say.

I was surprised to hear that Microsoft are abandoning DVD in favour of Bluray. Is this right?

copacetic

8T8 wrote:

If it weren't for the PS3 then Blu-ray would be far behind HD-DVD as many more standalone HD-DVD players are bought than equivalent Blu-ray ones so thats really it's killer app.

thats not at all true imo. As mentioned on the other thread, the cheapest way to get a standalone player has been to buy a PS3, no-one in their right mind would have bought a standalone blu ray player, they would all buy a PS3for the extra functionality so your argument doesn't make a lick of sense. The ONLY way to get a HD-DVD player has been standalone or as an add on to the 360 so it is just easier to seperate the numbers out. There is no way of knowing how many people bought a PS3 mainly for the blu ray player whatever you or I think.

I've got a simple question...when one of these formats "wins" will my dvd collection become obsolete and all the films be re-released on the new format?

byte

I think HD-DVD players can play standard DVD's no problem. A Blu-Ray player would need to be made backwards compatible, though I'd imagine few manufacturers of the players will make players Blu-Ray only...

8T8

copacetic wrote:

thats not at all true imo. As mentioned on the other thread, the cheapest way to get a standalone player has been to buy a PS3, no-one in their right mind would have bought a standalone blu ray player, they would all buy a PS3for the extra functionality so your argument doesn't make a lick of sense. The ONLY way to get a HD-DVD player has been standalone or as an add on to the 360 so it is just easier to seperate the numbers out. There is no way of knowing how many people bought a PS3 mainly for the blu ray player whatever you or I think.

I haven't read this other thread you refer to & I'm not sure what point your making as the sales data in the US and Europe showed that more standalone HD-DVD players & attach rate for movies bought were sold than equivalent Blu-ray players.

The PS3 changed things for the Blu-ray camp but of course it's almost impossible to separate those who bought it just for games and will never make use of the Blu-ray movie part but that is still the Blu-ray camps killer app as it's most high profile platform. Their fortunes coincidently have reversed somewhat with a spike in Blu-ray movie sales & the public perception even if wrong that they are dominating (but the spike has not been a killer blow to HD-DVD more leveling the playing field). Frankly I'm disappointed it is trending this way as Blu-ray is just not as good for consumers vs HD-DVD which is what I think.

In the long term if the rest of the movie studios refuse to adopt HD-DVD theres not exactly a whole lot that can be done as people will gravitate towards the platform that has the content. With the extra DRM in the BD+ format now finalized the studio's holding back are probably going to go Blu-ray but if BD+ is beaten by the hackers then maybe they will change their tune and support HD-DVD I hope so..

Deleted User

Deleted User wrote:

I've got a simple question...when one of these formats "wins" will my dvd collection become obsolete and all the films be re-released on the new format?

No, both HD DVD and Blu Ray and will play players are backwards compatible and will play DVD's. Most of them will upscale your DVD picture quality.
HD DVD was already cracked wasn't it?
If any of the major studios were going to desert blu ray, they would have done it long ago, not now when they are making more money from it.

copacetic

8T8 wrote:

I haven't read this other thread you refer to & I'm not sure what point your making as the sales data in the US and Europe showed that more standalone HD-DVD players & attach rate for movies bought were sold than equivalent Blu-ray players.

I'm saying that a stat comparing standalone players is useless since only an idiot would buy a standalone blu ray player when they can get the PS3 functions on top of the player for cheaper. Also that if if the stat was valid there is only 50k in the difference.

The other thread is here:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055110613


The overall stat (5 times more blu ray players in homes than hd-dvd) that I think matters was posted there:

According to research group Digital Entertainment Group, there are 1.5 million Blu-ray players in the US. That's made up of 100,000 standalone players and 1.4 million PS3s. As for HD DVD, there are 150,000 Xbox 360 HD DVD players and 150,000 standalone players

This stat is validated imo by the demand for rentals and the choice by blockbuster to dump HD-DVD, they don't make decisions like that for laughs.

Tony

Worth a read http://www.electricnews.net/news.html?code=10123910