Which format? Blue-ray or HD-DVD?

CJhaughey

So what's it to be?
HD-DVD or Blue-ray both expensive and both coming soon to a store near you.
trouble is you will pay more for the discs and much more for the TV.
Just when you thought you had got something that would last DVD along comes another format and blows it away

any answers?

ZENER

If only to throw sand in Micro$ofts face I'd like to see Blue Ray succeed. I dislike the way they attempt to kill off new technology often with their own inferior products. Blue ray has a lot going for it not least of which is it's capacity and support from Sony and it's associated movie companies. 20th Century Fox have also joined the frey which means the consumer - the ultimate judge in all this - will have plenty of "software" to choose from.

My only worry is that thwy will introduce new methods of charging us for each viewing of the movie similar to what they tried with DVD's initial competitor DVIX. If this system is built in to the standard I can see the movie producers opting in quicker than DVD HD.

Another problem is a lack of a definate HD TV standard for Europe, this will need to be resolved prior to the release of either of these standards.

I read on another forum from a naive person asking the question - Blueray has higher capacity than HD DVD why would an inferior product become standard ? *Cough* Betamax *cough*.

ZEN

A Dub in Glasgo

It will be a long time before I move over to either one of those technologies (and I like my movies!!). I have invested a quite a bit of time and money into my current system and the 250 DVDs that I own. I will let all the people who 'must have' new technology debug the format and players and TVs before i consider it

Bass.exe

ZENER wrote:

I read on another forum from a naive person asking the question - Blueray has higher capacity than HD DVD why would an inferior product become standard ? *Cough* Betamax *cough*.

HD-DVD is cheaper, in terms of both the media, and the readers. That's its advantage... but somehow, I see Blu-Ray coming out on top.

ZENER

A Dub in Glasgo wrote:

It will be a long time before I move over to either one of those technologies (and I like my movies!!). I have invested a quite a bit of time and money into my current system and the 250 DVDs that I own. I will let all the people who 'must have' new technology debug the format and players and TVs before i consider it

I don't think DVD will hust dissappear off the face of the earth somehow. It's envisaged that any new devices will contain both Red and Blue lasers for compatability with both standards.

Personally I think HD-DVD will be a step backward technology wise. When CD's were first invented they figured out ways of focusing a laser so finely that over 700 MB of information could be squeezed onto a 5" plastic disc, the advance from this was DVD where a shorter wavelength light beam could be focused into an even smaller spot so that data density grew higher. There isn't much further they can go with Red Laser after HD-DVD. Blue laser is in it's infancy, first generations can give us up to 50GB capacity, if we allow it follow the same developmental path as Red lase on CD & DVD and on to HD-DVD then we could see discs with a capacity in excess of maybe 200GB in years to come. HD-DVD won't be capable of this or anything like it, there is a limit to how small a red laser can be focused sue to it's wavelength.

Also consider the companies that are involved with it's development and it's difficult to see how it could fail. If this many companies were involved with mini-disc when it launched it wouldn't be the specialist format it is today.

Hitachi, Ltd.
LG Electronics Inc.
Matsu****a Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.
Mitsubishi Electric Corp.
Pioneer Corp.
Royal Philips Electronics
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
Sharp Corporation
Sony Corporation
TDK Corporation
Thomson Multimedia
In 2004, computer companies Hewlett-Packard and Dell joined the BDF to help develop Blu-ray's PC data storage application.

The defense rests . .

ZEN

Blisterman

Couldn't we enjoy dvd a bit longer?