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Blu-ray Disc or HD-DVD? — Page 7

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Originally posted by: Arnie.d
Originally posted by: Tiptup
Originally posted by: lordjedi
The read/write times have to do with how fast the disc is spinning.


Yes, that's true, but you're incorrect in thinking you know what I'm talking about. BDs have a feature that allows them to have slightly faster read/write times for the same spin speed and, as I remember, that has to do with the way the data is configured on the physical disc. I'd have to look up that feature again just to let you know what it is though, and I don't really care enough at the moment to do that.

According to the technical info at videohelp.com BD has a maximum data transfer rate of 54Mbit and HD DVD of 36.55Mbit (Link).
A BD can contain more data so if it spins about as fast as an HD DVD can't it be read quicker anyway?


I wasn't aware of the current transfer rate, but it does still follow similar principals as DVDs and CDs. The faster the disc is spinning, the higher the transfer rate. It also makes sense that the transfer rates would be higher on those than they are on DVDs or CDs. Usually, the more data you have, the higher the transfer rate needs to be in order to get the data off just as fast as before.

And I swear I saw somewhere where they showed HD-DVD using a red laser, but again, apparently that was incorrect information.
F Scale score - 3.3333333333333335

You are disciplined but tolerant; a true American.

Pissing off Rob since August 2007.
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Convert me to Bluray or HD-DVD no way, I’d wait and see what the outcome is I’m, far too old and wiser, to get mixed up in this format war, please be my guest I’m not going to miss anything special and I couldn’t careless if Star Wars on Bluray or HD-DVD!

When one of the formats is resting in a shallow grave at the back of your garden and that its confirmed it will not rise ever again, and after there’s a respectful, disc category to chose from, then I’ll consider it.
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Only the originals from the 70mm six-track Dolby stereo Dolby format 42 will sound better on DVD.
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Originally posted by: JediTemple70mm

and after there’s a respectful, disc category to chose from, then I’ll consider it.


Lawrence of Arabia and The Searchers-- you know you want Blu-Ray!

Actually, Lawrence of Arabia fans will be keeping a close eye on the HD version when it comes out next year--what with the infamous color disaster on DVD. Hopefully this will be the first LOA package of proper extras and the proper image.
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Originally posted by: zombie84
Originally posted by: JediTemple70mm

and after there’s a respectful, disc category to chose from, then I’ll consider it.


Lawrence of Arabia and The Searchers-- you know you want Blu-Ray!

Actually, Lawrence of Arabia fans will be keeping a close eye on the HD version when it comes out next year--what with the infamous color disaster on DVD. Hopefully this will be the first LOA package of proper extras and the proper image.


I’m willing to bet that Lawrence of Arabia as the same sound fault on the Bluray disc that is the same as the DVD version, its where Lawrence is walking on the train carriage.

The music skips a (few beats) on the English language track while the German language track sounds normal, except the dialogue of course.

I compared the fault with a VHS Hi-Fi widescreen tape and the music was of course perfect no jumps no skipping, now then.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w118/Brainstorm3417/LawrenceofArabia1.jpg
http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w118/Brainstorm3417/LawrenceofArabia2.jpg
http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w118/Brainstorm3417/LawrenceofArabia3.jpg
http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w118/Brainstorm3417/LawrenceofArabia6.jpg
http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w118/Brainstorm3417/LawrenceofArabia7.jpg
http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w118/Brainstorm3417/LawrenceofArabia8.jpg

Now if it is intact on the so called perfect format, I’d like to hear that down a high street in some home cinema demo room.

I first saw Lawrence of Arabia on TV many, many years ago and then saw it at the Odeon Marble Arch at London back in 1988 in 70mm six-track Dolby stereo SR.

Fantastic!
http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w118/Brainstorm3417/saberwalker.gif
Only the originals from the 70mm six-track Dolby stereo Dolby format 42 will sound better on DVD.
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Well missing frames often comes down to the print itself--the VHS tapes probably sourced a different print than the new digital master. So you'd get the extra seconds of footage but the sacrifice might be a less pristine image overall.

Actually, speaking of the coloring mishap on the first Lawrence DVD, I shouldn't applaud the new Searchers restoration too much since the coloring on that is equally off.
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Originally posted by: zombie84
Well missing frames often comes down to the print itself--the VHS tapes probably sourced a different print than the new digital master. So you'd get the extra seconds of footage but the sacrifice might be a less pristine image overall.

Actually, speaking of the coloring mishap on the first Lawrence DVD, I shouldn't applaud the new Searchers restoration too much since the coloring on that is equally off.


No it’s a pure and simple fault in the authoring of the DVD of Lawrence of Arabia, lack of supervision of the transfer, LOL or ether someone feel asleep though it as it is a long film, but that’s no excuse for taken consumers for mugs.
http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w118/Brainstorm3417/saberwalker.gif
Only the originals from the 70mm six-track Dolby stereo Dolby format 42 will sound better on DVD.
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I got a Toshiba HD-A2 when they were $99 at Wal-Mart, I'm lovin' it. I have only bought a couple of HD DVD movies, don't really intend on buying many. I am wearing out Netflix though, this is great so far.
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Originally posted by: JediTemple70mm
Originally posted by: zombie84
Well missing frames often comes down to the print itself--the VHS tapes probably sourced a different print than the new digital master. So you'd get the extra seconds of footage but the sacrifice might be a less pristine image overall.

Actually, speaking of the coloring mishap on the first Lawrence DVD, I shouldn't applaud the new Searchers restoration too much since the coloring on that is equally off.


No it’s a pure and simple fault in the authoring of the DVD of Lawrence of Arabia, lack of supervision of the transfer, LOL or ether someone feel asleep though it as it is a long film, but that’s no excuse for taken consumers for mugs.


To their credit though they redeemed themselves somewhat by correcting it. The Superbit LOA is beautiful--its just a shame you have to own the previous version if you want all the extras.

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Originally posted by: zombie84
Originally posted by: JediTemple70mm
Originally posted by: zombie84
Well missing frames often comes down to the print itself--the VHS tapes probably sourced a different print than the new digital master. So you'd get the extra seconds of footage but the sacrifice might be a less pristine image overall.

Actually, speaking of the coloring mishap on the first Lawrence DVD, I shouldn't applaud the new Searchers restoration too much since the coloring on that is equally off.


No it’s a pure and simple fault in the authoring of the DVD of Lawrence of Arabia, lack of supervision of the transfer, LOL or ether someone feel asleep though it as it is a long film, but that’s no excuse for taken consumers for mugs.


To their credit though they redeemed themselves somewhat by correcting it. The Superbit LOA is beautiful--its just a shame you have to own the previous version if you want all the extras.


I’ve heard as much, I only own one (Superbit) region 2 DVD Gattaca.
http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w118/Brainstorm3417/saberwalker.gif
Only the originals from the 70mm six-track Dolby stereo Dolby format 42 will sound better on DVD.
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Well, at least it will be a company that has actually had a stake in hollywood as opposed to microsoft. I mean seriously, which is the lesser of two evils there?

The only real advantage I see hddvd having over blu-ray is that you can get combo discs, but I see a number of drawbacks to that. One is that quality control for these combo discs is apparently horrible, DVD-18 is unreliable enough. Another is that it seems to say to me that the hddvd camp doesn't expect its own format to take off. Why else would they bother to include the analog-compatible transfer?

It seems like Blade Runner is going to be WB's acid test for which format is doing better at the moment, because there is absolutely no difference at all between the hddvd and blu-ray releases as far as I know.
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Originally posted by: ferris209
*sigh* dammit, I sure hope Sony don't win this, I dread to see what they intend to do whenever they finally dominate a market with one of there proprietary formats as they've been trying to do for the last 30 years.


Blue-ray is just as non-proprietary as HD-DVD.

"Now all Lucas has to do is make a cgi version of himself.  It will be better than the original and fit his original vision." - skyjedi2005

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Microsoft+lesser format+buyouts+"we believe the future is not in disk content but digital downloads"

versus

Sony+greater format+years of experience as studio+attempted format unification

Um, Sony!
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It still looks like BluRay is holding the market share during the Christmas season, even though HD-DVD has tried to win the price war. From what I read, the big change could be if Warner Brothers decides to choose one format, and the president of WB was quoted as saying that if they believe that 2 competing formats are stunting the growth of the HD market, they may have to chose.

I believe this could all be settled by Christmas 2008, and that is why I am still holding off from buying anything. I really wanted to buy an HD-DVD and BluRay cause there were alot of good titles sitting there calling my name in 1080i, but I resisted and I am just going to wait for the format war to end. If the HD market is still like this at this time next year.....I don't know what I am going to do.
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Pricewar or not, Blue-ray is winning 3-1.

But I don't think the war will be over any time soon.

Here's what I do see happening:

Okay, even with all those studios that Microsoft bought, Blu-Ray is still in a huge 3-1 lead--again, after they bought all that studio alliance. These figures are more or less the same as they were in the spring, so it seems that HD-DVD has had no gain whatsoever. And I think that the 3-1 gap will continue to grow, especially once all the people that just got Blu-Ray for Christmas start buying titles in the new year. By mid-2008 I don't think the 3-1 gap will widen significantly, but I think that the sole HD-DVD exclusive distributor (who is it?) will go format neutral, because it just doesn't make business sense, even if MS pays them big bucks to stay they could be making quadrupal the revenue. And when that happens support for HD-DVD will slip steadily, hopeful by the end of the year we'll be seeing a 4-1 gap, and theres really not much room for Toshiba to lower their prices so they've basically used up their leverage ammo already, and when this happens stores simply won't stock HD-DVD anymore. I think it will take into the spring of 2009 for things to be really finalised though, before the towel is officially thrown in--if these trends hold true then i can easily see a 8-1 gap snowballing by then and all the parties involved would basically be out of business if they kept at it any longer.

But you never know, I said the exact same thing at this time last year, and then Microsoft surprised everyone by buying out studios. My reason for thinking that it will actually happen this time is that even after Microsoft persuaded studio alliance, it seems to have done nothing to help (only draw things out), and after the hardware price-cutting that realistically can only be lowered by a tiny bit more, I really don't see any wiggle room here. The only thing that would screw things up is if the Blu-ray exclusive distributors somehow, miraculously, went HD-DVD exclusive, but with the 3-1 gap that would be financial suicide even if they had payoffs--going format neautral will draw things out another few months but thats it.
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Originally posted by: Tiptup
Originally posted by: ferris209
*sigh* dammit, I sure hope Sony don't win this, I dread to see what they intend to do whenever they finally dominate a market with one of there proprietary formats as they've been trying to do for the last 30 years.


Blue-ray is just as non-proprietary as HD-DVD.


Maybe I phrased that wrong. What I am referring to is the fact that current factories producing DVD's can be slightly altered and can make HD DVD's, I'm pretyt confident that licensing fees would be minimal if history is correct. However, to make Blu-Ray discs, it takes a whole factory re-tooling and I am pretty certain they'd jack up licensing fees like crazy once they leave HD DVD dead in the dirt. That all equals high assed Blu-Ray discs. Maybe I'm wrong, I dunno, I'm just speculating about a subject I admittedly don't know much about other than what I read on here and in the news.
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Originally posted by: zombie84
Pricewar or not, Blue-ray is winning 3-1.

But I don't think the war will be over any time soon.



One reason the war isn't over, and I don't think it will end anytime soon, is because the whole High-Def DVD thing has gotten a big yawn from consumers. I think most people are happy with standard DVDs for the time being, and aren't really ready to upgrade. Most people don't even have a HDTV of any kind yet. This format war would of been over by now if consumers as a whole cared about it. But currently, it seems like most of the people who do are high-end audio/videophiles. Unless things change, it seems like the high-def DVD is going to be this generations equivalent of the laserdisc, whichever format ends up winning.
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Well, I wouldn't go that far. My reasoning is this: open a flyer for an electronics store. They are all HD tv's. The dinky 19" $300 sets? They are flat-planel 16x9 HD or HD-ready. Standard-def 4x3 TV's practically are not sold anymore. So pretty much anyone who buys a TV from now on will be ready to hook up a high-def player.

Whether that player is BLu-ray or HD-DVD depends on if they both survive past 2009. But probably they will, and with the marketplace being upgraded in hardware the way it is, a lot of people will jump in and give it a shot.
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The issue is that most people still have old TVs, and aren't really in the market for something new. They are waiting around for "prices to drop" and aren't wanting to upgrade right now. Agreed, retailers are pushing HDTVs hard, but if you look at sales figures vs. predicted sales for HDTVs, they have consistently been very dissapointing for retailers. One stat I heard is that at current sales, HDTVs won't acheive 60% of the market for 15-30 years. If most people are that slow to adopt HDTV, I don't see any bigger hurry to adopt high-def DVDs. Especially when you are dealing with people who just stopped buying VHS about 5 years ago or so. They just upgraded, so why do they need to again? And the whole "format war" scares people off quickly. They remember they or someone they know got burned by buying a betamax, and they don't want to go through that again.

It still seems like the laserdisc to me-expensive, high end, high quality, and not used by the vast majority of the people.
But it appears that the blu-ray is winning, at least they have the most films and units out there, and thats what most people look at when they buy.
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Originally posted by: ferris209
Maybe I phrased that wrong. What I am referring to is the fact that current factories producing DVD's can be slightly altered and can make HD DVD's, I'm pretyt confident that licensing fees would be minimal if history is correct. However, to make Blu-Ray discs, it takes a whole factory re-tooling and I am pretty certain they'd jack up licensing fees like crazy once they leave HD DVD dead in the dirt. That all equals high assed Blu-Ray discs. Maybe I'm wrong, I dunno, I'm just speculating about a subject I admittedly don't know much about other than what I read on here and in the news.


As I remember, that was an additional cost of a buck or two for each BD over HD-DVD. Now that the production lines are up and running, the cost of the manufacturing upgrade is probably negligible in comparison to the profits.

Otherwise, the Blu-ray organization is big and wouldn't start voting to abuse the market anymore than DVDs do. The primary companies behind the BD format are most of the primary companies behind the DVD format. The only proprietary things about Blu-ray that I can think of would be the companies that own the patents for the technology behind BD. if they get bitchy and greedy with their agreements to the organization of which they are members, they could potentially cause the cost of Blu-ray discs to go up, but I highly doubt they would go that far.

"Now all Lucas has to do is make a cgi version of himself.  It will be better than the original and fit his original vision." - skyjedi2005

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Originally posted by: Number20
The issue is that most people still have old TVs, and aren't really in the market for something new. They are waiting around for "prices to drop" and aren't wanting to upgrade right now. Agreed, retailers are pushing HDTVs hard, but if you look at sales figures vs. predicted sales for HDTVs, they have consistently been very dissapointing for retailers. One stat I heard is that at current sales, HDTVs won't acheive 60% of the market for 15-30 years. If most people are that slow to adopt HDTV, I don't see any bigger hurry to adopt high-def DVDs. Especially when you are dealing with people who just stopped buying VHS about 5 years ago or so. They just upgraded, so why do they need to again? And the whole "format war" scares people off quickly. They remember they or someone they know got burned by buying a betamax, and they don't want to go through that again.


Best Buy recently announced that profits are up 52% for the quarter. This is huge and wasn't expected. It's also based on big ticket sales like HDTVs and DVD players (probably hi-def of both formats and standard def). The point, HDTVs have been selling like hotcakes for the past two years, but especially this year. More and more people do have HDTVs and are getting rid of their old sets (or their old sets are breaking).

As for people "not feeling the need" for hi-def, that pretty much goes against everything I've been reading. Everything I've been reading, and this is based on industry people talking to actual consumers and not just "well, this is what I think is going on", says that people aren't buying into either format because they don't want to end up with a dead format. That is the single overriding concern of most consumers. Those same people are also not buying regular DVDs much anymore because they don't want to have to rebuy everything once the format war is over.

Consumers would love nothing more than to buy hi-def DVDs to enjoy on their new HD sets. The problem is that there isn't one format and it doesn't look like there's going to be a single format for quite some time. This entire "format war" is either going to relegate both formats to a niche market or people will be forced to buy two players if they want to enjoy movies from all studios, especially since Disney is exclusive to Bluray.

5 years is a pretty long time. Most of those people have been purchasing DVDs since then, but they've just recently bought upgraded TVs. Now they're seeing how crappy their DVDs look on a bigger screen. I know exactly how they feel too. I'd love to get a hi-def player, but there's no way in hell I'm doing it until there's a cheap dual format player or a single format.
F Scale score - 3.3333333333333335

You are disciplined but tolerant; a true American.

Pissing off Rob since August 2007.
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Big, big news today.

Warner is dumping HD-DVD and going Blu-Ray exclusive.

The format war is over. I don't think HD-DVD will live to see 2009.
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For.The.Win


....maybe.....but it's a big step for BD supporters.

Hey look, a bear!

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Originally posted by: zombie84
Big, big news today.

Warner is dumping HD-DVD and going Blu-Ray exclusive.

The format war is over. I don't think HD-DVD will live to see 2009.


Actually, Paramounts agreement was to be exclusively HD-DVD for 18 months. That means that if they're going to release any HD titles at all, they'll have to be HD-DVD. Assuming Universal doesn't cave and switch to Blu-ray, they'll be the only two studios left still releasing on HD-DVD. I don't see that happening though.

I think you're right. What I see happening is Universal switching to Blu-ray and then Paramount doing one of the following 1) find someway out of the deal, 2) don't release any hi-def movies until mid 2009 since they're just going to have to re-release them all at that point anyway, or 3) release HD-DVD titles until mid 2009 and then re-release everything as Blu-ray (this would be stupid).

I would think that the agreement would be broken if the HD-DVD group ceases to exist. And I would assume that would happen if no one was releasing titles on HD-DVD anymore. So if Universal switches to Blu-ray and Paramount stops releasing HD titles for a few months, that could be all that's necessary to completely kill it. Of course, since Microsoft is part of the HD-DVD group and they've got money to burn, they could easily prop the group up for months or years if necessary.

As much as I did not support Blu-ray, this format war needs to end if hardware prices are ever going to come down. I only hope that the price of BD burners gets incredibly cheap in the next year.
F Scale score - 3.3333333333333335

You are disciplined but tolerant; a true American.

Pissing off Rob since August 2007.
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RIP hd dvd,this is GREAT news,Bluray all the way for me,the only movie we Bluray guys are missing is Transformers,I really hope that comes out someday on Bluray.