HD DVD vs. Blu-ray: who cares?

By David Carnoy, CNET.com on 14 December 2004

Since its 1997 debut, the DVD format has gone on to become perhaps the biggest success in the history of home theatre and consumer electronics. But will the current king of the video hill still be number one by the time it hits its 10th birthday?

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Comments (57)

  • Frank commented on 15/11/2006 20:46

    Now slow it down a tad here. We could be talking about a very distinct difference in price of the blue-ray unit AND the discs themselves; and if you take the time to read-around you’ll find that those manufacturing DVDHD disks can transfer its plant machinery in less than one day for the new technology and states it can bring its prices back down relatively fast after ‘swap-over’ However, and hardly surprising, blue-ray suffers at that point and it isn’t going to be that simple. There are a lot more logistics to take into consideration of blue-ray over HDDVD, and that doesn’t lie only within the price of the unit alone; for the vast majority of us we would all want a $100,000 sports car; for the same vast majority we can’t afford it so we settle for what we can.

    You might say that doesn’t make any difference to the end-user (which is you of course) but only time will tell if that will be the case or not. How much is the consumer prepared to pay for a blue-ray unit and, more importantly, how much is a blue-ray movie on disk worth to you? In all technological advances there is a cost; that’s why we haven’t colonized the moon as was forecast after the moon landing. Why? We have the technology, but what we don’t have is the price-label it comes in at. OK, so that might be just a bit extreme in what I’m saying here, but it’s on that sort of level where the pros and cons of blue-ray over HDTV will be passed on to the consumer; and there is your modern-day ‘VHS Betamax dilemma’ that’s about to kick-off.

    For a Nation that would go up in arms if one cent is put on the cost of fuel, then one should also be asking if that’s how it will turn out in the end at (what is stated to be likely) an increase in the region of 25-30%. The final analysis will be in how much we are all prepared to pay, and as much as is said her about ‘brining it on’ for blue-ray, I would only be left to wonder if that’s as simple as it’s going to be. In all honesty, I don’t think so and blue-ray is hoping that its current supporters will stand by them. But will they? At this stage I get a ‘Betamax de ja vous.’

  • jason commented on 07/11/2006 18:05

    I just had a look at the new Samsung BD-P1000 which was set-up on the new 1920X1080 Samsung panel using HDMI to connect the two...I should add the panal had just been calibrated too. I never expected the first Blu Ray discs to be wonderful quality but honestly it's not worth the money. All the BD discs we found in the catalogue were in the 1:2.35 aspect ratio (skinny widescreen). The problem ? well, you aren't using all your pixels maybe only 3/4 of them. So the picture you are watching is not actually HD, the quality is lower. So, the demo was not as impressive as it could have been....everything seems too rushed to make me want to invest in this technology for a good 4 or 5 years. As lovely as either HD format is, The software is not as available as DVD and will take a long time to be as common as DVD. There really is no point in investing the money untill there are TV's with a resolution greater than HD ...OR...they smarten up and stop producing all these movies in the 1:2.35 and format them to suit the 1:1.85 ratio that all of our widescreen TV's accept. Otherwise, you will not be getting the high definition picture that you have paid for.
    The winner will be the company that incorperates HD-DVD and Blu Ray and is backwards compatable with HDD and HD digital TV tuner ..oh and is a recorder too.

  • Peter Harvey commented on 01/11/2006 13:25

    Looks like David Carnoy was right on the mark way back in December 2004... "Me, I'm ballparking the end of 2006 before anything interesting really starts to happen in the high-def disc arena."

    I noticed today that EzyDVD will have HD-DVD movies in Australia from the first week in December 2006.


    @anon>" I don't want ten languages."

    Sorry, but you DO want ten languages because it keeps production costs down producing one product thousands of times instead of producing individual products of lesser manufacture run sizes for each language.

  • Jesse commented on 04/10/2006 11:50

    I don't want extras. I don't want ten languages. I just want the damn movie, and I want it to play when I put it in the player, and I don't want to pay $2000 vs. $500 for that extra little bit of space that's utterly useless (for my needs). HD-DVD has my vote, simply because it's a familiar name, cheaper, and the quality has the ability to be identical.

  • no name commented on 09/08/2006 15:37

    Yep, another marketing plot to make us buy everything all over again and I bet it will not be backward compatible with existing DVD players. I can just see it, ripping of everyone again. Make up your mind and stick to format for at least the next 20 years +. It seems that size does matter. These people just won't to prove how smart they are but the reality is, they are as dumb as our politicians.

  • jim commented on 29/04/2006 22:05

    hey well im goin for the bluray because im a playstation/sony fan and im just gonna get a ps3 anyway, so ill have the player and if blu ray wuins, thats my luck :)

  • gorman commented on 21/04/2006 21:19

    HD does look awesome, and DVD actually is pretty terrible quality. It's like VHS - no-one saw the advantage of DVD until they actually watched it, and realised just how much better it looked. Things can look that much better again. Who will win? Who cares. HD-DVD has a terrible disadvantage in that its acronym is five letters and contains three D's. I'm serious. That will have a huge effect. They all have a terrible disadvantage in that they can't play CDs or DVDs. Whoever puts two lasers in first (one blue, one red, obviously) will win.

  • gfuncjunkie commented on 18/03/2006 02:26

    Either would be great, because watching films spanned across 2 and sometimes 4 dvds is a joke. I like the sound of Blu-ray though because it hints towards larger capacity and re write discs from the off but I also love the look of the PS3 and that comes with BLU-ray!

  • Q commented on 12/03/2006 23:15

    The problem for both camps is that while they are fighting, consumers are unlikely to take the plunge. Compounding this is the impending introduction of holographic storage (which boasts 200~300 GB storage per layer) possibly as soon as Q4 2006.

    If neither HD format is on more solid ground by 2007 there is a good chance they will simply be over-run by newer technology. (LS-240? Anyone??)

  • modhal commented on 07/02/2006 12:23

    If current DVD can be played with BDplayer then Blue ray. technologies will win.

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