Veridian3

It seems that the format "war" is pretty much over and Blu-Ray has been victorious. Did the right format win?

Discuss...

ChaosMinionX

HD-DVD was dead when it came out.

It offered nothing over Blu-ray, and despite early reviews Blu ray had about not supporting various codecs, the support was later added. And PS3 played a big role in killing HD-DVD even if you dont want to admit it, it put more players in the publics eye, and although it was a gamble for Sony, it paid off.

Glad I didnt buy a dual format combo drive

__________________

Son_of_Thunder

I'm sad that HD-DVD didn't win. It was far less expensive to buy both players and movies, yet still offered HD quality.

Sayonara HD-DVD, enjoy cuddling with beta and laserdisc.

__________________

thunderclap

I don't think downloadable content will replace optical media anytime soon except for rental purposes. With the amount of drive space required for a 1080p HD movie it just isn't practical. And what about special features? How are they going to incorporate that? If digital download does take off for actually purchasing films it won't be for another 5-10 years.

__________________
Marc B.
Genrefinity.net - Your source for all things in the horror, science fiction and fantasy genres

OmegaRED

LOL@Downloadable content...many ISP's have monthly caps the size of just one Blu-ray movie Do people have any idea how much bandwidth would be required to download movies at an acceptable speed? Unless you're fine waiting a few days for a download to finish it isn't practical.

I like Blu-Ray, it sounds cooler and it has more storage space which means higher bitrate and quality. Other than that I'm just glad the war is over.

__________________

Necrosis

I need not bother say anything.

__________________

MooN*FiRE

Just to use blu-ray in my system I have to upgrade to core 2 duo 3.0+ GHz :/.

Zelig

Or a video card with proper acceleration. With my 2.8 GHz Athlon 64/8800 GTS G92, I can play Blu-ray discs with about 15% cpu usage.

__________________
--

mike2h

while i went with bd cause i thought it was obviously(to me) going to come out on top, i a mglad its over & would have been almost as happy had hd -dvd won. just wanted one of them to win - sooner than later.

__________________

CDsDontBurn

i will vote when the option of "who cares who won, i'm just glad it's over" option is made available .

now that it's clear that BR won, when i get the chance, i will go out and buy me a standalone BR player....yes, a standalone, not a ps3.

__________________

Judas

why?

get the LG drive.... it's cheaper then a stand alone BR player... ontop of that.... you can watch any HD-DVD movies that may come on special..... brilliant peice of technology that i'm glad someone had the balls to produce finally.....

__________________

Cannyone

I was in favor of HD-DVD, primarily because I have a grudge against Sony.

But for the time being I'm more than happy with regular old DVDs and an upscaling DVD player. I can rent movies for $1 a night. And I can continue to use XP (not even interested in a stand alone) Though I do have an upscaling player in the living room it's connected to a 720p TV. My computer on the other hand has a 24" display that is native 1920x1200.

Maybe by the time 5 1/4" Blu-Ray drives are down to around $200 the format will be closer to a "solid standard". As it stands any of you that wants to buy a Stand Alone Blu-Ray player is wasting their money. None of the current players, besides the PS3, is compatible with the 2.0 standard. And just a flash upgrade won't hack it! You're going to have to buy a new unit.

I'm not buying into Blu-Ray any time soon. 1. I don't really trust Sony. 2. Blu-Ray is too expensive for my tastes. 3. DVD is ubiquitous atm, so I don't see Blu-Ray replacing it. 4. I would prefer to download an "HD rental" that way I don't have the expense of running to the store. Xbox Live does this just fine.

__________________
Eagles may Soar! But Weasels don't have to worry about being sucked into a jet engine...

ET3D

Yes, me too.

I also admire Sony for its well laid plan. PS3 helped Blu-ray win, which in turn will help the PS3.

Asmoday

There, anything to please you Cd's..

No seriously I find it to be a valid point, so the option is added...

__________________

Judas

can i get a vote reset then?

__________________

dipstick

I can't say I really cared who would win but since all I can play is DB (ps3) I'm kinda glad it came out on top

Judas

did hd-dvd suddenly break..

now i can't play my HD-DVD using the same version of PowerDVD that i've been using all the time.... on the same movies..... full screen @ 2560x1600.... when i enter full screen it just goes to the 1920x1080 within a massive black bordered area.... wtf

__________________

mike2h

while im not a big fan of sony, you do got to give them kudos for that.

__________________

MooN*FiRE

The main reason I wanted blu-ray to win is cause it seemed at the time you could put more on them. 25 GB's a/side is alot of space for backup. Instead of those 4.7 GB disc for saving info etc you have a 25 Gig disc to play with. The only bad thing about blu-ray and hdddvd in the first place is the slow burn speed. 4-6x isn't good at all. Now that there is one champ maybe leaps and bounds in burning speed will get better, 18x burning would be nice.

Mousey

Quite frankly i don't really care about "High Definition" because it offers nothing appealing to me as a consumer. If i want "High Definition" i'll fire up CoD4 with max settings :/
The massive premium you have to pay to get the extra content doesn't seem justified to me and as such i don't think it's worth it.
But that's just my opinion.

__________________

mike2h

mousey what does watching hd movies have to do with gaming? hd isnt about extra content, it is about getting better visual & sound quality, period.
while i understand hd has no importance to lots of people, if you are going to have a negative(or pos) opinion about it at least make sure that your opinion has relevance to the subject.
not picking on you only mousey, just seen quite a few peeps around here express opinions on hd based on things that have little to no bearing on hd itself.
bty, i have little to no use for 'extra content' either. the little i have seen is pretty much what you get on the dvd releases. i believe this is changing tho. i think anybody that puts a premium on extra content should maybe get a life. jmo.

__________________

Zardon

Have you ever seen a bluray or HDDVD at 1080p running on a 52 inch screen? I think you might change your mind. Although I don't even think your statement really makes sense. I think you are confusing Anti Aliasing and Filtering with screen/movie resolution (1920x1080px for 1080p) etc.

I couldn't even watch a DVD now the quality is so rubbish. Funny thing is even when I was buying DVD's I always thought they were pretty rubbish, I was waiting for HD for a long long time.

I have always been very discerning regarding quality however, guess thats why I started Driver Heaven so I could explore the inner geek.......

TenKen

I would say downloaded content if you just want the movie or whatever content, but if you the extras or just to own a physical copy then I would say Blu-ray will be the way to go. Hopefully when they do release to blu-ray, they put extras that make it worth while than just junk and also they give the consumer an option go interactive or just plain menu.

Zelig

Heh, I get flak from a lot of my friends for holding a similar opinion. Some content doesn't gain much in the HD transition, but a lot of movies are begging for the increased resolution and decreased compression.

I just watched an HD-DVD copy of A Scanner Darkly, great movie, and beautiful in 1080p.

Like OmegaRED said, full HD content is too large for feasible large-scale download services. You need about a 30mbit connection (and actual download rates to match) for full quality Blu-ray streaming to become realistic. Current premium HD movies offered via download are actually smaller in size than regular DVD movies.

__________________
--

ExitiosuS

Eh, it makes me feel kind of out of the loop, or too poor, to actually get a 52" HD TV. I'm still using a 32" flat-screen and that runs my DVDs just great. Sit back and enjoy the show at little impact to my wallet.

I don't think I would notice too much of an improvement in order to justify the cost.

... Not yet, anyways. When I can afford a 52" screen, I'll probably need to re-educate my opinion... but with what I've got, I'd need to make too many upgrades in order to see what Blu-Ray has to offer --- and I don't even watch the extra content already on DVDs, I practically watch it much the way I watched VHS -- put it in, wait for all the crap to go by, and then hit Play. When the credits start, the TV goes off and I go to bed or do whatever it was I planned to do afterwards. lol

Lowfat

Very disappointed HD-DVD lost its support. As a video disc, it was definitely the better format. Cost for movies and players are considerably cheaper as HD-DVDs could be made in DVD plants with very little hassle compared to Bluray.

Also the fact that all HDDVD menus and features were standardized was very nice.

__________________
i7 920 on phase change * EX58-UD5 * 6GB @ 1600MHz * HD4550 * X25-M RAID0 * Enermax Revo 85+ 1050W * Silverstone FT01BW

Q8200 @ 3GHz * P5Q Pro* 4GB @ 878MHz * 9500GT * Auzen Prelude * 30GB Vertex * 11.5TB * Seasonic 420 M12-II * Silverstone LC17B * LG GGC-H20L

ChaosMinionX

I have to agree 100%..... My Aquos 46" with blu-ray/HD channels looks amazing, makes regular TV look terrible and reg DVDs are also terrible in comparison. I would think after you've experienced HD Mousey, you would change your thoughts on the matter in a jiffy

__________________

CDsDontBurn

thx man! much appreciated

__________________

Necrosis

For some movies HD really doesn't matter, I have to agree.

I found out another problem with owning HD content. Not only do I value the quality of a movie, but I almost value the quality of video just as much. There has been quite a few releases on Blu-Ray or HD DVD that I like the movie but the IQ wasn't there. I didn't buy those movies just for that reason. Funny thing is this wasn't that big of an issue w/ DVD's. You had the occasional botched job of post processing with video artifacts but now it's easily apparent.

__________________

wiskerbizkit

I think the people who really lost here are the consumers. i don't like sony one bit.