What was the appeal of HD DVD?

[roxics]

I remember thinking during this format war that Blu-ray was the technically superior format, so why would anyone want HD-DVD to win. Unless they are one of the backing companies of course.

I didn't buy into Blu-ray myself until 2012 but even before that I could tell you Sony as going to win this war based just on the fact that they owned one of the major movies studio. Which was not the case during the days of Betamax.

That said, I think the war would have lasted a lot longer is Microsoft had put an HD-DVD player inside of the Xbox 360.

Every so often I come across people who have HD-DVD collections and wonder why they bought into it. If you are one of these people, what motivated you to get on that horse?

[atomik kinder]

I got an HD-DVD player first, since they were cheaper than blu-ray at the time, but then purchased a PS3. There wasn't much that was HD-DVD "exclusive" that I wanted. I would buy everything that was on both formats on Blu-ray, and I am so glad I did. Didn't get stuck with many after HD-DVD folded.

[SlaughterX]

Price (of hardware)

[TripleHBK]

If you were a gamer in 2005/2006 and paid attention to what was going on at the time, Sony had became arrogant during the years of the Playstion 2 and were making claims such as... "The Next Generation Starts when we say it starts" and did a number of things with the ps3 that Microsoft ironically ended up doing with their Xbox One console one generation later. In a nutshell... they didn't (initially) listen to their core market, hardcore gamers.

I was an HD-DVD fan from day one largely due to the perceived arrogance on Sony's part. I've never been a Playstation fanboy and the added arrogance really pushed me toward the competing format. I wanted HD-DVD to succeed at the time not because it offered something that Blu Ray couldn't, but rather I wanted it to succeed just to spite Sony.

Sony of this time reminds me a lot of Apple currently (and over the last 15 years). Over priced, arrogant, and not providing enough of a performance upgrade to warrant the extra costs associated with their products. That was then, now I'm a pretty huge Sony fan. I'm still not a Playstation fanboy (I think I'll always prefer Xbox Consoles despite owning all of the consoles from each generation going back to the 70's) but in many other areas I am very much in their camp.

Had playstation and xbox not been involved with the format wars at all I don't know if there would have been much of one to begin with. I do recall there being pushback due to the perceived notion that Sony would essentially own the format where as HD-DVD was more of a consortium, but I feel like gamers like myself were really the ones that drove the war and caused folks to pick sides.

[TheBluRayBandito]

I remember when these two formats dropped and Circuit City (RIP) had a side-by-side comparison. Pretty sure I thought HD looked better. By the time I finally upgraded in 2011, HD was already extinct. lol

[bhampton]

Cheaper


I knew a pilot for SWA (just saying he is an intelligent fella) who bought an open box samsung BD-P1000. It was marked down from $1200 to $850 and he thought he got a great deal. The thing was pure garbage and every time a FW update was available we had high hopes but junk is junk no matter how expensive it is.

I bought a PS3 and it was fantastic but it was $600 and most HD DVD players were cheaper.

I never had HD DVD at all.

[Dex Robinson]

One of the things that concerned me about Blu-ray was that the data was so tightly packed together. I feared that BD would be very sensitive to scratches and dirt because any tiny blemish would cause problems.

The data on HD DVDs was not crammed so tightly and I thought it might be a more robust format.

It turns out, I was very WRONG.

But that was my thinking at the time.

I had about 50 HD DVDs before making the switch to BD.

[sfmarine]

HD-DVD never appealed to me even though it was cheaper. The ps3 was my first BD player and at the time Universal, WB, and Paramount were HD exclusive. HD also had porn but BD had Disney and Fox.

[BijouMan]

Originally Posted by bhampton

Cheaper


I knew a pilot for SWA (just saying he is an intelligent fella) who bought an open box samsung BD-P1000. It was marked down from $1200 to $850 and he thought he got a great deal. The thing was pure garbage and every time a FW update was available we had high hopes but junk is junk no matter how expensive it is.

I bought a PS3 and it was fantastic but it was $600 and most HD DVD players were cheaper.

I never had HD DVD at all.

Southwest Airlines

[BijouMan]

Originally Posted by sfmarine

HD-DVD never appealed to me even though it was cheaper. The ps3 was my first BD player and at the time Universal, WB, and Paramount were HD exclusive. HD also had porn but BD had Disney and Fox.

Don't know that that's true. It existed on Betamax tapes, and is not why VHS won that war.

[khalbrae]

Originally Posted by TripleHBK

If you were a gamer in 2005/2006 and paid attention to what was going on at the time, Sony had became arrogant during the years of the Playstion 2 and were making claims such as... "The Next Generation Starts when we say it starts" and did a number of things with the ps3 that Microsoft ironically ended up doing with their Xbox One console one generation later. In a nutshell... they didn't (initially) listen to their core market, hardcore gamers.

Yeah, because of that the Xbox was far ahead in system sales until the Xbox One was announced. Microsoft quickly stopped production of 360s (people were driven away from the bran anyway) and PS3 production and sales lasted a couple more years, allowing Sony to catch up and slightly pass them.

Originally Posted by TheBluRayBandito

I remember when these two formats dropped and Circuit City (RIP) had a side-by-side comparison. Pretty sure I thought HD looked better. By the time I finally upgraded in 2011, HD was already extinct. lol

HD-DVD had the better CODEC at launch. At first Blu-rays were only released in MPEG2. It took a year for them to release in the same format as HD-DVD and then MPEG4

Originally Posted by sfmarine

HD-DVD never appealed to me even though it was cheaper. The ps3 was my first BD player and at the time Universal, WB, and Paramount were HD exclusive. HD also had porn but BD had Disney and Fox.

The porn industry actually favoured BD

https://www.computerworld.com/articl...y--hd-dvd.html

[plissken99]

Well it had Serenity and Last Samurai, two movies I really wanted.. I’d also just gotten my first projector set up going and was mad for HD content. I was still going to wait for BD, but I got an HDA1 open box for $100 off when the format was two weeks old and no one could find a player lol.

[Musashi]

Originally Posted by TripleHBK

I do recall there being pushback due to the perceived notion that Sony would essentially own the format where as HD-DVD was more of a consortium

That's just it though: it was a perceived notion but far from the facts. If anything the opposite was partially true: Blu-ray had many shareholders, 2 of whom had even bigger %age stakes than Sony (Pioneer and Panasonic) in blu-ray. This was reflected in that there were BD players from Samsung, Sony, Pioneer, Panasonic, LG, Denon, and a whole bunch more, while HD-DVD players were produced by Toshiba and....Toshiba.

[nissling]

I appreciated the lack of crappy Java and region coding. BD is far more complex in how the disc decides how the playback should be treated and this causes so much headache with resumed playback.

Toshiba did make an HD-DVD with triple layers that could hold 45GB. It was never utilized but it would have made the two formats very comparable in the long run as far as storage goes. However, considering how much disc rot we've seen on HD-DVD in the last years while Blu-Ray is practically unaffected by comparison I do think that the blue team was still the better of the two.

[SlaughterX]

Originally Posted by Musashi

That's just it though: it was a perceived notion but far from the facts. If anything the opposite was partially true: Blu-ray had many shareholders, 2 of whom had even bigger %age stakes than Sony (Pioneer and Panasonic) in blu-ray. This was reflected in that there were BD players from Samsung, Sony, Pioneer, Panasonic, LG, Denon, and a whole bunch more, while HD-DVD players were produced by Toshiba and....Toshiba.

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-BD-UP.../dp/B000VDG0UK

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by Musashi

That's just it though: it was a perceived notion but far from the facts. If anything the opposite was partially true: Blu-ray had many shareholders, 2 of whom had even bigger %age stakes than Sony (Pioneer and Panasonic) in blu-ray. This was reflected in that there were BD players from Samsung, Sony, Pioneer, Panasonic, LG, Denon, and a whole bunch more, while HD-DVD players were produced by Toshiba and....Toshiba.

you are right in that Sony is not the biggest contributor to the patent pool, that being said and that Sony=BD was pushed to try and discredit the format. That being said

1)Toshiba was not the only company with HD DVD patents. Most of the patents were shared (i.e. same company on both sides for the same stuff) since a lot of the specs where the same. The big difference was the BD moved to 0.1mm data layer while HD-DVD stayed at 0.6 and that was Toshibas biggest contribution to DVD and HD-DVD and they did not want to lose out on it.

2) Sony owned the Beta format, JVC the VHS format it did not stop many other manufacturers from making players. You don't need to be part of the patent pool to get a license to build players

3) Toshiba was not the only manufacturer of HD DVD players and there were also some combo players that could play both formats

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by nissling

Toshiba did make an HD-DVD with triple layers that could hold 45GB. It was never utilized but it would have made the two formats very comparable in the long run as far as storage goes.

It was added to the specs as a possibility (and mostly marketing) but there was no way of replicating a triple layer HD DVD at the time. The more layers you add the more time it takes and the more rejects you have. The yields made it completely useless. On the other hand even if we consider it BD had 11% more capacity and there was the higher BW so I would not consider them comparable, plus now we have TL BD for UHD disks at 100GB.

PS just for fun

https://www.wired.com/2008/12/pioneer-16-laye/
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2008...er-500gb-disc/

in a lab you can always add layers, in real life it needs to be cost effective to do so or it is meaningless.

[Musashi]

Originally Posted by nissling

I appreciated the lack of crappy Java and region coding. BD is far more complex in how the disc decides how the playback should be treated and this causes so much headache with resumed playback.

Source? I heard nothing of the sort back in 2006. Not from anyone I trusted anyway.

Originally Posted by SlaughterX

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-BD-UP.../dp/B000VDG0UK

Originally Posted by Anthony P

3) Toshiba was not the only manufacturer of HD DVD players and there were also some combo players that could play both formats

That's just it though: the only non-Toshiba players were combos that also played BDs.

Originally Posted by TripleHBK

If you were a gamer in 2005/2006 and paid attention to what was going on at the time, Sony had became arrogant during the years of the Playstion 2 and were making claims such as... "The Next Generation Starts when we say it starts" and did a number of things with the ps3 that Microsoft ironically ended up doing with their Xbox One console one generation later. In a nutshell... they didn't (initially) listen to their core market, hardcore gamers.

I was an HD-DVD fan from day one largely due to the perceived arrogance on Sony's part. I've never been a Playstation fanboy and the added arrogance really pushed me toward the competing format. I wanted HD-DVD to succeed at the time not because it offered something that Blu Ray couldn't, but rather I wanted it to succeed just to spite Sony.

Sony of this time reminds me a lot of Apple currently (and over the last 15 years). Over priced, arrogant, and not providing enough of a performance upgrade to warrant the extra costs associated with their products. That was then, now I'm a pretty huge Sony fan. I'm still not a Playstation fanboy (I think I'll always prefer Xbox Consoles despite owning all of the consoles from each generation going back to the 70's) but in many other areas I am very much in their camp.

Had playstation and xbox not been involved with the format wars at all I don't know if there would have been much of one to begin with. I do recall there being pushback due to the perceived notion that Sony would essentially own the format where as HD-DVD was more of a consortium, but I feel like gamers like myself were really the ones that drove the war and caused folks to pick sides.

That's odd. I was certainly a gamer in the mid 2000s, as well as well before and well after, and your 'arrogant' perception of Sony at that time was exactly what I thought of Microsoft, and for me, spiting Microsoft was a little bonus to the Blu-ray victory. And what did the X1 do that the PS3 also did?

[BiggusDickus]

Originally Posted by sfmarine

HD-DVD never appealed to me even though it was cheaper. The ps3 was my first BD player and at the time Universal, WB, and Paramount were HD exclusive. HD also had porn but BD had Disney and Fox.

Actually, you reminded me, i bought the XXX film Pirates on DVD and it came with an HD-DVD disc! Had nothing to play that on tho ...

[nissling]

Originally Posted by Musashi

Source? I heard nothing of the sort back in 2006. Not from anyone I trusted anyway.

What do you want a source for? HD-DVD was region free, it lacked Java menus and BD Authoring is awful.