New Blu-ray microsite at Amazon

[The Big Blue]

AFAICT there currently is no similar addition for HD DVD

Amazon Blu-ray

Also, they re-worked the links the other day and now when you click the DVD link there are separate BD & HD links with the BD link on top.

More good news for HD DVD.

[goodstuff]

Wow, nice. Looks like that Amazon sale may have opened their eyes

[Amon37]

Very nice job. Amazon did good work.

[DTMoney84]

Yea the sale may have opened their eyes a bit but I think the real victory was in the sales figures for The Departed. It was essentially the first blockbuster simultanious release on both formats now that the consumer base has grown, with Blu-ray selling roughly 33% more than the HD-DVD version. I am not sure what the next really big blockbuster simultanious release is but it will be interesting to see what the sales figures look like at that point.

[powerSURG]

300 maybe?

as for the new mini-store... I like!

[WriteSimply]

The microsite belongs to Fox. But looking at the bottom of the Amazon BD page where the release list is, I'm wondering how many people here are working second jobs or overtime just to be able to get those movies on release dates?


fuad

[Spankey]

Some mistakes were made. They have single layer Blu-ray listed as 20gb, not 25. PCM is not listed as an audio codec. Still looking it over.

Looks like Amazon "kinda" makes the case for Blu-ray over HD-DVD in this paragraph.

What Is the Difference Between Blu-ray and HD DVD?

Although Blu-ray and HD DVD are both high-definition media formats that rely on blue-laser technology, there are some important differences between them. The first is capacity. Because a Blu-ray player utilizes a shorter wavelength blue-violet laser than an HD DVD laser, it can focus even more closely to read more densely packed data. This allows a Blu-ray disc to have even higher capacity. A standard HD DVD can hold 15 GB per side (30 GB on a dual-layer disc), whereas Blu-ray can hold 25 GB per side (50 GB on a dual-layer disc).

The second difference is content. Several major studios and software companies are currently supporting only one of the formats, meaning that their titles may be available on DVD in only one high-definition format, either HD DVD or Blu-ray. Titles from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (including Tri-Star), Twentieth Century Fox (including MGM), Lionsgate, and Disney are on Blu-ray, while titles from Universal Pictures are releasing on HD DVD. Warner Bros., HBO, and Paramount are releasing titles in both formats.

[dialog_gvf]

Originally Posted by sltmag

Some mistakes were made. They have single layer Blu-ray listed as 20gb, not 25. PCM is not listed as an audio codec. Still looking it over.

And the data transfer rate is wrong. BD is 1.5x or 54Mbps.

How did the braniac who made that table figure you can get 40Mbps of "Video bit rate" down a 36Mbps "Data transfer rate" pipe?

Gary

[Deciazulado]

Edit:

oops Gary beat me to it

It's saying Blu-ray has the maximum bit-rate that HD DVD has (36 Mb/s)

[dobyblue]

Spotted that one too. I was like "hey how can the data rate be less than the maximum video rate"

[degas]

And don't forget to submit what favourite movies you'd wish to see on Blu-ray soon.
You never know...they might give these to the studios.