The TV Addict’s Take: Blu-ray vs. HD DVD

[xtop]

http://thetvaddict.com/2007/11/29/th...vd-vs-blu-ray/

With the holiday season fast approaching, the one question on everybody’s mind — aside from when is the WGA strike going to end — is what format do I buy: HD DVD or Blu Ray?

This TV Addict’s answer — NEITHER! Or as I more eloquently put it in a recent interview with TechLore.com.

“It’s another money grab by the big companies,” says Daniel Malen, self-proclaimed TV addict and founder of the popular TV blog theTVaddict.com. “Sony, Toshiba and whomever else wants to further gouge consumers, get us to throw away our perfectly good DVD players and the thousands I’ve spent on TV on DVD… only to go out and buy the exact same stuff on the new High Def Version.”

Consider this. My good friend and frequent contributer to the site Amrie [of My Take on TV fame] has enough movies and TV shows on DVD to fill a small Albanian village. That’s a lot of hard earned money invested in DVDs [with my apologies to Amrie for reminding her of that!]. Does she really need to start replacing all her perfectly high quality DVDs with High Definition more expensive versions? Do we really need that seventh season of GILMORE GIRLS in HD? [Well, maybe season 3]


This TV Addict’s advice for fellow TV Addict’s everywhere. Skip the format war entirely. Forget HD and Blu Ray. Save your money. Or at the very least, buy yourself a really nice 42″ HD TV. Now there’s money well spent!

The future of video and television is downloadable content [see iTunes or even Amazon UnBox]. Downloadable content won’t require a new $500 DVD player and will offer downloads far more affordable than buying a $30 HD or Blu Ray DVD.

That said, if you’re addicted to technology and simply MUST HAVE the next big thing. Take a look at why HD DVD could win the format war according to TechLore.com

very laughable stuff

[Terjyn]

will offer downloads far more affordable than buying a $30 HD or Blu Ray DVD

I love that people keep assuming this when it comes to downloads.

This isn't iTunes where you can download only part of a CD. You have to download the whole movie. So there is no reason whatsoever for them to NOT gouge you.

Especially with just how much the bandwidth would cost to do this right.

[LynxFX]

Forget HD and Blu Ray. Save your money. Or at the very least, buy yourself a really nice 42″ HD TV. Now there’s money well spent!

Riiiiiight, that is great advice there. Purchase a great HDTV but be sure to never purchase high quality HD content that will actually take advantage of it.

It is all very laughable stuff xtop.

edit: Oh and where do you think you will play that downloadable content? On a ~$1000+ PC right, or if you want it on your tv, some standalone box which will *gasp* probably cost as much as an HD DVD or BD player...only lower quality of course.

[dgator783]

downloading sucks....imagine having 100s of movies stored on a hard drive and that hard drive breaking or get fried for whatever reason...bye bye movies....at least if ur player or one disc breaks for whatever reason then thats just one thing to replace....I would never download over owning the indiviual disc....and companies will never just switch to downloading competley with disc sales being lucrative as it is....

[bajor27]

That was a laugh and a half for sure

buy an hdtv becuase HD is great but don't buy HD dics because they are a waste of money

check out this article on how HD-DVD could win. How about asking them to check out some sales numbers on how blu ray is already winning.

And did anyone read that article. It basically said it could win by reducing the price or standalone players, reducing the price of the xbox addon, reducing the price of discs, etc. The only thing decent that it mentioned was going 1080P - which it definitely should do.

Couldn't blu ray win by doing these exact same things though? How is this somehow something that could magically make HD-DVD win but not bluray? The only reason they aren't doing these things is because they don't need to. They are more than happy to keep winning and actually turning a profit while they do.


And yes, downloading is great when I miss an episode of something, but I don't want to own downloadable stuff like that until I can download a full movie in about 15 minutes or less and I can redownload it whenever I want in case it crashes. It also better damnwell cost a lot less since they don't have to pay for shipping, cases, discs, art, someone to design the art, etc, etc.

[hc666]

Downloading does suck and will never beat out any type of DVD medium.

[aphex]

Originally Posted by hc666

Downloading does suck and will never beat out any type of DVD medium.

of course it will, but not any time soon. I mean we know the future everyting will be downloaded. It will take mere seconds to send tb's of data accross the world and it can be stored on something incredibly small.

However this can't happen yet and not for a while. We'd first have to see cds disappear alltogether to even get relatively close to seeing high definition movie discs(bluray of course) disappear. Music is infinitesimal compared to video, so I can see that happening in 10 or so years, but not to video.

[lch]

even when downloading some shows, i will back them up on dvd incase of my pc broke down on me. just imagine how many episodes can i save with a bd50 instead of dvd5.

[Spankey]

This might be the new talking point. If HD-DVD can't win, don't buy anything BUT IF YOU MUST, check out HD-DVD and why it MIGHT win the war. More rubbish.

[calcajun]

Ummm, how bout renting? Isn't netflix and blockbuster still around?

[dialog_gvf]

Microsoft doesn't want either to succeed. Until now it was trying to knock Blu-ray off the tracks. Is this the start of the campaign against HD discs?

Gary