Question from a neutral guy!

[dallasjetfan]

I have never really cared who wins or who doesn't. That is why I bought a $99 HD-A2 about a month ago. I also bought about 15 HD-DVD movies. Then I bought a PS3 because BR had movies I wanted too. That being said, I am glad that someone looks like they are going to win. Can some of you BR experts tell me what makes BR superior? I just would like to be able to explain to friends and family w/o sounding like an idiot! Thanks!

[Antny]

Higher bitrate. More capacity....ergo better picture

[Blu-Generation]

Originally Posted by Antny

Higher bitrate. More capacity....ergo better picture

And sound.

[xo151]

Disney, WB, Lionsgate, Fox, Columbia/Sony Pictures, New Line

[Canada]

More Space

Blu Ray 50 gigs max ( right now could go up to a possible 200 gigs, it's a big maybe though) Blu has uncompressed PCM min bit rate that I've seen 4.6 MBPS max bit rate I've seen 6.9 MBPS

HD DVD 30 gigs max

Blu Ray has more studio support

[ryoohki]

Yeah more TrueHD on disc too. Sony is starting to support Foreign Language in TrueHD.. witch is nice...

[PLASMA-1080P-FULLHD]

and industry support as well. why just choose one CE compnay for HD (TOSHIBA) where u can choose from (SONY, PANASONIC, PIONEER, SHARP, SAMSUNG, PHILLPS, MITSUBISHI, JVC, LG ETC...) for ur blu-ray players

[JesusChrist!]

I Support Bluray!!!!!!!!!

[darkpoet25]

Lossless audio, copy proctection, scratch resistant discs, wider bandwith and higher capacity for overall better PQ/AQ, support from Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, Sharp, Denon, Marantz, Phillips(I think). The studio support: Fox, Lionsgate, MGM, Sony, Columbia, Disney, Buena Vista, Miramax, Starz, and now Warner and New Line. Possible soon to be support from Universal and Paramount, I'm guessing both will go nuetral before exclusive.

[wisper9999]

Originally Posted by PLASMA-1080P-FULLHD

and industry support as well. why just choose one CE compnay for HD (TOSHIBA) where u can choose from (SONY, PANASONIC, PIONEER, SHARP, SAMSUNG, PHILLPS, MITUBISHI, JVC, LG ETC...) for ur blu-ray players

Don't forget MARANTZ

[DetroitSportsFan]

You're going to be able to buy Blu in stores a year from now.

That makes it pretty superior to me.

[YouSmellLikeBeans]

Not sure if this will matter to you or not but im gonna say it anyway. My friend and I own both Bluray players (PS3's) and HD DVD add ons for our 360, ( I own 50 br discs and only about 11 HDDVD's and im seriously thinking about dumping all the HD DVD stuff on ebay pretty soon) but anyway, on new years ever he brought Terminator 3 over on HDDVD, i own the same movie on Blu Ray. He wanted to do a test to see which looks better. So we popped them both in and set the movie to the same scene and put it on pause. I then reset the color settings to factory defaults on all of my HDMI channels so both settings would be the same. We hit play and kept switching back and forth between the the HD version and the blu version, and quite honestly the blu verison had way better color quality than the HDDVD version. The hddvd colors didnt look natural at all, they had a weird washed out kind of look. The blu colors were very vivid.
Anyways, i probably could have made this post shorter but im bored. Hope you can use this as an example when you are trying to tell your family the difference.

[dallasjetfan]

What about movies that are neutral? Like We Are Marshall or anything else on both formats, is there a difference between BR and HD-DVD in PQ/AQ? I currently have a Panasonic 720p.

[ryoohki]

Originally Posted by dallasjetfan

What about movies that are neutral? Like We Are Marshall or anything else on both formats, is there a difference between BR and HD-DVD in PQ/AQ? I currently have a Panasonic 720p.

Nope WB use the same encode... at least for the next 5 month LOL!

[dallasjetfan]

Originally Posted by YouSmellLikeBeans

Not sure if this will matter to you or not but im gonna say it anyway. My friend and I own both Bluray players (PS3's) and HD DVD add ons for our 360, ( I own 50 br discs and only about 11 HDDVD's and im seriously thinking about dumping all the HD DVD stuff on ebay pretty soon) but anyway, on new years ever he brought Terminator 3 over on HDDVD, i own the same movie on Blu Ray. He wanted to do a test to see which looks better. So we popped them both in and set the movie to the same scene and put it on pause. I then reset the color settings to factory defaults on all of my HDMI channels so both settings would be the same. We hit play and kept switching back and forth between the the HD version and the blu version, and quite honestly the blu verison had way better color quality than the HDDVD version. The hddvd colors didnt look natural at all, they had a weird washed out kind of look. The blu colors were very vivid.
Anyways, i probably could have made this post shorter but im bored. Hope you can use this as an example when you are trying to tell your family the difference.

You must have been typing at the same time I was!!

[turboedguy]

Originally Posted by dallasjetfan

What about movies that are neutral? Like We Are Marshall or anything else on both formats, is there a difference between BR and HD-DVD in PQ/AQ? I currently have a Panasonic 720p.

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...ht=technically

[YouSmellLikeBeans]

Ha! Guess i was.

[Kayne314]

Seriously, the higher bitrate truly does make for a better image. I wasn't a believer at first when I saw just how good HD DVD movies look, but believe me when I say this. The more movies in Blu-Ray I purchased, the more I noticed the difference. The worst looking Blu-Ray title on the market looks just as good as the BEST HD DVD title.

The larger capacity makes for better audio as well. There is space enough to really lay on the audio depth on a BD, that just isn't possible on an HD DVD.

Special features also benefit from the extra space. No need to skimp on the extra goodies when there is space enough to pack it all in. Also, where special features on HD DVD are usually in standard def, most BD special features are in High Def ( not all, but most.)

Blu-Ray currently lacks the online capability that HD DVD had from the start. I'll give you that. But Blu-Ray is adding those features as we speak. The brilliant thing Blu-Ray did here, was not putting all it's eggs in one basket at launch. They left room to grow, so as the format becomes more widely accepted, more features can be introduced. HD DVD spent its wad on day one.

One final thing that is merely opinion. With Blu-Ray Disks having their information closer to the surface makes the laser pick-up easier, and it suffers from less refraction. Doing this ensures a better transfer of data. The maker of the HD DVD and Blu-Ray title Nature's Journey spoke to this "refraction issue" and how it makes data transfer less reliable. I'm not 100% on the technical mumbo jumbo, so I'll admit that it is my belief that having the information nearer the surface of the disk improves the data read. Hence better picture and audio.

[Elandyll]

Going more in details, Blu Ray has been conceived like the DVD format was (which is ironical, considering that Toshiba and Warner were the fathers of the DVD format), in the sense that it was made to be a whole new step for AV formats.

Blu Ray gathers far more companies and standard makers than HD DVD, with more than 170 companies involved in the Blu Ray Association (BDA).
When Philips, Sony and Matshushita<Panasonic-JVC> (between all of them, the inventors of the Audio CD format, VHS, and Betacam among other things) gather, you know you have the strongest AV companies in the world -period- behind the format.

Now the Blu Ray format has been designed (Laser technology created by Sony and IBM btw, "borrowed" by Toshiba for their offshoot format) to be evolutive, and absolutely intended to be a whole new step in the data formtas (beyond simply an upgrade of DVD to make a quick buck before dowloads show up).
Blu Ray stores 25Gb per layer vs 15Gb for HD DVD. While Toshiba strive to one of these days present a triple layer at 51Gb (that could be incompatible with existing players due to physical constraints for the players), Blu Ray has a 50Gb fornat since a year or more, and the 100Gb and 200Gb are being worked on (wouldn't surprise me to see the 100Gb at CES 2008, it was shown at CEDIA 2007).
The bitrate is a huge issue, often dismissed by HD DVD supporters.
Encoding a video / audio file is one thing, but you will stil need a pipe large enough to transit the file. That's the Bitrate/ Bandwidth.
Blu Ray has a joint (a/v) Bw superior to 40mb/s peak, while HD DVD, if I am not mistaken, peaks around 30mb/s. For image quality, and to have lossless/uncompressed audio, that is huge.

HD DVD launched first, with sub-par specs, but what they called "finished" spec, aka with PiP feature and the online capabilities. These were future plans to be developped for Blu Ray, and are coming to fruition now with the profiles 1.1 (several players out, and PS3 enabled since December) and 2.0 (online capacity) early this year.

For all that matters for movies (capacity, and pic/audio quality), Blu Ray has been superior since launch (if we except some small blunders for a few releases in Mpeg2). The very advanced AVC codec is now standard, even if the VC1 codec can also, on high bitrates, deliver good results.

Blu Ray provides what is needed on the basics (where HD DVD failed), and evolves (with backward compatibility - aka a 1.0 player will read a 2.0 authored disc, just won't show the bonuses).
Of course, Blu Ray can also show (upconverted) your good ol' DVDs on HD.

Last, Toshiba and Warner proved with the DVD format that what counts for "implantation" is content and studio support. The BDA learned this lesson well, and we are two studios away (Paramount and Universal) from 0 content on HD DVD.

Current situation:

HD DVD:
Paramount/Dreamworks (TF / Bourne series / Shrek -- Spielberg is not part of the deal, and M. Bay is staunchly pro Blu Ray)
Universal (Again, except Spielberg Movies)

Blu Ray:
Sony/Columbia: Spiderman
Warner: Batman, HP series
NewLine: LotR ?
MGM: Bond movies
Disney / Pixar: PotC, Narnia, Wal-E, Nemo...
Fox: Alien, Star Wars? (2010: Avatar, Next James Cameron)
Lionsgate Films: Saw...

Just to give you an idea

[Alan Gordon]

Originally Posted by dallasjetfan

What about movies that are neutral? Like We Are Marshall or anything else on both formats, is there a difference between BR and HD-DVD in PQ/AQ? I currently have a Panasonic 720p.

Currently, Warner Bros. encodes their movies for HD DVD, then ports them over to Blu-ray... so no difference should be seen on "We Are Marshall". It has been stated that Warner Bros. may start to play around with seperate encodes optomized for Blu-ray.

As far as AQ, some of WB's movies on HD DVD have lossless audio, but do not on Blu-ray. Thankfully, they've begun to offer lossless on all Blu-ray releases if HD DVD has it as well. Some previously released movies were short-changed though...

~Alan