I am so confused... please help! Blu-ray or HD DVD?

[kalby8]

I am just about ready to purchase a unit - either Blu ray or HD DVD. I am so confused - please help. I saw a HD DVD presentation that was awesome - and my friend swears that Blu Ray is not as good while I hear others tell me that Blu Ray is the answer.

Please helpme make up my mind!

[Pilam69]

I doubt you'll find anyone here who will tell you to buy a HD DVD player. Certainly not me.

Blu-Ray stores more information on a single disc than HD DVD. How can HD DVD be better when it can't store the same amount of information? Everything else being equal, the more information you can store the better the quality you can get out of it.

Blu is beautiful!!

[Blu-Ray Buckeye]

Far more studios are exclusive to blu-ray, especially when you look at new releases. Every major blockbuster this year is pretty much exclusive to blu-ray.

[Deciazulado]

Disney/Columbia TriStar Sony/MGM/Fox/LionsGate/Anchor-Bay Starz and some others films are exclusive to Blu-ray

Universal and Weinstein films are exclusive to HD DVD

Warner and Paramount publish in both

There are more CE companies making Blu-ray players too (Panasonic, Phillips, Pioneer, Samsung, Sony, etc)

HD DVD players are by Toshiba, and the xBox add on

[Valore]

Just a side not about information storage...A lot of the studios who support both formats release their movies with the same specs. In other words...since an HD DVD holds half of what a Blu-Ray can, we truBLU supporters are forced to suffer with a "dulled" down version of a film because if we were to enjoy a movie to its full potentional, it would never make it to HD DVD.

[Rup_Muk]

What Buckeye said.^^

Besides, you'd be able to upscale movies that are (currently) HD-DVD exclusive - until the studios all turn blu .

Rup.

[theknub]

kalby, so much to say, so little time

quick summarization:
blu-ray has greater studio support
greater ce support
more bandwidth
more stoarge
java functionality


hd-dvd has a mandatory ethernet port
1 exclusive studio
1 ce manufacturer
uses ihd

read around the boards a bit and you should have a good idea of what's going on. if you have anything specific to ask, go for it.

[theknub]

Originally Posted by Valore

Just a side not about information storage...A lot of the studios who support both formats release their movies with the same specs. In other words...since an HD DVD holds half of what a Blu-Ray can, we truBLU supporters are forced to suffer with a "dulled" down version of a film because if we were to enjoy a movie to its full potentional, it would never make it to HD DVD.

not quite. paramount has been doing separate video encodes since day 1 while offering the same audio (bitrate wise, codecs were different). warner has just started using different audio tracks however the video remains the same.

[Blus Brother]

I am completely pro Blu Ray which is outselling HD DVD 2-1 in title sales, plus everything mentioned above - but if you are unsure they do now have a dual format player(not sure which manufacturer off the top of my head). I am sure someone on this site knows though.

[theknub]

the dual format player has been out for al ong time and unit sales have been miserable (and is a low end CE company, at least IMO). it is made by LG

[GoldenRedux]

It's pretty much all been covered in his thread, but here is something else to put it all into perspective. First I'll just go over the talking points:

Blu-ray has greater disc capacity. 25GB discs vs. 15 GB discs or dual layer 50GB discs vs. dual layer 30GB discs. Blu-ray also has greater bandwidth 40Mb/s for the video alone and 8Mb/s for the audio alone vs. a little over 30Mb/s COMBINED for the audio and video for HD-DVD. Regardless of what some HD-DVD supporters may tell you, this limited capacity and bandwidth can have a negative effect on picture quality and sound quality, especially with longer movies such as Lord of the Rings Extended Editions, etc. Also, who knows what things may come down the road that can take advantage of the the extra space and bandwidth Blu-ray has to offer?

Now, the real killer. These are all titles from studios exclusive to Blu-ray (some of them have already been released on Blu-ray):

Die Hard Quadrilogy
James Bond
Finding Nemo
Cars
Ratatouille
The Simpsons
24
Lost
FireFly
The X-Files
Prison Break
Spider Man Trilogy
Pirates of the Caribbean Trilogy
Fantastic Four
Surf's Up
Lawrence of Arabia
Toy Story
Sleeping Beauty
Cinderella
Fantasia
Wargames
Halloween
Planet of the Apes (original and remake)
The Poseidon Adventure
Night at the Museum
X-Men
Ice Age
The Pursuit of Happyness
Borat
The Devil Wears Prada
Open Season
Gone with the Wind
Rain Man
The Incredibles
The Lion King
The Sixth Sense
Monsters, Inc.
Ghostbusters
The Da Vinci Code
Men in Black
Tootsie
Crash
Hostel
Fahrenheit 9/11
Saw
Day of the Dead
Dawn of the Dead
Full Metal Alchemist

[nhaase]

Check this thread if you want to see the trend of Blu-ray sales vs. HD DVD sales: https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...019#post137019

Those numbers are Nielson numbers, just dry numbers, not altered in any way. To give you the gist of it, Blu-ray is currently outselling HD DVD by a 2:1 margin, and it has at least held that margin every month of the year. Despite the fact that HD DVD debuted two months before blu-ray, Blu-ray also leads in number of discs sold since debut, by a 60/40 margin now.

Also, every PS3 has a blu-ray drive, so there are a few million blu-ray players out there, but not everyone uses the PS3 for Blu-ray movies. Still, you have those players in home, so if those people get an HDTV, they're set. There are only about 300,000 total HD DVD players, so the amount of BD players in homes is staggering when compared to HD DVD.

One thing to reiterate from other posts: studio support. The only movies you can't get on BD are newer Weinstein movies and Universal movies. The movies which you cannot get on HD DVD are movies from Sony, Fox, MGM, Disney (including Buena Vista and Touchstone). Do you like Casino Royale, Pirates of the Caribbean, Spiderman, Die Hard, The Simpsons, and Fantastic Four? All of those big titles are only available on Blu-ray.

Thus far this year, of the top 10 grossing movies, 9 will be on blu-ray, 5 are exclusive to blu-ray, and only 1 is exclusive to HD DVD. So this fall those movies will be hitting blu-ray, and the biggest ones (Spiderman, Pirates), will only be on Blu-ray.

[Blu-dock Saint]

Your friend may have been talking about the first releases on blu-ray which can't even compare to the PQ that blu-ray movies have now.

[nhaase]

With this being an investment in which you don't want to choose the wrong side, read this: http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articl...oap060107.html

It is a very well-written article from a DVD guru about why he picked Blu-ray as the better of the two formats. He was spurred to write this because someone wrote why they picked HD DVD (he links to that story, then picks apart the inaccuracies in it).

[The Don]

everything has been covered here....somebody close this thread

[gand41f]

Originally Posted by The Don

everything has been covered here....somebody close this thread

Or better yet, sticky it with all the standard answers.

enjoy
gandalf

[The Don]

Originally Posted by gand41f

Or better yet, sticky it with all the standard answers.

enjoy
gandalf

bah...you and your better ideas need to go somewhere...

[KenO]

Blu-ray Discs will be around for a long time because the Playstation 3 plays Blu-ray Discs and it will not disappear anytime soon. There are a lot more Blu-ray Disc players out there than HD-DVD players because of this little fact.

The PS3 also has other features like being able to copy your CDs onto it and play them whenever you want and being able to copy your digital pictures to it and watch them on your TV in a slideshow.

[GasCat]

What is causing the confusion? I know you are torn but what concerns do you have?

[The Don]

Originally Posted by GasCat

What is causing the confusion? I know you are torn but what concerns do you have?

he just wants to be further convinced.....and he came to the right place...

imagine all the people going to the wrong place