What was the appeal of HD DVD? - Page 2 - Blu-ray Forum

atomik kinder · 02-23-2022, 04:45 PM

There were also claims that the failure rate for Blu-ray was very high since it had to manufactured on special machinery. I don't know it the failure rate was true. But HD-DVD supposedly could me manufactured on the same machines as DVDs.

There were Special Features that HD-DVD had that Blu-ray did not have since it was still a "work in progress" That was one of the big arguments from the HD-DVD camp. But Blu-ray could be updated and upgraded, where HD-DVD was stuck with their specs. 30gb capacity was their maximum and could not go higher. 15gb per layer.

Musashi · 02-23-2022, 07:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nissling

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

I want a source on that 'BD Authoiring is awful' claim. As mentioned, I heard nothing of the sort by any of the Blu-ray Insiders who frequented these boards.

Musashi · 02-23-2022, 07:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by atomik kinder

There were also claims that the failure rate for Blu-ray was very high since it had to manufactured on special machinery. I don't know it the failure rate was true. But HD-DVD supposedly could me manufactured on the same machines as DVDs.

Blu-ray failure rates dropped pretty quickly once a few dual layer movies came out. One failure rate that never went down much was those HD+DVD flipper discs.

Oh, and producing HD DVD on an existing DVD machine required an expensive upgrade.

PeterTHX · 02-24-2022, 08:05 PM

Well history has shown while there are isolated cases of BD rot, most - if not all - HD DVDs have since rotted into unplayability.

Also, it wasn't just a capacity question where BD was superior but also bandwidth. HD DVD was locked to 36Mbps and BD could go to 48Mbps. Once you started adding lossless audio at 24-bit, subtitles, and a PiP track the HD DVD bandwidth left very little for video so titles like Batman Begins were heavily filtered. I remember seeing a high bandwidth MPEG2 clip on a Samsung demo BD of the same film and it was much, much sharper (and not in an edge-enhanced way) with a lot more detail. Of course Warner's early practice of recycling the HD DVD video encodes onto BD made that moot.

Truth is, after their victory on DVD (with the Toshiba-backed SD disc beating the MMCD format backed by Sony/Philips) Toshiba got arrogant and tried to force their format on the marketplace thinking they'd win again and hoped Sony would back down. Except Sony had the backing of Pioneer, Matsushita, and Philips. Matsushita (Panasonic) actually had the majority of patents in the BD format. They were never going to support HD DVD. HD DVD did have the better interactive engine: HDi, which Disney supported and tried to get the consortium to adopt - but they went with Java instead. That in reality was HD DVD's only advantage over BD. In every other spec BD was better.

It's amazing how butthurt some people still are after all these years that the superior format won.

sfmarine · 02-24-2022, 08:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BiggusDickus

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 ...

Guilty of that as well!

That film was all the rage back then.

Anthony P · 02-26-2022, 03:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Musashi

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

first why would it matter?
second, no, combo players only appeared in 2007 https://www.ign.com/articles/2006/01...-hd-dvd-player

Quote:

Originally Posted by atomik kinder

There were also claims that the failure rate for Blu-ray was very high since it had to manufactured on special machinery. I don't know it the failure rate was true. But HD-DVD supposedly could me manufactured on the same machines as DVDs.

there was a lot of FUD going on back then.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Musashi

I want a source on that 'BD Authoiring is awful' claim. As mentioned, I heard nothing of the sort by any of the Blu-ray Insiders who frequented these boards.

I think what he means he likes HD DVD menus better then BD. Past that point, he definitely does not know what he is talking about, BD and HD DVD have the same simple menus For advanced menus (if someone wants to add them but not mandatory) BD had BD-J an offshoot of Java and HD DVD had iHD/HDi created by Microsoft. some combo players did not support iHD/HDi

AeroK · 02-27-2022, 05:35 PM

For me it was simply going to a Sam’s Club and seeing a Toshiba player and Transformers/300 disc bundle and wasting my Christmas money on it. I think a year later it became obvious I made the wrong decision. I went to a closing Circuit City and bought a bunch of discounted discs and a K-Mart and got the 360 player on clearance so I could get the free discs promo they were running. I can’t say much more about it other than I bought a new Blade Runner UCE briefcase for like $20 after the format was officially dead and swapped out the discs for the Blu-ray discs and saved some money piecing together the UCE instead of buying the Blu-Ray edition. And thanks to format dying and me trying to find anything to watch in-store, I discovered The Big Lebowski.

I still have both of my players, I use my Toshiba as a DVD player but I did find Letters from Iwo Jima sealed at a HPB not long ago. I blind bought it and will watch it at some point.

sfmarine · 02-27-2022, 07:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AeroK

I can’t say much more about it other than I bought a new Blade Runner UCE briefcase for like $20 after the format was officially dead and swapped out the discs for the Blu-ray discs and saved some money piecing together the UCE instead of buying the Blu-Ray edition.

I still have my BD briefcase. The release was quite epic and we really don't get collector's editions like that anymore.

AeroK · 02-28-2022, 10:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sfmarine

I still have my BD briefcase. The release was quite epic and we really don't get collector's editions like that anymore.

It looks nice on the shelf and the only differences I can tell from the editions are the slip which I didn’t keep and the numbered sticker on the bottom. I did the same thing with the Forbidden Planet HD-DVD UCE, just swapped out the disc for the BD and kept all the trinkets and tin case. That UCE from what I remember didn’t have a BD edition.

i95 · 07-09-2022, 02:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sfmarine

HD also had porn

porn has no say in anything, it has no value. It's a blip, the top sites are 100% free. Non of the higher end replicators will print it, sonopress, sony, technicolor, optical, discmakers.

plissken99 · 07-09-2022, 02:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by i95

porn has no say in anything, it has no value. It's a blip.

Completely incorrect.

https://www.businessinsider.com/how-...ech-2013-7?amp

i95 · 07-09-2022, 02:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by plissken99

Completely incorrect.

https://www.businessinsider.com/how-...ech-2013-7?amp

article written by a porn fan
porn pioneered streaming?

youtube/netflix made streaming what it is today
porn pioneered snapchat?

are you talking about teens sending noods to each other?
porn pioneered ecommerce? amazon did it better and on a more massive scale, why are all the top porn sites showing millions of videos for free? that's not eCommerce
porn shaped the home video market?

not the hollywood studios releasing catalog? not the home viewers time recording their fave soaps, family vacations and news?

porn has never been a big dog like this article states. It's not about who did it first, it's about who made it mainstream.
porn has never invented anything of any significance.
it was Hollywood studios who chose Blu-ray disc, no one (the movers and shakers in the content industry) gives a crap what the porn industry thinks.

plissken99 · 07-09-2022, 03:09 PM

Wow. That is simply too much ignorance and bad grammar to bother responding too.

take1leave1 · 10-06-2022, 01:39 AM

There was a point I bought 25 HD-DVDs of stuff I wanted on blu-ray, for about $75 total. Interesting memories. Can't recall what ended up happening to those.

Cheeks24 · 12-19-2022, 01:32 AM

Yeah, even back in 2007 I knew BD was going to come out on top.

Moviefan2k4 · 12-20-2022, 12:55 AM

I don't remember the specifics of the so-called "format war", beyond there being two options and each one vying for supremacy. I waited a full two years after Blu-Ray won that war though, just in case another option came along to disrupt it. I bought my first Blu-Ray movie in 2010, and haven't looked back since.

Warm Gun · 08-12-2023, 12:01 AM

The better name. Everyone knows what a DVD. Digital Versatile/Video Disc just makes sense. Blu-rays? Many people call those DVDs, lol. Ask normal people what the blue ray (the laser) is.

Should have been:

DVD > HD-DVD > Ultra-DVD

Samus Aran · 08-17-2023, 01:44 AM

Tropic Thunder had a scene about Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD that suggested porn would be the deciding factor, ignoring the whole high speed internet and home computers part.

meremortal · 08-23-2023, 04:45 AM

Hd dvd was probably the less problematic format out the gate as far as discs are concerned. But I recall players being a bit faulty, slow loading and sometimes requiring constant firmware updates. But cheaper players is a good starting point. From what I recall on launch, the first hd dvd player was $499 and the first blu player was around $999. The PS3 was around $599. All of these options were extremely expensive at the time. The Xbox hd dvd add-on got discounted as low as around $99, but it might've been towards the end of the run.

As for perks, hd dvd was like rooting for the underdog and at the time industry insiders were among the more vocal cheerleaders online who talked a big game and always promising surprises around the corner. Locally, this was long ago when physical media was still healthy enough to the point where you could probably find the entire catalog of both formats on the shelves of Best Buy for at least a couple years or so. But I tended to notice way more used hd dvds around town; the game stores like Game Stop and KB tended to be where to try to find them.

The writing was probably on the wall against hd dvd from the beginning and drama on another home theater forum was constant chatter with speculation and conspiracies. There was the occasional curveball like Paramount being exclusive to hd dvd for a few months, but otherwise everything was probably wishful thinking. Hd dvd was still lacking the big studios like Disney, Sony and Fox.

Hd dvd never did get the 51gb discs and was pretty much gridlocked into either 25gb or 30gb discs. Too many releases used DD+ instead of TrueHD. DD+ was usually around 1.5mbps and over double the core DD of blu, but I recall far more blus having hd audio in that window of time. Once Sony launched 50gb discs, hd dvd seemed too compressed. Initial blunders like MPEG-2 video and LPCM audio on a 25gb disc were replaced with more efficient codecs and blu started really shining.

In retrospect, the format war days were a total clown show by both the major companies and early adopters. Outside of forum nerds, the general public was really confused and average people don't keep track of studio ownership of movies outside of maybe Disney/Pixar, etc. I'd say in the end the right format 'won' and most of my old hd dvds ended up not working. Those last few months of the 'war' felt like an eternity and it seemed like Toshiba were too stubborn to throw in the towel.

Trekkie313 · 08-23-2023, 05:01 AM

Didn't HD-DVD go way harder on the internet connectivity features or did early contemporary titles just go nuts on both formats?

07-09-2022, 03:09 PM	#33
plissken99 Blu-ray Guru Member since:Mar 2007 Location:Colorado Springs Trading Score:6	Wow. That is simply too much ignorance and bad grammar to bother responding too. Last edited by plissken99; 07-09-2022 at 03:20 PM.

08-23-2023, 04:45 AM	#39
meremortal Blu-ray Champion Member since:Jan 2012 Location:Bedford Falls Trading Score:258	Hd dvd was probably the less problematic format out the gate as far as discs are concerned. But I recall players being a bit faulty, slow loading and sometimes requiring constant firmware updates. But cheaper players is a good starting point. From what I recall on launch, the first hd dvd player was $499 and the first blu player was around $999. The PS3 was around $599. All of these options were extremely expensive at the time. The Xbox hd dvd add-on got discounted as low as around $99, but it might've been towards the end of the run. As for perks, hd dvd was like rooting for the underdog and at the time industry insiders were among the more vocal cheerleaders online who talked a big game and always promising surprises around the corner. Locally, this was long ago when physical media was still healthy enough to the point where you could probably find the entire catalog of both formats on the shelves of Best Buy for at least a couple years or so. But I tended to notice way more used hd dvds around town; the game stores like Game Stop and KB tended to be where to try to find them. The writing was probably on the wall against hd dvd from the beginning and drama on another home theater forum was constant chatter with speculation and conspiracies. There was the occasional curveball like Paramount being exclusive to hd dvd for a few months, but otherwise everything was probably wishful thinking. Hd dvd was still lacking the big studios like Disney, Sony and Fox. Hd dvd never did get the 51gb discs and was pretty much gridlocked into either 25gb or 30gb discs. Too many releases used DD+ instead of TrueHD. DD+ was usually around 1.5mbps and over double the core DD of blu, but I recall far more blus having hd audio in that window of time. Once Sony launched 50gb discs, hd dvd seemed too compressed. Initial blunders like MPEG-2 video and LPCM audio on a 25gb disc were replaced with more efficient codecs and blu started really shining. In retrospect, the format war days were a total clown show by both the major companies and early adopters. Outside of forum nerds, the general public was really confused and average people don't keep track of studio ownership of movies outside of maybe Disney/Pixar, etc. I'd say in the end the right format 'won' and most of my old hd dvds ended up not working. Those last few months of the 'war' felt like an eternity and it seemed like Toshiba were too stubborn to throw in the towel. Last edited by meremortal; 08-23-2023 at 04:59 AM.

02-23-2022, 04:45 PM	#21
atomik kinder Blu-ray Samurai Member since:Jun 2007 Location:Omaha NE 4K collection:- Blu-ray collection:- DVD collection:-	There were also claims that the failure rate for Blu-ray was very high since it had to manufactured on special machinery. I don't know it the failure rate was true. But HD-DVD supposedly could me manufactured on the same machines as DVDs. There were Special Features that HD-DVD had that Blu-ray did not have since it was still a "work in progress" That was one of the big arguments from the HD-DVD camp. But Blu-ray could be updated and upgraded, where HD-DVD was stuck with their specs. 30gb capacity was their maximum and could not go higher. 15gb per layer.

02-24-2022, 08:05 PM	#24
PeterTHX Banned Top contributor Member since:Sep 2006 Blu-ray collection:563 Trading Score:14	Well history has shown while there are isolated cases of BD rot, most - if not all - HD DVDs have since rotted into unplayability. Also, it wasn't just a capacity question where BD was superior but also bandwidth. HD DVD was locked to 36Mbps and BD could go to 48Mbps. Once you started adding lossless audio at 24-bit, subtitles, and a PiP track the HD DVD bandwidth left very little for video so titles like Batman Begins were heavily filtered. I remember seeing a high bandwidth MPEG2 clip on a Samsung demo BD of the same film and it was much, much sharper (and not in an edge-enhanced way) with a lot more detail. Of course Warner's early practice of recycling the HD DVD video encodes onto BD made that moot. Truth is, after their victory on DVD (with the Toshiba-backed SD disc beating the MMCD format backed by Sony/Philips) Toshiba got arrogant and tried to force their format on the marketplace thinking they'd win again and hoped Sony would back down. Except Sony had the backing of Pioneer, Matsushita, and Philips. Matsushita (Panasonic) actually had the majority of patents in the BD format. They were never going to support HD DVD. HD DVD did have the better interactive engine: HDi, which Disney supported and tried to get the consortium to adopt - but they went with Java instead. That in reality was HD DVD's only advantage over BD. In every other spec BD was better. It's amazing how butthurt some people still are after all these years that the superior format won.

02-27-2022, 05:35 PM	#27
AeroK Blu-ray Samurai Member since:Dec 2009 Location:DFW TX 4K collection:106 Blu-ray collection:1178 DVD collection:168 Digital collection:771 Trading Score:3	For me it was simply going to a Sam’s Club and seeing a Toshiba player and Transformers/300 disc bundle and wasting my Christmas money on it. I think a year later it became obvious I made the wrong decision. I went to a closing Circuit City and bought a bunch of discounted discs and a K-Mart and got the 360 player on clearance so I could get the free discs promo they were running. I can’t say much more about it other than I bought a new Blade Runner UCE briefcase for like $20 after the format was officially dead and swapped out the discs for the Blu-ray discs and saved some money piecing together the UCE instead of buying the Blu-Ray edition. And thanks to format dying and me trying to find anything to watch in-store, I discovered The Big Lebowski. I still have both of my players, I use my Toshiba as a DVD player but I did find Letters from Iwo Jima sealed at a HPB not long ago. I blind bought it and will watch it at some point.

10-06-2022, 01:39 AM	#34
take1leave1 Active Member Top contributor Member since:Sep 2022 Trading Score:5	There was a point I bought 25 HD-DVDs of stuff I wanted on blu-ray, for about $75 total. Interesting memories. Can't recall what ended up happening to those.

12-19-2022, 01:32 AM	#35
Cheeks24 Active Member Top contributor Member since:Jul 2008 Location:Northern Hemisphere, Earth Home Theater Gallery:1 4K collection:5 Blu-ray collection:245 DVD collection:4 Blu-ray reviews:1	Yeah, even back in 2007 I knew BD was going to come out on top.

12-20-2022, 12:55 AM	#36
Moviefan2k4 Banned Member since:Mar 2010 Location:Montgomery, TX 4K collection:44 Blu-ray collection:317 Blu-ray reviews:5 Trading Score:2	I don't remember the specifics of the so-called "format war", beyond there being two options and each one vying for supremacy. I waited a full two years after Blu-Ray won that war though, just in case another option came along to disrupt it. I bought my first Blu-Ray movie in 2010, and haven't looked back since.

08-12-2023, 12:01 AM	#37
Warm Gun Blu-ray Ninja Member since:Dec 2020 4K collection:127 Blu-ray collection:653 DVD collection:103 Digital collection:2 Trading Score:10	The better name. Everyone knows what a DVD. Digital Versatile/Video Disc just makes sense. Blu-rays? Many people call those DVDs, lol. Ask normal people what the blue ray (the laser) is. Should have been: DVD > HD-DVD > Ultra-DVD

08-17-2023, 01:44 AM	#38
Samus Aran Blu-ray Baron Top contributor Member since:Jun 2010 Location:USA Home Theater Gallery:11 4K collection:14 Blu-ray collection:49 Trading Score:195	Tropic Thunder had a scene about Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD that suggested porn would be the deciding factor, ignoring the whole high speed internet and home computers part.

08-23-2023, 05:01 AM	#40
Trekkie313 Blu-ray Baron Top contributor Member since:Nov 2010 Location:Ohio Home Theater Gallery:2 4K collection:206 Blu-ray collection:1650 DVD collection:547 Digital collection:156 Blu-ray reviews: 5 Trading Score:59	Didn't HD-DVD go way harder on the internet connectivity features or did early contemporary titles just go nuts on both formats?

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