Comments on: HD DVD? Blu-ray? None of the above, for now.

By: Stef

Stef — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 08:13:33 +0000

Have you been following me across internetland and reading my posts from yesterday then writing them in here?

I raised this only yesterday. I don’t care if BluRay is better then HDDVD, or HDVDD better then BlueRay. I just don’t want “VHS vs Beta 2: The Rematch” I just want one ’standard’

I was expecting the HD releases of Trek (and upcoming releases of Next Generation) to put HD ahead of BluRay. Considering the lacklustre sales of PS3, Microsoft SHOULD have made the Xbox Ultimate with an HDDVD player. They could have buried the PS3 and BluRay in one fell swoop. But instead they decided to follow the Rolling Stones and paint it black instead.

“Until there’s a clear winner, why should we waste our money or time?” A semi-valid point, which many people believe.

But “Tomorrow never comes”.

There is never going to be a clear winner. Even as VHS was being phased out in favour of DVD, people were saying they were going to wait for HD/BluRay rather then update their collections. The HD/BluRay roll-out took a little longer then expected, but it is getting there…

… just in time to be eclipsed by the 1TB disc:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/scientists-terabytes-DVD,news-26214.html

By the time the studios take up 1TB discs (Films with no compression and no layer-change-pause, 400 commentary tracks from the catering staff, and the guy that swept up the studio when the actors had gone home,and the baby sitter that worked for the 3 assistant researcher to the 3rd assistant cameraman’s assistant:

“Oh my God! Like, I was totally looking after the baby on the day they filmed this!! My god doesn’t she like totally look great in the dress? I saw her in real life and she’s like really fat, and I told her that she’s like really fat, and she’s like ‘Whatever, talk to the hand’ she just couldn’t accept that she’s like totally fat.”

I really can’t wait for all the filler they are going to put on the storage.

Whatever happened to MiniDisc? Eclipsed by CD and iPod before it really got going.

By: Stef

Stef — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 08:15:41 +0000

I really should proof read for typos before I submit.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 11:15:35 +0000

I would agree investing in any HD-DVD player would be a bit fool-some whilst there is still no clear standard…however there isn’t quite that risk with BluRay if you buy a PS3 to play them. If BR does fail as the standard film format, at least PS3 games will still use BR for games (just as Nintendo still used carts in generations past), so you won’t be left with a useless piece of hardware.

For the record, my money is on the two becoming an amalgamated format with dual players…its already heading that way anyway.

By: chris

chris — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 18:11:44 +0000

i thought blockbuster announced it would support blu-ray over hddvd, not the other way around as per your article.

By: Jamahl Epsicokhan

Jamahl Epsicokhan — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 18:37:15 +0000

^ Yes. That’s what I meant. I typed it wrong. It’s fixed now.

By: Bryan K

Bryan K — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 00:48:46 +0000

Well, given the topic, I feel like posting the AACS key here — but since that may end up causing a couple of semi-serious threats against Jammer by the AACS crazies, I don’t think it’d be a good idea.

So instead, I’ll just say: “Boo to any standard with DRM included!” That goes for both BluRay and HD-DVD. (But then, so far I’ve only ever bought a couple DVDs, too. Partly that was for the same anti-DRM reason — CSS is annoying, and I’m probably watching them illegally every time I do watch them; thanks, DMCA — but mostly it was because I just don’t care enough to actually go buy any.)

By: Joseph B

Joseph B — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 23:13:08 +0000

Don’t forget that all of these “next gen” players will also play and upconvert standard DVD to 1080i over HDMI connections - so there’s no real need to replace your current DVD library. And with the new HD-DVD decks approaching the magic $199 price point, I think some consumers with large HDTV and/or front projector systems will consider purchasing one just to make their existing DVD library look better on their display. (Granted, there are HDMI upconverting DVD decks available, but the HD-DVD decks generally do a better job of upconverting for some reason.)

And if you don’t want to take a chance on purchasing a HD-DVD disc (since they could be coasters in two years) you could just *rent* what you wanted to view from Netflix.

It sure is a *shame* about the format war, though: If there had been just one HD format that was also backward compatible with standard DVD, then most consumers purchasing new HD equipment would have also purchased the new HD optical deck as well. It would have been a “no brainer”, so to speak …