hd-dvd or blue ray?

I'm certainly waiting to see which one wins before splashing out any more money on a new player. My guess is we will start to see them next year. The Sony Play Station 3 will be out next year (around may I think) and it will be equipped with blu-ray.

We are going to have see how long movies take to start coming out on them and if they are of high enough quality to force people over from DVD.

Also I'm worried that they are going to do thier usual trick of sticking an extra 30% onto the price over DVD which may well keep some away, especially as if on many TV's you won't be able to tell the difference in picture quality.

As I've said else where, I simply don't think that either one will take off. Most consumers have just got done with the switch from vhs to dvd. Though that was slow to start, the reason it took off was that it offered a quantum leap from vhs (approximately double the resolution, non of the annoying wear and tear issues, an end to tracking problems, no need to rewind tapes).

Both HD-DVD and blu-ray are more incremental, it's a case of well, the picture is sharper. But, for most people (especially given you'll need a new tv to take advantage), I just don't see it happening, for much the same reason as dvd-a or sacd haven't really happened.


regards,

Tam

Not sure if it's important or not, but Microsoft and Intel recently announced they will be supporting HD-DVD exclusively and natively. I'm sure someone, perhaps Sony themselves, will introduce a plug-in etc but I think this means that HD-DVD should be the predominate format initially.

Of course we'll have to wait and see.

Re Microsoft and intel - agreed, but then again, a number of the studios who were exclusively HD-DVD have now joined the bluray camp - universal is now the ONLY movie studio/group sticking exclusively with HD-DVD.

Apple are behind bluray, and the playstation 3 when it arrives next year will have bluray, AND SACD...

I guess the battle ain't over yet...

Cheers

Best Regards

John..

If there is going to be a winner, the one that comes out on top, will be the one that can somehow associate itself with HiDef TV. As that is going to happen regardless, I'd have thought the clever marketing people would latch on asap. If not, goodbye.

...and Universal now says they will support both.

The large media conglomerates will support any format that is copy-protected that they can make money off of quickly, regardless of volume.

From a DVD-authoring perspective, however, the welcome additional storage of both Blu-ray and HD-DVD is meaningless (from a quality perspective) without significantly increased transfer rate off the disc itself, which is the sole limiting factor with regard to real-time picture (and soundtrack) quality.

quote:

Originally posted by mozzer:
Should we worry? Do we care? is this the end of my brand new DVD5?

Only if a £300 Blue Ray equipped Playstation 3 blows it into the weeds!

I'll wait until naim brings one out and then decide if it's for me.