Warner dropping HD-DVD, moving to Blu-ray exclusively

[ampersand]

See, I thought what will decide whether or not HD-DVD or Blu-ray would win out wasn't the companies like Warner, but all of those porn companies.

Anyway, it's all moot when direct downloading from your computer become the fad. It's becoming that way already in the Music Industry, where CD is on its last leg, or so I hear. I wouldn't be surprised if before too long, you'll have more memory in your future cell phones than you would in today's computers.

[StruckingFuggle]

*hiss* I have a half-irrational-hate for and half-VERYSTRONG-preference against streaming media and downloads the way they're structured now (that part has reasons for it, too). Sad sight, sad sight.

[BtEO]

Fuggle:

HD-DVD is region free and the format was finalised a long time ago. Meaning that all players currently available should support everything HD-DVD has to offer.

Blu-ray was released as an unfinished profile 1.0, most players available now are only profile 1.1; Only Blu-ray profile 2.0 players (of which there are currently few, and despite most players supporting firmware upgrades few 1.x devices besides the PS3 will have the hardware needed for 2.0) will be able to match the level of interactive content provided by all HD-DVD players, I'm not even sure if 2.0 discs will be playable in a cut-down form on 1.x players. And Blu-ray has region coding.

[Brian]

There's a lot of detail that's hard to go into here as to format preference and details. If you want to read a lot of specs, Wikipedia is your friend. Here's a few thoughts -- I'm not an expert or anything, but have been reading up on and following the HD format war for probably the last 9-10 months.

I'm actively cutting down my post, because the lovely new phpBB3 keeps alerting me as to new posts here covering stuff I'd already written (like the region and format stuff BtEO just posted) but hadn't posted myself yet, so I keep editing this thing. Someday maybe I'll get to post it without being ninja'd, but I will say I like that it at least alerts me to it so I don't post as big of a wall of text.

Another small win for HD DVD, IMO, is that the HD DVD media is basically the same as normal DVD media, whereas Blu-ray discs keep their data a lot closer to the surface of the disk, making them more susceptible to scratches being destructive and non-reparable. Not a big deal, but hey.

HD DVD hardware has consistently been cheaper than Blu-ray, even if Blu-ray burners are more common right now.

I really don't like the idea of BD-Java, personally, although I can't justify it outside of my general disdain for Java.

I went with HD DVD because at the time of my decision, it looked close and HD DVD seemed to have an edge. However, Blu-ray sales have consistently won out over time, and it's really looking like HD DVD has pretty much lost the battle.

I'm excited about the prospect of direct download, but it's still going to be awhile before that really takes a solid hold. It's the future, but we're not there yet. From personal experience, it seems that the average film in 720p downloads at around 5.25GB. That'd make a 1080p film come in at about 12GB -- that's a lot of stuff to try and stream or download quickly. However, that's just the film. The whole extras bit is a big deal to a lot of fans, and there's no real solid answers yet as to how that'll work in downloads. We're getting there, but it's going to be awhile before optical media is out the door.

[Deacon]

EDIT: Um, yeah, what they said. I guess I'll leave my post here for reference anyway.

PS Brian makes a number of good points in addition to those I'd thought of.

Fuggle, there are a number of personal preference things between HD-DVD and Blu-ray, but a few quick things that suck about Blu-ray compared to HD-DVD are:

1) HD-DVD is region-free. If an HD-DVD is released in Japan, for instance, you should be able to view it on a US player without issue. Blu-ray carries on the senseless and obsolete idea of region encoding.
2) Blu-ray still does not support a number of features HD-DVD has always offered, such as multiple concurrent video streams which allow for dynamic picture-in-picture style commentaries and extras and such. The closest thing Blu-ray has to offer is a whole separate copy of the movie on the same disc but with modified video (kind of like a fan-subbed AVI where the subtitles can't be disabled).
3) It's Sony. Sony's even harder-headed than Microsoft, and its anachronistic, feudal-lord business practices and dealings with potential partners do not benefit the consumer.
4) It's Sony. As should be a surprise to no one, consumer-crippling DRM is buried balls-deep in Blu-ray. In fact, one of the major reasons Sony split from the HD-DVD camp is they didn't feel HD-DVD's already draconian protection schemes didn't go far enough. That's why you had things like Rise of the Silver Surfer and Day After Tomorrow unable to play in some Blu-ray players. People who bought the movie and found that they weren't able to sit down and watch it in their home theater were told tough titty, that they'd just have to wait till Samsung and LG released firmware updates to support ever more complicated protection schemes, and the end-user/consumer would be responsible for figuring all this out and installing it if the updates were ever released, and if they didn't like it, they could go right to hell.
5) It's less economical. The only reason Blu-ray movies aren't still all at $35 and up is purely because of HD-DVD's much more economically viable (and therefore price-competitive) solution. Because HD-DVD required relatively little retooling of factories (as compared to completely trashing the old production lines like with Blu-ray), the player hardware and media are both easier and cheaper to manufacture and more abundantly available than Blu-ray. This is also why HD-DVD players debuted several months before Blu-ray players at $500 while Blu-ray players were $1000 when they finally hit the shelves. This is also a big reason why the PS3 is so expensive--and even then Sony is still losing money on each unit sold. And, of course, this pricing trend continues. My dad got my Toshiba HD-DVD player on sale for $99 in October.
6) While this doesn't really mean much to me personally, it still bears consideration that due to all these reasons and more, the porn industry went exclusively HD-DVD.

[amlthrawn]

I recall reading an article some time back that made a pretty convincing argument around the premise of the adult entertainment industry being the primary driver for innovation in leisure and entertainment technology. There are significant cobwebs in my memory, but if I remember correctly the examples they gave included the choice of VHS over betamax.

Jackie Treehorn and his ilk have clout.

[Deacon]

Yes, that is true.

[raptor9k]

Meh, I got out of the media wars long ago. I don't really have a need for them any longer. I won't be buying HD-DVD or Blue-Ray for a very long time.

[adciv]

I recall reading an article some time back that made a pretty convincing argument around the premise of the adult entertainment industry being the primary driver for innovation in leisure and entertainment technology. There are significant cobwebs in my memory, but if I remember correctly the examples they gave included the choice of VHS over betamax.

Sony refused to license out betamax and kept all tape creation in house. VHS was licensed up the wazoo and, as a side effect, became much cheaper to use than betamax. Price really had little to do with it.

Dvd, on the other hand... Well, as I understand it, of the first 100 titles out on DVD, 99 were porn and the other was a Disney movie.

[Felan]

Mmmmmm...Pr0n in 1080p? >.>

[adciv]

No, you wouldn't like it. All the imperfections come out in High-Def. The world is best viewed slightly out of focus, like with 480.

[ampersand]

Is it just me, or is there something wrong with Hi-Def being more crystal clear than your own 20/20 eyesight?

[adciv]

20-20 is somewhere in the 18000 line range. HD is only 1000 line.

[Deacon]

Hmmm...

Toshiba to give up on HD DVD, end format war
Wal-Mart picks Blu-ray over HD DVD

[JermCool]

Looks like Blu-Ray is teh winnar.

Especially since I can't stop shopping at Wal-Mart. I'm cheap. What can I say?