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Author	Topic: Bye bye Blu-ray... HD DVD looks like the winner.

scoreguy16 Standard Userer	quote: Originally posted by Shaun Rutherford: Jesus, Clayton. Paragraph breaks, first of all. Secondly, if I had something that worked 3% of the time, I would probably use my warranty to get one that worked at least 5-100% of the time. Or are you keeping the player just so you can complain about it? Shaun Actually I had it exchanged at Best Buy, still comes out with the same issues but Toshiba is kind enough to continue to release firmware upgrades. Perhaps someday, they will release one to help the player work properly... perhaps not. The reason I keep it is because on Friday nights for the past 6 years we have people over to watch movies. I actually use the HD-DVD to play trailer discs. As you can tell, I actually don't buy HD-DVD's anymore. I quit earlier this year when I bought Happy Feet (for the Dolby TrueHD track) and the disc continues to freeze in the same spot (even when it's exchanced). I'll go back and edit my original post to include paragraph breaks just for you Shaun to make my points (and facts) a little more obvious.
posted 08-21-2007 03:11 PM PT (US)

PeterK FishChip	Um, Paramount is flip-flopping... and now with WB going for blue, Blu-ray will win! At least there will be a winner eventually, and all that makes HDDVD a better experience like menu systems, can be introduced into Blu-ray. But a winner better come soon... HD downloads may be heating up in the pipeline if a fiber optic network can make it into people's homes. What say you? Should we get into fights again over this? ::::PUNCH:::: <<<duck>>>> !!!!WHAMiiii
posted 01-11-2008 04:34 PM PT (US)

scoreguy16 Standard Userer	lol I was going to bring this up again but decided not to. As for the menu comments, the menus are basically the exact same. The only thing that's different is the HDi and BD Java. Basically what that boils down to is the in-movie stuff. I personally don't think that's a big deal, but now Blu-Ray does it to. You just have to have a Profile 1.1/2.0 compliant player, which the PS3 is so I am in luck! But what about non-profile compliant players you say?! Well it's just you can't watch the in movie features. Not exactly a huge loss there as you can still watch all the other features and the movie itself. Personally, even though I own both HD DVD and Blu-Ray, I am very, VERY happy WB went Blu-Ray. And now with Paramounts contract being void supposedly, hopefully they'll follow in the same footsteps. And Universal and Toshiba better get their heads right because there's no way they can survive. And anyone willing to buy into HD DVD at this time is an idiot... How many movies can these 2 studios possibly release? They'd each have to release 2-4 movies per week in order to keep up. Pretty sad... But now people can pretty much buy one of these formats (Blu-Ray) and be safe in doing so. But if Toshiba and Universal (who's contract with HD DVD has supposedly also expired) don't raise a white flag soon, retailers are going to have to do it for them and that wont look to good for them. The places I shop (Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Target) are all already shifting shelf space to Blu-Ray. As for downloads, I think of them the same way I think of downloading music. I hate it. I dont think anyone (aside from Microsoft) really wants it. Like I've been saying, people want a physical product. People enjoy opening their physical product. Plus, if people blind buy a download and hate it, how are they supposed to sell it? And what happens if the hard drive they're saved on gets fried? Wow that would suck! Or getting a virus and losing every single movie you've ever owned... Whew. No thank you...
posted 01-12-2008 11:44 AM PT (US)

NeoVoyager Standard Userer	Ya know, this format war is like the 21st century equivalent of horse races. It was pretty fun while it lasted. I always wanted Blu-Ray to win, and I predicted they would... in time. Thank goodness it's happened so soon.
posted 01-12-2008 11:50 AM PT (US)

nuts_score Standard Userer	Sorry, I have an upconverted DVD player and I'll be buying DVDs until they stop making them. If it ain't broke, no need to fix it, eh?
posted 01-12-2008 12:14 PM PT (US)

scoreguy16 Standard Userer	quote: Originally posted by nuts_score: Sorry, I have an upconverted DVD player and I'll be buying DVDs until they stop making them. If it ain't broke, no need to fix it, eh? But it is broke... Have you heard uncompressed/lossless sound?! It's freaken amazing. Plus I don't like upconverted DVD's. They don't look nearly as good. Easiest way to tell the difference (if you're having trouble, and I don't know how you would if your TV is big enough to even warrant HD) is if you look at some text. On a Columbia Pictures logo, look at the bottom and you can see all the little pixels around Sony pictures. Plus another thing that really, REALLY bothers me is compression artifacts. If you look at walls with solid colors or even close ups of people's faces, you will notice blocks. Very annoying, almost annoying as color banding in animated movies. Whew, that's just as bad.
posted 01-12-2008 12:45 PM PT (US)

NeoVoyager Standard Userer	quote: Originally posted by nuts_score: If it ain't broke, no need to fix it, eh?[/B] I've said it before, and I'll say it again... if humanity followed that logic throughout history, we'd still be living in the Stone Age.
posted 01-12-2008 12:46 PM PT (US)

BigT1981 Standard Userer	I had a feeling Blu-Ray would win. I was waiting to see who would win before I converted over. So now that Blu-Ray looks like it's going to be the winner in this I will buy a Blu-Ray player and start buying DVD's. I'm glad I bought a Samsung 40'' HDTV. [Message edited by BigT1981 on 01-12-2008]
posted 01-12-2008 02:18 PM PT (US)

Gae Standard Userer	Samsung are releasing a player BD-UP5000 that plays both formats so I guess Universal, Paramount, Microsoft and Toshiba could still keep supporting HD DVD if they wanted. There is still a pretty good back catalogue of HD DVD movies out there too. Gae P.S. As you can no doubt tell, I have a HD DVD player! [Message edited by Gae on 01-13-2008]
posted 01-13-2008 09:03 AM PT (US)

Marian Schedenig Standard Userer	quote: Originally posted by NeoVoyager: I've said it before, and I'll say it again... if humanity followed that logic throughout history, we'd still be living in the Stone Age. Very true. The DVD format has been "broken" from the beginning - by being limited to a few very specific formats, none of which look that good on a big screen. The sensible way would have been to define the standard in a way that allows more flexible resolutions, but then they wouldn't be able to sell the new formats all over again.
posted 01-13-2008 09:16 AM PT (US)

nuts_score Standard Userer	quote: Originally posted by scoreguy16: But it is broke... Have you heard uncompressed/lossless sound?! It's freaken amazing. Plus I don't like upconverted DVD's. They don't look nearly as good. Easiest way to tell the difference (if you're having trouble, and I don't know how you would if your TV is big enough to even warrant HD) is if you look at some text. On a Columbia Pictures logo, look at the bottom and you can see all the little pixels around Sony pictures. Plus another thing that really, REALLY bothers me is compression artifacts. If you look at walls with solid colors or even close ups of people's faces, you will notice blocks. Very annoying, almost annoying as color banding in animated movies. Whew, that's just as bad. Clayton, I'm sure that some day I will be able to experience this joy that you speak of (why would I want to see what it says on the Columbia Pictures logo when I know it says, "A Sony Pictures Corporation"?) but for now plain DVDs and an upconverted player do me just fine. I'm still watching great movies that aren't hurt by their loss of "uncompressed/lossless" sound because their stories and characters are so much more interesting. If I really want to endugle in a great picture's sound design, I'll simply listen to it on a fine pair of headphones. Basically, I'm not jealous of you guys because you seemed to jump on the HDDVD or Blu-Ray bandwagon. HD definition downloads and bigger harddrives are the future. I think I'll wait for that wagon. P.S. I have a 32" Toshiba Flat-panel LCD. Playing my XBox 360 in 720p looks wonderful, for sure; although I do get envious of those who have the HDMI outputs for theirs'. My DVDs work just fine, thanks.
posted 01-13-2008 10:34 AM PT (US)

scoreguy16 Standard Userer	Downloads are NOT the future. Microsoft says they are because THEY want them to be. They've done tons of surveys on it, and it seems that hardly anyone wants it. There was one survey that said that less than 2% of the people that took it said they wanted downloads. Now that's bad. The only problem is, Microsoft has the power to actually force downloads upon people. But I've explained my views on this many, many times before. Plus, it'll be loads of fun when your HD crashes and you lose every single movie you've ever purchased. I look forward to those days. I also look forward to the days where it'll take you days to download a movie. These little 3gb HD downloads on the 360... are the dumbest, crappiest things ever invented. There's a reason HD DVD uses 30gb and Blu-Ray uses 50... If HD movies actually only took 3-5gb, then DVD's would have enough disc space to handle them. As for the person who recommended a combo player.... why? Blu-Ray has basically won. You'd be spending quite a bit of extra money to support a format you wouldn't be using. Nuts... no... how can you compare listening through headphones to listening to a 7.1 PCM track?! It's just not right. Lets take a look at this for a second. Dolby TrueHD can handle bitrates up to 18mbps, DTS-HD Master Audio is 24.5 and both are up to 8 channels. DVD at most is 1.5mbps from a DTS track, though they haven't produced one of those in a long long time. Most are 448kbps. With these new audio codecs, you hear everything exactly the way the sound designer intended. Unaltered and its true form. Same with the video. These new codecs were invented to match the director's vision perfectly. As for the HDMI out on a 360, that is deffinately not something to be jealous about. There's absolutely no difference between the 2 other than you will have less cords. As for the Sony Pictures comment, I only used that as an example. But if you'd like, you can look around the edgest of objects instead of me pointing out a specific obvious thing for you to look at.
posted 01-13-2008 02:06 PM PT (US)

Dinko Standard Userer	quote: Originally posted by scoreguy16: Downloads are NOT the future. Microsoft says they are because THEY want them to be. They've done tons of surveys on it, and it seems that hardly anyone wants it. There was one survey that said that less than 2% of the people that took it said they wanted downloads. Now that's bad. We'll see. Agree as I do about crashing hard drives, and unreliable internet connections, I'm also kind of attracted to the flat fee + unlimited downloads model. I gave up on Napster to Go just because they didn't have enough choice available yet and because their software app was annoying. But if Microsoft (or anyone else) can develop a model whereby for a given subscription fee, you're entitled to listen/watch any album/movie you want... I'd easily sacrifice some level of picture/sound quality for greater choice and easy availability with no long term commitments. Especially that I watch a movie once, and move on with my life. Paying 30$ for a shiny frisbee (HD or not) I'll watch just once is hardly a good investment. I wonder what polls say about people buying DVDs and how often they watch them afterwards.
posted 01-14-2008 06:03 PM PT (US)

scoreguy16 Standard Userer	This isn't like music though, these are feature length movies. Do you know how long it would take to download an entire DVD, let alone an HD movie? Lets say you have 100 mb take up an hour (which is pretty realistic). That'd end up being roughly 14 hours to download. And like I said, in the end result, what happens if you don't like the movie and want to sell it if they do charge per movie? There's no way of doing that, you're stuck with it. And, I know I've already said this 1000 times, but people actually feel an enormous ammount of satisfaction going to a place and purchasing (or ordering) an item and being able to unwrap it and physically hold a product. It's been proven to have a psychological effect on us. And that is why downloads SHOULDN'T take off. But again, this is Microsoft we're talking about here. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind they'd be willing to force these things on people without any hessitation what-so-ever.
posted 01-14-2008 10:41 PM PT (US)

Quill Standard Userer	Late into this discussion, but... I have support for both formats in my house, and not because I support one over the other, simply because I want ALL my movies in some form of high definition. I agree with previous posts regarding the uncompressed audio on BlueRay. With a proper setup it is a staggering jump over standard DVD. On a 1080p TV the video for both are so crisp and vibrant (of course being able to see every nook and cranny of Will Ferril's ugly face may not be too great). The difference may not be enough for some people to foot the bill, but that is the only argument. An upconvert standard DVD doesn't even come close. I have read and heard much of the churn of the format war versus downloadable content. Downloadable content has its place, but it will never be the dominant force. Too many factors, the most obvious being the human one. The vast majority of the American consumer is simply not ready, the internet backbone still needs expansion to support such widespread high bandwidth downloads of this size. I HOPE they do push it though...I sell into those equipment makers (Cisco, Juniper, etc.) Also, for those people with the equipment and the saavy (like many of us on this board) there will still be the overriding collectibility factor. Aside from the risk of losing your collection, I simply WANT my physical product. Same for most of my music. In the end, I'm simply glad I have a high definition product. The experience is great.
posted 01-16-2008 10:36 AM PT (US)

nuts_score Standard Userer	I do agree with Zak, however. I still want my physical product too; simply because I have a collectionist fetish. Just ask Sean how often I turn down or overlook downloads. Nothing beats having a jewel case and inciteful liner notes or production credits along with a film's original artwork and photography. Same with DVDs. I think I might switch to whatever format Criterion Collection chooses. I was almost sold when Anchor Bay chose to release on Blu-Ray, but I'm still holding off.
posted 01-16-2008 12:53 PM PT (US)

scoreguy16 Standard Userer	Nuts, get a cheap PS3. Then you can have Blu-Rays and play all the wonderful games the PS3 has to offer... exclusives like... Uncharted? Resistance? Ok so I don't use my PS3 for gaming very much, but I do enjoy those games (plus Call of Duty 4 and Lego Star Wars) plus you get free online play! At some point, I know I will sound like a PS3 commercial, but seriously, it is a pretty awesome machine. As for both products (HD DVD and Blu-Ray) being able to achieve awesome video. I agree with that, but for awesome video on HD DVD you have to sacrifice awesome audio. Most HD DVD's with lossless audio actually suffer from compression artifacts. I never knew why, but apparently it has to do with bandwidth. I guess you can't have a high bitrate picture with high bitrate sound. I am not 100% sure if that's really reason, or if it's some really weird coincidence, but that's just been my observations. Supposedly it's because Blu-Rays max bit rate is like 50mbps and HD DVD's is only 30 (weird how those almost match disc space). So without lossless sound and only having 1 Dolby Digital-Plus audio track, the peak video bitrate could be 28.5mbps. However, there's almost always multiple audio tracks and actually multiple video streams which really hurts the bandwidth. But I am no professional, I am not certain on how all of this works so don't quote me on it. I could also have the numbers way wrong. So a lot of the time (especially with WB movies) the bitrate is only around 10-15mbps. In some movies, it actually drops below DVD's peak of 10mbps. I think in Troy there's a scene where it's hovering around 6-8mbps and there's clearly compression artifacts visable. Same with Blood Diamond. And unfortunately, that ended up happening on both formats due to WB using their ports. Have I typed enough yet? My fingers are getting tired...
posted 01-16-2008 02:50 PM PT (US)

PeterK FishChip	When Wal-Mart doesn't want you anymore, you must be toast. Toshiba's announcing HD DVD end on Tuesday after Wal-Mart announces they will go Blu-ray from now on. Yay for me. I didn't buy any HD DVDs!
posted 02-18-2008 10:41 PM PT (US)

Crono/Kyp Standard Userer	I should also point out that in the contracts what Paramount and Universal have, if Toshiba stopped producing HD-DVD players, that does give both studios an opt out of their contracts for the format. From the WSJ: <<If Toshiba withdraws from the HD DVD business, Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures and General Electric Co.'s Universal Pictures, both of which support the format exclusively, would be immediately released from their commitments, one of the people familiar with the situation said. Warner Bros., which is obligated to sell HD DVD movies through May under its contract, would also be freed from those terms. All three studios couldn't be immediately reached for comment.>> --Brian
posted 02-18-2008 11:03 PM PT (US)

NeoVoyager Standard Userer	Yeah, I saw this story Sunday afternoon. YAY! Sorry Toshiba and Microsoft. Or maybe not. I'm exclusively an Apple user, and I've naturally been rooting for the (superior) Sony developed, Apple backed BRD format. BTW, will that be the abbreviation now, or what? We all know it's going to be abbreviated sooner or later. BRD doesn't roll off the tongue too well, though. Hmmmm. OK, I'm rambling. Better get to sleep.
posted 02-18-2008 11:15 PM PT (US)

Ge0rge Standard Userer	that was easy. Now let's see how hard is to win the DVD battle. I personally have only one film in a 100 that I'd love to see in HD.
posted 02-19-2008 03:37 AM PT (US)

Justin Standard Userer	It's over. Blu-Ray wins! FINALLY Toshiba pulls out of war! http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23204819
posted 02-19-2008 07:37 AM PT (US)

scoreguy16 Standard Userer	quote: Originally posted by Ge0rge: that was easy. Now let's see how hard is to win the DVD battle. I personally have only one film in a 100 that I'd love to see in HD. Actually it wasn't that easy, there were A LOT of lies being told by Toshiba (K-Mart being HD DVD exclusive, Dolby Digital+ is the same as uncompressed/lossless audio, Paramount/DreamWorks made their decission on their own free will, attach rates, hardware sales, software sales). They were supposedly even going to sue WB for switching sides which I thought was hilarious because it's ok for Paramount to accept a payoff and drop Blu-Ray but it's not ok for WB to give them a 6 month time period where they'd still be supporting HD DVD... Anyway, I see Blu-Ray and regular DVD co-existing. As someone wanting 1 out of 100 films in HD, have you ever seen an HD movie? After watching both HD DVD's and Blu-Rays, I don't think I've seen a DVD (except for Waitress and then some TV shows) for like a year now. And I know I haven't bought a DVD since 2006. But I prefer to see a movie exactly how the director indended. Which means no compression artifacts, better color reproduction, better black/white levels, a much sharper image, and preferably lossless/uncompressed sound. And the abreviation is BD... Not sure why it's not BRD, but they just call it BD.
posted 02-19-2008 09:24 AM PT (US)

Crono/Kyp Standard Userer	Uni goes BLu http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/Universal/Breaking:_Universal__Studios_Goes_Blu/1483 Expect Paramount to follow. --Brian
posted 02-19-2008 10:46 AM PT (US)

BigT1981 Standard Userer	Peter, Don't you think you should rename the thread to.. "Bye bye HD...looks like Blu-Ray is the winner"? lol
posted 02-19-2008 03:47 PM PT (US)

PeterK FishChip	Hahahah. NO! Just shows you how ridiculous the whole thing has been. I'd like NOT to polish up the dirty reality of stupid format wars. I wonder how much money was blown for the losers.
posted 02-19-2008 04:37 PM PT (US)

BigT1981 Standard Userer	I wonder that too. I'm glad I was in the camp that waited to see which format won before switching over.
posted 02-19-2008 04:40 PM PT (US)

scoreguy16 Standard Userer	Lets see... I had an HD-A1 ($500) with 72 HD DVD's... 72x30 is... oh sweet googamooga... At least I supported Blu-Ray more... 200 of those discs (whoo! thankfully they won!) with a Sony BDP-S1 ($1000!!! holy crap! But it's deffinately lived up to it's price tag... unlike my HD-A1) and a PS3 (even more so has lived up to its price tag... it's gone way above and beyond!) But I am super glad this thing is over. It's caused such a mess and so many fights between obsessed fanboys (how can a movie format have fanboys?). Each yelling at the other camp that their format is better even without owning their opposing format... Messed up crap...
posted 02-19-2008 05:20 PM PT (US)

Justin Standard Userer	...and Paramount follows making this the last studio for completion
posted 02-21-2008 11:25 AM PT (US)

BigT1981 Standard Userer	Paramount would be very stupid if they didn't fall in line with this.
posted 02-21-2008 02:46 PM PT (US)

Justin Standard Userer	Agreed!
posted 02-21-2008 03:07 PM PT (US)

BigT1981 Standard Userer	Well Paramount has finally fallen in line. That didn't take long. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3ic60f3f2e7077b9b8dc969933f25fc601
posted 02-21-2008 03:53 PM PT (US)

scoreguy16 Standard Userer	quote: Originally posted by BigT1981: Paramount would be very stupid if they didn't fall in line with this. You know honestly, it wouldn't have surprised me if they didn't support Blu-Ray. I figured them and Microsoft would try to force downloads upon people...
posted 02-23-2008 12:37 PM PT (US)

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