A recent thread about LaserDiscs sparked me to start this thread after reading about different digital media types on Wikipedia (initially I was after info on LaserDiscs, and then started looking at other disc-media types and decided to read up on both BluRay and HD-DVD)
Anyway - seeing as there is an all out "war", likened to the BetaMax Vs VHS war of yesteryear
, with these two formats, I was wondering what your views on it was?
Now I haven't seen any films on either format, nor do I have HDTV (call me dark ages
), so I really can't comment on picture/sound quality...
But reading up the specs it's a hard one to choose....
One on hand, BluRay wins with capacity : Over 9 hours of high-definition (HD) video on a 50GB disc. About 23 hours of standard-definition (SD) video on a 50GB disc, whilst TDK recently announced that they have created a working experimental Blu-ray disc capable of holding 200GB of data (six 33GB data layers).
Thats pretty impressive!
HD-DVD has a modest 15gb for a single layer disc, and 30gb for a dual layer disc, with doublel sided discs having 30gb single layer and 60gb dual layer.
Standard break down for comparrison between HD-DVD and BluRay would be 15 GB vs. 25 GB for single layer, 30 GB vs. 50 GB for dual layer (respectively)
But! Specs aside, the other thing to think about is compataility...
BluRay discs (from what I have read) would only work on BluRay players, on which HD-DVD and normal DVD would not play - so you would need to have two players : a BluRay player and a DVD player...
The idea for HD-DVD, since it is backed by the official DVD Forum, is that all HD-DVD players would be backward compliant, so that normal DVD's could still be played on the new HD DVD machines, and added to that, that new HD-DVD discs can also contain the normal DVD movie aswell as the HD-DVD encoded movie, meaning that if you buy a brand new HD-DVD disc, you can still watch the normal encoded version on your old DVD machine.....
Hmmm... That makes is tough! On one hand you have bigger capacity, but on the other hand you have fully bacward compliant discs playable on both machines!
One other thing worth noting about this "war" between HD-DVD and BluRay;
In the early 1990s two high density optical storage standards were being developed: one was the MultiMedia Compact Disc (MMCD), backed by Philips and Sony, and the other was the Super Density disc (SD), supported by Toshiba, Time-Warner, Matsushita Electric, Hitachi, Mitsubishi Electric, Pioneer, Thomson, and JVC. IBM's president, Lou Gerstner, acting as a matchmaker, led an effort to unite the two camps behind a single standard, anticipating a repeat of the costly format war between VHS and Betamax in the 1980s.
Philips and Sony abandoned their MMCD format and agreed upon Toshiba's SD format (not to be confused with secure digital cards) with two modifications that are both related to the servo tracking technology. The first one was the adoption of a pit geometry that allows "push-pull" tracking, a proprietary Philips/Sony technology. The second modification was the adoption of Philips' EFMPlus. EFMPlus, created by Kees Immink, who also designed EFM, is 6% less efficient than Toshiba's SD code, which resulted in a capacity of 4.7 GB as opposed to SD's original 5 GB. The great advantage of EFMPlus is its great resilience against disc damage such as scratches and fingerprints. The result was the DVD specification Version 1.5, announced in 1995 and finalized in September 1996. In May 1997, the DVD Consortium was replaced by the DVD Forum , which is open to all companies.
Now, HD DVD is promoted by Toshiba, NEC, Sanyo, Microsoft, and Intel, among others. In terms of major studios, HD DVD is currently exclusively backed by Universal Studios, and is non-exclusively backed by Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. Studio Canal, and The Weinstein Company, and is the official format backed by the DVD Forum. BluRay was delevoped outside the DVD Forum and as such was never considered for admittance(sp) - also BluRay will probably, initially at least, more expensive to produce.....
Thoughts?