The Format War of the Blue Laser: HD DVD vs. Blu-ray



Posted: Tuesday, November 18, 2008

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Blu-Ray & HD DVD's have been competing for some time now to become the successor to DVD's throne. Both display movies in full high-definition resolution, addressing one shortfall of the current DVD format, which is only standard-def. The video and audio quality of both formats can be truly spectacular when shown on an HDTV with a quality home theatre audio system, surpassing even high-def television itself.

Take the bad with the good To get that improved fidelity, you have to decide between either a Blu-ray player or an HD DVD player, and you won't be able to play certain studios' movies on either one. For example, if you're a sci-fi fan and want to watch 2001:The Space Odyssey (Sony Pictures), you'll need a Blu-ray player, but if you want to watch Van Helsing (Universal) you'll need an HD DVD player. Yes, there are combo players available, but they currently cost more than actually purchasing two players, one for each format!

Blu-ray and HD DVD unfortunately are not incompatible formats. What does this mean to you? It means that no standard Blu-ray player will be able to play HD DVD discs, and no standard HD DVD player can play Blu-ray discs (with the exception of pricy combo players of course). If a movie comes out in one format, there's no guarantee that it will be available in the other. Certain studios could release movies in both formats, but you'll still have to be careful not to buy the wrong version of the movie. Adding to the frustration is the fact that the capabilities and features of the two formats are far more similar than they are different

HD DVD

The Upside: Entry-level players are much more affordable than Blu-ray units; tighter specification means that all players have a more consistent feature set; some movies include standard-DVD version on the same disc.

The Downside: Studio support limited to just Universal and Paramount, which means no HD DVD movies from Columbia, MGM, Fox, Disney, or Warner (after May 2008); Xbox 360 requires an add-on accessory to play HD DVD discs.

Blu-ray

Upside: PlayStation 3 plays Blu-ray movies; Blu-ray has support of 70 percent of movie studios; Current Blu-ray discs can hold more data or video than HD DVD counterparts.

Downside: Blu-ray players are more expensive than their HD DVD counterparts; support for audio can vary from player to player; different profiles can cause confusion over special feature support.

Winner?

The format war was essentially tied until Warner Studios decided to become Blu-ray exclusive in early 2008. Now Blu-ray has the support for 70 percent of movie studios, including; Sony Pictures- MGM/Columbia TriStar, Disney- including Touchstone and Miramax, Fox, Warner, and Lions Gate.

Blu-ray also has an advantage in raw capacity (50GB vs. HD DVD's 30GB), and while that hasn't made much of a difference in the vast majority of titles, the special features of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix were in HD on Blu-ray, but only in standard-def on HD DVD. We can only expect more of this as high-def special features, which demand much more capacity on the disc, become more prevalent.

Conclusion

Wait it out, there is no true winner until one backs down. Plus, we all know how technology can change on a dime!

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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)
» left by David Pekrul
 3 years 83 days ago.
66 fans.
It probably is best to wait. Does everyone remember Betamax?
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