Blue Ray vs HD-DVD - is it time to take sides?
29th Aug 2007
By Chris Tomlinson
Every generation experiences at least one epic struggle which divides the world into two polarised camps. Father is pitted against son, brother against sister, in a bitterly contested battle to prove the other side wrong, through force of arms, to gain the right to rewrite history.
For my generation it was the VHS vs Betamax video war.
Which was surprisingly lost by the side holding the technological high ground (Sony), proving that better marketing and stronger commercial allies will always triumph over merit.
As the current DVD format comes to the end of it useful life we find ourselves divided once again by a format war for High Definition disks.
In the Blue Corner, is Blue-Ray, the Sony brainchild that comes as standard in every PlayStation 3. In the red corner HD-DVD created by Toshiba and supported by Microsoft and anyone else who perceives Sony as a commercial threat.
Recent sales figures show consumers have just about voted with their credit cards and placed the champion’s belt on Blue-Ray, despite HD-DVD systems being cheaper.
Despite an early lead by HD-DVD, the PS3 means there are more Blue-Ray devices out there now and it was looking like Sony was going to win this war.
But last week, old media studios Paramount and DreamWorks effectively took a bribe from Toshiba to back HD-DVD disk, agreeing that for the sum of $150m they promise not to release their films on Blue-Ray disks for the next 18 months.
Other content providers have been impartial enough to produce film on both formats till the market sorts itself out and a clear winner is found.
Most sensible consumers are waiting till one of the contenders has clearly lost before buying a player and while the battle rages the entire market is suppressed as no one wants to buy the Betamax player of the future.
But just when it looked like the waiting was over and HD-DVD was squirming on the floor in its last throes of death, Paramount and DreamWorks revive it.
The joke is, these old media monoliths could be fiddling while Rome burns, as more and more seek their HD pleasure by illegally downloading films from the Internet.
In fact this could be the final format war of all time. Like dinosaurs fighting over a dead caucus while a rather large asteroid is hurting towards their earth, Blue-Ray and HD-DVD will be made extinct by the Internet.
The chances are, most of us will replace our DVD players with nothing, relying on our broadband providers’ on demand services for watching HD content.
Chris Tomlinson is Head of Digital at WAA.
Comments on this article
Nic B commented 4 months ago
The fact is they are virtually the same in many ways. Blue-ray is slightly better, but HD DVD is more compatible with PCs and less new and scary. I bought a PS3 because it's beginning to look like Blue Ray is going to win. Really, who cares who wins? They're both the same thing. Just pick one so I can spend money on it.
tom coy commented 4 months ago
The fact remains that current blue-ray players that cost about $300 dollars retail have old firmware that can't be upgraded. Sony could care less about its customers so they don't like to elaborate on that point. It will be a couple more months before they even have the 2.0 firmware profile, which means the newer disks that are coming out with the 2.0 profile won't play all their features on the disk. For $130 dollars you can buy a hd-dvd player that is supposedly better at upsampling standard dvd's to reasonable high resolution. For me this is a great feature to consider if my current standard player stops working. Another thing to consider is backing a company that developed infected cds (rootkits) and is for region coding. It is my understanding that you will still be able to buy hd-dvd's from other countries that are produced by warner brothers. I think warner bros is selling a lot of propaganda with all that is going on so far. In the end I don't know if either of the two high def. formats will carry anywhere near the catalog amount of standard dvds. For me this two high def formats seem like an interim solution that will be out dated. I prefer not to be a guinea pig that adopts early technology. Like i said the only thing that makes says is to buy a player that upsamples and not actually invest in the media.
Jon Saul commented 3 months ago
I'm in the UK, and here BlueRay seems to be winning. I have a HD-DVD player, I also have a PS3 60gig. On standard DVD playback the Toshiba wins in both quality and sound, and the upscaling also surpasses the PS3s output. Both units are on a full HD display, with 1080p resolution, and in the case of the Toshiba 24fps. As I understand it, the BlueRay discs will be far more expensive to produce, as the failure rate in the factory is around 50%, compared to HD-DVDs 98% success rate. Also, the Blueray production pland will have to be built from the ground up, unlike HD-DVD that only requires a small mod to the existing DVD plant. I stand to be corrected, and if I an wrong, please let me know. I have looked at the studios that are backing BlueRay, and once the various studios are bunched with parents and daughters under their umberellas, the size of the support list is cut right back. It's interesting that Apple Computers do not have a BlueRay drive in any of their machines, although they are a supporter or at least their CEO is; but he also has shares in Disney, another supporter. I also read recently in a newspaper that Sony was under investigation in Europe for anti-competative and restrictive practices regarding its' format. According to the sales figures BlueRay is outselling HD-DVD, however on like for like titles, HD is outselling BD. BlueRay titles are also being given away with the current rash of Buy Two, Get One at most outlets.
I don't have any BD titles, the PS3 is a games console and is used for PS2 and PS3 gameplay, new 40gig PS3s don't play PS2 games. It's just a trojan to get BlueRay into peoples homes, and claim x amount of BlueRay players have been sold, actually shipped, since PS3s are hardly moving off the shelves. You can claim that you have sold for example 2,500,000 BD players, but if 1,800,000 are games consoles, it's not a lot when the sale of stand alond HD units has already passed 1,000,000. It's the stand alone player people who buy films, not the games console players.
You can claim that you have sold 90,000 units of a title, but that may well include 30,000 BTGO specials, but 2,500,000 / 90,000 = 1 disk for every 27.7 players you claim to have sold. People are comparing this with VHS and Betamax, VHS is still here, or CD and MiniDisc, CD is still here. You pay you money and take your choice.
There is an old saying, "If in doubt, buy nowt" , "nowt" means nothing. If you have a large collection of DVDs, and your player is due for replacement buy a Toshiba, you will not be sorry. Otherwise, wait. I have over 300 DVDs, and 21 HD-DVDs and no BlueRay, I'm not sorry.
Mike Hunt commented 1 month ago
Well to be honest.... HD is evil...I'm a star wars fan, and me and my 40 year old brother (yes he still lives with me and my mom) see red as the dark side 0_o, so its blue ray all the way
may the force be with you:)
Sam Bloomer commented 5 months ago
i think the blue ray disk is 10x better than hd dvd it holds more memory and come in nicer cases also they are made by sony