HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray
I officially no longer have any idea which format I want to see win the bloody HD war that is soon going to be taking place.
Originally, I was in the Blu-Ray camp. In general, both formats are going to be pretty much the same on the major, important points. So it came down to the smaller points, and Blu-Ray appealed to me more because:
Size - It was looking like Blu-Ray would be able to store more information per layer than HD-DVD, and that's going to be important for HD content.
Java - Blu-Ray's menus and non-video content are going to be powered by Java, instead of Microsoft software. Microsoft is trying to control too many things for my tastes, so I'd prefer to support the alternate.
However, in the past week, two major points have come out that are starting to make HD-DVD look like a sexy bitch.
Controlled Copies - (Some) companies seem to be starting to understand that supporting their customers in doing certain things is far better than fighting them and driving the customers to less legal means. One aspect of the new AACS copy protection scheme is that it will allow for "controlled" copies. So, for example, you have a media center machine that can work with AACS. You would then be allowed to make a copy of the movie to the media center, so that you can play it off of that instead of the disc. Sure, you can do it now with DVD, but not easily, so I'm glad to see that maybe they are starting to realize that everybody who wants to copy their DVDs to their computer or whatnot isn't doing it just to be a pirate.
Under the HD-DVD specs, from what I understand, it is required that movie studios support the controlled copy feature. Blu-Ray also uses AACS, but while they have the ability to support controlled copies, at this point they are letting companies decide if they want to support it or not.
Region Encoding - According to a story up on Engadget today, the utter hatred for regional encoding is finally being understood, and HD-DVD may include no regional encoding. If this is true, that would be a HUGE checkmark in the "plus" column for HD-DVD as far as I'm concerned.
Also... isn't Blu-Ray going with some sort of "feature" where, if you try to hack your machine at all, it calls up HQ and basically bricks your machine?
Of course, Blu-Ray is looking like the stronger format right now. The two advantages to HD-DVD above are probably big-ass "disadvantages" as far as movie companies are concerned. As well, with the PS3 supporting Blu-Ray, that is just going to get too many Blu-Ray machines into homes before HD-DVD even sells one standard machine.
Also, there is this today from The Digital Bits:
Around the Net today, there's some breaking news on the Blu-ray Disc/HD DVD front. Business Week is reporting something that we've been expecting for a couple days now, namely that Warner Home Video is about to announce that they're going to follow Paramount's lead and support BOTH the HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc high-definition formats when they debut next year. If this happens, and we expect it will (we also expect Universal to follow suit as well), the writing may be on the wall for HD DVD. All of the major Hollywood studios will have announced support for Blu-ray Disc, while only Paramount, Warner, New Line, HBO and Universal have proclaimed support for HD DVD. We'll have to wait and see how this plays out over the next few days and weeks, but it's definitely a BIG deal (not to mention an interesting development). Stay tuned on that.
Anybody else with thoughts on the matter?
WARNING: This post may contain violent and disturbing images.
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