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Thread: HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray

  1. Film 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.

  2. The menus and interactive stuff on DVDs isn't running on Microsoft software, it's done with bitmaps and smaller video clips as buttons and backgrounds and stuff, and some scripting that the player interprets to tie it all together, though on a PC the part of the 'player' that runs the scripts is Microsoft's DVD Navigator DirectShow filter, but there are others you can use.

    As far as Java goes, on the one hand it's a really powerful idea, on the other hand it's just more to go wrong. I imagine a lot of players will ship with buggy Java VMs and a lot of discs with buggy code and there will be a headache, considering that many players and discs today don't play nice when it comes to decoding the video stream, which you would think would go through the most testing and QA. But hey, interesting idea none the less, might make for some really slick presentation if companies put the money into it.

    No thoughts on the other stuff.

  3. Quote Originally Posted by outRider
    The menus and interactive stuff on DVDs isn't running on Microsoft software, it's done with bitmaps and smaller video clips as buttons and backgrounds and stuff, and some scripting that the player interprets to tie it all together, though on a PC the part of the 'player' that runs the scripts is Microsoft's DVD Navigator DirectShow filter, but there are others you can use.
    The point is still that HD-DVD is using Microsoft's IHD technology to run the interactive elements. The (very informative) below article goes into this, and why the war may already be decided.

    Daggers Drawn over DVDs
    WARNING: This post may contain violent and disturbing images.

  4. Sorry, I thought you meant that current DVDs used Microsoft's interactive authoring system.

  5. Hasn't this topic been done before?

  6. I searched for it, and didn't find it. *shrugs*
    WARNING: This post may contain violent and disturbing images.

  7. This could have been done in the "I'm Drunk" thread Shidoshi, you inconsiderate bandwidth hogging bastard.

  8. SO I guess the DS screen preotector jokes are getting through eh?

    This war between formats has been a complete waste for me. I'm going to buy an HD-DVD just becuase I know I will have a PS3.
    Last edited by avatar; 07 Oct 2005 at 09:40 PM.

  9. I'm uncomfortable with Sony having a stranglehold on the market and I want full compatibility with existing DVD's, so I'm an HD-DVD guy.

  10. Quote Originally Posted by SpoDaddy
    I'm uncomfortable with Sony having a stranglehold on the market and I want full compatibility with existing DVD's, so I'm an HD-DVD guy.
    To be fair, you're going to be able to pop a DVD into a Blu-Ray drive and have it play just fine. They've already said that that will be the case, and they HAVE to do so, otherwise it would be suicide for the platform.
    WARNING: This post may contain violent and disturbing images.

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