Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

BluRay or HD DVD?

M

miTunes75

macrumors 6502
Original poster
May 29, 2006
280
0
This fall, I am looking into pimping out my tv/dvd player situation. I have done some investigation, pricing, hands-on playing and was wanting some feedback from fellow macers.

Which do you have/prefer? BlueRay or HD Dvd.

It seems that the selection of movies are about the same from just "glancing" at the shelves.

What do you think
 
it really depends where you live. I MYSELF prefer blu-ray but i have no reason for it, maybe cuz i ll be buying a ps3 in the future,,,
 
It sure seems like Sony is always in the middle of the battle for what a new standard is going to be. I suppose it comes with the territory and happens when a company is heavily involved with cutting edge technology. The net result for us is high prices and lack of availability. The same thing happened with Beta/VHS. The price was beyond the reach of most people until VHS won out and mass production could begin. Now you can get a VCR player for <$30. Many people have posted that they are bummed they cannot get a Blueray option for their macs. But, I wonder how many of these people would actually fork out for that $800 upgrade? Not too many I think.
 
The thing that i have noticed, also, is that the prices of dvds are declining. Within a year or two of release, you can purchase dvds for prices as low as 8.00.

Now, here's something else. I was thinking about upgrading my tv to the widescreen hdtv, but if I didn't have HD equipment, would there really be a point? I don't believe that current dvds are HD...wouldn't it make sense to purchase a blueray or hd dvd if you're going to fork out $1000+ on a decent screen-sized HD TV?
 
G5Unit said:
HD DVD is the way to go, do we really need another thread on this?
Click to expand...

There is still no way to predict a winner between hddvd and blue ray..

Disney just recently said that they were not going to the neutral camp and just release blue ray disks.. at least for a while.. (link to the news)

Both disney and apple are in the blue ray board of directors.

That and the fact that hd dvd's encryption is "almost" a thing of the past, but not yet.. might pressure other studios to go to the blue ray camp..

Blue ray also uses the same encryption as hd dvd, but has an extra layer of defense called BD+ or BR+ or something like that..
 
miTunes75 said:
Now, here's something else. I was thinking about upgrading my tv to the widescreen hdtv, but if I didn't have HD equipment, would there really be a point? I don't believe that current dvds are HD...wouldn't it make sense to purchase a blueray or hd dvd if you're going to fork out $1000+ on a decent screen-sized HD TV?
Click to expand...

Personally, I wouldn't buy a high definition DVD player in the current climate: the hardware's very expensive, the technology's still immature, and you could end up buying into the wrong format.

Larger LCD televisions (anything over 32") tend to show up the limitations of standard definition content more than plasmas and smaller LCD panels. You can improve the quality of standard definition DVDs by buying an upscaling DVD player with an HDMI output. These are becoming very popular as consumers look to sit out the HD war, but don't buy on spec alone because the quality of upscaling varies dramatically, with cheaper players offering no discernible improvement in image quality over standard definition.
 
Blu-ray is going to win because it has the most studio support. The only major studio that is solely supporting HD-DVD is Universal, while Blu-ray has many studios solely supporting it.

It doesn't matter if HD-DVD players are currently a couple of hundred bucks cheaper than blu-ray, because the studio's don't care about this. They're going to pick the one that best suits their needs, at almost all of them have chosen Blu-ray. If Universal decides to start releasing movies on Blu-ray, then HD-DVD is pretty much dead.
 
zioxide said:
It doesn't matter if HD-DVD players are currently a couple of hundred bucks cheaper than blu-ray, because the studio's don't care about this.
Click to expand...

If nobody buys Blu-ray players because they're too expensive, then the studios will start to care that they're not selling any movies!
 
blue ray prices are coming down soon... tho, I don't know how soon.

I dont have numbers of blue ray and hd dvd drives out there, I'll say it's pretty close. All ps3 have 1.. and although they haven't sold as many ps3 as they wish, that's still a lot of ps3s. In fact, some movies have sold more blue ray disks than hd dvd disks..
 
Nermal said:
If nobody buys Blu-ray players because they're too expensive, then the studios will start to care that they're not selling any movies!
Click to expand...

Yes, but the prices on both will be less than $200 in a couple of years when they really start to get adopted.

And there are also a few million PS3's with built-in Blu-ray's already in the market.
 
I wouldn't even buy a High Def DVD player yet. Not at the price they are at right now. Plus the movie studios are stupid and have two different formats, which is just terrible for consumers. Wait till they pull the sticks out of their asses.
 
There is zero HD DVD content here in Australia, no players, no media, I've seen a few movies advertised but nothing tangible whereas Blu-Ray is everywhere. Players, movies, the PS3, I could go out to most high-end department stores today and buy myself a full 1080p Blu-Ray based home theatre setup in a matter of minutes but I am yet to see anything to do with HD DVD that I can hold in my hand. The only HD DVD references I've seen have been ads in shops that "The following movies are also available in HD DVD" as part of a half-Blu-Ray half-HD-DVD poster on top of a stand packed with Blu-Ray movies for purchase.

There is no battle here in Australia, even digital SDTV has been very slow to get off the ground let alone HDTV but if we were all forced to go out tomorrow and get 1080p set ups we'd only have one choice. Blu-Ray.
 
Nermal said:
That's really interesting because over here we more HD DVD movies available than Blu-ray. Also, at $249 for an HD DVD drive and $1199 for a PS3... :p
Click to expand...

Pfft, silly kiwis.

$249?? Bloody hell that's awesome. Blu-Ray players here are all around the $1k mark.

But then nobody's buying them because we don't give a flying rat's arse about 1080p HDTV. Or 720p HDTV.... or digital TV....

Well I do but the massive elderly and bogan population don't. It's only the technophiles and the mogans (moneyed-up bogans) that can afford to care about HDTV.
 
It appears that I may have misled you a bit there... $249 for an HD DVD drive for your computer or 360. I have no idea what the standalone players cost.
 
Nermal said:
It appears that I may have misled you a bit there... $249 for an HD DVD drive for your computer or 360. I have no idea what the standalone players cost.
Click to expand...

Oh right, yeah same as here. But I haven't actually seen the HD DVD add-on for the 360 anywhere. Definitely no movies in shops and no standalone players either.
 
jaw04005 said:
I suggest you check out http://www.eproductwars.com/dvd/ for current sales trends, and http://www.hidefdigest.com for reviews for each format.

Otherwise, you're just going to get slanted comments from supporters on each side.
Click to expand...

I'm not supporting either, I'm just going to stick with DVDs until a unified format comes out. Just my observation that there is no HD DVD presence in Australia beyond advertised movies (no physical stock though) and the 360 add-on that has apparently gone on sale but not in any of the stores I've been into.
 
There are a lot of myths perpetuated by fanatics for each format, and I like both for numerous reasons. Here is my take on the war, excluding the DRM issue, with research I've done on the topic.

HD DVD
Pros
• Most titles use VC-1 encoding.
• Players (not discs) are cheaper.
• Full interactivity support since launch (iHD interactivity layer, ethernet ports, etc).


Cons
• No Fox, Disney or Sony movie titles.
• Lower storage capacity per layer.
• Lack of PC/Mac burners.
• Lack of 1080p support on cheaper players.
• Popular titles that include both DVD/HD DVD on one disc are expensive.

Blu-ray
Pros
• Scratch resistant coating.
• Higher storage capacity per layer.
• Hardware support (PC/Mac burners available, PC industry support including Dell and Apple, electronics industry support including Pioneer, Phillips, Hitachi, Samsung, LG, etc).

Cons
• Most titles use BD-25 discs with MPEG-2 encoding.
• No Universal Studios movie titles.
• Lack of interactivity support at launch. (Launch players not mandated to support interactive layer, ethernet ports, etc.)
• Players are generally more expensive.
• Lack of PC/Mac BR-ROM (read only) drives.
 
If I had to, I'd put my money on Blue-Ray...it started later, and has already passed HD-DVD in sales. Not to mention the PS3, who has Blue-Ray is tons of homes already.

I'm suprised Sony looks like its going to win this battle, but they seemed to play their cards right, and use the fact their a big movie studio and large gaming company to help them get the win
 
Neither, I'm going with downloads. And I only have a 512kbps connection too! I figure why spend hundreds of £'s when I already have the right equipment, just not the ability to get the data off the disc onto my computer. Which is altogether skipped with downloads, whenever they turn up.

Not too impressed with HD yet either. It costs all this money when I'm not blown over by the image.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back