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What's Good About Blu-Ray Movies?

Some misconceptions to be fixed:

The Samsung BD player is shipping now. Some BB and CC stores have them. Price is $999. Official availability begins on June 25.

Toshiba HD-DVD player has been available for several weeks at $499 for the low end and $799 for the high end.

The Sony BD player is only available for pre-order on Amazon; it is not shipping. Sony has delayed the release until August.

I think the format war will continue, but it may be a moot issue as soon as dual-format players arrive en masse. Samsung has already announced a dual-format player. Just as we have DVD+R and DVD-R today, it is possible we will continue to live with dual format movies for a long time. I really don't care about dual formats as long as we eventually get plenty of dual-format players.
 
I going to go with in the long run Blue rays is going to win.
HD may win in the short run but in the long run BR is going to win. Reason for it is BR can store a heck of a lot more data on on it. Not only can Blue Ray store more per layer it can also read more layers of the DVD which ups the ammount of Data storage even more.

On those grounds alone Blue ray is going to win in the long run.
More storage space= better in the long run. It just a matter of time of getting the cost down and manufactor processes better for the blue ray players.
 
Joe Sixpack doesn't care much about quality. He cares about price. If you don't believe me, ask Wal-Mart, Dell, or McDonalds. Who ever can get the lowest price to the masses is probably going to win.

Wasn't BetaMax a superior format to VHS, even though it ultimately lost that format war?

Question: Would I be able to play any of my current DVDs on either of these next-gen players? That by itself will go a long way to convincing me which side I'd prefer.
 
Yes you can play standard DVDs on next-gen players. I have the Toshiba HD-DVD player which uses a Pentium 4, runs Linux, and does one heck of a good job with standard DVDs. It's connected to a Samsung H710AE DLP projector (1280 x 720 resolution) and the combination is truly amazing. DVDs are very good, but HD-DVDs are absolutely stunning. I have waited a long time to display a seamless and fluid picture across a 120-inch screen, and this combination does it with flair.

Joe Sixpack may not care too much, if at all, for the differences between HD-DVD and BluRay, but he should care about the differences between DVD and either of these hi-def formats. Even with the dearth of HD movie titles, I am extremely happy with the HD-DVD player. And the price is just icing on the cake.
 
I believe HD-DVD will win over blu-ray, because:

1) Player costs less,
2) Disks are cheap to manufacture - hence can be sold a lower price to BR.
3) It's got HD in the name

According to reports people in the UK already think they are watching HD-TV just because they have purchased a HD-ready TV. Most don't realise that you have get a SKY box to received a HD signal, or get a HD-DVD/ Blu-Ray DVD player to watch HD movies.
The HD name has entered the general mind set of the public and they know just know that HD-DVD provides HIGH-DEF. The blu-ray name doesn't tell the consumer what it does.

One point about the Uk and Europe is that our TV is already at a much higher res than the USA. The step up from SD(pal/secam)->HD isn't as vast as NTSC->HD and unless they stop compressing the image no-one is going to notice. Some of the Sky/Cable stations are currently so digitally compressed that while it's a ful PAL image it's as blocky as an old faster moving mpeg. :(

I don't know much about free-to-air, but the freeview digital boardcasting signal doesn't have the bandwidth for HD signals - tho they are trialing it in certain parts of London. Maybe once analogue goes off the space can be reclaimed. (2008)

Tho seen as I still know people who are buying VHS (my nan), and haven't even upgraded to DVD, I wouldn't be suprised if neither sold well in the UK.

- all this so someone who doesn't have a TV :D
 
CorvusCamenarum said:
Wasn't BetaMax a superior format to VHS, even though it ultimately lost that format war?
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Sure betamax was a superior picture, but it also had one downside. The superior picture meant that it had a shorter recording time, I believe only about 60 min, whereas VHS had at least 90 (maybe 120 on EP mode-but at lower quality.) So people couldnt record TV movies on betamax so the bought VHS instead. Now this time, Blu-ray has the (much) greater recording capacity. In addition, the discs won't be that much more expensive than HD-DVD's, as Sony, et. al. are continually improving the technology (remember the cartridges that aren't there anymore?). I think really the only thing that HD DVD has on Blu-Ray at this point is the price of the players, which, as was mentioned before, will continually decrease (for both HDDVD and Blu ray) as they make it into mainstream market.

Personally, I want Blu-ray to win the format war, because I'm definitely interested in the greater potential storage capacities of blu-ray. Recording a single season of your favorite show (in HD - or multiple seasons in SD) on a single disk would be really awesome.
 
I also wouldn't put any money on Sony in a format war. I'm not sure they've won one yet. It will definitely be interesting to see how the PS3 is received once it comes out.
 
How good a DVD player is the PS2? I don't own one but from some people who do they didn't think too highly of it.

So to me an important question is: "How good of a Blu-Ray player will the PS3 really be?"
 
Motley said:
How good a DVD player is the PS2? I don't own one but from some people who do they didn't think too highly of it.

So to me an important question is: "How good of a Blu-Ray player will the PS3 really be?"
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Better be bloody good for Play.com to charge £550 for one.
 
combatcolin said:
Better be bloody good for Play.com to charge £550 for one.
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I'd assume the player in the PS3 will be along the same lines of quality as the player in the PS2. It's a "bonus" feature basically. Sony won't do anything to cannibalize the sales of the stand alone BR players.


Lethal
 
LethalWolfe said:
I'd assume the player in the PS3 will be along the same lines of quality as the player in the PS2. It's a "bonus" feature basically. Sony won't do anything to cannibalize the sales of the stand alone BR players.
Click to expand...

I do hope for a little better though. The principal problems of the DVD player included in the first PS2 were a poor quality of color with the standard connection, and the noise generated by the fan, in addition to the weird control with the pad if you did not want to buy the additional remote.

Later on, they re-designed the PS2, and the slimmer version is supposedly less noisy, I guess they realised some requisites of an "entertainment center".

Additionally, in the past couple of years, Sony has tried to improve its position in the field of the "digital video", by providing high quality for the video features, regardless of the product, trying to get the customer to associate the brand with this quality : that's one of the reasons why they introduced early rather decent video features in "normal" photo cameras - which has become nowadays a standard for most -. On my own F727, the best video settings require a MemStick Pro, but the result is really nice, and handy for limiting your gear.

All in all, I think they might be more careful with BR in PS3, than with DVD in PS2. Maybe they also consider it will help the customer swallow the pill of the price tag.

It might all be a part of wishful thinking too: I guess I'll get a PS3 some time in the future, to replace my PS2, and I'd like the double-use; if the BR standard fails... I'll still have my PS3 games :D
 
Arnaud said:
I do hope for a little better though. The principal problems of the DVD player included in the first PS2 were a poor quality of color with the standard connection, and the noise generated by the fan, in addition to the weird control with the pad if you did not want to buy the additional remote.

Later on, they re-designed the PS2, and the slimmer version is supposedly less noisy, I guess they realised some requisites of an "entertainment center".

Additionally, in the past couple of years, Sony has tried to improve its position in the field of the "digital video", by providing high quality for the video features, regardless of the product, trying to get the customer to associate the brand with this quality : that's one of the reasons why they introduced early rather decent video features in "normal" photo cameras - which has become nowadays a standard for most -. On my own F727, the best video settings require a MemStick Pro, but the result is really nice, and handy for limiting your gear.

All in all, I think they might be more careful with BR in PS3, than with DVD in PS2. Maybe they also consider it will help the customer swallow the pill of the price tag.

It might all be a part of wishful thinking too: I guess I'll get a PS3 some time in the future, to replace my PS2, and I'd like the double-use; if the BR standard fails... I'll still have my PS3 games :D
Click to expand...

You would assume Sony would try and put their best foot forward w/the BR movie playback quality of the PS3 since it is most likely going to be many people's first experience w/that format. But on the other hand Sony's newest consumer HDV cameras have fewer bells & whistles than the older models so there is the typical Sony move of protecting it's product lines at all cost. If the PS3 rivals BR players that cost 1.5-2x as much that will definitely cut into the sales of stand alone players. Sony *might* be able to stomach that for a bit if they think it will help them win the format war, but their hardware partners also producing BR players won't like the idea of being undercut by the PS3.


Lethal
 
Bubbasteve said:
correct me if I'm wrong but weren't DVD players on the expensive side the first year they were released? Like other people have said, I will wait until DVD turns into VHS until I purchase a BD /HDDVD Player
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Sure were, when a new technology is introduced it is always expensive....

The only thing I don't like about Blu Ray is that I'll have to update my DVD collection from DVD to HD-DVD :rolleyes:
 
the war is officailly on

Sorry my post is so long but i made it into 2 sections one about my impressions of the players at best buy and the other about my opinion on the format war so feel free to skip one and just read the one ur interested in.


Well the war is officially on now. I was at the best buy today and they had both the samsung blu-ray player and the toshiba hd dvd player. They also had movies on both blu-ray and hd-dvd. The movies in both formats were exactly the same price: $24.99. The samsung player was more expensive at $999 vs i think $599 may have been $499 i cant quite remember. 2 interesting things i noticed was that the toshiba hd-dvd player was quite a bit bigger and uglier imo then the samsung (not that either looked that great). Also the hd-dvd player took a long ass time to go from off to playing a movie at least compared to a normal dvd player. The samsung i couldn't really test as the smart smart people at best buy made a whole nice display with a big samsung hdtv and the blu ray player with it all plugged in and then didn't go and connect the player to the tv sigh best buy. In terms of specs tho it also looked like the samsung was a slightly more capable player too as the tag said it would 1080p were as the toshiba appeared to only do 720p/1080i.

In terms of my opinion on the format war well i cant say i care that much but i hope blu-ray wins as personally i cant see any advantage for me the consumer for hd-dvd that isn't very short term. Basically it seems player price is all hd-dvd has going for it. Which is important but i fully expect the prices on the players for both formats to go down dramatically over the next few years. Were as blu-ray higher capacity may not make much difference for commercial movies it makes a huge difference for computer data needs were more capacity is always better. I mean if it takes half the black blu ray discs to back up my hard drive then it dose hd-dvds then hell yeah that sounds good to me. I could care less if when i buy a movie on blue ray that half the disc is wasted space as long as i still have the movie on there to enjoy. Lastly i know it make a lot of sense to just wait till one format wins but its going to take a long for one to win if everyone is afraid to buy into either format.
 
bubbasteve said:
correct me if I'm wrong but weren't DVD players on the expensive side the first year they were released?
Click to expand...
You aren't wrong. I'm not saying $499 is cheap, but compared to $999 it is, especially seeing as the actual audio/visual quality is so similar (or at least has the capacity to be).

Laslo Panaflex said:
The bottom line is this.

Neither format will "win" anytime soon becuase the consumer demand and interest for HD-DVD or BRD is miniscule compared to that of DVD when it was introduced. VHS was king for 25 years before DVD came around, DVD is only about 10 years old. The majority of consumers are happy with DVD. Also, you don't just need a PS3, 360 with add on drive or set top player, you also need a HDTV. That's a two fold investment, while jumping into dvd just required a player.

I believe that BRD and HD-DVD will be the next laser discs, where the videophiles and rich jump on board, getting both HD-DVD and BRD players making studio preferences a moot point.

The demand for any sort of next gen DVD format will come when 75% - 90% of consumers have a HDTV, which will be at least 5-10 years.

Trust me, you will see.
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I said it before, HVD will own them both.
 
I don't think either format will catch on for years.

Maybe a LONG time from now, if they can get the prices down to the same as DVD and the players are compatible with the old format.

Way too expensive, most people don't have HD screens, and the improvement is far too subtle for many people to even notice. I haven't seen any commercial HD that has impressed me.
 
Zman5225 said:
I won't buy a ps3 for a BRD player, i'll buy it for a gaming machine. I'd rather Sony took out the BRD, cut the price to say 400 or so of the ps3 and not try to shove their "technology" that I don't want in my gaming machine up my arse. I think they should go the way of the xbox 360 and offer it as an addon. I don't know a single person that watches dvd's on their ps2 or xbox, or xbox 360. I'm sure they are out there, i'm just saying I personally don't know any. It's all a marketing ploy by Sony to try to boost their sales of the BRD. Didn't work for UMD, let's see if it works for BRD dvd's and players.
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BR discs read much faster than DVDs. Meaning less loading time for games... combined with HD caching, maybe no loading. And Sony was gate keeper of UMD... not supposed to be widely adopted. Like a Sony portables perk. Also, Sony is like, designer electronics... they want to have high quality and integrated systems. Do you really want two optical formats for your computer? One for movies and another for data backup, games, software bundles and the lot?
 
it's not that much faster than dvd's

dvd's can do about 200Mbit max which is like 25MB/s compared to BD is around 30MB/s so due to more stuff being on the disk loading times will be slower compared to old content as storage has increased allot but read speed has only gone up a bit
 
Actually...

Nermal said:
Also for the record, Apple already has HD-DVD authoring software (DVD Studio Pro) and HD-DVD playback software (DVD Player; although it may currently be limited to unprotected content).
Click to expand...

I don't think this is correct. First, no HD-DVD drives are available for actual install & usage with computers of any kind yet that I can find on Google or Froogle.

Second, while DVD Studio Pro does support "HD DVD" authoring (notice the lack of a dash), an HD DVD is simply a regular DVD-R or +R that has HD content encoded onto it in HD format. An HD DVD produced by DVD Studio Pro is essentially a hybrid, and Apple's DVD Player plays back these hybrids.

It would be interesting to see if such a produced DVD would play back at all in the Toshiba HD-DVD player. Apple's file structure on an HD DVD may differ from the actual HD-DVD spec, and in addition, the Toshiba would probably not even look for an HD-DVD structure on a DVD-density disc. They do not play in regular DVD players.

Fun fun!

-rand()

EDIT:
I did a new search and found that somebody has tested Apple's HD DVD with a Toshiba. The Toshiba will indeed play the HD DVD, full content. Too bad we don't have HD-DVD writeable drives, or we'd be all set! I'm not sure how much HD content will actually fit on a DVD-R, but it's probably not much over a half hour.
 
If you want to compare Betamax to VHS, you have to know that one of the reasons VHS won, was because the adult entertainement industry chose VHS, and it looks like they're now gonna choose Blu-Ray
It will certainly be interesting the coming years, but I'd bet on Blu-Ray in the long run.
 
Macnoviz said:
If you want to compare Betamax to VHS, you have to know that one of the reasons VHS won, was because the adult entertainement industry chose VHS.
Click to expand...

I hadn't heard that, but it's an interesting take.

Sony invented Betamax and held all the rights to the format, restricting the number of companies that could manufacture Betamax tapes or players.

JVC invented the VHS format, but allowed all other companies to manufacture VHS tapes and players. VHS players/movies became cheaper and easier to find than Betamax. Although Betamax was visually superior, it did not reach as many people as VHS, you couldn't get a lot of movies on Betamax for purchase or rental, and, ultimatly, Sony's refusal to share ruined the format.

I hope they've learned a few things in the 30ish years since.
 
risc said:
Also they have huge amounts of storage available for extras so who really knows what the movie studios will do with the media? Only time will tell.
Click to expand...

They will definitely use ALL that space for DRM purposes. You'll be lucky if you can even play them.
 
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