Russ1974

I still stick by the fact BluRay will fail for NO OTHER reason than the name. Mums aren't going to go in to shops before Christmas buying a "blue film" for their kids are they, think about it. Either they need to rename it or HDDVD, will win. I would recommend simply "HDVD, HVD, DVDH". Although some of those do sound a little too like diseases.

westcoast550

Beta !!

Russ1974

Well exactly. What does "beta" mean. It means it's being tested and isn't ready. Who's going to buy that ... "Beta Max" Wooo the marketing people did a great job there

ImolaRedM

I'm not sure that logic holds. No offense. The term "Beta" wasn't associated with a preproduction product for the general public back in the early 80's. Most people of the day would more likely associate a hard drive with golf and much less understand terminology like Beta in terms of software development.

Also, Beta and VHS could never co-exist, unlike Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. The analogy may be better made with the early battle between DVD-R and DVD+R. Even from a marketing standpoint, HD-DVD is little more than an alphabetic mouthful that adds confusion for joe-sixpack over yesterdays technology. Blu-Ray, it could be argued, rolls off the tongue.

The biggest bonus of HD-DVD that I see so far is that the players are less expensive than Blu-Ray. Generally speaking those cheaper players are also of lesser quality (1080i) than the lower end (1080p) Blu-Ray players. This somewhat reminds me of the arguments over Circuit City's DiVX (DVE) format they were pushing against the DVD in the 90's. The CC DiVX movies were cheaper (initially) but the selection was fewer and people just didn't buy it. But there are also countless times in history where the cheaper product wins and HD-DVD has the upper hand. Technologically, I think Blu-Ray has the upper hand with the ability to store more information as well as bit-rate.

It seems that many HD-DVD proponents seem to go for that format over two issues, first is cost and the second is Sony's history with Beta. As someone already pointed out Blu-Ray isn't Sony's but they belong to the group. And unlike Betamax, many other makers are producing BluRay players including Panasonic (a big VHS supporter). I don't think the same can be said about HD-DVD that seems to be primarily supported by Toshiba from a hardware point. So it seems that the HD-DVD argument used by pointing to the proprietary hardware of Beta almost makes the case for Blu-Ray. I think Onkyo is also making a HD-DVD player based on a Toshiba XA2 but is anyone else aware of other non-Toshiba HD-DVD stand alone players (excluding hybrids)?

sideeffects

http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/home_av/other...62029539,00.htm
some info on asia and Blu-Ray exclusives (can't find the REALLY good article I had on this topic )

http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6471109.html&
article stating the the end of the war is in site, with back up

http://charts.highdefdigest.com/history.aspx
Sales charts of Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD on Amazon.com (pretty much the largest vendor of high-def media) look through this site alot of good information!

http://www.tech.co.uk/home-entertainment/v...cleid=126958731

"Yesterday the HD DVD Promotion Group said that the attach rate for HD movies on the HD DVD format was far greater than on Blu-ray. The claim was that HD DVD owners buy, on average, 3.8 HD movies each, compared to just 0.6 movies sold per Blu ray player.
Blu-ray rejects HD DVD claims. But Frank Simonis responded by saying this is a "gross misrepresentation of data" and that the GfK research has been manipulated by the HD DVD camp in order to appear more in favour of the HD DVD format."

That article posted above in favor of HD-DUD sales may be masking some lies

Russ1974

"Marketing - the art of making your lies more believable than those of your competitor"

westcoast550

Ouch !! Very hurtful Russ !!

sideeffects

Hey that definition gos both ways. Though the statement is very true, looks like we are just going to have to wait this one out and see who comes out on top ..........I say Blu all the way!

Cheers!

jet190rs

I'm rooting for Blu-Ray, because its the superior technology and I have a PS3.

I got a 60gb PS3 for $350 during the SonyStyle promotion and it seems to be the best deal in the high def dvd wars. Its one of the best Blu-Ray players out on the market, and there's contant downloadable firmware updates that provide new hardware features. If Blue-Ray loses, then I'll still have a high tech gaming system. If PS3 loses the gaming wars, then I should be able to get my money back for it on eBay, since there seems to be much more demand for PS3 (higher resell) than any other high def dvd player. PS3 seems to be the 'safest' bet in this war.

However, I am disappointed that Transformers is not on Blu-Ray, and there are some cheap HD-DVD players out now, including that $100 Toshiba special sale at Walmart recently.

Russ1974

My aim is to build a new media centre PC with a BluRay drive, and then either add an HD-DVD drive or replace with a dual format drive, depending which one comes out first at a reasonable price. Stick 1Tb of HD inside and then just rip the films to the hard drive and play them from there. So I really don't mind which media format wins, but I still maintain it will be HDDVD, so there.