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45 GB HD DVD Tested.. bye bye Blu Ray

"Why would anyone ever need more than 640KB?"
-Bill Gates
 
It is way too early to call BR dead... One bad player and 25GB disks do not show the true potential of the product. Now if a year from now they do not have 50GB out, the PS3 completely flops and no other players make it to market that do better than the samsung, then the format may start to die.

I have about 25 HDDVD titles now, 0 BR. I am waiting for them to work the kinks out of BR first. If they do not get the format working properly then I will never buy a player. I could never bring myself to buy a Samsung player since they were not known at all for their quality and high end performance. Looks like they still are not up to the task. If Sony and Pioneer cannot get the format to work then it never will.

If HDDVD is doing so good and is dominating then where are all the movies for it? A couple of recent second rate hits and some old movies are all that have been released.
 
"... I'm sure the Toshiba could display BD with a firmware upgrade!..."

This is quite an interesting idea. Could it? With the "pits" closer to the surface in BD would that require different focusing? Or it's already "close enough?" Since HD-DVD gave up it's early idea of using a red laser and moved to the same blue frequency as BD, what else, save track density and proximity to the surface, would there be? Size of each track/pit?

Wouldn't that be a kick- buy an HD-DVD player and a year later it becomes a dual player!
 
The demand for the extra space will be needed when the next generation of HD comes out. We will need all the space we can get. If technology advances so fast that it is outdate in just a few years then it will be hard to keep up with the new stuff. A technology is needed that will support future reading of these more advances disks if that will be possible.
 
A year from now, the HD DvD player will be even cheaper do to the volume they will have sold, and the media too. IF 50 GB disks are available they will be even more expensive. And do the the failure of SONY to deliver that media now, sales of there players will be so small that the price will still be 1 grand a pop. Its over.
 

Because Hollywood does not want to seem to put thier movies on HD DVD (very limited amount of companies are committed to HD DVD) plus HD DVD will not put out anything on 1080p ultra high definition whereas blu-ray can.

I went to walmart today and saw an RCA HD DVD player there, I guess Walmart is now selling HD DVD players. It was $500
 
houselog442 said:
Because Hollywood does not want to seem to put thier movies on HD DVD (very limited amount of companies are committed to HD DVD) plus HD DVD will not put out anything on 1080p ultra high definition whereas blu-ray can.
HD DVDs are 1080p. The first gen players do not output 1080p. But do you call down converted then upconverted 1080? That's what the Samsung does.

Yes BD has more studios, but the studios HD DVD have represent 60% of the DVD sales in 04. I'm sure more studios will come around to HD DVD when Sony continues to blow even more smoke and they realize the cost savings (more profit) of HD DVD.
 

Umm you're not making sense...
VC-1 is on pair if not superior over h.264 but certainly superior when it's compared to the MPEG2 on Blu-Ray.
 
navychop said:
"Why would anyone ever need more than 640KB?"
-Bill Gates


Yep... and it took how many years to pass that...?

Blu-Ray is already dead if they are baking on this.
 

The current # of players and discs sold by HD DVD cannot support that format either. As I mentioned there have been no major movie support on HDDVD yet. Neither format is beyond the experimental stage yet. Studio support is key, even if you have the best picture and the cheapest price, if you are selling old movies and not the hottest hits you will not succeed.
 

HDDVD does not need 50 Gb disks to look and sound incredible. They have accomplished that on DL 30 GB disks. There are enough studios and the rest will follow the money.


I think more can be found here http://www.thelookandsoundofperfect.com/
 
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HDDVD is producing a lot of titles, but how many of those are big hits? None that have been released are recent hits. Yea a few big ones are listed (like Harry Potter, MI, etc) but they are not exclusive to HDDVD. Having 400 titles and only a few recent hits vs the promised (and I know not yet released either) 200 titles with many more recent hits listed, which will the consumer pick. Yeah they have to pay $500 more for the player with the hit movies, but what good is a $500 paperweight if the movies the consumer wants are not released.

Nobody ever said this is a technology contest. Content is what matters. Sony by hook or by crook has managed to line up the studios and appears to be holding on to them very tightly. Yes controlling 55% of the movies ever made gives them a huge advantage, they are not stupid at Sony. Other studios will probably release on both formats eventually, but it will be a long time before Sony controlled movies make it to HDDVD.

I own an HDDVD player, and yes I agree 30 GB of VC-1 seems more than enough, but then I have not seen what could be done with 50GB of VC-1. It looks like Sony botched the launch by not having VC-1 or MPEG-4 authoring software available. The 50GB disc issue was pretty well known, they were not expecting 50GB until next year, so it is not a shocker. What I think is the real shocker to Sony is that HDDVD would use VC-1 so successfully that they ran away with the disc quality in round one.

The average Joe will be walking in to BB/CC and see 5 BR players and a PS3 at the end of the year. Due to Sony buying the space they will be prominately displayed, the HDDVD player will be hidden in the back of the store somewhere. They will also see the hits they want in BR. They do not have any idea of picture quality, they will look better than DVD and in their minds to justify the expense they will look fantastic... This is what will happen if Sony manages to get its ducks in a row. The whole price and quality issues will not be there because the consumer will never see the choice to start with.
 
So does anyone have a calculation that if a movie was 1080p60 what the speace requirement would be? Just looking at the frame rate being 2 1/2 times higher than the current release would lead one to increase capacity that much? I know that compression could make a big difference here.
 

I do agree with you somewhat. I think before this format war really gets heated and on its way...PS3 will have been released. I'm not saying that HD DVD won't win the format war....I'm saying that the success of PS3 will have a great deal to say about the success of BLURay. I remember when the first PS2 came out and the game system was actually the first DVD player that some people had in their homes.
 

Actually not really as both would use the same VC-1 codec.

OTOH VC-1 only supports 1080p60 in Advanced Profile@L4 which would be out of range for probably anything until some upcoming new format like HVD kills these current wannabies.