Most of the posts I see in the war zone are centered around who will win based on popularity that is driven by studio exclusives/titles and retail price deals on players.
While this is fine I would also like to add my own perception and rude awakening over the two formats.
When I first saw the Blu Ray and HD DVD formates demoed a couple years ago, I became initially one sided favoring the Sony Blu Ray for this reason- I produce content and being a Sony House, I felt that Sony's DVD authoring and editing software that I use and like today would directly support this medium. It would be a good choice to have a BluRay burner in the studio and a set top player in the Home theater. Plus, I could see the wide acceptance of the Studios on BR vs, few on HD DVD. I never forget that content choices / titles available is king when winning the so called format war. In addition to that, I was told by Sony and some BR supporters that the format was technically superior to HD DVD primarily because it was being designed from the ground up as a higher capacity disk plus a burnable format that could be used for video producers to run off short quantities of HD productions. They said HD DVD would not do that.
Well, it's two years later and I am getting ready to begin my Home theater transformation to 1080p and a deal surfaces that I could not turn down. It was one where I buy the 1080p projector and a DVDO 50 Pro processor that has a 4x1 hdmi switching at a good price, PLUS it was bundled with a free Toshiba A30 player. This is how I end up getting into HD DVD before Blu Ray.
But I am not giving up on Blu Ray. I just needed to continue shopping for a player so I can be "Purple" as the saying goes. Here's where my surprises surface-
After 2 years waiting for this format war to be decided, plus 2 years waiting to be a medium that is out of the early adopter stage, I discover several personal misconceptions about the two.
First, I get the HD DVD setup working and I am most impressed with the quality and features. I sign up with the largest Block Buster store in Jacksonville, and have what seems to be a good quantity of HD DVD titles. Well with Movie pass, I quickly exhausted their library of new titles and have reverted to watching others as in reruns. The Wow factor of HD DVD is spent as far as Block Buster is able to supply. Now I do a census count and discover that this store has reduced it's HD DVD titles shortly after I signed up and now has about 1/4 of the number of titles available for rent. The true census is what is available to buy or rent with other services such as Netflix. The title count is about equal and therefore the deciding factor is get both or settle for one that has the title collection you prefer. For me that would be a difficult choice so being Purple is the only answer here.
So, happy with how things are working with my HD DVD, just not happy with available titles to rent, I decided to ramp up my decision to buy into Blu Ray. The A30 I had came as a free bonus but was selling for around $300 where I could find it so I felt all things being equal, I should pay no more than $300 for a Blu Ray player. I begin to shop and after eliminating the high end stores who only sold Blu Ray for $1000 and up, I looked at the CC and BB deals. Hardly any inventory. I'm reading forum threads on which player is best and was shocked to learn that BluRay has barely entered the market with any sort of maturity. For waht I was told 2 years ago about being a technical superior format, I discover the opposite is true that HD DVD offers these high end features Now and most of the Hd DVD's are offering them too. Well, slap me on the side of the head! My favored Blu Ray is still in the "early adopter stage of development with what they call profile 1.1, to offer us some better audio and a PIP feature was just released and no disks will support it until January or March depending on which editorial you believe. Only one title! WTF? Here I wait for 2 years and it's still early adopter with Blu Ray.
Well as I said before You'd never know it because with all the sales of HD DVD players promotion, BB still has 4 times as many titles as HD DVD to rent. Something seems out of balance here, don't you think?
So here we have more players with fewer disk rentals for HD DVD and plenty of titles available that lacks high tech features and will only play on expensive hardware for Blu Ray. IT makes no sense! The only way we can explain it is the "spoils of war" between the two formats. The consumer is getting screwed!
Well, I order a Player for Blue Ray so I can get the titles to view, knowing full well the technology seems inferior to HD DVD, it will do for now as long as I don't over pay. I find the Sammy 1400 for a bit over $300 which was my goal and have it on the way. But continuing the fiasco this war brings, I discover some more problems such as very long startup times with Blu Ray as well as stuttering and judder. Further confirmation that BluRay is stuck in the early adopter level of development. Hopefully, I can put up with the issues I've read about with Blu Ray, and I'm hoping Sony and partners will soon fix all this stuff. Then I can buy a real feature rich BluRay player that matches the technology I now get with HD DVD plus have that long sought after tight integration into my edit system for HD content production. At this rate I may be retired from the business before this all comes together. with Sony and partners.
After considering all this- I have concluded that HD DVD is the better choice today for a mature format and available titles but do not spend too much on it. Blu Ray, seems to have more rental availability but lack features if you are into that. If you just want to see the movie and send it back, ignoring these features then Blu Ray today will serve you well. But again try not to spend too much on this format for a player because these players are ALL developmental products full of flaws and lacking features of the competition.
While all this was disappointing to me, I can say it has given me renewed excitement over some of these productions since the quality difference is so pronounced. Even the sd, DVD played on the HD DVD player offers significant improvement over an older SD upconverting DVD player. So, its worth it even with SD DVD library. Again, just don't pay too much as the technology will improve and the price will keep coming down to the under $100 price.
This is a personal experience post of my assessment today in the format war. Hopefully, I won't become collateral damage in the battles. So far it seems I lost a battle at Block Buster as they have reduced the inventory at my store of HD DVD as compared to Blu Ray.
BluRay vs. HDDVD; who will win? I think there is no clear cut answer.
While this is fine I would also like to add my own perception and rude awakening over the two formats.
When I first saw the Blu Ray and HD DVD formates demoed a couple years ago, I became initially one sided favoring the Sony Blu Ray for this reason- I produce content and being a Sony House, I felt that Sony's DVD authoring and editing software that I use and like today would directly support this medium. It would be a good choice to have a BluRay burner in the studio and a set top player in the Home theater. Plus, I could see the wide acceptance of the Studios on BR vs, few on HD DVD. I never forget that content choices / titles available is king when winning the so called format war. In addition to that, I was told by Sony and some BR supporters that the format was technically superior to HD DVD primarily because it was being designed from the ground up as a higher capacity disk plus a burnable format that could be used for video producers to run off short quantities of HD productions. They said HD DVD would not do that.
Well, it's two years later and I am getting ready to begin my Home theater transformation to 1080p and a deal surfaces that I could not turn down. It was one where I buy the 1080p projector and a DVDO 50 Pro processor that has a 4x1 hdmi switching at a good price, PLUS it was bundled with a free Toshiba A30 player. This is how I end up getting into HD DVD before Blu Ray.
But I am not giving up on Blu Ray. I just needed to continue shopping for a player so I can be "Purple" as the saying goes. Here's where my surprises surface-
After 2 years waiting for this format war to be decided, plus 2 years waiting to be a medium that is out of the early adopter stage, I discover several personal misconceptions about the two.
First, I get the HD DVD setup working and I am most impressed with the quality and features. I sign up with the largest Block Buster store in Jacksonville, and have what seems to be a good quantity of HD DVD titles. Well with Movie pass, I quickly exhausted their library of new titles and have reverted to watching others as in reruns. The Wow factor of HD DVD is spent as far as Block Buster is able to supply. Now I do a census count and discover that this store has reduced it's HD DVD titles shortly after I signed up and now has about 1/4 of the number of titles available for rent. The true census is what is available to buy or rent with other services such as Netflix. The title count is about equal and therefore the deciding factor is get both or settle for one that has the title collection you prefer. For me that would be a difficult choice so being Purple is the only answer here.
So, happy with how things are working with my HD DVD, just not happy with available titles to rent, I decided to ramp up my decision to buy into Blu Ray. The A30 I had came as a free bonus but was selling for around $300 where I could find it so I felt all things being equal, I should pay no more than $300 for a Blu Ray player. I begin to shop and after eliminating the high end stores who only sold Blu Ray for $1000 and up, I looked at the CC and BB deals. Hardly any inventory. I'm reading forum threads on which player is best and was shocked to learn that BluRay has barely entered the market with any sort of maturity. For waht I was told 2 years ago about being a technical superior format, I discover the opposite is true that HD DVD offers these high end features Now and most of the Hd DVD's are offering them too. Well, slap me on the side of the head! My favored Blu Ray is still in the "early adopter stage of development with what they call profile 1.1, to offer us some better audio and a PIP feature was just released and no disks will support it until January or March depending on which editorial you believe. Only one title! WTF? Here I wait for 2 years and it's still early adopter with Blu Ray.
Well as I said before You'd never know it because with all the sales of HD DVD players promotion, BB still has 4 times as many titles as HD DVD to rent. Something seems out of balance here, don't you think?
So here we have more players with fewer disk rentals for HD DVD and plenty of titles available that lacks high tech features and will only play on expensive hardware for Blu Ray. IT makes no sense! The only way we can explain it is the "spoils of war" between the two formats. The consumer is getting screwed!
Well, I order a Player for Blue Ray so I can get the titles to view, knowing full well the technology seems inferior to HD DVD, it will do for now as long as I don't over pay. I find the Sammy 1400 for a bit over $300 which was my goal and have it on the way. But continuing the fiasco this war brings, I discover some more problems such as very long startup times with Blu Ray as well as stuttering and judder. Further confirmation that BluRay is stuck in the early adopter level of development. Hopefully, I can put up with the issues I've read about with Blu Ray, and I'm hoping Sony and partners will soon fix all this stuff. Then I can buy a real feature rich BluRay player that matches the technology I now get with HD DVD plus have that long sought after tight integration into my edit system for HD content production. At this rate I may be retired from the business before this all comes together. with Sony and partners.
After considering all this- I have concluded that HD DVD is the better choice today for a mature format and available titles but do not spend too much on it. Blu Ray, seems to have more rental availability but lack features if you are into that. If you just want to see the movie and send it back, ignoring these features then Blu Ray today will serve you well. But again try not to spend too much on this format for a player because these players are ALL developmental products full of flaws and lacking features of the competition.
While all this was disappointing to me, I can say it has given me renewed excitement over some of these productions since the quality difference is so pronounced. Even the sd, DVD played on the HD DVD player offers significant improvement over an older SD upconverting DVD player. So, its worth it even with SD DVD library. Again, just don't pay too much as the technology will improve and the price will keep coming down to the under $100 price.
This is a personal experience post of my assessment today in the format war. Hopefully, I won't become collateral damage in the battles. So far it seems I lost a battle at Block Buster as they have reduced the inventory at my store of HD DVD as compared to Blu Ray.
BluRay vs. HDDVD; who will win? I think there is no clear cut answer.
