The format wars march on
Blu-ray or DVD? Maybe a winner will be declared by year end...or not.
As we've reported before, Blockbuster has made the decision to carry mainly Blu-ray movies in its stores. But not only has Blockbuster leaned towards Sony backed Blu-ray, so has the Japanese adult film industry.
Sony's stance is to not allow adult content to be produced in its own production facilities but they will support any company that wishes to produce the discs themselves. Earlier this year, other adult production companies complained about not being able to get their adult films out on Blu-ray discs and were talking of taking the side of HD DVD.
Last week, Target Corp, the second-largest retail chain in the US, announced that it would begin promoting Blu-ray with end-of-aisle displays and start selling Sony's stand-alone Blu-ray disc player before the start of this coming holiday season. HD DVD movies will still be sold alongside Blu-ray movies at Target, but only expect to be able to pick up the HD DVD player attachment for the Xbox 360 in store locations with Toshiba's stand-alone player still being available through the website. This moves come after rumors that Walmart, the largest US retailer, will be backing HD DVD by selling HD DVD players at a deep discount.
Definitive sales figures for both formats for the latter part of the lapsed year are hard to come by and both sides are claiming leadership in the European market.
In a sort of funny bit, apparently a group of thieves have decided that Blu-ray would be the winning format and decided to wipe a Seattle store clean of its almost entire Blu-ray stock leaving HD DVDs behind. The retail value of the stolen Blu-ray discs was more then £3700 which would equate to around 200 discs being stolen.
With no definitive sales figure released recently for the two different formats, one would have to conclude that Blu-ray is coming out on top judging by the partnerships that have been formed. Have you personally backed either format or are you still waiting for a winner to be decided? Let us know in the comments section or over in the forums.
Previous Article
39 Comments
Discuss in the forums Reply£18.50 a disc..... You have to be kidding....
Actually, I remember when DVDR's were more than that...
p.s. in places like gamestation and asda, i've seen hd-dvd's and blu-ray disc for as cheap as £10.
Best viral marketing ever.
If you re-read what was actually written... Sony doesn't allow adult content to be manufactured in its own production facilities but WILL SUPPORT anyone that wants to print the discs in other production facilities.
I'll be waiting until the format war is over before buying into either.
I did re-read, and I edited before your post
Which would be HD-DVD. Last time I talked to my pop, he had snagged a Tosh from Crutchfield, because they dropped the price below 200. He said that was the magic number for him. lol.
Personally, I'm partial to Blu-Ray simply because it's a step in another direction and has room for growth in the future as opposed to building on existing tech. Just my $.02. Don't wanna start another one of those annoying pissing-contest debates over this stuff!
The tech is the same, they both use the same lasers and whatnot... just Blu-Ray has a thinner coating and is one piece of plastic (like a CD - hench it can't do dual sides) and HD DVD has kept with the two pieces of plastic (like DVD - can do dual sides). The thinner coating allows for tighter focus on the laser.
Neither is "more advanced" technologically speaking.
It would be insanely expensive to do so with HD-DVD and BR. I only tend to buy movies I already have on VHS because of sales or for extra content and director cuts.
Also how many people are waiting until 'the war' is over? This can't be good for the market if consumers aren't buying anything but DVDs. I'm probably going to buy a PS3 when I move house, so I'm in the Blu-Ray camp and I couldn't care less about the 'format war'.
True. I merely meant as in using new manufacturing techniques instead of building upon existing formats, i.e. DVD. Hard to explain. :o
They killed each other off and one has just managed to survive.
Terrible forcing this stuff on us when previous generation gear is still good.
There's a difference? :D
... I mean really ... by the time the DVD arrived, basically everyone could see the point (was there a format war back then, for the R-discs?).
-btb-
Absolutely the truth. Unfortunately, in a free-market system where every corp or group of corps can come up with an idea, pump money into it, then sell it, they tend to have differing ideas and more often than not are a direct competitor of the other. But this is all obvious, I know.
I just hope this thing is over soon, so I can watch something in higher def than current DVD on my HDTV that isn't television!
DVD 4.7gb/9gb
HD 15gb/30gb / 51gb tripple layer but not work with some older drives (firmware update maybe)
BD 25gb/50gb / 75gb (it may be bigger) tripple layer same as above
as long as the wining/loseing war is on it push BD drives down when thay get to less then £100 i probly get one (£300-£350 for an 4x one still alot cheaper then when DVD-/+ drives came out, the reader only BD + dvd burner combo is £150)
It's all very good having a larger disc and everything, but is it really necessary? There hasn't been a single Blu-Ray release which has actually made use of it's extra space over HD DVD. You only need look at Hot Fuzz with an amazing picture and audio and 10 hours of additional features on one disc (compressed in MPEG2 I might add, if that was in AVC or VC-1 4X as much could be fit on there - or it could be in 1080i) to wonder what's the point considering HD DVD's can be made on pretty the same equipment that makes DVD's that are in supermarket bargain bins at £2.99.
The new codecs mean that a film is pretty much topping out at 22GBish... that's topping out, many films are well below 20GB, Blu-Ray's as well as HD DVD's. Blu-Ray's includes the PCM audio which is nice and fills up the disc, but lossless DDTrueHD is just as good... in fact 98% of people's home cinema setup's wouldn't allow the listener to distinguish any differences between a good DDPlus/DTSHD/PCM/DDTHD track.
Most new DVD authoring equipment is actually capable of making HD DVD's without modification, that means if HD DVD was suddenly at the distribution levels DVD is at currently the costs of manufacture will be the same.
As for the multiple layers... adding 1 more layer to blu-ray would mean another substantial out-lay for equipment upgrades, increase risks of faults by a third, decrease yields (which are already much much lower than HD DVD/DVD), cut out the PS3 owner as a potential customer and as I have said spark of utter pointlessness considering just how much can be fit on a 50GB disc. Why do all that to make tri, or the even more costly quad layer, when they can just throw another disc in the box.... I'm sure that customers aren't going to be put out swapping discs over after watching a single disc for 13 hours.
More layers will never happen..... look how much DVD+RWDL discs still cost... more layers more trouble and money.
For PC use Blu-Ray is too little too late... is anyone going to backup a 1.5 terabyte Hard drive to 30 ultra expensive DL Blu-Ray discs?? Cheap USB hard drives will take over that backup duty and then holographic discs will take over after that. Plus DVD large and cheap enough for burning out a movie... even in 1080p.
jesus I've gone on for ages...
Bottom line my friend... size isn't everything.
As for blockbuster backing Blu-Ray, a very large percentage of people renting BR movies from them will be the same people who are renting games for their PS3. Right now, I don't know a single person with a stand alone BR player.
Also, I know that USA is a huge consumer market and Wall-mart dominates. But Target is International and is going to spray ads and the like over the world + it doesn't mean that other companies can't do what Wall-mart does (which imo is appalling)
You also have the companies, Samsung, Sony and Panasonic are the biggest names in Home Theatre and the HD corner, all of them support Blu-Ray and all have their own players... So I think I can safely say that it's only a matter of time when either one of these companies decide to drop their price that all of the Blu-Ray players will drop in price.
Here in Australia you can either buy a Blu-Ray player for $1000 or buy a PS3 for the same price... Why would you buy a player?
IMO I think that Blu-Ray has the lead, only slightly though... It only takes a drop in price to win :)
Personally id like to see BD win because 50-200gb backup discs really do appeal to me
So my guess is: same as with VHS vs. Beatmax vs. Video2000... the first one to flood videorentals with P0rn is going to win. :o
On the PC side... both are too small really, Harddrives have gotten too cheap.
The downside however: if games stop fitting on DVD (as is already happening) we've got to find SOME way of transporting content into our PC's.
(And no, not everybody can or will stream >5GB from the internet)
Xir
I think HD DVD will win, though. People today aren't willing to pay for future-proofing. They just want the cheapest crap on the market. (They still complain when the DVD player they got with their box of cereals break, though...)
The enthusiast market is just to small for BD to survive at the moment.
Another outcome is that dual format players will be more popular, and people stop to care about the formats (like on DVD+/-).
The VHS/Betamax war was a bit different, as the media was physically different. This made dual-format players much harder to make. Here it was the cheapest, and not the best format that won.