[DaViD Boulet]

While I've been a strong supporter for Blu-ray since the inception of the "war", I haven't been blind to the positives of the format war; It's no secret that the BD format as it stands today has Toshiba and HD DVD, in large part, to thank for helping it become a format worth owing. I want to thank Toshiba/HD DVD because it was their influence (along with Warner) that actually transformed Blu-ray Disc into a format fit for audio/videophiles.

Prior to the launch of HD DVD, Sony's proposed Blu-ray Spec was to include MPEG2 video *only*, and PCM was the only provision for lossless sound. While those two options could still provide high-quality pictures and sound at generous bit-rates, they negated any advantage that 50GB and high-bit-rate bandwidth might have otherwise provided. It was only because of competition with HD DVD that the BDA acted and incorporated AVC, VC-1, and Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA into the BD spec which allowed the higher-bandwidth and 20GB of additional space able to be used meaningfully to provide greater transparency, extras, or both.

Had the format war never taken place, or Toshiba's HD DVD format not been so well designed with advanced audio and video codecs to make more efficient use of the more limited space/bandwidth needs of HD DVD, Blu-ray Disc would be another MPEG2 format using up vast amounts of space whenever lossless audio was provided.

I just recently reviewed The David Matthew's BD and the 5.1 24/96 kHz Dolby Digital TrueHD soundtrack was astounding... and provided higher quality than the 24/48 PCM soudtrack that would have consumed the same amount of space, not to mention the transparent video compression of the many dark/hard-to-compress scenes since MPEG2 wasn't used. At this point the majority of BD titles are compressed with AVC/VC-1: HD DVD's influence hasn't just been a spec-change on paper for the BD medium: it's made a difference.

Now that Warner has moved to Blu-ray Disc, HD DVD will most likely become the "beta" of the HD format war. However, the positive effects of HD DVD have been significant, and have actually made BD format a MUCH better product than it otherwise would have been. BD still has a way to go to fully catch up with HD DVD hardware (profile 1.1 is now just available and 2.0 web-interactive features are still on the way) so it's not time to rest our feet on the coffee table with BD just yet. But BD wouldn't be where it is now if it weren't for HD DVD.

[Cees Alons]

Well, you know David, this is one of the occasions where I can fully agree with you.
Indeed the "war" (I like to call it competition) has brought us some goodies - and I personally would not have regretted it to linger on a while. On the other hand: if it's mainly over now, that might bring us some well-deserved peace, although, like you said we need to stay vigilant. There are some aspects we need to keep watching with a distrusting eye (I mentioned them before, I won't here).


Cees

[Averry]

Well.


For whats it's worth, the War was kind of what made Hi-Def fun.


It's like anything with wager, and that's kind of what made me more excited about it.


But now it's like a game of bingo gone wrong.

[Brandon Conway]

I applaud everything you just said, David.

[Adam Gregorich]

David-
Well put. While the competition sometimes brought out the worst in all us, it brought out the best in both formats.

EDIT: This was a two way street. Was it any accident that we were seeing more Dolby TrueHD titles, or that as BD got closer to 1.1 we started seeing more creative special features from HD DVD? Nope. Competition. I hope that all the studios realize that they are competing with DVD and keep pushing what they can do with audio, video and special features.

[ReggieW]

Well put David.

[Craig Beam]

Thanks for posting that, David. I've always preferred Blu-Ray over HD-DVD, but I don't discount HD-DVD's value (which is why I've been format neutral). So... thanks, HD-DVD.

[Zack Gibbs]

Well put, but like Adam said it was a two-way street. After all, HD-DVD was originally going to use red lasers.

[Dennis Maricic]

David, could not agree with you more. Excellent post!

[Man-Fai Wong]

Ditto all that.

_Man_

[Joseph J.D]

An excellent post sir...