Two opposing views on who will win the HD battle (1 Viewer)

I found both of these editorials on-line today, and find them quite ammusing.

For those in th BD camp, read the following;

Enjoy. I did.

I have to chuckle at the pro-BD writer's assertion that both Hid def formats have been a disaster...a convenient line to take for proponents of BD.

What neither he or any credible writer has yet to articulate is how BD; whatever the spec may be on papaer what with 50GB discs et al...is in fact 'better' than HD.

Thus far, HD DVD clearly has the better working spec currently, considering audio in particular, and any idea that 50 GB disc will actually 'look' or 'sound' better is purely hypothetical at this point, and will in the end likely prove moot for any number of reasons.

The PS# will not be a huge boon to BD except for early HT adopters...gamers will no more buy PS3 for BD movies than they did PS2 for DVD...which they did not.

The unfortunate loser in all of this continues to be the consumer.

So many use studio support as to why BD will win, I say studio support means very, very little in this war.

It comes down to the entry fee into this war, the price of the players. The more players sold, the more movies sold and the studios will go where the money is. If BD keeps their prices at twice that of HD-DVDs, HD-DVD will sell more, faster and the studios will take notice. If this pricing trend keeps up into mid-next year I bet we start seeing those BD only studios rethinking their support.

wow uncompressed PCM or DTS-HD master on Blu-ray is bad and purely hypothetical according to you ? well only DolbyTrueHD on HD-DVD is on the same boat in audio field...

did you read any reviews of some PCM soundtracks ?

Marek

Marek,

What Peter was talking about, and I quote "will actually 'look' or 'sound' better is purely hypothectical" is whether BD will look and sound better than HD-DVD, not wheter it supports PCN and DTS HD.

Fact is, it will not 'look and sound' better, it only has the potential to look and sound the same.

Fact is that Blu-Ray has the potential to look better due to increased storage space on BD50s and the ability to use higher bitrates (both average and peak) then HD-DVD is capable of. A BD50 could theorectically use a average bitrate thoughout an entire movie that HD-DVD could only peak at.

Both formats use the same exact encoding/decoding for both video and lossless audio. In fact I bet when the formats become more established they will both use pretty much the same exact hardware with only the disc reader being different.

In reality HD-DVD has no technical advantages at all over Blu-Ray, while Blu-Ray has more headroom for both storage needs and higher bitrates. If you want to argue that HD-DVD will never need a higher bitrate or the ability to supply a huge bitrate peak on demand, you'd most likely be standing on shaky ground.

What about the 45 gig HD-DVDs? Clearly those are a reality and therefore BD really has no storage advantage over HD-DVD.

While they have been talked about, they do not exist in the current specs of the shipping players. Many people speculate that while triple layer discs may be feasible, they were never truly intended to be used and hence the lack of a spec for triple layer discs on the current players.

Also the additional space of a triple layer disc will not negate that fact that Blu-Ray has a bitrate limit of 54Mb/s while HD-DVD has a 30Mb/s limit.

In order for triple layer discs to ever be used they'd have to be placed into the official HD-DVD specs which could open up the possibility that all the current and near future HD-DVD players may not support the discs. If they ever really intended to use triple layer discs, why isn't it in the official specs already?

To be fair, Blu-Ray has shown quad layer discs are feasible, but they cannot be used because they also are not in the Blu-Ray specs. You'd have to imagine that if something isn't in the official specs after a year, it will probably never be officially supported. So we shall see what happens in the near future.

Thanks Shawn.

In reality, both formats have the ability to look identical in both sound and video. The extra 20 GB will have no difference in 95% of all releases. The added bandwidth of BD gives it no advantage in picture or sound.

I am getting so tired of this 'my disk has more space than yours' arguments. They are totally meaningless at this time.

I own a Chrysler 300C that has had the engine rebuilt by Hennesey. It now pushes out more than 440HP, up from the 340 HP of the stock vechile, and now has a top speed of 171 MPH, up from the 131 MPH of the stock vechile. Guess what. The stock vechile will do exactly what mine will do. And while I can now do 171 MPH, I will never use it.

Sorry for the slightly off analogy, but I see this discussion of HD vrs. BD in the same vain. Extra HP that is not used is waisted. When I actually see any reason for the extra space, we might be into an entirely different format.

BTW, I have both formats, and for all of the promise of BD, the releases have not held up to the promise.

no advantage ?
like mentioned in other thread, BD can use two loosles track (like for movie and for music only track..), while HD-DVD can't due bandwith limit, which was confirmed by AMIR (from avs forum)

so you really think that for example LOTR will look identical if made for HD-DVD 30GB and BD 50GB, same vc-1 codec used ?

BD have advantage to use higher bitrate, to uses 2 loosless tracks, plus maybe a few extras... and HD-DVD will be at it's MAXIMUM compresion even with still better and better vc-1 authoring...., I bet they will not get TRANSPARENT quality with full movie plus at least DoblyTrueHD and few other soundtracks,.. because there will be no BITRATE for other music only track...

Marek

Thomas, he mentioned "THUS FAR HD-DVD has clearly the better working spec currently, considering audio in particular"

WHICH IS NOT TRUE !

Marek

Few argue that Beta was 'better' than VHS. Having lived in EDurope for 8 years, I am also familiar with the merits of PAL over NTSC.

One of the problerms with the 'my disk is bigger than yours' theory is that there are not likely to be any display devices, or receivers, or players in the market that will demonstrably show that bigger is better.

Thus, the general consumer wanting an HD format of any kind will base the purchase on what he or she can see, and folks...whatever the 'on-paper' merits of BD....I would be hard pressed to convince a buyer that 1080p on BD will look and sound better than 1080p on HD, given that no hardware exists that will allow me to actually show anyone the difference, if any.

I don't care who wins...I like this war to some extent because it forces both sides to watch the pricing. However, any percieved technical superiority in the long term (there is none at this time whatsoever in practical, measureable terms) is going to be lost becuase BD cant get it's shit together in either the hardware or software department; charges too much for too little, and Toshiba is doing a pretty masterful job of spearheading the HD camp, aka the new promo, that I have already elsewhere indicated will be announced in Canada on Monday.

BD can have all the technical advantages it cares to trumpet. No one on God's green earth can actually show me a single one of them, or let me hear them for that matter. Wendy said it best hehe..."Where's the beef?"

To quote you again, why stand up for a format that:

Has less potential in storage capacity
Has less potential for bitrate
Has far less studio support
Has almost no manufacturer support outside of Toshiba

The only thing that HD-DVD has going for it is a cheaper price. Since you admit tht HD-DVD and Blu-Ray have identical futures in the video and audio department, the current lackluster releases are a moot point to argue about. We are discussing a HD format that may be with us for 10 years as DVD has been, so focusing ona few dollars price difference today is pretty shortsighted.

And, of course, BD has potentially more consumer unfriendliness than HD DVD, like the BD+ specs and other DRM unpleasantness.
They can "revoke" your player's licences. (They "won't do it", I'm sure, but just imagine what you will have to do if a reading error, or another temporary digital glitch, renders your player revoked.)


Cees

I keep getting the impression that a minority of people continue to clutch this theoretical "superiority" of Blu-Ray that exists only in their minds even after several months following the launch. Sony botched this format from Day 1 and now seem to be placing all their hopes into the launch of a videogame! That, my friend, is simply pathetic. If the Blu-Ray format is indeed so superior, why are the early adopters choosing the alternative? The average consumer depends on $ to make their decisions - early adopters simply go for the best quality. HD-DVD offers BOTH.

Again, you insist on calling it a "sony" format yet there is mountains of evidence that it is anything BUT. Panasonic, Philips, Samsung and soon Pioneer are carrying the flag because the BD group is a true coalition. No one except Toshiba has yet to offer consumers another choice for HD DVD.

BD may not be perfect. But pretending that it's somehow inferior picture wise is ignoring that current releases from multiple studios are every "bit" as good as the competiton. You rail against an "older" codec yet Paramount's MPEG2 versions look as good as the VC-1 versions. Soundwise there is no contest. A handful of HD DVD releases have Dolby TrueHD, yet every Columbia/MGM and Disney have uncompressed multichannel PCM. Some with 24 bit resolution! Fox is coming up with DTS-MA on every release as well.

You also dismiss the PS3 factor. I can say without hesitation that it will be a boon for BD. Myself I've spoken with a couple dozen folks who's eyes light up when mention of the PS3's BD capabilities. Does it mean for sure that each and every one of them will buy a PS3 and use it for BD films? Of course not. But it does mean that the interest is there. We'll know for sure in less than a month.

So BR is terrible because they're ramping up an entirely new form of disc that uses cutting edge technology, while the company using fairly standard "Yesterday's tech" for it's discs is wonderful? Thank god the market didn't say that when AMD ramped up Athlon production, or Intel would just now be getting around to releasing 2ghz CPU's.

You're also neglecting to mention that BD50 can be overkill for some media. Not much sense in releasing a 60 minute kids movie on a 50 when a 25 has plenty of space. Just like there's not much sense in releasing the same thing on a dual layer DVD when it'll fit fine on a single layer DVD. Everything has it's place.

I also find it interesting that you neglect to comment on Toshiba subsidizing Laptops-in-a-box while slamming Sony for subisidizing cutting edge tech. I'm sorry, I don't care what Tosh claims, I've built enough computers to know that they're not selling those things at a profit, before considering the quality non-computer components they added in.

As far as the codecs go, perhaps you should be looking at Microsoft rather than Sony. You don't really think Microsoft would give one of their biggest competitors a leg-up on them when they can make life difficult and shut down a selling feature of a direct competitor do you? I mean honestly, MS has no problem going out of their way to make life difficult for competitors, why would they suddenly want to play fair with Sony and risk pretty much the entire future of the company?

BR isn't perfect, and it didn't come out of the gate looking good compared to HD-DVD. But if you're going to slam BR, at least slam it's problems, or comment on both sides. Tosh isn't any better than BR right now on a number of fronts.

It will be interesting to see how the two formats play out over here in Europe. Certainly it has been explained by one of the lead designers of Pioneer's BD player that they chose that format specifically for the European angle. It seems their calculations reveal that there's not enough room on an HD DVD30 for a full HD movie plus multiple quality audio tracks, and HD extras.

BTW have any of the HD DVDs released so far had all of their extras ported from the DVD but in HD resolutions?

And you continue to see implications that objectively aren't there. He doesn't call it that in his post: he mentions "Sony" a few times in a context that's correct, because Sony is indeed involved. No need to deny that, I suppose? (And why "again"?)

Fact is: until today Sony DID botch the format's launch since day 1 (and DID the other things he mentions), whether or not it is their format, and they do that even if Bob Black, or anyone else, believed it to be theirs or not.


Cees