Top 4 reasons HD30 is good (1 Viewer)

[BrettB]

Just to be clear, Thomas had it right, my post is a summation of some of Amir's beliefs in the HD DVD Juggernaut article. Everyone should read it. There's other good stuff in there such as HD DVD having infinite storge via external hard drives.

 

[Harminder]

Oh for crying out loud, if HD30 is not enough, HD51 will start to see the light if studios want to cram everything onto a single disc (which I personally like). However, from a marketing stand point, I don't see that happening. To the average person, and I know this first hand being in retail, 2 of something is better than 1. And since producing 2 HD-DVD's costs nearly as much as 2 DVD's (according to Amir), I see 2 disc HD-DVD's being produced more frequently.

 

[Ryan-G]

I'm *not* installing a movie to my HD. It's bad enough I've gotta juggle 2-6 CD's to install a game, I'm not about to do it with HD-DVD's. At that point, BR is the far superior choice as they're now supposedly demonstrating something on the order of 200 gigs in multi-layer prototypes.

 

[ppltd]

Not sure where you were going with this thought, but the only point I see to the slow start up of download services for video is the deadly slow throughput of most users DSL or Cable connections. This will be improved over the next few years, making on demand movie purchases, downloaded to the hard disk of a centralized media device a real contender for the Video viewer, even if not the collector.

Heck, most consumers with cable or sat systems already own systems that 'download' movies to a hard disk for viewing at a latter time if they own a DVR. And the use on on-line rental houses over retail BB's is growing at a very fast pace. It is not a very difficult leap to see these customers perferring the on-demand download approach over waiting for the disk to be mailed to them. Just look at the comments made in this forum about the frustration when these rental houses do not have the title available when the consumer want's it. Downloadable content would eliminate this.

Again, this will not happen in the next 12 to 24 months, as the current internet infrastructure will not support it seamlessly, but that is being worked already. Over the next 2 to 4 years, we will see vastly improved speeds to our desktops making this delivery system a no-brainer.

 

[Dave Moritz]

The interesting part of this entire thing is that Toshiba and maybe even MS. Has claimed that they did not need 50 gigs and that there current disc capaciaty was more than enough. Now they are looking at a 51 gig disc to compete with Sony's 50 gig disc. This tells me that Toshiba was hoping that they could convice everyone that there lower storage capacity would be enough. I honestly believe that Toshiba was in a state of denile knowing full well that a real disadvantage could hurt there chances to win the format war. They seem to be looking into correcting that mistake and all the early supporters could end up being screwed if there 1st gen players do not play the tripple layer discs.

HD30 was ok, but IMHO 50 gig is alot better and its something they should have done to begine with. But this is one of the things that most likely suffered in the rush to beat Blu-ray to market. I love my HD-DVD player and if the 51 gig discs end up not being compatible with 1st gen players. It will be another reason to buy at least 80% of my HD movies on Blu-ray.

 

[Ryan-G]

Well, I was following the trend of thought in the portion I'd quoted in my post, that referenced "Infinite storage space for HD-DVD via external drives". Which says to me that HD-DVD thinks it's got legs for beyond 1080p by taking a page from PC Gaming through using multi-discs with content spread across them, requiring all the discs to be installed to the drive prior to playing. Thus, installing a Movie.

As far as Downloadable content, IMO, it's the solution to the now weakened rental market. I believe the downloadable's will always lag behind physical storage due to bandwidth constraints in quality, I suspect that while 720p could easily become prevelant with decent quality in the near term, we're a long ways away from 1080p. But 720p is probably more than sufficient for that movie you'd like to see, once and only once. IMO by the time 1080p is downloadable in a realistic time, physical storage will be somewhere in the 2k range.

 

[ppltd]

This is all new territory for the content providers to explore, and I think it will be many years before the final tally is in. Big obstacles still face these content providers, not the least of which is bandwidth to the home, but I applaud them for trying a new approach.

Being able to add new content to a game (content with real play value), or being able to download new content for a film, instead of having to buy a SE version, has many benefits, not the least of which could lessen double dipping by the content providers. Whether these benefits will ever see the light of day is the million dollar question. IMHO, it is a long way off.

 

[Jeff Adkins]

Sorry, but I see this "we'll give you just the movie, then you can download the trailer, deleted scenes and other extras to the hard drive" as a major step backwards. I don't see how this is an "advantage" for HD-DVD. Even if it were free. I'd rather just have the 50GB BD with everything included.