Is there a clear winner between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD yet?

[mpompey]

What do the industry pros say? Is it likely that there will be a dual format player in the near future?

 

[j_garcia]

No and No. The only new tech that I've seen that may help is a universal disc that can handle SD DVD, BD and HD DVD all on one multilayer disc, which would prevent double dipping on titles and would allow you to own the disc already and upgrade to one of the high def players down the road.

 

[evilkat]

What do the industry pros say? Is it likely that there will be a dual format player in the near future?

ROFL

The war has not even BEGUN yet. It feels like the whole Betamax vs VHS thing, and THAT debacle took almost 9 years to resolve (Sony introduced Betamax in '75 and started manufacturing VHS in 88)!

Hopefully this format war won't be as protracted as the last one, but given how hard it has been to note differences between the two formats, expect to see no resolution for quite some time.

Which means of course that we the consumer will be screwed over potentially 3 times when we want to buy our favorite movies: 1 for DVD, 2 for HD-DVD and 3 for BD-DVD (and that's not even counting special editions!!).

Is it a wonder why piracy runs rampant?

 

[Jack Hammer]

If I recall, the dvd vs divx situation only took a few years to be decided, obviously, dvd won. Hopefully this will settle in a relatively short time. I see it as being in no one players best interest for it to take a protracted amount of time to be decided. It just alienates consumers more.

My $0.02

Jack

 

[billnchristy]

IMO the first format you see Disney classics on will win...of course right now that would point to Blu-ray.

Seems HDDVD is the affordable solution and if that continues who knows...its really about the publics want and studio support I would think.

 

[davo]

I'm going to make the call that in 6 to 8 months there will be a clear leader and me thinks it will be Blu-ray.
The xbox 360 doesn't even have hdmi, and despite all my googling no one has even seen a hdmi cable for the Hd-dvd add on.

Suddenly one horse faulters, the other one bolts...

 

[mpompey]

I remember the DIVX vs DVD debacle. DIVX pretty much died in the Internet. It never got a running chance. <-- Thank goodness for that.

Wouldn't it be great to have a disc that would have all three formats on it. That would really help the consumer out. But wait a minute, I think I hear my alarm clock going off. There's no way they'll do that.

Oh well, I guess I'll have to wait and see. I guess whatever format New Line puts the LOTR extended trilogy on will the format I buy first.

 

[evilkat]

All three formats become feasible only if BD/HD are here to stay.
Because if one of the formats decide to go bye-bye then you need to
repurchase whatever you bought for the dead format in whatever
new format wins so that you can keep watching movies you like.

I think this is a totally unaaceptable situation to be in. No one wins
except possibly the movie studios who get to re-sell movies you ALREADY
bought, except in a different format. At a minimum they should have
coupons or something that allow you to switch formats without having
to pay for stuff you already bought.

A lot of people say BD will win because the PS3 will make it prevalent.
If the price of the PS3 tumbles down a lot more, then I would agree.
But as things stand, I cannot see anyone shelling out that kind of cash
for the PS3...unless the PS3 has an incredible BD player.

It's still very much a wait and see market. Unless you look around
for torrents of course

DivX may have lost the DVD battle, but it's still pretty big on the net,
along with Xvid and h264 which is catching up fast.

 

[mpompey]

True, Divx and Xvid are large among the video on the internet.

Oh well, I guess I'll have to wait this out and see. Too bad for me.
I guess it isn't too bad, that gives me more time to save up for my 1080p projector.

 

[Jedi2016]

I gather it'll take about 18-24 months for the picture to become clearer. And maybe another year beyond that for the loser to throw in the towel and stop making discs.

What will happen is that one of the formats will begin to outsell the other. Slowly at first, but picking up speed. For the moment, my money's still on Blu-Ray, largely due to the PS3 (which, by all accounts, is a far better BD player than the Samsung). As the sales gap widens, the studios will put their support where the money is, releasing all the big titles in the better-selling format, while support for the losing format slowly dwindles. For a while, some studios will continue to support both, but eventually they'll stop releasing titles in the format that just isn't selling.

About a year after that, the losing format will officially declare itself dead, and while the manufacturers will continue to support the existing hardware, and some low-end manufacturers may continue to make them, or multi-format players, the manufacture of high-end players, as well as the discs themselves, will cease.

Then, and only then, a winner will there be.

Until that happens, I'll wait. I'll get a PS3 sometime next year, probably, and buy one, maybe two Blu-Ray movies on it just to enjoy. Or maybe not, if Blockbuster starts renting them. Then, I'll just wait for a winner. Then I'll go buy a set-top box and start rebuilding my collection. I already have a list of the films I'll be re-buying in HD.

 

[evilkat]

Oh well, I guess I'll have to wait this out and see. Too bad for me.

I hear your frustration! I've been wanting to build a cool HD movie collection, with all my favorite action flicks, but this format war is just ridiculous.

 

[mpompey]

By the time an HD winner is declared, Web 2.0 will be out and we'll be streaming HD content on demand for free right?

Or is that another one of my pipe dreams?

 

[evilkat]

By the time an HD winner is declared, Web 2.0 will be out and we'll be streaming HD content on demand for free right?

Or is that another one of my pipe dreams?

Did you know that the NYT has already been making noises about Web 3.0

Crazies! But as for streaming HD content, we're already doing that. Except we call 'em torrenting lol.

Actually, doesn't CBS have some television content available for download? Not sure if it's HD though.

What we need is for someone to figure out a way to get HD content on a DVD (i.e increase DVD capacity to more than 4GB) and then we'll have a real winner.

 

[mpompey]

What we need is for someone to figure out a way to get HD content on a DVD (i.e increase DVD capacity to more than 4GB) and then we'll have a real winner.

That is hilarious!

 

[JoeE SP9]

A double sided double layer DVD can hold more than 17GB.

 

[stratman]

Winners? Hah! The only winners (wieners) will be the studios after the dust settles probably sometime next year or someone will launch a dual format player and the whole point becomes moot. Then we win! Unless you bought a player now, oops.

 

[evilkat]

Winners? Hah! The only winners (wieners) will be the studios after the dust settles probably sometime next year or someone will launch a dual format player and the whole point becomes moot. Then we win! Unless you bought a player now, oops.

I beg to differ on the dual player thing. Already Vida box is offering that functionality, but frankly what good will that do? Sooner or later one of the formats will die, meaning the consumer will have to repurchase all my movies in the dead format all OVER again. It's difficult to have to maintain a decent movie library when there's 3 different formats for the same damn movie.

The consumer should NOT have to choose between two formats as similar as HD/BD. It's rather ridiculous. I agree with you about the studios being the only winners, however. This format war seems to be a convoluted way for studios to make MORE money. It's in their interests to keep the consumer repurchasing the same movie over and over again, in different formats!

 

[Seth=L]

Vida Box is to expensive, like $3000 Hu-uh.

 

[stratman]

Believe me the studios are happy with format wars, we the suckers are the losers at the end; if you start building an HD library now, you might regret it, depending who wins the war. And Vida, as nice as a product that it is, how many can really afford it.

 

[racquetman]

What we need is for someone to figure out a way to get HD content on a DVD (i.e increase DVD capacity to more than 4GB) and then we'll have a real winner.

Ask and you shall receive . . . sort of.

http://www.nmeinc.com/evd-vmd.htm

From that link:

VMD - Disc
Versatile Multilayer Disc (VMD) is an optical storage device in the traditional DVD format, except that it can hold about 10 times the quantity of a standard DVD, or roughly 5 times the quantity of a DVD9. This is achieved quite simply through a multilayer technology that exploits the unused or wasted space, as we like to call it, within the disc itself.

The usual CD/DVD technology does not allow manufacturing disks with more than two layers (from one side). In contrast VMD technology allows building disks (and compatible players) with 5, 10 up to a maximum of 20 layers. VMD is a multi-layered reflective disk. Its format, dimension, weight, coding, technological and operational standards, as well as the corresponding parameters of the drives/players (including reading rate and power consumption) meet the regular standards of CD, DVD, minidisk and other existing information carriers.