Sales of HD DVD and Blu-Ray players

[MBauer]

Saw an article this morning on the PC Magazine site "Blu-Ray Leads Next Generation DVD Sales. Interesting statistics and observations

 

[j_garcia]

That has been the consensus, as Blu-Ray discs are also outselling HD-DVD. Does it mean BD will win? I'm supporting BD, but it is still anyone's bet.

 

[billnchristy]

This is probably because they are actually releasing titles on BD. There has been a fat wad of nothing for HD-DVD for a while now.

 

[j_garcia]

That too...but there have been a lot of announcements of releases coming, and it seems there will be a bunch of titles hitting the market in the near future. The "combo" DVD/HD-DVD flipper disc doesn't sell me either.

I think maybe one of the more telling things has been releases on both formats and the BD version outselling the HD-DVD version by a margin of 2 to 1.

 

[stratman]

Like I said before, I think that by summer's end there will be a clearer indication as to who the "winner" is. The way I'm looking at it is exposure, Blueray is becoming the defacto name for hi-def dvds, I know this because in casual conversation with older folks who are not into HT the word Bluray always comes up, Bluray has spent more money in exposure than HD-DVD has. I see commercials for Bluray constantly on tv, when was the last time you saw one for HD-DVD? When a product becomes ingrained in the mind of the general population that product has captured the market to a degree. If the sales statistics keep tracking in the same direction, its going to look bad for the HD-DVD camp. So far the LG player hasn't made a splash and the units that have sold have tech issues to be resolved. I just hope that the better format prevails.

 

[Seth=L]

Like I said before, I think that by summer's end there will be a clearer indication as to who the "winner" is. The way I'm looking at it is exposure, Blueray is becoming the defacto name for hi-def dvds, I know this because in casual conversation with older folks who are not into HT the word Bluray always comes up, Bluray has spent more money in exposure than HD-DVD has. I see commercials for Bluray constantly on tv, when was the last time you saw one for HD-DVD? When a product becomes ingrained in the mind of the general population that product has captured the market to a degree. If the sales statistics keep tracking in the same direction, its going to look bad for the HD-DVD camp. So far the LG player hasn't made a splash and the units that have sold have tech issues to be resolved. I just hope that the better format prevails.

HD-DVD is arguably better, currently. Blu-ray has the most potential, and it will most likely improve to match HD-DVD in the quality.

 

[MACCA350]

HD-DVD is arguably better, currently. Blu-ray has the most potential, and it will most likely improve to match HD-DVD in the quality.

If Blu-ray had've matched or exceeded HD-DVD's mandatory specification for disc content and player abilities, I'd have a BD player right now

cheers

 

[j_garcia]

HD-DVD is arguably better, currently. Blu-ray has the most potential, and it will most likely improve to match HD-DVD in the quality.

Are you talking in terms of video, audio or features? Because I've seen both and there isn't a big difference in any of them.

 

[Seth=L]

Video, I always saw better video performance with HD-DVD movies. I have seen some terrible Blu-ray discs. Granted this is what I have seen in stores.

 

[j_garcia]

They use the same codecs, so video quality should be basically the same, assuming a good transfer. Comparing the better titles from each, in terms of straight video, the two look identical to me. Audio wise, they also both support the same audio formats, though it seems releases for certain discs have been putting better audio tracks on the HD-DVD (the studios). Feature wise, they appear to be very close too. I like the fact that I can jump to trailers or behind the scenes stuff mid movie and then it automatically goes back to where I was in the film. I also like that you can pop up the various menus without stopping the movie (scene selections, audio/alternate audio selections, etc..).

 

[Thunder18]

Actually, some of the earlier Blu-Ray movies used an older codec, but now they are pretty consistantly using the same codec that HD-DVD is using. That is the reason some of the older title looked horrible.

 

[j_garcia]

Go back to that thread where we talked about it, the codec is not responsible for the lousy video on some early discs. I have seen Mpeg2 video look every bit as good as AVC or VC1 when using the same high bitrates.

 

[darien87]

I just saw an article the other day that said that Microsoft planned to support Blu-ray if they ended up the winner. I think the fact that they will even say this publicly, speaks volumes.

Personally, I thought that Blu-ray was going to fail, given Sony's past record with new technologies. But now that I have a PS3, I hope Blu-ray wins.

 

[jeffie7]

Video, I always saw better video performance with HD-DVD movies. I have seen some terrible Blu-ray discs. Granted this is what I have seen in stores.

I think this has to do with the fact that BR format has put out a lot of remastered movies where the company seems to upconvert the video and leave it at that. no doubt it looks pretty bland. but check out some of the newer movie releases like crash, MI3, ice age...

 

[mouettus]

hd-dvd or blu-ray...

either of em... you can see the grain from the 35mm camera (except for the digitally made movies like king kong etc.). The more details you have, the more glitches are brought up. The two of em looks sweet anyways. No difference to the (my) eye. There is one VERY bad thing though. I went to electronics stores today for a TV unit for my Sony and checked out the actual products in demonstration. The new Sony and Toshiba HD players. JESUS CHRIST those things are slow. Sometimes I just wondered if the unit crashed!! Are they all going to be that slow or it will improve??!

 

[mtrycrafts]

...The new Sony and Toshiba HD players. JESUS CHRIST those things are slow. Sometimes I just wondered if the unit crashed!! Are they all going to be that slow or it will improve??!

Some are very slow at start up as you discovered, others are much faster. Need to read reviews which are the fast ones.

 

[mtrycrafts]

...Microsoft planned to support Blu-ray if they ended up the winner. ....

Or, did they just mean they will support the winner? What if HD is it, what then?

 

[rgriffin25]

Or, did they just mean they will support the winner? What if HD is it, what then?

Well, they already support HD DVD. So it is probably just a marketing ploy to keep them in the game either way.

Just to reiterate what was said before, the codec does not effect the picture quality, mpeg 2 is a very good codec, it just doesn't compress the movie as much as the new codec. Which is not as big of a deal for Blu-ray, since they have more space on their discs.