HD-DVD and Blu-Ray
September 9th 2006 07:33
Back before I was born there apparently was a disagreement over which tape format should become the industry standard. It was Sony’s Betamax against JVC’s VHS tape format. I guess we all know VHS won over Betamax. So why this brief history lesson? Well truth is ladies and gentleman, we are on the brink of another such war which can in the end be very expensive for the consumer.
It’s between two rival formats that aim to be the successor of the Digital Video Disk (DVD). When DVD overtook VHS some time ago (when I was alive), it was a very good step up from VHS in that it was more compact, added a myriad of new and innovative features (chapters, special features etc), and is now also far cheaper than VHS.
DVD’s are an amazing storage medium for movies. A god send in the technology world no doubt. Up to that point no one ever had any convenient access to special features such as ‘making of’ or ‘directors comments’ or ‘deleted scenes’ etc. In fact DVD’s have been deemed so successful that the recent Hollywood box office slumps have in part been blamed on the massive success of DVD’s over the years.
So why would we want to ditch our old DVD players and hop onto another format? Well it’s all to do with High Definition TV’s (HDTV). DVD’s cannot support the high bit rate (basically higher bit rates mean better image quality) of HD quality picture and sound. But isn’t the quality of your DVD players screen output not good enough already? Well according to two rival competitors aiming for market dominance (Blu-Ray and HD-DVD), no the picture output of DVD’s are not good enough, not by a long shot. So much so that both formats expect you to fork out potentially thousands of dollars for the better image and sound quality since you need a HDTV AND the Blu-ray or HD-DVD player to get HD quality output.
Just hang on, before you reach into your pockets if you have ones that are deep enough or wallets if you prefer regular plastic. We don’t know which of the two formats will take market dominance or if they’ll share custody of the market or maybe they’ll both bomb.
You’d think that the successor of the DVD will be the best quality technology available, however historically in media formats that is not the case. Betamax though having better picture quality and being the first format for a tape recorder failed. There are many reasons for this, one of the most interesting was that the Hollywood pornography industry wasn’t too happy with the slightly higher cost of Betamax, given there are thousands of porn movies released a year and far more than actual mainstream Hollywood productions it did in fact pose to create significant financial losses to the Hollywood pornography industry. But that aside it was also owned wholly by Sony, and it was perhaps the first time Sony found that they couldn’t single handedly make an industry standard format.
Development and support
HD-DVD was developed by several companies headed by Toshiba. It has major industry backing among NEC, Microsoft, Sanyo, Hewlett Packard and Intel among others. In terms of the crucial Hollywood studio support it has Paramount Pictures, Warner Brothers, Studio Canal, The Weinstein Company and Universal Studios. Compare that to Blu-Rays industry support of Apple Computer Inc, Dell, Hewlett Packard, Hitachi, LG, Mitsubishi Electric, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung among others, with Studio support rivalling that of HD-DVD and superseding too since some studios are wholly owned by Sony (Columbia Tri-Star as an example) hence those studios will not ever produce HD-DVD’s.
Bare in mind two things here, first that my source had a far more elaborate detailing of Blu-Ray hence listing far more industry sided support for it than for HD-DVD which does not necessarily mean the margin of industry support between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray is that great. Also note that most studios and industry partners are choosing to back both formats rather than punting all their support behind any one media format (Sony and Microsoft being notable exceptions).
Blu-Ray has a significantly higher storage capacity, approximately 50 gigabytes opposed to HD-DVD’s 30 gigabytes, however coming at a significant price difference. The average HD-DVD player in the near future costs significantly less than the average Blu-Ray player. Sony’s betting a whole lot on the Playstation 3’s capacity to sell Blu-ray and make it industry standard, it is not only far more expensive than the Playstation 2 (it’s launching for $600 USD in the united states and a whopping $1000 AUD here in Australia) it is also going to be sold at a very large loss, Sony’s expected to lose approximately $300 for each Playstation 3 sold.
In their most attractive (aka cheap and affordable) forms Blu-Ray aims to be the standard drive on the upcoming Sony Playstation 3 and HD-DVD is planned as an add on to Microsoft’s Xbox 360. Which means if you buy a Playstation 3 you can play Blu-Ray movies on it out of the box, with the Xbox 360 there will be an attachable external HD-DVD drive add on.
The Blu-Ray inside the Playstation 3 is in fact better value for money than the Xbox 360 with the add on external drive in terms of money spent. If you buy a Playstation 3 it costs $1000 AUD and you get the Blu-Ray player built in, on the other hand an Xbox 360 costs $650 AUD and its external HD-DVD drive add on costs a further $490 which means you’ll be paying about $140 more for the Xbox 360 with HD-DVD.
Sony has been historically trying to push its own formats for quite a while failing the vast majority of times including with the Mini-Disk, UMD disks (for the Playstation portable), and of course with the Betamax. This time however it’s tied itself down betting everything on the Playstation 3 to sell the Blu-ray format into homes. It might not be such a bad bet, the Playstation 3 gives you not only the Blu-ray player but also the ability to play Playstation 1, 2 and 3 games all selling for a vastly cheaper sum than a regular standalone Blu-Ray player. The best value for money alternative would be the Xbox 360 with the HD-DVD add on, the advantage of this is that you can buy the HD-DVD add on when you are ready for it, the disadvantage is that it puts you back slightly more in terms of money.
At the end of the day my own personal preference lies in neither, DVD’s are still great and should be able to carry us through for at least another four or five years. Why throw away several thousand dollars for technology that you don’t even know will last out the year? Best we all just wait and see what happens.
A failed format
It’s between two rival formats that aim to be the successor of the Digital Video Disk (DVD). When DVD overtook VHS some time ago (when I was alive), it was a very good step up from VHS in that it was more compact, added a myriad of new and innovative features (chapters, special features etc), and is now also far cheaper than VHS.
DVD’s are an amazing storage medium for movies. A god send in the technology world no doubt. Up to that point no one ever had any convenient access to special features such as ‘making of’ or ‘directors comments’ or ‘deleted scenes’ etc. In fact DVD’s have been deemed so successful that the recent Hollywood box office slumps have in part been blamed on the massive success of DVD’s over the years.
Should we already lay the DVD to rest?
Just hang on, before you reach into your pockets if you have ones that are deep enough or wallets if you prefer regular plastic. We don’t know which of the two formats will take market dominance or if they’ll share custody of the market or maybe they’ll both bomb.
You’d think that the successor of the DVD will be the best quality technology available, however historically in media formats that is not the case. Betamax though having better picture quality and being the first format for a tape recorder failed. There are many reasons for this, one of the most interesting was that the Hollywood pornography industry wasn’t too happy with the slightly higher cost of Betamax, given there are thousands of porn movies released a year and far more than actual mainstream Hollywood productions it did in fact pose to create significant financial losses to the Hollywood pornography industry. But that aside it was also owned wholly by Sony, and it was perhaps the first time Sony found that they couldn’t single handedly make an industry standard format.
Development and support
HD-DVD was developed by several companies headed by Toshiba. It has major industry backing among NEC, Microsoft, Sanyo, Hewlett Packard and Intel among others. In terms of the crucial Hollywood studio support it has Paramount Pictures, Warner Brothers, Studio Canal, The Weinstein Company and Universal Studios. Compare that to Blu-Rays industry support of Apple Computer Inc, Dell, Hewlett Packard, Hitachi, LG, Mitsubishi Electric, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung among others, with Studio support rivalling that of HD-DVD and superseding too since some studios are wholly owned by Sony (Columbia Tri-Star as an example) hence those studios will not ever produce HD-DVD’s.
Bare in mind two things here, first that my source had a far more elaborate detailing of Blu-Ray hence listing far more industry sided support for it than for HD-DVD which does not necessarily mean the margin of industry support between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray is that great. Also note that most studios and industry partners are choosing to back both formats rather than punting all their support behind any one media format (Sony and Microsoft being notable exceptions).
Blu-Ray has a significantly higher storage capacity, approximately 50 gigabytes opposed to HD-DVD’s 30 gigabytes, however coming at a significant price difference. The average HD-DVD player in the near future costs significantly less than the average Blu-Ray player. Sony’s betting a whole lot on the Playstation 3’s capacity to sell Blu-ray and make it industry standard, it is not only far more expensive than the Playstation 2 (it’s launching for $600 USD in the united states and a whopping $1000 AUD here in Australia) it is also going to be sold at a very large loss, Sony’s expected to lose approximately $300 for each Playstation 3 sold.
In their most attractive (aka cheap and affordable) forms Blu-Ray aims to be the standard drive on the upcoming Sony Playstation 3 and HD-DVD is planned as an add on to Microsoft’s Xbox 360. Which means if you buy a Playstation 3 you can play Blu-Ray movies on it out of the box, with the Xbox 360 there will be an attachable external HD-DVD drive add on.
Will this help make Blu-Ray DVD's successor?
Sony has been historically trying to push its own formats for quite a while failing the vast majority of times including with the Mini-Disk, UMD disks (for the Playstation portable), and of course with the Betamax. This time however it’s tied itself down betting everything on the Playstation 3 to sell the Blu-ray format into homes. It might not be such a bad bet, the Playstation 3 gives you not only the Blu-ray player but also the ability to play Playstation 1, 2 and 3 games all selling for a vastly cheaper sum than a regular standalone Blu-Ray player. The best value for money alternative would be the Xbox 360 with the HD-DVD add on, the advantage of this is that you can buy the HD-DVD add on when you are ready for it, the disadvantage is that it puts you back slightly more in terms of money.
At the end of the day my own personal preference lies in neither, DVD’s are still great and should be able to carry us through for at least another four or five years. Why throw away several thousand dollars for technology that you don’t even know will last out the year? Best we all just wait and see what happens.
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