Blockbuster goes Blu-ray, HD DVD=beta?,

The thing is, Blu-ray players are still $600 and up, mostly up, whereas you can currently get a Toshiba A2 or D2 for $249-299, and a full-featured 1080p (with 5.1 analog output) machine for about $500. Plus they're excellent upconverting players and CD players as well.

Blu-ray's biggest advantage is the Sony pictures juggernaut--Blu-ray exclusivity on releases from Sony Classics, Columbia, MGA, UA, Disney, and Fox.

HD DVD's advantages are lower price of admission, excellent digital transfers on most releases so far (bravo Universal), a higher standard for required audio, ability to play CDs, etc.

One thing that puzzles me however is that so far all HD DVD players are Toshiba (plus LG if you count their dual format player), whereas you can get Blu-ray players from Sony, Sanyo, Pioneer, Panasonic, and Philips.

In the past, Sony shot themselves in the foot with Beta by refusing to license it to other mfrs, while JVC made VHS available to everyone. Toshiba also got industry-wide buy-in on std. DVD when it came out. So I wonder what's going on with HD DVD? Is Toshiba trying to keep the technology to itself or are other manufacturers simply not throwing in with Toshiba this time?

06-21-07: Fatparrot
Don't forget that Sony's Play Station 3 will play Blu-ray, so there a huge market penetration due to the sale of these machines.

And Xbox does HD DVD. But on the worldwide market, you're absolutely correct: Playstation has by far the dominant market share.

Microsoft is accustomed to setting standards, but in the case of gaming, Playstation has far more market penetration.

Having recently acquired a Toshiba A2, I wonder if I bet on the wrong horse given the disparity in studio support for the two formats, but at $249, I guess I can afford to for now. If I "lose", I still have a really good upconverting DVD player and a very decent CD player, and current Blu-ray players don't do CD.

For now, Sony is sitting in the catbird seat based on movie studio support, but the high price of Blu-ray players is blunting the theoretical advantage.

06-26-07: Newbie13
So far, sales swing back and forth based on who has the hot titles being released. Now if titles were being released on both formats and we could see those numbers.

Paramount and Warner release in both formats.

There are some titles, however, that Warner has so far only released in HD DVD. Not sure if Paramount has done the same thing.

But they have certainly released some titles in both formats.

06-24-07: Rysa4
Fundamentally the Blu ray disc is a bit of technologic problem because it requires much more processing and hard drive space to function than an HD-DVD player; thats why they really havent been able to roll out all of those purported added features on the blu ray discs....

HD-DVD is straightforward and delivers the goods, without all of the false hullabaloo about a "Blu Ray victory is ineveitable" and other marketing drivel. Cart came out way before the horse.

That's the way I see it too. Blu-ray is *not* the better mousetrap. HD DVD is a more elegant solution, requiring less storage space to achieve equal resolution, standard interactive features, and standard high-def surround sound schemes which are optional on Blu-ray.

I hope the public sees it that way. I think Blu-ray is so complicated and memory-dense that it'll take years to work out the bugs and realize the theoretical potential. You can have it all right now with HD DVD.

06-26-07: Leedistad
Not to be negative, but I've sat through a lot of demos of both formats, and have yet to be wowed by any of the content beyond what I've seen done by good DVD-players that upconvert 480p content...

I have a 720p/1080i RP LCD 55" Hitachi display I've been viewing for 1-1/2 years. This past Spring I experienced a noticeable upgrade by getting a cable/DVR box with HDMI input to the TV. About 3 weeks ago I also added Toshiba's entry-level HD DVD player.

My observations so far? HD programming is all over the map. Some of it has been phoned in, some of it is pretty good, and some of it is stunning. At the bad end is the cable broadcast of "Da Vinci Code." It's in 16:9 aspect ratio, but that's about it. I've seen better resolution on upconverted standard DVDs. No kidding. I wonder if that's what the Blu-ray looks like?

In cable, however, one of the best sources I've seen is the UHD channel--Universal Studios' HD. It's a 1080i channel and some of the films that come over it look great--far better than upconverted DVD.

With my own HD DVD machine, the best disks definitely look better than cable HDTV because--even though the resolution is the same 1080i max--with the faster transfer rate the picture looks sharper because fast motion does not produce pixelation. This weekend I watched the HD DVD reissue of Spartacus. Although it wasn't the sharpest image I've seen, that is mostly attributable to the source, because I could actually see the film grain consistently throughout the movie.

Finally, I got a taste of the future at a Best Buy display of a Sony 1080p Blu-ray demo disk playing into a Sony 1080p LCD Bravia direct view screen. I had to get within 14" of the screen to see dots or picture elements at all. Anything beyond that looked continguous and organic. Granted, this was a demo disk, tweaked to bring out the best in the signal chain, and some of Sony's own Blu-ray releases won't approach it in sharpness, texture, or color resolution, but it *is* indicative of the potential of the medium.

This demo elevated the paradigm. HD DVD can also do 1080p so that format can probably equal what I saw. What I saw was a picture quality that in sharpness, motion, color saturation, color gradation, and most of all, texture, exceeded anything I've seen at home or in a theater. Before seeing this demo, I'd only hoped for home theater to equal the picture experience in a good theater.

It had never occurred to me that it could exceed it.

You can get Planet Earth from Netflix in standard DVD, HD DVD, or Blu-ray.

07-05-07: Shadorne
Currently they need to sell two HD-DVD players for each Blu-Ray player to make the same net....although a lot of profit comes from selling the "super duper" expensive cables and other accesories...

Yeah. Unless you get a special edition DVD player from Costco or Sam's, hi-rez DVD players *never* come with the HDMI cable. Circuit City sells the 6' Belkin HT HDMI cable for around $100. You can get the identical cable in identical packaging at my local Sam's Club for $22.

The computer printers are the same way. Get a Lexmark printer for $99, but it doesn't come with a USB cable. USB cables at Circuit City and Best Buy are around $60, but you can pick up a 3-pack at Sam's for $15-20.

I remember 15 years ago when DVD players came with free movies too.

That's quite an accomplishment, as the DVD spec wasn't even finalized until Dec. 1995, the DVD Forum didn't form until May 1997. Some early machines may have hit the market around 1996, but disks and players didn't become generally available until 1998 and most players were still $1K and up. :-)

I bought my first DVD player in July 2000, and it included 2 or 3 free DVDs. In fact, progressive scan DVD players just began to hit the market around August that year. At that time many video rental stores were just starting to offer DVDs, and it was still a couple years before they pushed VHS off the bulk of the racks.

It's hard to believe that the DVD--revolutionary as it was--is being replaced after about 8 years on the market and 4-5 years of market dominance.

Walmart and Sams are with HD-DVD,

My local Sam's Club carries both the Toshiba HD-D2 HD DVD player and the entry-level Sony Blu-ray. They also carry movie titles in both formats.

08-08-07: Leedistad
I admit to being startled that Hitachi is launching the first two Blu-ray camcorders this fall. I remember when Sony was the king of the camcorder, and I'm surprised that they weren't first to market with a Blu-ray Handycam.

Maybe, with the crash'n'burn of Beta in the marketplace, Sony finally realized that they'll do better in the long run if they're less greedy with the hardware technology and license it to multiple vendors to establish Blu-ray as the de facto standard. Whereas Sony didn't license Beta to anyone until it was too late, Blu-ray machines are made by Philips, Samsung, Pioneer, Hitachi, Panasonic, LG, Sharp, Lite-On, and Mitsubishi.

To my knowledge, Toshiba's the only one making home theater standalone HD DVD players, though there are different vendors for HD DVD drives for computers and X-boxes, and I suppose you could give a half-manufacturing credit to LG as well.

Sony finally realizes that they want as many Blu-ray machines out there as possible, regardless of manufacture, because they hold the rights to a huge market share of the software--everything from Sony Pictures, Columbia (and Tri-Star), most of MGM, and a lot of United Artists.

And HD DVD is already putting out DVD/HD DVD dual-layer disks, so they're already up on the curve where a single SKU-per-title is concerned.

Still...the difference in studio support in the US (Sony/Comumbia/MGM/UA/Disney/Fox/Warner/Paramount for Blu-ray vs. Universal/Warner/Paramount for HD DVD), and the difference in the number of player manufacturers per format (also in favor of Blu-ray) is pretty intimidating.