Why I'm looking forward to Blu-Ray

[Digital Awakening]

This is why I prefer BD (50GB)  over HD-DVD (30GB), more space means better quality even though it's more expensive at the moment. Now I just got to get a job and enough money for a PS3 and a 50" 1080p capable LCD TV at the end of this year (or whenever PS3 is released here in EU) :)

Oh, and here's a good article by AnandTech reporting from CES: (login required)

[Ian Price]

Whilst I'm all for technology marching on, I think I'll wait until a decisive winner has been decided before I buy into it.

Both technologies (and a further one from China that's similar to Blue Ray), do look and sound very good though.

I still haven't got rid of all my old VHS tapes yet. I can certainly wait for new tech (and until my current tv requires chaniging to make use of the enhanced features).

[Digital Awakening]

I'm still in the VHS generation myself, well I do have a cheap DVD player. I use VHS tapes for recording stuff on TV that I can't watch for some reason and I rather spend the little money I have on something other then a HDD recorder. Oh, and I only have a 19" TV :( So with a nice summerjob and pricedrops on LCDs I could afford a serious upgrade. BTW, a 5.1 speaker system wouldn't hurt but I do have some nice 5.1 headphones at the moment :)

Anyway, I don't think BD will die, we may actually see both formats co-exist like the DVD +/- formats. I read about a chip that could handle both. BD currently have the strongest support both in movies and software companies. But MS is on HD-DVD only and they are a big player. BD seems to have fixed most features it was lacking earlier that HD-DVD where praised for.

But BD's strongest card is the PS3. After all Sony have shipped over 100 milion PS2 units worldwide (30 Nov 05), far more then GC and XBox together. So the possibility is that about 100 milion PS3s will be sold over the next 5 years so there will be plenty of BD players around.

[Ian Price]

I tend to agree that the PS3 will be a major factor in introducing the technology, but as I'll get one of those at some point anyway (I have or have had every single console format since the introduction of the Megadrive), I won't be ditching my DVD Recorders. I'll also wait until Blu-Ray recorders are available.

BTW I'm also not sure that two new formats can co-exist TBH. Remember the Betamax and VHS wars? Two differing formats can cause confusion and at the end of the day the best technology didn't win.

Like you say, Blu-Ray has massive support from the movie industry etc. and I can see that being the system of choice, although that may change - price has a way ofmanipulating the people buying the products. If HD-DVD is 58pence plus the cost of a bag of chips and Blu-Ray is £1000, which would you choose?

[Digital Awakening]

You know, I think there will be recorders for both formats right away. On the show they showed rewriting to a BD disk at 2x speed (72Mb/s, or MB?). DVD took almost 10 years to replace the VHS but I think that they want to bring out the new formats faster. It's only single layer at the moment but hopefully PS3 can burn dual layers. BD is so far capable of up to 4 layers, burnable, that's a wooping 100GB. HD-DVD got 30GB at dual, burnable, and 45GB for the tripple but not burnable discs.

I'm not so sure Betamax really was better, it had a habbit of destroying tapes at random and you really can't have that. The thing here is that it's possible to have readers capable of both formats and from the looks of the show BD had cases with blue frames and HD-DVD had red frames.

Right now there's a huge price difference in players where HD-DVD is half the price of BD. However, it's not like your not getting something for spending twice the cash. 1080p have 125% more pixels then 720p so for larger screens this will make a quality difference and thanks to flat panels dropping in price people are buing large TVs. And HD-DVD is only cheaper now because it's technology is similar to DVD, over the years the price of BD will drop. This is because BD requires a lot of new investments in factories etc.

Sure it's gonna take some time before people want to upgrade their 720p TV to a 1080p TV but I think that before the end of this year 1080p TVs will be the standard sold from about 35" or 40" and up. This is also reason to get a PS3 instead of a 360 (if you're not getting both) because the 360 is only capable of max 1080i and both are gonna last 5-6 years.

[Ian Price]

Sure HD-DVD has fewer pixels than Blu-Ray, but the average Joe isn't really going to notice that. And most people that have bought Xbox 360 are still playing it on a bog standard normal definition tv.

Price is an important factor when someone considers buying goods. Quality is sometimes of lesser importance than cost.

Anyway, as I mentioned above, due to the massive support that Blu-Ray has from the computer and film industries, I suspect that will be the winner long-term.

[Digital Awakening]

Price could really be the reason for both formats surviving. As you say there are people who won't notice the difference and there are still many who are useing regular TVs. For those who argue about 720p or 1080i beeing the best format 1080p is the holy grail. As long as BD is more expensive and people doesn't have 1080p capable TVs HD-DVD will probably survive.

[Digital Awakening]

Here's a shot from Anandtech's day 3 article:


So this means that we get writeable dual layer (50GB) BDs from start :)