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Forums - Sony Discussion - Bluray vs hddvd - HD-DVD Buyers Beware

Gballzack on 06 June 2007
MikeB said:

Personally I prefer to have movies stored on physical media coming supplied in a nice box. Some people brought forth some good points with regard to internet access, even in countries with high internet penetration internet usage is far from 100%. Anothier issue is harddrive storage capacity, I think most people won't like the idea of having to delete movies from their harddrive to be able to download more movies. In full quality high definition movies may take up between 20 and 40 GB worth of storage.

Even if you would have the bandwidth and servers to stream all that content in realtime, negating the need to store content on your harddrive but instead have it stored on remote servers this would still be far from ideal from my perspective. Sometimes things go wrong at internet provider's end and if this would become a success it's not unthinkable servers may get overloaded during the weekend when overyone starts to stream huge amounts of data to their home system simultaneously.

I don't see this happening on a mass scale for many years to come, IMO the reason why Microsoft's mouth is currently pointing towards this direction has everything to do with them seeing HD-DVD is in a pretty bad position right now.


I agree with physical media storage, It terrifies me to think video games may not be that in the next gen.



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footbag on 06 June 2007

"And where the hell do you find HD South-park?"

There is only one place to get HD south park. Xbox Live!

"I'm just saying, it's gonna be 2-4 years before it's an option for the elite."

I consider the people who go to Audio/Video/Gaming forums to be the Elite. Or at least early adopters. My usual board is AVSforum, so VG might be a little bit behind.

I was assuming you were familiar with Xbox Live. It is actually a basic version of what I'm refering to. But you only download the HD version if you have a HD setup. Otherwise you can download them in SD very quickly.



MikeB on 06 June 2007

There is only one place to get HD south park. Xbox Live!

Why would anyone really want to view South Park in true HD vs ordinary resolution upscaled on a HDTV? The animated videos have some of the least detailed drawings currently available, Ice Age, Monsterhouse, Dinosaur, etc I can understand, but South Park?



Naughty Dog: "At Naughty Dog, we're pretty sure we should be able to see leaps between games on the PS3 that are even bigger than they were on the PS2."

PS3 vs 360 sales

eab on 06 June 2007
Silver_Z said:
nathantay said:
Hddvd has fewer problems with discs and players. Hddvd for the most part gets better reviews for the movies and the players. Hddvd players are cheaper by about 50%. Hddvd has better deals by giving you 5 free movies when you buy a player. It looks to me that Toshiba cares more about the customers than Sony, so why does everyone on this site seem to support Bluray.

I think the number of people on this site will not decide who will win the format war. You should instead be asking the studios, why are they in favor of BD over HD DVD. Content decides the winner.

"Currently, Blu-ray Disc is exclusively supported by Columbia Pictures and MGM which are both owned by Sony, as will as Disney, 20th century Fox and Lionsgate. Both Blu-ray and HD DVD are supported by Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks, Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema. HD DVD is exclusively supported by Universal Studios[2] and The Weinstein Company." from Wikipedia


 Right so ignoring the companies that support both or the ones that Sony owns, the major independent publishers are as follows:

Universal vs Fox and Disney. Universal produces more movies than either of those two, altough granted together Fox and Disney produce more. My point is though that I always seem to hear of this huge gap between the two companies, and that "studios heavily favor Blu-Ray" when this doesn't appear to be the case. The vast majority of studios (Paramount/DreamWorks/Warner/NewLine) are supporting both formats, and NBC Universal is one of the largest media outlets in the world.

Yes Blu-Ray has the upper hand, but it's not like as one sided as many people are saying it is.      



footbag on 06 June 2007

Why would anyone really want to view South Park in true HD vs ordinary resolution upscaled on a HDTV?

The only reason I used South Park as an example is because I have downloaded it myself and know how long it took.

Many movies are available in HD also. Some of them are Flags of our Fathers, Happy Feet, Blood Diamond, Employee of the Month, Open Water 2, The Departed, etc...


This was the launch lineup in '05;

* CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: New York, NCIS, and Star Trek from CBS.
* Chappelle’s Show, Drawn Together, and Emmy and Peabody award-winning South Park from COMEDY CENTRAL.
* Pimp My Ride and Punk’d from MTV.
* Avatar: The Last Airbender and SpongeBob SquarePants from Nickelodeon.
* Skyland and Invader Zim from Nicktoons Network.
* Chinatown, Star Trek VII: Generations, Patriot Games, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, The Sum of All Fears, The Untouchables, and We Were Soldiers from Paramount Pictures.
* Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Frisky Dingo, Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, Sealab 2021, and The Venture Bros. from Turner Broadcasting.
* Some of the most intense fights from Ultimate Fighting Championship.
* Breaking Bonaduce and Hogan Knows Best from VH1.
* Perfect Storm, Poseidon, The Shining, Three Kings, and V for Vendetta, as well as The Nine and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip along with the CW show Veronica Mars from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment.



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MikeB on 06 June 2007

Universal vs Fox and Disney. Universal produces more movies than either of those two, altough granted together Fox and Disney produce more. My point is though that I always seem to hear of this huge gap between the two companies, and that "studios heavily favor Blu-Ray" when this doesn't appear to be the case

You are forgetting Sony Pictures/Columbia Pictures, MGM (partially Sony owned) and Lionsgate as major studios backing Blu-Ray exclusively. All major studios minus Universal are supporting Blu-Ray.



Naughty Dog: "At Naughty Dog, we're pretty sure we should be able to see leaps between games on the PS3 that are even bigger than they were on the PS2."

PS3 vs 360 sales

naznatips on 06 June 2007
Kwaad said:

Dude, you just totally knocked your knowledge of codecs.

I could compress a hour of 1080p video of south park into about 200-400megs.

A hour of 1080p Spiderman3 would be around 4-8gb.

Only 20-40x bigger. Seriously. learn how video compression works.

I can compress 24 minutes of anime into around 200megs of 1080p. And anime has a hell of a lot more detail than South Park.

4 minute trailers at 1080p are over 200 megs.

And where the hell do you find HD South-park?

I'm just saying, it's gonna be 2-4 years before it's an option for the elite. 6-12 for the every-day internet user. 6 years, is AGES when it comes to technology. And actually in america, I dont think internet is going to progress as much as you guys seem to think. Like I said earlier. I would be happy with a stable 3mbit. Screw 10mbit, screw 20mbit. I'd be happy with a STABLE 3mbit.


Well since a 1 terabye hard drive was recently released and compression technology continues to advance at an unbelievable rate I'd say 4-6 years at the most for mass market appeal of downloaded HD movies. Digital distribution will take over long before Blu-Ray even has 1/3 of the DVD market conquered.



Gballzack on 06 June 2007

Blu-Ray and HD-DVD both lose in my opinion, they don't do anything new for the consumer. DVD made it easier and more convenient to watch movies than VHS (no rewinding, selecting chapters, multiple languages). CD made it easier and more convenient to listen to music than Cassettes (no rewinding, selecting chapters). Blu-Ray and HD-DVD only improve on appearance... that's all... People bought DVDs to have a library that would last forever unlike VHS, now you want them to start over again when you're just going to come out with a new format seven years from now?



vizunary on 06 June 2007
LordTheNightKnight said:

 An op-ed piece in reaction to another op-ed piece=sh*t about proving what will win.

 When either format starts selling a million for a SINGLE TITLE, get back to me.


Does anyone with this attitude have ANY idea how long it took a DVD title to sell it's first million? The adoption rate for high def formats is about FIVE times higher than was DVD penetration.

As for digital distribution??? So what kind of speed do you get on that T1 connection? At 1.5 mbps a 50 gig HD movie with extras would only take about 9.259 HRS to d/l, and at double that speed 3.0mbps(which is VERY uncommon right now) we're only looking at 4.629 HRS and 6.0mbps we're down to ONLY 2.314 hours...........so when exactly is this gonna be pratical?

BTW, some people will ALWAYS want to have a collection, started with rocks, then maybe logs... then books, records, 8tracks, cassettes, VHS, CDs, DVDs, even video games for christs sakes, and now I have a lovely collection of BDs and if Universal doesn't pull there head outta their ass soon I will pick up a cheap ass HDA2 =)



HappySqurriel on 06 June 2007
vizunary said:
LordTheNightKnight said:

 An op-ed piece in reaction to another op-ed piece=sh*t about proving what will win.

 When either format starts selling a million for a SINGLE TITLE, get back to me.


Does anyone with this attitude have ANY idea how long it took a DVD title to sell it's first million? The adoption rate for high def formats is about FIVE times higher than was DVD penetration.

As for digital distribution??? So what kind of speed do you get on that T1 connection? At 1.5 mbps a 50 gig HD movie with extras would only take about 9.259 HRS to d/l, and at double that speed 3.0mbps(which is VERY uncommon right now) we're only looking at 4.629 HRS and 6.0mbps we're down to ONLY 2.314 hours...........so when exactly is this gonna be pratical?

BTW, some people will ALWAYS want to have a collection, started with rocks, then maybe logs... then books, records, 8tracks, cassettes, VHS, CDs, DVDs, even video games for christs sakes, and now I have a lovely collection of BDs and if Universal doesn't pull there head outta their ass soon I will pick up a cheap ass HDA2 =)

You're making two assumptions that may not be true:

  1. People care about the extras
  2. People care about High Definition

The reason why HDTV sales have skyrocketed recently is because affordable flat-panel displays recently became HDTVs; before that people were buying LCD EDTVs in record numbers. A conclusion you could make is that people like inexpensive flat panel displays regardless of resolution. Highly compressed 1080i/720p would be adequate for the majority of users.

As for extras, I can't remember the last time I bothered to look at the extra features on a DVD.

Right now, people are getting digital cable boxes installed at a much faster pace than are buying HD-DVD and Blu-Ray combined. Most cable companies are offering video on demand and the only thing that is preventing this from dominating is the price; people are used to renting a movie for $5 and would be willing to purchase a downloaded video for $5 but many companies are asking $8 to $10.