BR is still luke warm and has not met its potential its easy to see it fail at the rate its going

limelight
and that 2X is almost as fast DVD writers its not 2X DVD its 2X BR ...........
2X CD is slower than 2X DVD is slower than 2X BR /HD DVD

Grayarea's right in that these new players seem to be as much about beefing up the DRM a.k.a. taking away consumer rights as anything else. I was looking at 720p and 1080i sets in Best Buy today and I wasn't that impressed.

And some of them were 60"+ sets.

Well that is Best Buy, go to a Sony Store or some non branded Visual/Audiophile specialist place. See a decent 720p set hooked properly, playing some real 720p content like The Fifth Element WMV HD and you'll see the difference immediately. Do not go aee something like 1080i which isn't as high detailed as 720p, nor Progressive so not as smooth in motion. 1080i is a disappointment overall IMHO.

DR34MER
I have not seen alot of difrence in them ,at least not to the point to drop 5G to overhaul,it will take maybe 5 more years for high def to mature enough to be worth the while

I think we know what formats going too win Blu-ray is the ovious choice.


HDdvd stupid

I somehow doubt that. HD-DVD has support for better codecs, x264 has much better profiling than BR's MPEG2. That and really, HD-DVD is only 1080i for now. In future I'm sure manufacturers will release HD-DVD boxes with 1080p output. In reality the output format has little to do with the storage system. These current Format Wars are rubbish and just a way to rake more dollars in.

Why would anyone want to pull for Sony in any contest. They want a monpoly on all their electronics. Remember their digital cameras, invented memory stick for their storage!

garmoon
*punt*
Sony dose not own BR like that they are just part of it,since they are PART OF IT they can't claim royalties off it...

I lean to BR because of its potential,however even I can see BR is falling behind and its potential in hideing........

Im pretty sure Sony is going to win, what many people have yet to notice is that the X360 cannot use the HD-DVD Drive for gaming, meaning while sony is squeezing out massive HD games, The Xbox crowd is going to be switching disks before they can go in for the kill. Remember People, It is more than just movies we want from a GAME System. Note im not trying to offend no body.

h8xor
thats what I was thinking untill I looked deeper,HD cacheing is getting better thus helping load times,true changing discs is a pain but at worst is 2 or 3nothing diffrent than the CD days,theres also some power left hiding in the 360 unlike the Xbox days the 360 is not the most powerful but it has more games that has got me likening it more than the Xbox a year after launch.

the 360 never had the chance to "beat" the PS3 I mean it will have the games and it has the power if it were not for the price and for Sony it would be almost the prefect system 0_o

Dont get me wrong the 360 in all is overpriced and still not quite worth spending 300 on.

I do like the WII the most it has innovation and price the PS3 has power I and the 360 has its US/EU fan base *L* its reverse japanase only console only its not japanase only 0-o



PS3
(since sony has the games or should have the games they dont need the fan base as bad as MS)

1. power equal to games
2.Free Online(quality yet unknown)

360
1.fan base
2.Games
3.updated online system

Nintendo
1.Innovation
2.Price
3.Games

hd-dvd will win hands down, and not because of fetures, its all in the name. "hd-dvd" sounds way more official at this point. "blue-ray" definatly doesnt sound as official.

the xbox360 not being able to play HD-DVD out of the box is yet another huge money-grubbing slap in the face from microsoft.

luckily for us sony might drop the price of the ps3 to like $200 in the next couple months because the 360 can already be had for that price from certain online outlets.

^
If you think a price drop for a PS3 is coming anytime soon, you're sorely mistaken. They cost Sony $820 each for just the console (n.i. cables, controllers, packaging, shipping etc.).

I have a Wii. I love it. Nintendo actually MAKES a small amount of money per console. Forget how much.

That being said, I'd never buy a Blu-ray DVD player - if only to boycott Sony's horrendous practices (PS3 price, huge laptop battery recall, big digital camera recall, DRM encryption that was a security breach... etc. etc.).

I have a nice HD capable TV but I'm in no hurry to throw money at a potentially worthless technology.

georgeluv
PS3 might have a 100 price drop by the END of 08.....

Thonor
or the killng of link sang :P
Sony is evil *L* they've made MS look "better" 0_o

besides when do you make a profit off the console?
Sony is doing what MS did with the Xbox over power it and hope it will sale.
Its going to take 2 or 3 years for a 20-40% drop in price for the PS3.

garmoon
"Why would anyone want to pull for Sony in any contest.Why would anyone want to pull for Sony in any contest. They want a monopoly on all their electronics."

Why would anyone want to pull for Microsoft in any contest. They want a monopoly on all their software.
HD-DVD is not exactly MS but they have their claws in it pretty deep. I don't like either one much at all, but in this case I guess I'll go with $ony.

DR34MER
"I record MPEG2 digital TV @ 1080i/720P and it comes in at around 11gb for two hours worth of content so it stands to reason that 1080p would need the space that Blu-Ray/HD-DVD offers, what with added extras such as "making ofs", previews and the rest."

My point was that the industry as a whole should adopt MPEG4 or some other reasonably efficient codec so 2 hours of content wouldn't be 11GB. MPEG2 is so eightys. ;-)

@DR34
^^ This is what I meant earlier. Sure, 1080i recording can take up more than 9gb, but not because it has to. 1080i recorded at a codec that is thoretically 300% more efficient than your L2-Mpg (L4-MPG, which is supported by HD-DVD, but not Blu-Ray) could easily fit on existing media. Not to mention that HD-DVD supports other new compression formats also, which may prove to be even better than L4-MPG. I record 1080i DirectTv using my capture card, but since I compress it using L4-MPG, I can fit a 30-min TV show on my 1gb flash drive, with room to spare. Compare that to L2-Mpg, which clocks at about 3gb/30 min.

CiDaemon
are you kidding its not their hand made codec and they cant DRM it well so they can overprotect thier media and break fair use *L*

@CiDaemon
Bluray does support MPEG4( has support for MPEG-2, MPEG-4 AVC and SMPTE VC-1) and always has, newer BD movies are being released using MPEG4 and so will all movies in future(of BD).

Andrew691
thus why I say BR is not dead yet now if they can just get on the ball with other things *L*

The only problem with the earlier poster's view that HD Video Compression has fallen way behind is that it HASN'T! The facts are that they are compressing these things to the best of their ability, while still giving no noticable lag in the viewing of the picture.

That is a problem that can only be solved by more powerful video/CPU chips in hardware, and by more memory in the hardware as well.

"Video will be stored using MPEG-2 technology, just like in DVD-Video discs, but in much higher bitrate. Currently DVD-Video discs can have a bitrates upto 9.8Mbps, but Blu-ray discs support bitrates as high as 36MBps."

This is what I got my info on that BluRay only supported L2 MPG. This is from the afterdawn encyclopedia...is it wrong? If so, don't blame me! ;)

AD may need some updating... got that from Blu-ray.com/faq" class="korostus" target="_blank">http://www.Blu-ray.com/faq (hopefully link appears properly AD had problems with it before) both HD-DVD and BD support all the same video codecs.

Well first ill say, im in the HD-DVD boat. It just seems like the logical consumer choice. Everyone knows DVD, so the name HD-DVD will sound familiar. Also many HD-DVD movies are released on Combo format, so you can buy it now, play the DVD side, then when you upgrade, you dont have to buy new media, just flip it over to the HD side.

And someone posted here that HD-DVD is only 1080i, which is not true. Every HD-DVD movie i have seen lists native resolution playback as 1080p. I have also heard that bluray movies are less resisitive to damage/fiunger prints etc.

Bigperm88
ture,BR has a uphil fight they only way they could get anywhere is to play on their strengths and get that 100GB disc out asap also they have to make it cheap if they can stabilize the techonolgy and make it cheap they could win but as they are now tis like the PS3 and PSP they are not mostly living off their rep and not doing anything with it....if this keeps up for a year or 2...BR is dead(for movies and personal storage) and so much for the long 5 year format war.

BR needs to get on the ball as the months pass they lose more and more to HD DVD which has their at together.

ZIppyDSM

It always seems like Sony has the better product but are ahead of what consumers can and are willing to adopt. Pushing out a 100GB disk will help sell blueray to technophiles like ourselves, but this means little to the average consumer.

Bigperm88
Ya SOny needs to get a handle on things thinking ahead is great but if its costly or buggy people will not adopt it.
HDVD has the balance DVD+ HDVD the size is ok a DL one sided is 30 thats more than enough for the next 5 years.
Like with the PSP they are screwing things up as they go..they need a corperate innovator one that understand the consumers and knows that lower the "profit" on items will help sale more and gain them more in general...MS kinda gets it but realy dosent Sony has not seen the light in years...

they dont really need the 100GB if they could get the 50s going well and make them cheaper it all adds to their favor but they would rather sell it and make a 30-60% profit than sell it and make a 10-20% profit....
I love corporate logic Sell less = more money............