Sorry Sony (Blu-ray), HDDVD is here to stay?

Question

Even my brother, who owns nearly 6 figures worth of Home theater equipment prefers the "American" HDDVD. Are format wars good and why does Sony always try to go into left field?

Answer 1

It's a battle between the Giant Electronics manufacturer to get a big slice of the market.
If i were you, I would be comfortable watching the DVD player until both the Blue Ray/HD DVD giants are tired of this wars and after some financial loss, decide to put their head together and come up with a format that would benefit the millions of electronic consumer out there. Meanwhile the consumers should unite by giving these giants a message. We will wait out for a while before rushing out to buy either of this formats the Blue-ray/HDDVD. Stick to your faithful DVD player.

Answer 2

Both brands are excellent, but I would go with a Sony PS3 with an Nyko Blu-Wave Infrared Remote (about $20.00 at Best Buys or Radio Shack). This way you get an excellent Blu-Ray player and a gaming console as a bonus. And if you decide to upgrade in the future, I'm sure the PS3 will hold it value much better than a regular Blu-Ray player.

Answer 3

Let me say this a two hour movie is a two hour movie when the credits roll I never say god I wish I had more space on this disk and the audio compression is so non existent that the average consumer will never never hear it. Unless we are all running a $15,000 Bang and Olufsen system with analog tube receivers. They both produce 1080p and well it has nothing to do with image quality but more to do with which organization can suck more money from the average consumer. Pick what ever you want I have the Phillips HTS8100 and the picture on that is amazing and all it does is upscale. Don't get me wrong Blue Ray and HD DVD's look amazing with a HD TV that can put out 1080p as well as with a good quality surround sound system. If you don't posses that then the purchase and argument is pointless.

Answer 4

The format war is still going on and I support having a choice. It is forcing both sides to be competitive about lowering prices and getting titles out.

If we only had 1 format, Hollywood would adopt a 'wait-and-see' attitude and we might have 50 titles out instead of 350.

Sony is trying to make aggressive business agreements to 'win' the war and force studios to go exclusive. Some are, some are not.

Answer 5

Bluray is technically a more superior format as it holds more information, and the audio is less compressed. Since Jan of this year bluray has out sold hddvd by at least 2 to 1, and 8 of the top 10 movie studios are on board w/ the bluray format. It is a misconception that sony is the only backer of this format, as there are many (including some companies that are on board w/ hddvd as well). Even retail chains are on board with this format as Blockbuster, Hastings, Target (I believe as well), Kmart are all blueray exclusive (or they will be once they sell through their hddvd catalog). Most retail chains also promote blueray better than hddvd as well. For a fun (depending or your idea of fun), go to various retail stores and seek out both formats, blueray is usually in a well defined area w/ marketing that pops out, and hddvd is not as easy to spot. Alot of people think that sony always comes up with their own "gimmick" but forget that they also were one of the top companies in the development of the cd and dvd format as well. The betamax was actually more superior than vhs as it had better video quality, but sony refused to sell the liscense to anyone (except to zenith at the very end). As jvc (the company that invented the vcr) sold the format to anyone that could afford it. Now if you want to be safe for any format you could pick up a combo unit that plays both bluray and hddvd lg and samsung make universal players that will play both, and their will be more on the way. Now I am not particular in favor of one over the other, as they are both great formats. But by having somewhat of a choice the people are swinging towards blueray. There was also this issue with blank media as cd-r/rw and cd-ram, and also with dvd +/-r/rw and dvd ram as well, and the -'s won that one as well. You can also check out the following sites www.twice.com, and video business's web site as they are both industrial trade publications (you can get a free subscription to them as well).

Answer 6

I'll focus first on your specific question, then try to to position the whole 'HD thing'.

For interest see the history section of the document at the 1st link for a blow-by-blow account of the history behind the Blu-Ray disk.

Format wars are both good and bad. Good, because they encourage competition and innovation, and help to control prices, but bad because they confuse consumers and waste resources.

Why does Sony try to go into left field? Well. consider that new technology involves licensing fees. If Sony builds the new standard 'xyz' (assuming they 'win' a format war or develop a 'new' must-have item) they don't have to pay licensing fees (although they do have to pay the high cost of R&D), instead they can both make direct profits and charge others licensing fees. So, as with most things, motivation is profit (in this case potentially $Billions). In most things consumer benefit is very much secondary ... and this case (see below for reasoning) is almost an accident.

One HD disk format if adopted for both video and audio to replace CD, SACD, DVD-A, DVD, etc., WOULD have been beneficial. But then other license holders/interest groups would have lost out on licensing fees and sales profits ... so it ain't going to happen.

In the case of the HD DVD vs Blu-Ray 'war', two new formats are not much benefit to the consumer since they are unnecessary and further confuse the market saturated with incompatible file and physical formats (The fact that Toshiba has demonstrated the capacity to put 2 hrs of HD video and audio on a STANDARD DVD shows the HD DVD and Blu-Ray are unnecessary). The real successor to the DVD is more likely to be some form of Digital Holographic Disk (DHD; see 2nd link for a 2005 reference, or Google it) with capacity in the Terabyte range. Note that proponents of Blu-ray tout the 'superior' storage capacity over HD DVD, but either 30GB or 50GB look pretty small relative to a Terabyte.

The fact is the vast majority of consumers can't benefit from HD DVD or Blu-Ray (only 14% of households in the US have HDTV's and only a fraction of them are 1080p and/or have large enough screens to provide a visible benefit from HD disks). The true motivation for developing HD disks is that DVD sales are shrinking, so to counteract that prices were cut (read: lower profits) and on line video is starting to cut into disk sales, so manufacturers are REALLY pushing HD disks because they need to sell something new (and something that on-line sales 'can't' compete with (at least not yet)). Add in the consumer unfriendly -- but industry protecting -- mechanisms to discourage copying (i.e. Digital Rights Management (DRM; e.g. BD+, HDMI with HDCP)) and you get a pretty transparent attempt to generate new sales profits.

It's all a conspiracy to convince us we need something we don't so that we all rush out and buy new HDTVs, new HD disk players, new cables (HDMI), and replacements for existing DVDs ... all at higher cost and with greater complexity and interconnection issues.

For example, BD+ -- the DRM mechanism on Blu-Ray disks -- recently prevented consumers who bought Revenege of the Silver Surfer from being able to play their new $30+ disk on certain players. Or, HDCP prevents people using component video cable to watch HD, forcing consumers wanting to watch HD to buy new receivers and TVs (and technically inferior HDMI cables), even though the old ones was perfectly satisfactory.

But this time consumers are not falling for it nearly as fast as in the past. The result is manufactuers are losing their shirt ... or at least are not raking in the windfall profits they expected.

Long answer ... sorry ... but I hope it was useful.

Answer 7

Blu-ray discs hold more memory and give a better picture than hddvds do. I think that sony has a great product that has a slight edge over hddvds. i bet the only reason he has "six figures worth of h.t.e." is because that they were cheaper. Blu-ray discs are more expensive, but provide better quality with more disk space

Answer 8

Actually, blu-ray is winning as of now, it's outselling hd-dvd 2 to 1, and because of the larger storage capacity and more major movie studio support, it's more "future proof" than hd-dvd.

Answer 9

the format war is still going on and will for the next couple years

Answer 10

agb90 gave a good answer.

My two cents worth are: "American"? Neither.

HD-DVD is Toshiba's technology.
BluRay is Sony, Philips and others' technology.

Neither is "American" exactly.