HiDef.com Forum - View Single Post - Blu-Ray or HD-DVD

species8472 · #2 (**permalink**) 12-25-2006, 05:00 AM

Supporting HD-DVD for the following reasons:

1. HD-DVD has adopted the VC-1 codec which is far superior to the MPEG 2 (very old) codec that Sony/Blu-Ray Camp has adopted. I am not convinced the MPEG 2 will ever be good enough regardless of how high a bitrate is used. VC-1 has a better color space resulting in far more vibrate colors. Overall, image quality trumps Blu-Ray hands down.

2. Combo Disk - The ability to buy a disk that has HD-DVD content on one side and standard DVD on the other is very cool. It allows consumers to build a library before purchasing an HD-DVD player. It also allows you to share disks with friends who do not have a HD-DVD player or use in other players in the home (that are not HD-DVD).

3. Audio support is more consistent - TrueHD is becoming a standard on many new HD-DVD releases. In addition DD+ 5.1 and DTS are commonplace. Many Blu-Ray supporters are sticking to PCM uncompressed audio.

4. HD-DVD will move to 45GB in the spring/early summer, neutralizing Blu-Rays ONLY advantage (which is really not an advantage as HD-DVD image quality on 30GB disks beats Blu-Ray running at 1080p on 50GB disks.

5. Standards should not be forced upon consumers - Sony is very heavy handed with Blu-Ray which is ironic considering their track record with standards in the past (Betamax, MiniDisk, UMD, etc)

6. Cost - Toshiba HD-DVD players debuted at 500.00 vs 800.00 to 1200.00 for Blu-Ray players. The XBOX 360 HD-DVD player is only 199.00 and works on the PC (very NICE - a cool Trojan horse).

L8