The end is nigh for HD-DVD, but will Blu-ray prevail?

[shadowmaster]

I got myself a ps3 a week ago so this is good news for me

[SiM]

Film studios need to start doing the smart thing and stop releasing new films on DVD...
Then sit and watch profits soar

[Cozwin]

Never mind. I will always love my HDDVD player nomatter what

you have both :O omg lol your either rich or foolish lol

[Cozwin]

i do have a feeling although its a group of company's its defo a sony product, sony are the one doing all the bribery and making all the deals.

[OV3RCLOCK3R]

Its roumered to already of been developed.

Any links?

[dakini]

Today in Zavvi and HMV in Oxford STreet the shelves were stocked with un sold blu ray and HD DVD. Fear uncertainty and doubt working. Myself, i'm about to buy an express card SATA II for my notebook, so I can plug a blu ray drive into it, I already have HD DVD. Personally it's all about the extras on films for me. I'm sad to see HD DVD go, as some titles had good extras however its great to have one format. Better consumer confidence, and already some Hong Kong films which I love are available on blu ray now.

[Konan555]

To be honest, Compact-Disc was developed in part by Sony, and I don't really see many complaints. Perhaps not all their formats have been winners (I prefer SD over MS, but I also prefer MS over xD), but perhaps it's not to say that all their formats are inferior.

To be fair, I think people are just complaining that Sony are so good at pushing the inferior format onto the market.

[TooNice]

As someone who likes lossless audio and everything as high quality as possible, it's not something I like to admit, but I think that the first point of the article is a strongest one. If you look at screen shot side by side, HD movies have an advantage over DVD, oversampled or not. Yet a lot of people are quite happy with 700MB DivX (hardly the cutting edge of video compression these days) even 300MB RMVB rips going by the booming P2P networks.

Some people comment that HD movies are too expensive compared to DVDs. Fair enough. Yet I don't see that being a long term issue by itself: VCR was definitely cheaper than DVDs when it was first released. But we don't really hear about it these days. And HD-DVD and BD carried their battle for longer, I kind of feared for the future of high-definition movies (a lot of people were not going to make a move until the dust settle). Now that the end is nigh, more people would be willing buy into those formats, and in time it will bring down the costs for everyone else. I doubt the BD team is simply looking at ousting HD-DVD, but to establish itself as a successor of DVDs.

[Tumble]

see - this is another advantage of not being an early adopter - everyone else gets to be bitten in the arse before you spend your money

[Cozwin]

my only worries are sony's very positively few of drm, with them supporting vista, inventing a new frequently updated security for blue ray and the fact they have been caught before using rootkits.. so if we add all that up and then give that company the next standard format... well it spells trouble.

[Funkstar]

No one has ever been able to explain to me why HD-DVD movies cost the same as BD movies, and why BD-R is cheaper per GB than HD-DVDR. So that means one of two things: HD-DVD is not as cheap enough to manufacture to make a practical difference (i.e. it's propaganda from HD-DVD that people took it as fact) or the HD-Camp were being greedy and decided not to pass on the savings (unlikely considering that they did so for the hardware, but anyway) or the BD camp is subsidising a good of the cost (works for me if they want to do that).

HD-DVD is cheaper to produce becuase it uses the same production equipment as regular DVDs, with only some minor changes. BluRay requires a whole new production process. I don't know the actual figures for production costs, but even if the cost to manufacture a BluRay disk is twice that of a HD-DVD you aren't going to see the cost differences in the high street. The manufacturing cost is still going to be a fraction of the retail value. For instance a HD-DVD may cost £0.50 to produce and a BluRay dis £1.00, but then you have the packaging which is the same, distribution which is the same so the cost to manufacture could be, as an example, £5.00 vs £5.50.

And capacity has nothing to do with it. You don't pay more in the high street for a film on a dual layer DVD than you do for a film on a single layer DVD. VHS was the same, you didn't get a £0.10 discound on a title that used half an hour less tape.

So although HD-DVD disks may have cost slightly less to manufacture, the main argument about cheaper production was actually about setting up the production lines. It costs tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars to design and build the sterile production facilities needed to make these things. With HD-DVD, existing production facilities could just be upgraded, this would have a huge saving on infrastructure costs, it also means that factories could share capacity between DVD and HD-DVD production, making the facilities far more profitable. Expansion of production capacity can also be handled easier.

[greenalien]

It was inevitable that one of the two competing formats would lose and in the long run it will be better for all in the industry that there's now only going to be one HD format. Bad luck for those early adopters who've backed the wrong format, but that was the risk they took.
What I wonder now is how long it will be before the studios stop releasing new material on Standard-Def DVD and concentrate purely on HD Blu-Ray? My guess is that it won't be long before SD DVD becomes obsolete in its turn - I'd give it no more than 3 or 4 years.

[Parm]

Another problem in my opinion is that special features aren't valued quite as much anymore. When DVDs first came out, special features were entirely new and the wow factor was there.

I'm not sure about everybody else, but me personally, I don't remember the last time I watched special features. Indeed, if I do buy a DVD, I go for the one-disc £3.99 edition rather than the spangly 3 disc bonus special hoopla edition with limited edition post card for £14.99.

In a similar respect, special features on standard DVDs seem cool to some people cause you can get the "10 disc special will-cook-your-breakfast for you edition". HD DVDs and Blu-rays with their added space only need the one disc - where's the fun in that?

It's just all a bit strange for me. I love new gadgets and when HD DVD and Blu-ray first came onto the scene, I really looked into adopting them and seeing what players were best etc. All I found however was stuff that put me off and now I'm thankful that I didn't adopt either. I'm very much so still happy with DVDs.

[Stoo]

Today in Zavvi and HMV in Oxford STreet the shelves were stocked with un sold blu ray and HD DVD.

Unsold stock on shelves in a shop? Blimey, call the papers

[kalniel]

Flash memory is too expensive. An optical disk takes a few pence to manufacture in quantity. have you seen the price of 32GB flash cards?

Comparable to the price of Blu-ray media at the same stage in the product cycle isn't it?

The price per gb for flash is coming down an awful lot quicker than it is for Blu-ray.

[Funkstar]

But flash has a lot further to drop, price wise, than BluRay ever has.

Sure recordable BluRay disks were, and still are, expensive. But no where near the cost per GB of flash. any not just cheap flash, you need something that is going to be able to sustain around 7-8MB/sec read speeds.

Flash memory at the very least is a few £/GB, pressed HD disks are going to be in the region of a few pence/GB.