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

[Lowe]

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

Only if you back the wrong horse

[Stringent]

Well what was DVD like when it first came out? Expensive. Recorders were expensive as were discs. They dropped in price after a while. Then double layer ones came out and were expensive to buy, but now they are reasonable for that extra notch.

I think Blu-Ray will go the same way. The drives were like £450 when they came out and I noticed on Scan they had them recently for the £150ish mark, so thats a good drop.

DVD will be around for a while yet, and HD is still a niche market, but its good that there is one format now rather than two.

As for digital downloads, you will never get the quality you do from a Blu-Ray disc. BR holds 50GB at DL, you want to keep downloading 50GB of data? Sorry the infrastructure here in the UK isn't up to it, not to mention capping. 1 movie will blow most caps. So unless hard drive storage becomes free or very dirt cheap, digital downloads aren't really the answer. CD's are still here (granted loosing money), and iTunes and the like have been around for how long now?

[Parm]

Well what was DVD like when it first came out? Expensive. Recorders were expensive as were discs. They dropped in price after a while. Then double layer ones came out and were expensive to buy, but now they are reasonable for that extra notch.

In my opinion though, DVD offered a lot more when it came out. It was such a big step up from VHS, it warranted the expensive cost. Blu-ray and HD DVD don't seem as good value to me.

As for digital downloads, you will never get the quality you do from a Blu-Ray disc. BR holds 50GB at DL, you want to keep downloading 50GB of data? Sorry the infrastructure here in the UK isn't up to it, not to mention capping. 1 movie will blow most caps. So unless hard drive storage becomes free or very dirt cheap, digital downloads aren't really the answer. CD's are still here (granted loosing money), and iTunes and the like have been around for how long now?

I'm not so sure on this one either. The UK's infrastructure isn't here right now, but it is continuing to improve (albeit slowly) and media compression is improving too. Right now, downloading HD movies isn't ideal but in a few years time it could be the norm.

Hard drive storage too is getting cheaper all the time, it's close to dirt cheap already.

You're right about CD's, they're still here - despite iTunes and despite SACDs. Don't think anybody has touched on SACDs yet, they were the next step up from CD and like Blu-ray/HD DVD, the only real advantage to them was better quality - but, they never managed to displace CDs.

You do make some good points though Stringent, it's an interesting debate cause there aren't really answers but there are many viewpoints.

In hindsight, it almost seems as though the format war never was. The real war it would seem is Blu-ray vs DVD vs Digital Distribution - that's the war I see. With that in mind, I see DVD being the clear winner for the next few years at least. By then, digital distribution may be more feasible.

[staffsMike]

I'm agreed with that, DVD still offers the best value. I've never been that fussed about HD, it looks nice and everything but I can appriciate the film just as much on good old DVD

[MadduckUK]

As for digital downloads, you will never get the quality you do from a Blu-Ray disc. BR holds 50GB at DL, you want to keep downloading 50GB of data?

no-one ever needed to download an album at 650MB a pop

[kalniel]

Exactly. With hardware decoding as well the bitrate for HD-quality video is not going to be prohibitive for too long.

[MadduckUK]

if a movie comes to 5GB (methinks its slightly less than that) then i dont really think thats out of the reach of most. only people with there dainty 256kb, 2GB per month limits. but really who cares about them?

[Barrichello]

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

lol yeah - call the police for them having to much stock.

Seriously though, why are people even looking at HD films in places like HMV/Zavvi when they are £10-£15 cheaper on the internet.

[Stringent]

Its all to do with quality though. Sure you dont need 650MB for an audio CD, compression does the work, so you can rip it to 160kbs MP3. Depends on your ears though. For someone who has an HDTV and a PS3, anything other than Blu-Ray just doesn't look as good any more. Upscaled DVD's are OK to a point. I guess I have been exposed to the pure stuff and its goooooooood.

Notice I haven't mentioned sound, don't have an Onkyo TR-605 with Kef speakers. Yet.

[Parm]

lol yeah - call the police for them having to much stock.

Seriously though, why are people even looking at HD films in places like HMV/Zavvi when they are £10-£15 cheaper on the internet.

There are a lot of people who feel more comfortable buying from a high street outlet than an online store. Though I do most of my shopping online, I know friends and family who would be willing to pay more just to buy from an actual store - I guess mostly for the peace of mind. If anything goes wrong, they can take it back easily.

Two big threads on this subject at the mo so I've merged the two.

[Funkstar]

if a movie comes to 5GB (methinks its slightly less than that) then i dont really think thats out of the reach of most. only people with there dainty 256kb, 2GB per month limits. but really who cares about them?

At roughly 7MB/sec, HD titles require around 20-25GB an hour for full quality.

As a comparison, an average DVD (straight from the disk, no re-compression, no stripping of features) is around 6.5GB.

[MadduckUK]

Its all to do with quality though. Sure you dont need 650MB for an audio CD, compression does the work, so you can rip it to 160kbs MP3. Depends on your ears though. For someone who has an HDTV and a PS3, anything other than Blu-Ray just doesn't look as good any more. Upscaled DVD's are OK to a point. I guess I have been exposed to the pure stuff and its goooooooood.

not sure why you mention upscaled dvd's man, no-one is asking you to go back to that

720x480 = 345600
1280x720 = 921600 (2.6 x 480)
1920x1080 = 2073600 ( 6 x 480)

so 1080p, at 6x the size of standard definition is quite a jump. while 720p is only 2.6x and i think most people would say that for the increase in quality the size difference is worth it.

of course that is just comparing a dvd quality download to a "high definition" quality download. and with the super sexy 1080 being only 6x (dsl lines hve gone from 512k to an average of about 5Mbit? with many a LOT higher (me ) since dvd downloads really took off). i think that the increase in video sizes are comparatively slightly behind the curve of the download methods we can use

whew

[pollaxe]

The best I can get is 512k as I live in the armpit of the world for technology.

[TooNice]

Sorry for the long quote, I'll trim them as best as I can.

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. [...]

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.

[...] 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.

I understood all of that, but the thing is, people usually point that as an advantage for HD-DVD. But since I have no vested interest in the format, the profitability of HD-DVD facilities mean little to me (and most people posting here) unless I get a piece of it. My point about capacity is not to do with movies, but the cost of media in general. I often read blanket statement a la 'HD-DVD > BD because it is cheaper'. That's true for hardware but while we've established that it doesn't in practice for movies and it's also clearly not the case as storage medium.

You're right about CD's, they're still here - despite iTunes and despite SACDs. Don't think anybody has touched on SACDs yet, they were the next step up from CD and like Blu-ray/HD DVD, the only real advantage to them was better quality - but, they never managed to displace CDs.

My main concern when the BD vs HD-DVD thing started was indeed that they would go the way SACD/DVD-A went. It's clear that many would forgo SACD/DVD-A for lossy quality MP3s that can be downloaded in a matter of minutes if not seconds today. However, I think it is fair to say that Hi-def video brings more to the average person than Hi-def audio. I would not be willing to bet that everyone can tell CDs from SACD using the best audio equipment. But I would be very surprised if most people can't tell BD from DVD side by side.

My stance a month ago is that the sooner the infighting between hi-def format ends, the better the chance hi-def format will eventually prevail. There are definitely people who are interested in hi-def, but not willing to gamble on one format at the expense of the other. If those people now start getting into hi-def, will slowly economy of scale would come into play, and price will slowly go down (and as the price gap narrows, more people would go hi-def and cycle repeats). Basically, I saw BD or HD-DVD as better than BD + HD-DVD for spreading hi-def and competing with DVDs.

Will it last as long as CDs or DVDs I am not sure. Will it even replace DVDs in it's entirety? I am not so sure. As long as DVDs is available for cheaper than BD, there will be people who go for the cheaper option. DVDs hasn't eradicated VCD in regions where it saw a lot of use (certain Asian countries).