Brad Wardell's views about technology, politics, religion, world affairs, and all sorts of politically incorrect topics.
Published on January 7, 2008 By Draginol In Personal Computing

0107081144  While the HD-DVD group canceled some of their press events due to the defection of Warner Bros to Blu-Ray, HD-DVD has a pretty significant presence.

There seems to be no shortage of HD-DVDs currently available on the show floor as my blurry picture makes clear.

The CEA announced awhile back that over 30% of American households own an HDTV.  With approximately over 60 million HDTV sets sold, the demand for high-definition video is growing.  Thus far, both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD have sold pretty abysmally. There are a lot of reasons for this such as people wanting to wait until there's a standard format, they don't necessarily see enough of a visual difference to justify the expense. And there's a lot of obnoxious copy protection involved limiting compatibility (play that new Blu-Ray movie DVD in your new Blu-ray DVD drive on your new Dell and you may find they don't always work).

One of the more interesting sights (literally) has been the 120hz 1080p sets. There really seems to be a visual quality difference based on the refresh rate that is independent of the resolution.


Comments
on Jan 07, 2008

The format war is annoying to say the least. When purchasing a DVD player, I chose Blu-ray as it seemed that's the way things were going. I then had the nasty shock that my beloved Star Trek was coming out in HD-DVD only... Bleh! So now I have both Blu-ray and HD-DVD.

There's very little to choose between the two formats, other than Blu-ray has significantly more storage available. Picture quality is similar, but both a vastly superior to standard definition in a good set up.

on Jan 07, 2008

That sucks. I dont give a crap who wins, I just want this nonsense over. Advantage: BluRay, so down with HD-DVD.

On a similar topic... I recently spec'd a Dell out the other day with a BluRay drive. Cost an extra $500, for on a laptop anyways. For all the ridiculous added inconvenice of unreliability (my DVD player has never broken, but my PC's video card software sure has freaked out before) I don't see the point, beyond if you plan to rip all the bluray disks to your harddrive (can you do that even?)

on Jan 07, 2008
There's very little to choose between the two formats, other than Blu-ray has significantly more storage available. Picture quality is similar, but both a vastly superior to standard definition in a good set up.


Thanks, F.L.

Yep, this sucks.   
on Jan 07, 2008
I vote for Blu-ray but I guess since Star trek is on HD I might go that route.

Maybe they will come out with a player that does both...

I'll only switch to the new standard when they quit making regular DVDs...
on Jan 07, 2008
I hope HD-DVD wins but Sony is all-powerful so we’ll probably be stuck with the over the top copy protection of Sony’s blue ray. I still believe the customer has a right to make personal backup copies of their movies after all were not buying a just a fragile plastic disk.

In the end it’s up to us so let’s send Sony and their root kits a message, and only buy HD-DVD.
on Jan 07, 2008
I like Sony. Love my PS2 and the Final Fantasy games.

on Jan 07, 2008

Maybe they will come out with a player that does both...

LG To Unleash HD-DVD/Blu-Ray Combo Player