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It looks like Blu-ray won?

Happy b-day to me. What a difference a year makes. I bought my HD DVD add on drive for the 360 on my b-day last year and now one year later HD DVD's life has ended. While this does suck for the consumer, at least now we can get ALL the movies in HD on one format. There's at least one benefit. As for prices of BD staying high, I'm sick of having to repeat this but the main competition for BD is NOT HD DVD. It's DVD. If prices stay high, then no one will adopt it and the format will lose just as badly as HD DVD did. This while "Sony's now got a monopoly so they can do what they want crap" is starting to irritate me. First, BD != Sony. It's an alliance of companies. Second, they MUST compete against low cost DVD and upscaling players. If they plan on doing that with high prices "to screw the consumer" then good luck with that cause it'll never happen. Prices will continue to drop.
 
I've been a long time supporter of Blu-Ray even though I've never actually watched and compared HD-DVD, but my decision to support Blu-Ray was based on the Wikipedia HD format comparison chart.

Now that the format war is over, I'd like to know why people constantly claim HD-DVD was more "technologically saavy". From what I can see, Blu-Ray has more storage and the capability to support every feature HD-DVD supported. The only area where Blu-Ray didn't really measure up was DD+ support, but even then it still supports enough to gain 7.1 support, which is perfect in my mind...

Please keep in mind that I'm not "defending" Blu-Ray or trying to spark another war. I'm just posting my thought process on why I supported Blu-Ray, and would like to know why people became so divided in general. Am I missing something about Blu-Ray compared to HD-DVD?

I am familiar with the region free capability of HD-DVD, but I just don't see this as a major or "technological saavy" item which divided the community...

I do agree that the biggest competitor is DVD and hopefully Blu-Ray prices will drop. Almost insane how high they are...

Also are there any screenshots comparing Blu-Ray to HD-DVD?
 
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The big thing you're missing is that HD DVD was more consumer friendly. No region coding, mandatory managed copy built into the spec, and far less DRM overhead than BD. Also, HD DVD was a finished spec from the beginning most unlike BD. So while there are advantages on BD, the reality is it's less friendly for the consumer. Also, those technological advantages of theoretically higher bit rates and more space have so far not been utilized to "blow away" HD DVD. You'd be hard pressed to find a difference between HD DVD and BD in terms of video quality. Audio is a different story with BD having enough space to provide an uncompressed LPCM track. But video, not much difference in quality if both are done right IMO.
 
it would be nice now that blu ray won, if SlySoft would drop there BD+ bomb on them :agree:
 
Happy Birthday SamuriHL

Happy%20Birthday%20Colors.jpg
 
No region coding, mandatory managed copy built into the spec, and far less DRM overhead than BD.
Click to expand...

What do you mean by mandatory managed copy?

I do understand the DRM argument, and I can definitely see this being the first dividing line.
 
HeartsOfWar said:
What do you mean by mandatory managed copy?

I do understand the DRM argument, and I can definitely see this being the first dividing line.
Click to expand...

Managed copy was a technology designed to allow you to make a DRM'd copy of your disc to another device...media center, portable, laptop, etc. BD has something similar in the works, but, for HD DVD support of managed copy was mandatory.

It certainly was. Unfortunately, all this is moot.
 
Well for what its worth I had every initial intention of buying both formats and letting God sort them out. In cases like this early adopters should be prepared to buy both or wait before buying anything,…thus not really being an early adopter.

Not trying to be funny, but one has to wonder how long it will take Toshiba and partners before manufacturing Blu-ray devices. Again, I’m not trying to be funny but it would seem like a natural progression IMO.

As for standard DVD, the same techniques for chocking off media / content from HD DVD will likely be used since they have proven to be effective. Its harder to do to DVD since it is so well entrenched and lucrative but if they really want to push BD all they need to do is make some titles exclusive,…and then a few more,….and then stop production of DVD altogether. Getting the movie studios to march in lockstep doesn’t seem to be a problem especially when they share the same mindset. Better protection (BD+) alone would seem to be motivation enough to target DVD’s demise or at least hasten it.


Remember this is less an issue of what format is best, giving the consumer a choice of what’s best for them and so on, its really more an issue of removing choice from the consumer or making the choice for them.
 
I just got home from BJs Wholesale Club and the manager told me all their HD-DVDs with go on sale for 8.99 beginning Monday. :(
 
As I've said before, there really wasn't a choice to begin with. Your "choice" was limited to "can I live without titles from these studios, or these studios?" People who said "buy all the HD DVD's and stick to DVD on studios that don't support it" were missing the point. I didn't want to stick to DVD. If I did, I'd have bought neither. Consumers only ever had a chance at having a choice IF ALL STUDIOS RELEASED THEIR STUFF ON BOTH FORMATS EQUALLY. But that never happened. So, there was only 2 ways for this to "end." Either all the studios lined up behind one format(I thought this very unlikely until Warner's decision) or we'd get a cheap dual format player so that the format became irrlevant to the consumer. I thought the latter was more likely and I was wrong. Nonetheless, consumer choice in the matter was a joke. Buy one format and stick to DVD for those that didn't support it, buy neither format and stick to DVD period(most did this), or buy both to hedge your bets as I did. That's not exactly a choice...
 
interesting how companies would protect their IP via DRM and then opt to allow "managed" copies. Obviously there would have to be some kind of check and balance on how many "managed" copies could be made, but it would seems like this would be the easiest way to defeat DRM...
 
SlyFox 1 said:
I just got home from BJs Wholesale Club and the manager told me all their HD-DVDs with go on sale for 8.99 beginning Monday. :(
Click to expand...

Snikes! That's awesome!! :) Fire sale time. I may have to rethink my boycott of HD DVD if they go that low.
 
HeartsOfWar said:
interesting how companies would protect their IP via DRM and then opt to allow "managed" copies. Obviously there would have to be some kind of check and balance on how many "managed" copies could be made, but it would seems like this would be the easiest way to defeat DRM...
Click to expand...

Don't kid yourself. This managed copy concept was not "unlimited". Hence the managed part. Why do you think HD DVD had mandatory ethernet connections, as well? :) You have to acquire a license from a central server to be ALLOWED to make a copy.
 
SamuriHL said:
Don't kid yourself. This managed copy concept was not "unlimited". Hence the managed part. Why do you think HD DVD had mandatory ethernet connections, as well? :) You have to acquire a license from a central server to be ALLOWED to make a copy.
Click to expand...

was it possible to make a "managed" copy of a "managed" copy?

For the record, even though I felt Blu-Ray was better I didn't support either of them as I too felt it was unfair how the studios rallied behind a format forcing people to choose.
 
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HeartsOfWar said:
was it possible to make a "managed" copy of a "managed" copy?
Click to expand...

Uh, no. Besides the fact that managed copy never materialized even though it was mandatory, obviously the only way to make a managed copy would be to own the original disc. The copy would be limited to a period of time and have to be reauthorized (with the original disc) after a certain number of hours/days. When I say the managed copy is DRM'd I ain't kidding. It was going to be rather nasty.

EDIT: Think of it like how XBox 360 movies work. They're downloaded to your xbox 360 hard drive in an aggressive DRM'd format. That's pretty much the model for managed copy.
 
Actually I was thinking about this while I was in the shower. Here's my theory on the managed copies.

I read the other day this was just a rumor nothing else on google news.

If this was to happen I feel that there is a registry key or similiar put in place on the PC to say hey you already did this and you can't do it again.

Again just a theory.
 
This may be the best decision that Toshiba could make financially which would inadvertently cause the most heartache to Blu-Ray. Competition is always best for the consumer...
 
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