Comments on: Blu-ray vs. HD DVD: I don't care who wins!

Outside of the protagonists and their immediate families, does anyone really give a darn who comes out on top? CNET News.com's Charles Cooper sure doesn't.

[ebg_51]

It doesn't matter

Samsung & some other company make a player that plays both Blu-Ray & HD-DVD. so as long as they have a player that will play ALL formats, It shouldn't matter. I'm looking for OPPO to build an all format player cheaper than Samsung's.

[Kreloure]

Best pf Both-

There is a Blu-Ray AND Hd-DVD player-in-one that you can buy

[Kainchild]

Dont need to burn already made Movie disks

Don't need to burn already made movie disks. Most people don't watch their dvd movies on a computer. Plus once the movie studios realize Blu-ray holds more, Sony and other companies should be able to start having more intitative to make more blu-ray burners for comptuers.

[couchpotato99]

HD-DVD combo discs can be used in any room

One very important thing to remember about HD-DVD. The "combo disc" has HD-DVD on one side and standard dvd on the other. This is not technically possible with Blue Ray since it is not an evolution of the dvd system. It is an entirely new format.

An HD-DVD combo disc can be played in high def in one room and standard def in another. For people with more than one disc player in their home, this is very important.

You're not forced to buy 2 versions of the same movie title! HELLO!

Could this have been Warner's real motive? Think about that!

[jrm125]

Probably

This probably was their motivation. I'm also thinking the ability to DRM their material was too.

But I have to ask, what planet do you live on where companies arent out to make money?

[nesheimbru]

hd dvd and bluray burning

since neither seem to be supporting a burning program of any use I presume that the wars will continue and who should care but the great distributers like warner, disney et al. THese comps are out to make money off the ord people and protect their licences. So be it. Those of us who might use the tech for other purposes are ignored. So I guess We have to use divx. Good bye sony/toshiba. I do own a hd dvd player by the way and presume this controversy will continue untile I need to switch to someting more meaningfull.

[jrm125]

Nero 8

Nero 8 supports Blu-ray burning. Check www.newegg.com for burners and prices.

There you are.

[dwalltheone]

Who cares? Not me!

My regular old DVD player died a couple weeks ago. I replaced it for $99 with an HD A3 that has the bonus of up-converting my now large (200+) library of non-HD DVDs. My flat screen LCD TV is a couple years old and only goes to 1080i. Spend over $400 on a decent Blu-Ray player now? No thanks ... I'll wait a few years and get one when the price is down under $150 and after I have also purchased a more affordable 1080p LCD.

[David Kelson]

MY SOLUTION

I have both formats hooked up in my system. The two players cost
half the price of a "combo" player. I'm enjoying them both almost
daily. By the time a winner is declared my machines will be ready
for replacement anyway. The only caveat is I rent my discs I don't
purchase them. (I can always purchase my favorite discs later when
a format winner emerges). Regards, David

[ralfthedog]

Good choice.

Getting one of each is far better than a dual format.

"By the time a winner is declared my machines will be ready for replacement anyway."

Probably not true. My guess is that Toshiba will be making Blue-ray players by the Fourth of July.

[heikin]

not relevant

The fact is that DVD's are dead men walking... Apple has made
them obsolete.

We can now rent or buy movies online...stream or store them on
AppleTV...order them from AppleTV... etc... we recently threw out
our DVD player as it is no longer needed... who cares which format
wins? don't know they are both obsolete...

[qazwsx555]

You are Funny............

You are soooo funny mate, you cannot compare apple rent and Blu-Ray/HD-DVD. It shows you dont understand why we need these player and the new technology, and what hi-definition means.
You can only compare your apple rent with VCD, which was already dead years ago. But dont compate it to DVD or even HD-DVD. Do you think your apple can download 20 Gigabites only to watch one movie? are you serious????
Please understand what it is before give comments OK!

[jrm125]

Buy a decent TV

Buy a TV made after 1990 and you'll be able to tell the difference. The Apple product is worlds behind disc media in quality. That's just the reality. And it doesnt really look like itll get better anytime soon.

[leedominate]

Not relevant for whom

For those of us who dont spend our life on a computer and who enjoy the experience of home theater, this is a big deal. You can sit at your chair pulling pud under your desk and enjoy your existence with your little monitor and your downloads and your streams. I on the other hand will be sitting back on my large couch with my large HDTV enjoying some nice nights with my wife and kids.

[ward09]

You're stupid!

LOL - you 'threw out' your DVD player, becasue it was 'no longer needed'. I think in your effort to make your point, you went a little over the top.

Why would anyone care about your opinion after such a ridiculous statement? I find it hard to believe that one day you decided the DVD format was dead, unhooked your player, and put it in the garbage can. Maybe you should have said you took it to the antique store or put it in a garage sale.

What if you have friends over and they bring a movie to watch after diner? Are you going to run to your computer and start downloading ? LOL? Maybe you can all watch it on your iPod Video.

DVDs and whatever format replaces them will be alive and well for a long time to come. People will always want to own a copy of their favorite movies, and it?s still just not practical for people to have all that data stored on their computer hard drives. Think of the popular DVDs that are selling now ? TV series. That?s a lot of annoying downloading. DVDs, HD-DVDs and Blu-Rays are popular, because they are EASY to use.

[D_advocate]

I also don't care.. for now

It is pretty obvious what Toshiba is doing. They will drag this whole thing on until HD DVD is either the winner, or until Sony grows impatient waiting for Toshiba to fall and offers them a nice payout. It was reported that Sony paid Warner Brothers 500 million to join their side. The longer this battle goes on, the more dollars Sony will lose on top of the risk of losing complete adoption by the public.

This confusion can already be seen with some talking about downloads taking a bite out of the next HD format. Sure many scoff at this idea as being impractial and years away, but the real ending to this war could very well be years away.

Others have talked about other media coming into the affordable picture in a few years. Panosonic just intoduced their new Viera line of HDTVs with integrated 32GB SD slot. The potential of this format could be huge. No doubt these 32GB cards will be very expensive, but so were 1 and 2GB cards when they were fairly new. A 2GB card sold for a whopping $200 only 2 years ago, now the same can be had for a only $16.

My point is whichever DVD format "wins" the battle. What exactly will they be winning, and for how long? Will this be the format for the next 10+ years like the orginal DVD? Do you think most people in the world.. yes I said "most" will replace their current DVD players in the next few years with one of the winners? Surveys have indicated many are still very happy with their DVDs thank you very much.

I honestly do not think so. But one thing that no one can deny is that technology will continue to evolve, and perhaps the ideas people are scoffing at today will present interesting questions and choices to the consumer several years from now. We will just have to wait and see, and I suspect many others will do the same thing.

[couchpotato99]

HD-DVD gives the best upconversion of standard dvd's

It is true that there are a lot of upconversion dvd players on the market, some as low as $69. But not all upconversion machines are the same!

User reviews everywhere have confirmed that the Toshiba HD-DVD players do the job BEST! Just check on the internet and you'll see.

I did a comparison of HD-DVD discs and upconverted standard dvd's on my Toshiba HD-A3 player and the difference was minor. Sure the HD-DVD looked better, not much by much! The sharpness and color intensity on the standard dvd's was absolutely astounding!

If you were to buy an HD-A3 player at today's price of $149.00, It's a win-win situation.

You can play HD-DVD'S from Paramount and Universal and standard dvd's from EVERY studio and have SUPERB video and audio quality on all of them.

To top it all off, HD-DVD Combo Discs that have HD-DVD on one side and standard dvd on the other can be played on any dvd machine in the house.

Can Blue Ray claim that?

[jrm125]

Save your money, buy this

http://www.amazon.com/Philips-DVP5982-1080p-Upscaling-Player/dp/B000N254LU

$65, 1080p upconversion, USB input

And BD and HD DVD perform the same quality upconversion. Your personal review means nothing since your posts show you have a very biased preference. An overall comparison of online reviews shows the two techs on-par with each other. Not to mention you did't compare HD DVD with BD, you just compared to a cheaper upconvert player.

How about not spreading useless info?

Next time, try spelling Blu-Ray correctly and maybe we'd even consider listening to your BS. Save your money, don't invest in dying-tech HD DVD.

:-)

[samkass]

"Can Blu-Ray claim that?"

The Sony PS3, of which more are sold per quarter than all the HD DVD players ever made, can upconvert DVDs beautifully. It can play discs from all the major studios except the two holdouts (which are reportedly no longer bound by their exclusivity contracts).

The only good thing about HD DVD and DVD combo-discs is that you won't have to throw away your discs in 2 years when you can no longer buy an HD DVD player.

[fgsdfgdsfgdsfg]

wrong.

okay.
so HD-DVD has standard deff on one side, and hd-dvd on the other.
why is that a big deal. why would i buy a HD-DVD disk to watch standard deff. clearly i want a high def disk if i am buying a HD-DVD.

also in reguards to your claims on up converting. the PS3 is one of the best up converting players on the market. and it is also a blu ray player, not HD-DVD.
the quality is based on the player, not the players chosen HD standard.

[tvfilm]

YOU ALL ARE MISSING OUT A MAJOR POINT

------------
STICK WITH HD-DVD !

HD-DVD are all REGION FREE and ARE FOR THE CONSUMER!

BLU-RAY is ran by the studios and are not in the best interest of the consumer or technology.

There is a reason why movie studios CAN'T own movie theaters!

They were caught manipulating the system.

Its a monopoly if they control the distribution as well.

This is really bad for consumer.

GO WITH HD DVD, they will make the technology better.

Already by HD DVD putting out all DVDs are REGION FREE, is a clear sign that they are there for the consumer interest along with the cheaper prices.

Blu-Ray is not the answer, I'm telling you.

It will be ran to the ground, overprices, undeveloped and we will have ourselves an industry that is going to be corrupt and ran by the same people who create the films.

DANGEROUS!!!!!

[samkass]

FUD

Blu-Ray discs are higher quality, cheaper, and have the same DRM as HD DVD for the most part. In addition, if customers want region-free so much, only buy region-free discs! About 2/3 of Blu-Ray discs made so far are region-free, so studios do seem to be responding.

The only thing advocating HD DVD does is make people buy neither format. No sane person is going to spend money on HD DVD these days... at this point that camp just wants to lash out and hurt Blu-Ray as well.

[nmharleyrider]

You have forgotten an important point

You have forgotten that the BlueRay format can hold over twice as much data as HD format. In fact BlueRay has a theoretical limit of 200gb whereas HD has only 60gb. That alone makes it a winner in my book. Who cares if they are region free. I buy my HDs here in the US as do most consumers; I don't order them from other countries so it's not an issue. On another subject, you really must learn to write better English if you expect your comments to be taken seriously. There are more than six grammatical errors in your comments and I find that embarrassing for you.

[qazwsx555]

WOW

Maaan, If I tell u that single layer Blue Ray can contains 20Gb data/video, and can be layered until 5 layers, which means can contain 100Gb in one single disk, Will you still agree with what you just said, Man? will you still pround with your 2Gb thumb drive?? how many Blue-Ray quality movies can u store in your 100-500 Gb ??
If you're happy with your VCD or 700mb video streaming movie, that stick with it, but don't expect other people to blind themself like u.

[fred dunn]

Neither will win as technology passes them..

While they are having their battle at the consumer's (not mine) expense. New optical technology has come out that has the capability of storing 500GB and 1TB, and DRM will pass them by as newer and better methods are available to the studios.

Content is King, not the mechanism that delivers it.

[EddyLim777]

TheBestWillWin

TheBestWillWin

[www.hdgreetings.com]

I choose on demand via the Internet

Why should we rent more discs that are never available from Blockbuster or Netflix?

Just get everyone to switch over to a simple movie download system like Apple TV or XBox or whatever.

[jrm125]

then you choose low quality

Some of us actually want a crisp picture and sound that hasn't been compressed so much that it sounds like it was recorded in a tin can.

I've tried the latest internet techs. They, nor the internet itself, is ready for prime-time to replace disc media.

Once I can get 1080p without artifacting and uncompressed 7.1 sound on demand...then I'll switch. But I hope you're ready to wait, the internet isn't up to the challenge in its current state.

[fgsdfgdsfgdsfg]

because of 1080P

cable broadcasters only broadcast in 720P or 1080i. if you want FULL HD you can;t get it on cable, or the dish. blu-ray or HD-DVDs only.

[fgsdfgdsfgdsfg]

ummm ok whay dows that matter

okay.
so HD-DVD has standard deff on one side, and hd-dvd on the other.
why is that a big deal. why would i buy a HD-DVD disk to watch standard deff. clearly i want a high def disk if i am buying a HD-DVD.

also in reguards to your claims on up converting. the PS3 is one of the best up converting players on the market. and it is also a blu ray player, not HD-DVD.
the quality is based on the player, not the players chosen HD standard.

[johnthedj]

Recording, Recording,

HD DVD has very few recording aspecs and for a consumer of a new format recording is the most important. The DVD+/- battle was for recording not playing the format. The HD market is young but if HD DVD is to survive it has be consumer viable. The consumer wants to upgrade thier own content more than view studio made movies. Blu-ray is in video cameras HD DVD is not. You can't author a HD Dvd with much ease. Blu-Ray is in the most popular recording software. The HD Dvd recorders are hard to find and have very limited recording space.

[Dr. B]

How about not wanting either of them to win?

I'd actually be happiest if both lost and we didn't have to worry
about any of this blasted format war anymore.

I know it's not going to happen, but I can still dream. Or hope for
the next best thing - that the 'format war' goes on forever with no
end in sight.

[libertyforall1776]

HD, not discs people want - Apple TV could be the solution

Networked HD is much better than discs -- people are tired of
dealing with all those discs, just as they were tired of cassette
tapes and 8-track players...

The Apple TV or Mac Mini are good examples of the likely future -
- discs are old hat... ;-)

[kdrobb2k]

Hi Cost will doom HD

Perusing the Web and Sunday newspaper supplements, the high price of Blu Ray players and 1080p televisions look prohibitive and will slow down adoption of any new format. A possible looming recession will not help matters. I predict $100 up converting standard DVD units will trump $400 HD players, $1800 LCD and Plasma televisions in the foreseeable future.