Blu-ray vs. HD DVD

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Be serious. Apple, Dell, Disney, Sony, HP, Hitachi, LG Electronics, Matsushita, Mitsubishi, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK, 20th Century Fox is backing Blu-ray and Microosft and Toshiba flubbed the demo of HD DVD at CES (it didn't work!). Blu-Ray is looking pretty good. It seems kind of premature to pick HD as the winner. What are you basing your reasoning on?

Fair Use rights are why consumers will pick HD-DVD (if they know any better).
Content Control is why studios will pick Blu-Ray.
But price is HD-DVD's biggest advantage. With the first players announced at about $500, and Blu-Ray players announced at $1000+ they're off to a good start.
And that isn't even bringing up the cost of the discs.

Chris, it looks like you're mistaken about HD-DVD's backwards compatibility. Why else would you be required to buy an add-on HD-DVD player for XBOX 360? According the its entry in Wikipedia, HD-DVD players will be able to play old DVDs but this does not mean current generation DVD players will be able to play HD-DVDs. From reading of the respective articles in Wikipedia, it seems the Blu-ray standards offer real innovation, including a scratch-proof surface, higher capacity, and Java support.
It's not required, Blu-ray player makers are encouraged to integrate the ability to play DVDs (and why wouldn't they?). This wouldn't really be called backwards compatibility, because Blu-ray isn't DVD.

And how about a run down of the DRM differences between them?
Just Say No To DRM
Julian Bond
julian_bond at voidstar.com

Chris you're off on HD-DVD:
It cannot be played in todays DVD players. No matter what the standard, you're going to need to buy a new player. HD-DVD has the advantage of being able to play standard DVDs without the need to have a second lens inside the box. Blu-Ray, on the other hand, will need a second lens.
I've gone off on this topic before, and this really is just a dick-waving contest between Sony and the DVD consortium. In the end I think HD-DVD is going to win, for several reasons:
1. HD-DVD is easily associated with HDTV. Consumers can readily latch on to the HD-DVD moniker, rather than the BD or Blu-Ray one. It is going to take an advertising blitz of enormous proportions on Sonys part to get consumers to associate “Blu-Ray” with “good.”
2. Price vs. features. HD-DVD offers backwards compatability with DVD out of the box with no extra cost in the manufacturing of the product. Blu-Ray has the added cost of a second lens and additional software to play DVDs. HD-DVD is cheaper to manufacture, Blu-Ray is more expensive. The consumer sees: “SuperHotMovieOfTheWeek – $19.99, HD-DVD or $29.99, Blu-Ray”
3. Cost of equipment. Sony has picked a godawful time to release a standard which is going to require a huge investment on the consumers part. Everyone is going to be spending a good wad of cash on a new television, digital converter, antenna, or other digital equipment. To ask that consumer base to also invest in a very pricey machine at the same time might be asking way too much.
What Sony is hoping for, with aligning itself with these huge media companies, is to force the consumer base to upgrade to Blu-Ray (just another reason why I can't fucking stand Sony).

“Be serious. Apple, Dell, Disney, Sony, HP, Hitachi, LG Electronics, Matsushita, Mitsubishi, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK, 20th Century Fox is backing Blu-ray and Microosft and Toshiba flubbed the demo of HD DVD at CES (it didn't work!). Blu-Ray is looking pretty good. It seems kind of premature to pick HD as the winner. What are you basing your reasoning on?”
Um. I think it's pretty obvious.

Having just arrived back from CES, I can say that I was very surprised by the lack of presence of the HD-DVD folks on the show floor. Blue-Ray outnumbered HD-DVD players by a margin of 3-1. Blue-Ray had it's own both admist demo units in quite a few manufacturers booths. I stumbled across HD-DVD in the Toshiba booth and watched David Pogue try to interview the Toshiba folks while having a Toshiba handler dismiss question after question. This is the first time I've seen an interview on the show floor that required a handler for the interview. I don't see how HD-DVD is going to win this battle. Sony has tried and failed with quite a few formats in the past, but it appears they're due for a victory on the next gen video front.

Something no one's mentioned:
whichever format the pr0n industry picks will most likely be the winner.
Think I'm joking? It was apparently a factor in the success of VHS over Betamax.
That, and the fact that Blockbuster standardized on VHS, making it harder to hire any Beta content. (Maybe the modern day version of this will be what Netflix decides to offer?)
In other words, it's those who hold the content most in demand who will really decide which prevails.
Bill G, and by extension every Microsoft fanboy, is keen on HD-DVD mainly because it lets his company inside the gate for re-purposing media using MS based platforms. This is something less likely with the Blu-ray consortium, which will probably favor a more open license approach (ie, devices, not MCE).
However, I think both are going to have a battle winning the hearts and minds of consumers in the numbers they need to make the technology a success. The reason: it has taken almost 30 years to displace VHS (in 1977 my father brought home a bootleg copy of Star Wars filmed at a drive-in for our new, mechanical buttoned VHS player!) despite there being better technology along the way – SVHS, Hi-8, etc.
Those technologies just weren't better enough than VHS for consumers to even consider them. The same is true to a large extent with the DVD installed base: MOST people think DVDs are already high enough resolution and the gain to be had from viewing HD content is marginal.
I personally can't wait for HD content (and no, I am not specifically dreaming of HD pr0n, although now I mention it…!), but I'm also old enough to know my consumer electronics history.

What Geoff says is valid, but it's hard to say that HD-DVD will win just because people will be able to play it in DVD quality using their old players. People who actually choose between the next-gen formats should have more sway because the apathetic could just continue to buy cheaper DVDs. Even though DVD players are very affordable nowadays, VHS tapes are still on sale (although at this point probably not for their lower prices, given that they often cost more than DVDs now).

http://www.hddvdprg.com/press/toshiba/t-11.jpg
HD-DVD disc can be used in both players(HD and regular DVD). A dual layer disc can be used for a 15gig for HD and 5 for DVD dual disc and a triple layer disc can be used for a 30gig HD and 8.5 DVD dual disc on the same side..

Hey there, Anonymous, another Anonymous here!
That JPEG image you linked was a Toshiba Dual Format disc. I strongly suspect that most HD-DVD discs produced will NOT be dual-format (which is likely more expensive to manufacture). So unless you can present some compelling evidence that the content producers lining up on the HD-DVD side of things WILL ship HD-DVD discs in not just HD-DVD format, but DUAL HD-DVD/DVD format, your argument that this “backwards compatibility” will weight consumers to HD-DVD just doesn't work.
I'll support whichever format, HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, in which the content protection scheme is cracked first so I can exercise my full Fair Use rights to edit my own personal purchased discs for my own viewing, make backups, etc.

The HD-DVD standard supports a hybrid disc that can be played in a regular DVD player (not high-def) or in an HD-DVD player (high-def). Each version is on a different layer of the disc. This is the same type of hybrid functionality offered with the SACD standard.
Note the hybrid feature is optional. It will also be more expensive to produce a hybrid disc. The reality is the first HD-DVDs will probably *not* be hybrid, which means they won't be playable in standard DVD players. This was how SACDs played out.
Not that it matters since it is unlikely someone will buy an HD-DVD unless they have an HD-DVD player.
HD-DVD and Blu-Ray will duke it out in a similar way DVD vs Divx did in 1997-1998. Hopefully the technically superior Blu-Ray will win.

Here's a website that tracks the success of blu-rays vs. HD DVDs over time. It include a dashboard of graphs and stats, and it's based on data from Amazon.com.
Check it out here: http://www.thedvdwars.com

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I think this is another instance where consumers WILL lose like the article states. Just heard this morning that Blockbuster will choose Blu Ray over HD DVD. I hate the fact that it is not backwards compatible. Another way to push cheap chinese junk on the consumer. If I have to get a Blu Ray player I might as well just throw the towel in and never have another “player” again. Beta, VHS, DVD, HD, Blu Ray…we’re screwed.

At least VHS had a long run.

Apple may be part of the group that helped develope Blue Ray, but they certainly don’t seem to be backing it. Thier latest macs and dvd authoring software don’t support playing, creating, or burning Blue Ray disks, but do support HD DVD.

maan this is crazy, i thought HD-DVD was bigger in capacity!

I still prefer hd-dvd over bluray anyway

I still prefer hd-dvd over bluray anyway!!

Well it seems like Blu-Ray has won and HD-DVD has lost, speculatuion has it that Toshiba might be dropping their HD-DVD format… I was surprised that Blu-Ray held more data… So it seems like Blu-Ray will be the next step forward. But what is the point when we are now seeing 16gig and 32gig memory cards coming out.

i think blu ray will win. its just like when we move on from cassetes to hd dvd or carteges to dvd. cassetes are the past dvds are the now blu ray is the future.

blu-ray !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! rocks. 10 gig more than hd dvd when single layer.

sony ps3 and its blu ray games can manage 10 gig more than microsoft xbox and its hd dvd.

Well due to the fact that Wal-mart stated that they are not going to sell HD-DVD movies and only Blu-Ray is going to be an enormous advantage and HD-DVD are going to lose the battle quick