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Remember what happened to the better standard Betamax when the cheaper VHS came along. They need content, though, and both Sony and S.J. have clout in the content business.
An additional hope is that HD-DVD is backed by MS, and MS never showed to have a clue about the hardware business.

I may have to side with Sony on this one. They are at least working hard to make their DVD's hold more and better data because of their need to get it into their broadcast cameras.

IMX is already DVD based.

yeah but better doesn't always win. I can see the public going for "HD-DVD" just because of the name.

Blu-Ray's cool too, though.

How many viruses can you fit on a HD-DVD???

Once again, Microsoft backs an inferior technology simply because it could be more profitable in the short term. How sad.

Isn't PS3 going to play Blu-Ray? That should help.

Apple's upcoming vPod will make disc format arguments irrelevant as far as movies are concerned. 500GB capacity up to 500 movies in glorious H-264.

Ahhh, rocket scientists at their best...=P

Did we ever really think Microsoft would support Blu-Ray?

Line in the sand are being drawn. Stakes are gettin higher.

Just got a HDTV and though regular DVDs are quite impressive on the screen, there is a definite need for a HD DVD format now. The industry is being incredily slow about this. At this rate it is going to be 5 years before the new DVD format gets cheap enough for the average punter like myself gets to afford one!

Let us remember, however... that Toshiba was right the first time, and DVD became their invention, whereas we got Playstation out of Sony's first stab. I can't see this working out in MS's favor, since there are already tons of companies on the Blu-Ray campaign, but we shall see. h.264 already pounded WMV-HD at the video consortium, so yeah, MS doesn't get it.

Either format will work great with the complete line of Apple hardware and software. I wouldn't worry about this one folks.

Honestly, people always go for the cheaper product if it is "good enough". I agree that the name "HD-DVD" is way more marketable too.

vPod?

Who needs a 30 Gb or 50 Gb DVD? We have one good quality movie on half a DVD (4.7 Go).
If you put your whole life on a HD or blue-ray DVD, you would lost your whole life in half second.

I found this on the Internet:-

"The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), is a group of leading consumer electronics and PC companies (including Apple, Dell, Hitachi, HP, JVC, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson)"

Looks like a winning team to me.

Well, true to form, if MS is backing it, most undoubtedly it will suck.
Microsoft is the anti-Midas. All the gold they touch turns to crap.

MW member... uh huh-huh...huh-huh

Hmmmm... next generation Mac mini with upgraded video card that can handle the 30" Cinema display... oh, and it has a built-in H.264 decoder on the card. So top of the line Cinema display for sub $3,000... plus a Blue-ray capable player for $500 and you've got a system that can play full blown 1080p for way cheaper than most 720p systems out there. I think Apple is going to sell 720p standard and 1080p for a little extra in the future, most HD sets can't go anywhere near 1080 right now. Basically undercut the whole HDTV market.

formats are ultimately decided on by the masses that buy it. It is not really a brand issue thing.

"Who needs a 30 Gb or 50 Gb DVD? We have one good quality movie on half a DVD"

Hey, who needs color TV or computers? What's wrong with your Super 8's, too? I like my 5.25" floppies. That way I can make sure my data is distributed in case one of them goes bad.

Frenchie-

What are you talking about?
First, movies take up more than the 4.7gb of a single layer disc. In fact, if you look at movies like the Lord Of The Rings trillogy, they can use up to 4 dual layer disks per movie. (2 for each movie and 2 for special features.)
Second - the resolution of DVD is less than the resolution of HD. Go to a friends house and watch some true HD content - not just regular tv on a HD tv - and compare that to a DVD. HD makes you understand that DVD is NOT 'good quality' as you stated.
A standard HD movie encoded in h.264 will take about 22gb without special features.

Lord of the Rings with special features in Hi-Def would take 1 disk per movie on blu-ray and 2 disks per movie on HD-DVD

funny how they're forcing Apple and SOny to see each other more and more on the same page..

Wow..

So the Xbox has gone the road less travelled

""The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), is a group of leading consumer electronics and PC companies (including Apple, Dell, Hitachi, HP, JVC, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson)"

Looks like a winning team to me."

You aren't kidding. I dont care how big MS is, when you have companies like Sony and Philips on your team, thats some pretty heavy clout. Throw in Apple and Steve's influence. Yeah, i HOPE Microsoft backs the other standard. Just another giant anchor on their boat.

MW anything, as in anything MS does is most likely mediocre at best.

"Apple and Sony are on the side of the better technology while Microsoft goes with the cheap, second-rate "solution." How typical is that?"

It's pretty typical, but it should be noted that this more like MS following Apple's long-traveled road. Apple supported DVD Forum (backers of HD-DVD) in 2001 when they announced the 733 MHz Power Mac G4 with SuperDrive. It's only recently that Apple has backed Blu-Ray.

Apple supports both formats, and I believe they will continue to do so until the market makes a choice. Nonetheless, I do hope that Blu-Ray wins out in this battle.

"Dell, Hitachi, HP, JVC, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, ... and Thomson"

Isn't that just about every decent-sized maker of HDTVs except Toshiba?

Quad-density 5-1/4" (1.2M) vs. 3-1/2" floppy(1.4M)
super 3-1/2" floppy (120M) vs. iomega zip (100M)

The cost advantage of HD DVD will be short lived. As soon as Sony and others begin ramping up their production, the cost difference will disappear. New technology with better performance will win and people will quickly forget about advantage of compatibility with past media.

Frenchie, like already stated by others, true 1080i or 1080p movies of extended nature (say the Lord of the Ring, Return of the King) will NOT fit on a single HD-DVD disk in single layer. They are more than 15 GB in size (when you include things like forward error correction coding and such) -- even using h.264 or equivalent compression. However, such a movie definitely will fit on the 30 GB, dual layer, version if a compression technique like h.264 or better is used.

Second, let me say for the hundredth time, Betamax lost out to VHS because it had a fatal flaw. Its best mode had a run time of 90 minutes. VHS's best mode had a run time of 120 minutes. Very few movies have a run time of 90 minutes or less. Putting a full length feature film on Betamax required extended duration tapes which were more expensive and more failure prone. Home recording of TV movies and such requires 120 minutes. Extended version Betamax tapes were never readily available to the public. When Betamax was used in its next best mode (3 hour duration) it was no better than (and maybe even worse than) VHS.

While the analogy is not quite exact, why back a format which TODAY requires the use of both layers of a dual layer disk to capture an entire film -- then requires another disk for all the "additional features"? You're still stuck with multiple disks just like you are today with dual layer DVDs. Why not back a format which will capture everything you need in one layer then you have an entire other layer for such additional features? Being able to put everything on a single disk makes sense to me.

Well, TDK has already expanded the blu-ray disk to 100GB per disk.

http://www.linuxelectrons.com/article.php/20050608030752538


and its data transfer is pretty impressive for an optical format.

blu-ray is the way to go. But I would look at TDK before setting the standard.

As long as manufacturers make DVD players paly on both format, who cares?

Toshiba makes HDTV's? Just kidding. It does seem funny that Blu-Ray has all those backers, and Toshiba is stuck with M$.

Chuckie C,

The problem is manufacturers are NOT making players that can read both formats. This is the very nature of the HD-DVD/Blue-Ray divide. The camps are pretty much diametrically opposed to each other and as a result, Hollywood is hesitating on releasing content on either technology. Ordinary DVDs are making tons of money as it is, and Hollywood would rather sit on the sidelines making dough on plain ol' DVD until the victor in the next-gen technology emerges.

That means we probably won't see HD movies for sale for quite some time now.

Shadowself,

You never owned a beta deck did you? Beta II, a 3 hour speed, ran circles around VHS SP. 260 lines, (330 in Super Beta) vs. 240. Better sound quality in non hi-fi years too. BETA survived for years, despite being bested, and is still the same basic cassette used in high end Video Delivery formats like Beta SP, and SX, etc. Betamax, ran circles around VHS, but due to a max of 5 hours record time, vs. 6 hours, or eight, that's what killed it. I used Beta until the bitter end, and the 30 dollar Toshiba "Betacord" deck I got in 1990 at a garage sale, kicked the crap out of $900 Panasonic VHS decks, at the time. IN terms of picture quality, there was never a comparison. ED BETA beat SVHS, Super Beta easily beat VHS, as did regular Beta, and those who had an early enough deck to have Beta I speed, beat everyone in their day, including 3/4" in terms of raw quality. Sorry, but Beta rocked for it's time, and I lived in Rochester, where blank Betas were still available as late as 95! It was an original test market...

Second, let me say for the hundredth time, Betamax lost out to VHS because it had a fatal flaw. Its best mode had a run time of 90 minutes. VHS's best mode had a run time of 120 minutes. Very few movies have a run time of 90 minutes or less. Putting a full length feature film on Betamax required extended duration tapes which were more expensive and more failure prone. Home recording of TV movies and such requires 120 minutes. Extended version Betamax tapes were never readily available to the public. When Betamax was used in its next best mode (3 hour duration) it was no better than (and maybe even worse than) VHS.

If you've said this a hundred times, you've said it wrong a hundred times!

Beta II was the best, and it was 3 hours, not 90 minutes. That was the format that movies were released in. Even Beta III, at 4.5 hours, was broadcast quality (couldn't tell the difference from live cable), and that was with regular L-750 tapes, which were available everywhere. L-800 tapes held 5 hours. Beta was always way better than VHS. Why are you spreading this misinformation?

Why can't everyone just get along? Standards? What standards.

I don't really care much about higher definition movies; if I want to see something on a glorious big screen in enveloping digital surround sounds, I'll see it when it opens at the cinema.

I'm more interested in the storage capacity of Blue-Ray for archiving.

I wonder how long before holographic discs, which have a mind boggling capacity (potentially terabytes), are ready for prime time?

blue Ray and Cell would be incredibly cool
dont the psp s use blue ray and cell now?
i-wand

You're all wrong....JVC allowed others to make VHS decks while Sony decided to keep Beta to themselves--obviously you are too young to remember or just have memory loss. It was allowing the format to be the standard and not proprietary that killed Beta with consumers. Hence, with so many manufacturers behind it, Blu ray will win out. I just want an Apple Tivo/Multiplayer so I don't have to worry about this crap, maybe software emulation etc would be a way to do it and it will probably get written by some kid in his proverbial garage

Isn't BluRay the bigger capacity (50 or 60gigs or something?. Wheras HD-DVD is what? 30gigs?) Wouldn't it be a no brainer for everyone to embrace BluRay. If you only want to put 30gigs of info on there you can. But you cn't put 50/60gigs onto a 30gig HD-DVD. I thought competition was supposed to be a good thing. I think it's a pain in the a$$.

Knowing MS they'll make HD-DVDs 1cm wider in diameter so we all have to go out and buy new CD/DVD trays/burners, new Stereo's, new DVD players......

I wonder if this alliance is just an exercise from Bill Gate’s will and power (in my opinion he thinks he “alone” is in a position to produce a market). But, on the other hand I don't see Microsoft baking up something on Apple or Sony side right now. So Bill may be left without options but he thinks he could still win this market battle. Is Microsoft starting to fall apart?: Longhorn delayed, a rush with Intel and a market battle over to many music, video, game formats/devises/services. It’s a time to reorganize, recreate, etc. and I think it is a good healthy indicator for the consumer. I just expect that the winning solution will be the best.

dont the psp s use blue ray and cell now?

-----

no, the psp uses UMD, which is 1.8GB..

decent.. but for a portable.. it does a number on battery life, etc.. 4 hrs vs. the DS's 10...

by that i mean, high end games on a portable..

Dan the Man,

You are partly correct, sony didn't license it quickly enough. But since the Sanyo BETA and Toshiba line models I have from 82-84 are still working, you are not accurate. My top loader Sanyo shows it was licensed, they just couldn't use the name, "BETAMAX". I was there, I owned 5 betas, from 3 different manufacturers, care to say how wrong I was still? Been an owner of Betamax since 1978.

MDN could not be more wrong than to call HD-DVD "second-rate." Blue Ray DVDs may be bigger than HD DVDs but that does not make them better. Blue Ray discs will be bulky because they need a protective shell around the disc itself. They will cost more than DVDs because they need new factories and equipment to produce them. HD DVDs look the same as normal DVDs and need few modifications to be made in current DVD factories. I hope Apple abandons the Blue Ray DVD format and joins Microsoft in supporting HD DVD.

The "Consortium" is whoever wants to take Micro$oftopoly's money and be their B*tch. Toshiba is as petulant this time as Sony was the last time. Sony thought that just because they co-developed the CD, everybody would line up behind them. This time Toshiba is being stupid because they authored the DVD spec.
Sony has something that Toshiba and M$ do not have-- content. With their Motion Picture/ TV and Music subs, they have a built-in pipeline of content out of the box.

With a name like Betamax, how could they have done anything other than come second place.

Sol
I hope HD-DVDs have a protective shell around them too. Like the DVD-RAM discs. I'm not putting 30gigs of stuff on a disc knowing that one tiny scratch could ruin it.
I sometimes wish current DVDs had a protective case, especially movies at the local video rental store. Ever hired a movie on DVD only to get all comfy and snug, eat all your munchies, and have the movie crap out on you 30 minutes before the end. It kinda ruins the experience.

Gary can you imagine how much thicker Apple's laptops would have to be to accommodate Blue-Ray DVDs? HD DVD will use the same technology as TDK's scratch-proof DVDs so your data would be perfectly safe on it.

I'm not attached to either format provided that there is plenty of capacity on the disk so that we don't require multiple disks to watch a movie(except if it's an epic like the LOTR extended versions, which I was more than happy to change disks to). They need to be capable of holding a feature length 1080i or 1080p movie and extras. Their data transfer rate needs to handle this too. And, as a bonus, if it turns out to be Blue-Ray and that adds a nail into Microsoft's coffin, I'll be even happier.

I'm also hoping that even before this gets resolved, Apple releases the AirPort Video Express which streams HD to your HD TV and sound to the HiFi. Of course we'd be buying out HD movies from the iTunes Music and Movie Store, online!!

Can someone explain to me the seemingly glaring conflict here - Dell, HP and Sony all support Blue-Ray, but they also all sell computers running MS Windows which is going to support HD-DVD. How's that going to work? Presumably, Dell, HP and Sony are going to have to put DVD burners in their computers - are they going to have to offer their own burning software? What if they just said no to MS?

How many movie studios do Toshiba and Microsoft own?

I'M SORRY, BUT BLU-RAY HAS THIS ONE IN THE BAG. THINK ABOUT IT, THE BLU-RAY FORMAT IS BACKED UP BY THE BIGGEST TV AND PC COMPANIES. THERE IS NO WAY MICROSOFT CAN WIN WIN THIS. SONY AND APPLE... WHAT COULD BE BETTER? ANYWAY, IF THEY MAKE A DISC THAT CAN HOLD A FEW MOVIES ON THERE, THAT WOULD BE GREAT, PROVIDED WITH SIMPLICITY, OF COURSE. BUT HOW WILL PLAYERS DO THIS, WILL BLU-RAY AND HD-DVD's WORK ON DIFFERENT PLAYERS, OR JUST BE COMBINED? PLEASE REPLY! tHANX!