HD DVD vs. Blu-Ray... Which one?

[Joseph Hutson]

Does anybody know who's winning the battle?

What do your clients want as a general rule? Or do they?

Where did you get the burners, and how much were they? $600?

Joseph

[Joe Batt]

Blue-Ray is winning. all the major studio's are on board with blue-ray accept for one or two. Blue-Ray is capable of holding more info and can read at a higher bit rate. It can also be read by a PS3 which tells you what Sony thinks.

[Kevin Shaw]

Blu-ray movies are reportedly outselling HD-DVDs about 2:1 overall since the start of this year, and Blockbuster observed a similar ratio in a rental test at over 250 stores - after which they decided to adopt Blu-ray as their standard. Several models of Blu-ray burners are readily available for prices starting at around $450 and blank discs are available in both 25 and 50 GB capacities, while HD-DVD burners are hard to find at any price and blank discs are only available at 15 GB for now. The higher capacity of Blu-ray allows you to use full-bandwidth HDV encoding for long projects, which can be rendered much faster than the MPEG4 encoding required to fit a long project on an HD-DVD. The main thing HD-DVD has going for it is a lower cost for basic players and better ability to play HD content from a standard red-laser disc, but those aren't helping it win much ground.

I recently had a customer request Blu-ray delivery for his wedding video even though he doesn't own an HD player yet, and have not had any requests for HD-DVD. So I'm planning to buy a Blu-ray burner and start recommending that format to those who ask; if someone requests HD-DVD I'd probably try to burn that on a red-laser disc so I don't have to buy another burner.

[Paul Kepen]

This is a bit off subject, but I have not found any discussion anywhere on DV info about this. Reportedly people have had great success using Uleads MovieFactory6+ for burning their HDV projects in full HDV resolution just using a standard DVD burner on a standard blank DVD-R disc. You are limited to about 20min, or 40min on a DL disc.
I recently purchased this program, but it does not seem to accept any of my video files. Using Vegas 6 to render out as HDV (as in sending it back to tape), Movie Factory keeps saying "file is not accessible." Funny it will play just fine in WinMedia Player or the VLC player. Next I tried rendering out as an .AVI. Every time I click to add the .avi file to the open moviefactory project , the program crashes. I finally had some success rendering as a .wmv file. The disc plays fine in the HD-DVD player, but the picture came out at 4x3 instead of 16x9. The very small program manual is of no help whatsoever. Just wondering if anyone else has used Moviefactory, if they have encountered some of the same problems, and if they have discovered the magic solution :) Thanks, and again, I'm sorry if this is the wrong place to post this.

[Carlos Rodriguez]

you can do the same with blu-ray on standard dvd-+r. I've done it successfully.

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by Joseph Hutson

Does anybody know who's winning the battle?

What do your clients want as a general rule? Or do they?

Where did you get the burners, and how much were they? $600?

Joseph

In our town is a video rental shop who has their first high def video's in, (3 movie titles, one of them the latest James bond movie) it was not hddvd but blue ray. The shop owner told me he took them in because he had 2 clients with a playstation 3.
My clients have not asked for blue ray yet and I"m sure most of them don"t even know what it means, I will only buy a hddvd or blue ray recorder if I know for sure which one of the 2 will be the safest bet. It might as well be that there won't be a "winner" and that both formats continue to exist side by side. You might get dual recorders capable of recording to both formats or if prices continue to drop we might have to buy 2 types of hd recorders to supply our clients with the proper format.

[Paul Kepen]

Originally Posted by Carlos Rodriguez

you can do the same with blu-ray on standard dvd-+r. I've done it successfully.

That's great, but do the disks play in any set top blue ray players? Even if you have a blue Ray burner and buy the ridiculously priced blank BD-R to record on, many set top units will NOT play BD-R discs, only BD-ROM discs, which I don't think are available to the public, and I don't know if current Blue RAy burners are capable of using them if they were. So, to play your Blue Ray disc, you stuck with playing it via the burner in your computer, as I understand it. I just purchased a SONY Blue Ray Player, and the manual specifically list BD-R along with HD-DVD as disc types that will NOT play on the unit. Gee thanks Sony, guess I'll be returning your baby back to Bestbuy tomorrow.

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by Paul Kepen

That's great, but do the disks play in any set top blue ray players?

I recently confirmed that you can play HDV content from standard red-laser DVDs in the Sony Playstation 3, which is probably the best-selling Blu-ray player at this point in time. If I get a chance I'll try this in other Blu-ray players to see what happens.

[Mel Namnama]

Hey Guys,
I have been successful in authoring BR discs (albeit crude)...menus and all, and burning to Blu-Ray BD-RE discs via DVD-IT Pro HD on a Lacie burner. I am able to view them on the PS3. I obtained a plug-in "Monte Carlo" via web and inserted it into the dvd authoring program...viola ! Plug-in free...BD-RE disc ( which you can reuse over) $20.00..

[Ken Hodson]

Thats good news Kevin, are you using DVD5 or DVD9's?
9+ gig's is a lot of space for HD content if "Extra's" aren't taking up space, and content is limited to 90 odd min.
Has anyone done the same thing with an HD-DVD player? Can't see why it wouldn't. Hope so.
I read that the HD-DVD is the highest selling perif, for the 360. IMHO who ever wins the console wars, will win the DVD wars.

[Thomas Smet]

Just to point out that both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray can offer the exact same level of quality. They both support mpeg2, VC1 and AVCHD at equal bitrates.

The only thing that is different is the cost and how much you can fit on each disk. HD-DVD disks have less space. HD-DVD players are of course cheaper and it is very common and easy to use cheap DVD disks to create HD-DVD content that will play on any HD-DVD player.

For me it all comes down to cost. I choose HD-DVD right now because I can give my clients HD content or create HD content for myself for less then $1.00 per disk. There also seems to be more options right now for cheap HD-DVD authoring. DVD-it is kind of expensive right now and add to that the cost of a Blu-Ray burner and Blu-Ray disks and the cost is very high.

The only reason why Blu-Ray seems to be winning right now is because of the massive amount of marketing money behind the product. Other then it being forced down our throats there is nothing that makes Blu-Ray better in any way other then it can fit more video per disk given an equal quality level. This is the main reason why I am against Blu-Ray right now. I could really care less what format wins as long as it is easy to produce and can be done so for a decent price level. I will gladly buy Blu-Ray products once the price comes down. In order for Blu-Ray to become mainstream the way it needs to for clients to want it is going to have to greatly reduce in price to the $100.00 to $200.00 price range.

[Ken Hodson]

The last thing I think anyone wants is a Sony price controlled media. We have been lucky with CD/DVD's, but we have to realize that Blue-ray is a corporate push to regain market control. Aren't you glad VHS won and we all got affordable decks and cheap blank tapes?

[Kevin Shaw]

Ken: I'm using single-layer DVD-R discs because I don't trust dual-layer ones. That makes the extra capacity of Blu-ray significant because it allows a long project in HDV format on one layer, something other alternatives can't support. Add to that the fact that Blu-ray burners are widely available while HD-DVD burners aren't, plus more authoring programs are supporting Blu-ray because the burners are shipping, and Blu-ray is clearly a more mature solution at this point in time. As Thomas noted it's cheaper to deliver HD content on red-laser discs for HD-DVD playback, but then you don't really have much choice about that until proper burners are shipping.

Blu-ray is winning because of sales of the PS3, which is an excellent multimedia device and game machine. HD-DVD has lost ground with consumers even though the players are currently cheaper, so as Blu-ray player prices fall (which they are doing) it will be even harder for HD-DVD to make headway.

As far as disc prices are concerned, there are already several brands of Blu-ray discs available but few HD-DVDs, and the Blu-ray discs cost less per GB. Plus Blu-ray burners and discs are about to move to 4X write speed while HD-DVD is still at 1-2X, so development dollars appear to be flowing to the Blu-ray side. I don't know what Sony's long-term pricing plans are, but if they want Blu-ray to be ubiquitous they'll have to try to hold the cost of discs down.

[Tom Roper]

The problem with Blu-Ray Kevin, is where specs on paper don't translate to a better playback experience. Blu-Ray is region coded, lack of audio CD playback, and unfinalized specs in flux. The 50 gb disk was conceived because that was the only way to fit 2 hours of mpeg-2 video on a single disk. But when Microsoft and Toshiba told them it wasn't needed because of the new VC1 codec and advances in conventional manufacturing technology, they didn't listen. HD-DVD emerged as a competing format that was first to market, but surprisingly had better picture quality due to the more advanced codec. Blu-Ray has been making gains since that time, but home made authoring of disks isn't one of them. There, HD-DVD had a 9 month lead. Blu-Ray has surpassed HD-DVD in the availability of high capacity burners and media, but compatibility remains an ongoing problem. BD-R's don't playback in all the players. Blu-Ray authored to DVD5/9 is problematic as well, playing mainly in PS3's not running the latest firmware. So while it's not unusual to make a Blu-Ray authored disk that works in a personal player, making one with compatibility across platforms has not been achieved.

So I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with your conclusions. They are way premature. And this format battle is far from over. Toshiba is putting HD-DVD burners in laptop computers. The home market in China may end up being the most significant factor, a market potential 3 times the size of the U.S.

The only obstacle to mainstream adoption of HD-DVD for U.S. consumers is a boycott by 5 major Hollywood studios. Without the continued solidarity of these strange bedfellows, the more expensive and so far unprofitable Blu-Ray format would likely be trounced by lower cost, profitable HD-DVD players.

Kevin, I am so ready for mainstream Blu-Ray authoring. It is a wonderful playback experience. But at this time, it simply is not ready as a format for distribution of HD content due to its compatibility woes.

[Kevin Shaw]

Tom: I think you're missing the points I'm trying to emphasize, so let's review.

(1) Blu-ray movie sales are currently outpacing HD-DVD by a ratio of 2:1

(2) Blu-ray burners are readily available at speeds up to 4X, while HD-DVD burners are hard to find and then only at 1-2X.

(3) A single-layer Blu-ray disc can hold up to two hours of HDV 1080i content, which is significant if you want to distribute a long project in HDV format. HD-DVD single-layer can only hold 70 minutes of HDV and single-layer DVD5 about 20 minutes. Dual-layer discs are unreliable and hence not of interest to me.

(4) It typically takes much less time to encode a finished HD project to HDV than to either H.264 or VC1, at least until we get affordable real-time encoders. Hence if production efficiency is desired, HDV is a the quickest output format and that makes Blu-ray a useful delivery format.

The main thing HD-DVD has going for it is that you can cram HD content onto a red-laser disc and deliver that to others without paying for a new burner or expensive blue-laser discs. But we don't even need HD-DVD for that since that's been possible for some time now anyway, and if you make long videos you have to compress the heck out of them to make this work.

Also note that HD-DVD and Blu-ray offer *exactly* the same picture quality using the same supported codecs and bit rates. If some Blu-ray movies haven't looked as good as some HD-DVD movies, that's solely a matter of encoding quality settings. The best thing you can do for home-made HD discs is render out to the HDV format at full bandwidth to make sure you don't lose much during rendering, and that brings us back to all of my points above. HD-DVD has nothing to offer in this regard since it doesn't support any encoding options not available for Blu-ray.

If home-made Blu-ray discs are proving to be problematic on some players that's something to keep in mind until that issue gets sorted out, which presumably it will. Until then I suppose there's a niche for HD-DVD on red-laser discs as a stop-gap measure, but the format as a whole appears to be in trouble.