Can we safely say the HD war is a draw -- at least for now?
 

It seems that Blu-ray has the most industry support, and it has a decent amount of market penetration with the Playstation 3.

But HD DVD players are half the price and seem to have a better market penetration overall, which won't change unless blu-ray prices start dropping fast. Just saw Toshiba's HD-A2 HD DVD player listed for $299 at Best Buy. PLUS I can burn HD DVD discs now using regular DVD media.

I've been waiting patiently for one side or the other to take control, but it really doesn't look like that will happen anytime soon, if ever. It appears to me that for the foreseeable future -- say, 5-10 years -- both of these formats are here to stay. And right now, the only player that plays both is $1,000, way too much.

So tell me, am I wasting my money by getting in the game with one of these Toshiba HD DVD players for $299?

no it wont ever be over until prosumer and more importantly consumer authoring tools are made available to those budding hobbyists.

In addition, BluRay has a new burner in the pipes with a chinese manufacturer touting a $200AUD price tag for a BD Burner. Theres also rytek whove just licensed the media, so we should be seeing cheap BD media very soon.

However above all this, Its not about price, its about market acceptance and functionality

most people here in aus prefer BD due to capacity, Theres also the issue of PS3 in addition to movies being made available in BD.
Here in aus, HD DVD is virtually non existant, unless you know what your looking for. Retailers are not pushing HD DVD either.. the major retailers here arent pushng for any format really as for them theres not much cash in it. BUT BD is on the shelves whereas HD DVD is not

There wont ever be a winner as IMO the 2 will continue side by side. The only real winner i guess is the consumer, as dual format playback devices are made available, both optical formats will be playable.
Thats the only saving grace here, to be honest, i really dont care who wins, the fact remains is that i can now deliver my goods in a high def on optical media.
HOW the client plays that back is my first concern though, and Sonys marketing muscle (re PS3) is what will push HD into households which never considered HD content.
You gotta understand, those in the know KNOW, but those that dont know much about HD, dont care for it. BUT PS3 pushes that ideal into the household with the product itself, and no need for marketing hype or educating the client, its just THERE.
This is the one major factor.
With the XBox 360 HD DVD, fair enough its selling, but not enough to make any impact of acceptance of the format itself. Its just not penetrating, and for both formats, i believe its the lack of content

Maybe if more content was made available and HD DVD and BD discs included content which isnt available on SD discs, the market might grow with edmand for that content, but without demand, there is no point in worrying too much just yet

Unfortunately, it does look like a draw at this point in time. Personally, I have my fingers crossed for HD-DVD. The players are significantly less expensive than Blu-Ray players.

Manufacturing facilities require a minimal amount of modification to start producing HD-DVDs, but Blu-Ray discs require a more expensive process. I'm not sure if that means anything in the long run, but if both formats have similar image quality, and one is a lot cheaper than the other... its a no-brainer.

For what it's worth, I don't think you'd be wasting your money on a $300 HD-DVD player. I've been contemplating picking up one of those myself. $300 is alot easier to swallow than $700 for the Blu-Ray players.

I'm rooting for HD VMD (http://www.nmeinc.com/index.aspx). :-)

Harry from Ain't It Cool News is sold on HD DVD:

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/32838

I haven't watched enough HD DVD, but CASINO ROYALE on Blu-Ray was INCREDIBLE.

heath

For some reason I think HD-DVD will prevail simply because it lacks the "brand" name on it...

It's always been generic... VHS... DVD... HD-DVD... it's simplicity...

Blu-ray can hold more.. yes... it is more expensive... you can spend $600 on an "entertainment" system that can play blu-ray movies... and play some games occasionally... or you can grab an HD-DVD player for half that and watch movies, then get an Xbox 360 for $300 and play games... or... not? You're not forced into spending a lot.

If you already have a 360... $200 gets you an HD-DVD player...

Whatever, I haven't actually even seen an HD-DVD or Bluray in person... haha...

Once you buy an Xbox, and I prefer the one with the hard drive at $400, and add on the HD DVD, which isn't built-in and therefore is another add-on to your system, trh price hits around $600, too.

heath

All disc formats are about to be leapfrogged by on-demand delivery.

They BOTH lose.

IMO, until someone offers hardware that handles both formats, there will be no widespread public acceptence. Few people to place a $600 bet with a 50% chance of being wrong.

I'm way behind....I dont even have an HDTV yet, so this whole format war is worthless to me lol.

I am also... It looks to be both backward compatible and future expandable w/ a slightly higher data transfer rate.

DVD Comparison Chart Link : http://www.nmeinc.com/comparisonchart.htm

if you ever try to run a good DVD from an HDMI player to an HD ready (1366x768) with HDMI input, you would understand that HD is pretty useless...
except if you watch movies with the nose on the screen, or are a lucky guy with a 65" LCD screen.
when properly mastered and played, DVD are damn good.
and if you need more, you can buy a Harddisk player (basically a harddisk with video output) HD capable (most of them are today).
When shooting for our clients we now add to the quote such device, so at the end the customer receives the multimedia player with the final movie and all the rushes and projects files in the box.
If later he needs some change, he come back with the data ready for editing.
he just need to connect the box to any TV or PC and watch.

Having experience with both HD-DVD and BluRay, my family is sold on BluRay (even though we were pulling for HD-DVD in the beginning).

[ Running both PS3 and xbox360 at 1080p through HDMI ]

The quality is the same, the players (xbox360 vs ps3) are basically the same amount, but BluRay actually releases a lot more movies in comparison. Each week we watch for new HD movie releases, and HD-DVD is just coming in very slow. Not to mention, the other night, we actually had to flip a disk (nice feature actually) and watch the DVD side of an HD-DVD because the movie stutters and skips on "some" HD players (namely the xbox360 and a few others).

In comparing newer stuff that is just coming out, BluRay is actually coming out with content and the features of the extra content are really shaping up. HD-DVD, not so much.

As far as noticing a difference between HD and SD disks --- i've noticed huge differences (some are bad, such as too much detail ruining the effects) and a large improvement in visual quality on HD-DVD/BluRay vs DVD. Of course, this is all based on variables such as encoding quality and print quality they used for the DVD - however, in watching the same film SD DVD vs HD -- huge differences can be found simply because they don't have to compress the video so much.

I don't think that either format will go away any time soon. They both have their big supporters (studios and corporations). I'd agree that right now it is a draw.

I'm guessing you don't have a gambling addiction.

The problem is, if you lose, you've got a $600 brick with no new movies to play on it. if you "win", you've got a $600 machine that has half the features of the new $200 machine.