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Sooner5030
9/25/2007, 09:02 PM
The sound on my current DVD player just quit and it's time to buy a new one.

Anyone know which technology (HD DVD or Blue Ray) will offer the best in available movies over the next 5 years?

Thanks

soonernation
9/25/2007, 09:05 PM
The sound on my current DVD player just quit and it's time to buy a new one.

Anyone know which technology (HD DVD or Blue Ray) will offer the best in available movies over the next 5 years?

Thanks


Don't ask me. I'm still trying to figure out VHS vs. Beta.

Widescreen
9/25/2007, 09:39 PM
No way to tell. This whole format war is retarded and it's the consumers that are paying the price. Most studios offer discs in both formats but some studios are exclusive to one format or the other. Blockbuster (the evil empire) only rents in Blu-Ray if that matters to you. My personal thought was that Blu-Ray was going to win by 1/08 but then Paramount received a boatload of cash to go HD-DVD only so at this point, I'm not convinced there will be a winner. It wouldn't surprise me at this point if both end up niche's and fail, kind of like SACD and HDCD.

soonerboomer93
9/25/2007, 09:41 PM
The sound on my current DVD player just quit and it's time to buy a new one.

Anyone know which technology (HD DVD or Blue Ray) will offer the best in available movies over the next 5 years?

Thanks

no one knows for sure. you can get a better deal on an hd-dvd player then a blu-ray and blu-ray currently has more exclusive studio support (they have disney) but I think one company just moved from support both to only hd-dvd. I did see they're some hybrid hd-dvd+dvd discs now coming out. Blu-ray does have higher capacity though.

bluedogok
9/25/2007, 10:12 PM
LG has a Blu Ray/HD-DVD combo player out but it is not entirely HD-DVD compatible, many of the menu functions do not work on it. Right now I would still be inclined to buy one of each. The Sony Blu Ray player is now about $500, you can find the Toshiba that will do 1080i for $299, the 1080p model is around $399.

Sooner_Havok
9/25/2007, 11:06 PM
or just buy a PS3. No, really. It is one of the cheapest Blue Rays on the market, and can be used like a media center. Has a hard drive, Blue Tooth, and wireless for web browsing. Plus, if you got any young ens' they would love playing their video games

Frozen Sooner
9/26/2007, 12:28 AM
Widescreen, that Blockbuster "only" rents Blu-ray is a common misstatement made in the press. Blockbuster rents HD DVD in 150+ of their brick and mortar stores and continues to rent HD DVDs online. They DID state that they will add BD to more stores instead of HD DVD, but they have also said that if they get demand for HD DVD that they will roll them out to more stores as well.

5030, here's my advice. I own both formats, enjoy both formats, and REALLY don't have a dog in the fight. Look at the lists of movies available for each format. Look at the upcoming releases for both formats. Good lists can be found at www.highdefdigest.com . Whichever format has the movies YOU like either available or with announced release date, buy that one. The fact that Fox is Disney exclusive is nice, but until they release some more titles it's not really relevant. The fact that Universal is HD DVD exclusive is nice, but you won't see the Indiana Jones movies released any time soon, or Jurassic Park, etc.

Or just say "screw it" and buy both.

Frozen Sooner
9/26/2007, 12:30 AM
Oh, yeah-I think BD is actually the better technology, but HD DVD has some advantages over BD that are making this an actual fight. If you're going to buy a BD player, either buy a PS3 or wait until 1Q2008 when profile 2.0 players start hitting the market. According to Samsung, discs authored to profile 2.0 may not work on non-2.0 machines.

soonerboomer93
9/26/2007, 12:32 AM
Blu ray has regional encoding, which is the suc...

Frozen Sooner
9/26/2007, 12:40 AM
Blu ray has regional encoding, which is the suc...

Well, region encoding is mandated in the spec. I don't know if everyone is using it yet. Region encoding is NOT in the HD DVD spec.

soonerboomer93
9/26/2007, 02:07 AM
i know

i does hd-dvd even check for the region encoding on dvd's since it's not in the spec?

also i noticed blu ray only has 3 regions vs the 7 for dvd

SoonerBBall
9/26/2007, 03:40 AM
I'm not going to switch from regular DVD. Unless you are a serious videophile, I don't think you really notice too much of a difference between upconverted regular DVD and true 1080p. Anyways, why spend all that money to buy movies you already own in a perfectly acceptable format? Especially when there are 2 formats (and another one coming into the market very soon) that are both at least 1.5x as expensive as regular DVD.

Also, for you PS3 guys, I have a question. I had a PS2 and it was a really awful DVD player. It has serious audio/video synching issues and the control scheme was equally hideous. Is the PS3 a good Blu-ray player? How is the control scheme? I have the chance to get a PS3 on the way cheap, but I'm really only interested in it as a media center and only because it is super cheap. Thanks in advance.

Harry Beanbag
9/26/2007, 07:07 AM
I'm not going to switch from regular DVD. Unless you are a serious videophile, I don't think you really notice too much of a difference between upconverted regular DVD and true 1080p. Anyways, why spend all that money to buy movies you already own in a perfectly acceptable format? Especially when there are 2 formats (and another one coming into the market very soon) that are both at least 1.5x as expensive as regular DVD.


I second this motion. http://www.soonerfans.com/forums/images/icons/icon14.gif

OUDoc
9/26/2007, 08:00 AM
I'm not going to switch from regular DVD. Unless you are a serious videophile, I don't think you really notice too much of a difference between upconverted regular DVD and true 1080p. Anyways, why spend all that money to buy movies you already own in a perfectly acceptable format? Especially when there are 2 formats (and another one coming into the market very soon) that are both at least 1.5x as expensive as regular DVD.

Also, for you PS3 guys, I have a question. I had a PS2 and it was a really awful DVD player. It has serious audio/video synching issues and the control scheme was equally hideous. Is the PS3 a good Blu-ray player? How is the control scheme? I have the chance to get a PS3 on the way cheap, but I'm really only interested in it as a media center and only because it is super cheap. Thanks in advance.
Blu-ray is better, to me, than an upconverted DVD. Most of what I notice is MUCH higher sound quality and a better picture. Plus a cool menu option that lets you view the menu while the movie still runs. :)
As for the PS3's ability to play the movies, it's okay. About the same as controlling it on a PS2, but I've never looked for a remote for it or anything.

85Sooner
9/26/2007, 08:27 AM
Neither, they will be streaming it before you know it.

Frozen Sooner
9/26/2007, 09:45 AM
I'm not going to switch from regular DVD. Unless you are a serious videophile, I don't think you really notice too much of a difference between upconverted regular DVD and true 1080p.

If you can't tell the difference between an upconverted DVD and an HD DVD or BD, then either your eyes need to be checked or your display does. Picture sharpness is only part of the equation. Both HD formats use a much broader color space, both support much richer sound quality, and both use much better compression algorithms which lead to much less artifacting.


Anyways, why spend all that money to buy movies you already own in a perfectly acceptable format? Especially when there are 2 formats (and another one coming into the market very soon) that are both at least 1.5x as expensive as regular DVD.

Why would you HAVE to buy movies you already own? Nobody's forcing you to, and every BD or HD DVD player on the market includes legacy DVD support. Both the PS3 and all the Toshiba HD DVD players are excellent upconverting DVD players. Sure, the old DVDs look kinda bad in comparison to your new stuff, but they'll still play in your new player.


Also, for you PS3 guys, I have a question. I had a PS2 and it was a really awful DVD player. It has serious audio/video synching issues and the control scheme was equally hideous. Is the PS3 a good Blu-ray player? How is the control scheme? I have the chance to get a PS3 on the way cheap, but I'm really only interested in it as a media center and only because it is super cheap. Thanks in advance.

The PS3 is in the top tier of BD players. IIRC, the Pioneer Elite player is the only one that consistently outscores it on PQ and AQ. The major drawback is that it doesn't have an IR port, so if you have a nice universal controller it's kind of annoying to have to switch to a Bluetooth remote for BD playback. The control scheme is just fine, though. If you want to watch DVDs on it, the PS3 will upscale regular DVD to 1080p. The PS3 also supports Dolby TrueHD audio in either bitstream (receiver decodes) or PCM (player decodes), which some BD players do not. The major AQ flaws are that it doesn't support DTS-MA HD (yet, rumored to be coming in a firmware update sometime "soon") and that it doesn't have analog 5.1 breakouts, so if you want to listen to uncompressed or lossless sound you'll need HDMI. Legacy codecs like Dobly Digital 5.1 or DTS 5.1 can still be passed over optical with the PS3.

The PS3 will also do a couple of cool things media-center wise. It will detect media servers on your network and allow you to control them through the XMD interface. It will also upsample CDs, which is a kinda nifty feature. SACD support is included as well, if you can find any SACDs.

Getem
9/26/2007, 06:24 PM
The cheapest way in is the Xbox 360 addon if you already have the 360. Otherwise, there is a $199 retail HDDVD player (Venturer) announced for this fall, and rumor is the cheapest Toshiba HDDVD player will drop to $199 or $249 as well. If you go bluray, I would stay away from the current crop of standalone players, as none of them have all the hardware needed to run all the extra features that are planned for bluray. If you don't care about extra features, then the cheapest bluray standalones are about $450.

As far as studio support goes, Disney, Fox, Sony and Lionsgate are all currently bluray exclusive, while Universal, Paramount/Dreamworks, and Weinstein are HDDVD. Warner releases on both, although they have released some on HDDVD that they haven't yet on bluray (The Matrix, Batman Begins). Lionsgate and Weinstein are probably the "softest" commits. One interesting exception is that some European studios that favor HDDVD have distribution rights there to movies that are bluray exclusive in the US. Because HDDVD has no region coding, you can import and play these just fine. HDDVD players do, however, enforce the region coding for regular DVDs.

As far as whether it's worth it, it depends on how big your tv is and how close you sit. You might not notice much if any difference on a 37" 720p screen 12 feet away. IMO you need a display with 1080 lines of resolution to get the full effect, and the bigger the better. The sound is better too, though, with higher bitrates and lossless sound on some titles. And the special feature/interactivity technology is improved as well, at least on HDDVD (bluray seems to still be in development here). The directors commentary on 300 was neat, they showed you the original footage as it was shot on the green-screen set in a PIP window in realtime with the movie, along with explanation from the director.

If you can't tell, I'm firmly in the HDDVD camp. They just seem to have gotten their act together quicker and are putting out full-featured players for less than half the price of barebones bluray players. Lots of rumors about bluray replication issues abound and there still are no profile 1.1 or 2.0 players to buy.

MR2-Sooner86
9/26/2007, 07:52 PM
Why pick now? By the time a winner is finally decided holodisk will be out and they'll be able to hold several terabytes.

If I HAD to pick one though I'd say it'd probably be BR. It seems to be the winner as Sony's strategy of using the PS3 as a trojan horse for BR is working.

SoonerBBall
9/26/2007, 09:50 PM
I think the real question is....which one looks better on a 61' 1080p DLP. ;)

Also, I've heard discussions about HD porn. Who in the world wants that? There are some things that are just not meant to be displayed in all their...um...glory(?).

Frozen Sooner
9/26/2007, 09:57 PM
There is basically no difference between the two formats PQ-wise. BD supports higher bitrates for video, so technically BD can give a sharper, less-artifacted picture. However, this hasn't really been seen in practice. Generally releases that have been on both formats are using the same encodes, so no difference at all. The Matrix looks phenomenal on HD DVD, POTC looks phenomenal on BD.

sooneron
9/26/2007, 10:32 PM
Neither, they will be streaming it before you know it.
THANK YOU!!!

I was saying this about 5 months ago, eh Froze?

Frozen Sooner
9/26/2007, 10:36 PM
Uh-huh. And in five-ten years, that will be the case. Short-term, we don't have the bandwidth to have on-demand HD content with enough penetration to replace an optical standard.

In the major cities, sure. But I don't think we're going to have the infrastructure to support streaming of HD content soon.

sooneron
9/26/2007, 10:37 PM
Uh-huh. And in five-ten years, that will be the case. Short-term, we don't have the bandwidth to have on-demand HD content with enough penetration to replace an optical standard.

In the major cities, sure. But I don't think we're going to have the infrastructure to support streaming of HD content soon.
Sucks for you hillbillies.:D

Frozen Sooner
9/26/2007, 10:43 PM
Heh.

There's some speculation that MSFT is only supporting HD DVD to attempt to kill optical HD in its infancy to better prepare the way for streaming.

If they can figure out a way to get acceptable bandwith to my house to stream HD media with lossless at least 5.1 audio and minimal artifacting, I'll be all for it and I'll gladly mothball my HD DVD player and PS3. Like I said, though, I don't think that there's going to be significant enough penetration of such bandwidth to kill HD optical formats for several years.

But hey, I could be wrong and they could lay fiber to the curb tomorrow everywhere.

Widescreen
9/26/2007, 10:47 PM
Personally, I prefer to have a disc sitting on the shelf that I can watch any time I want.

ouflak
9/27/2007, 07:48 AM
I'm not going to switch from regular DVD. Unless you are a serious videophile, I don't think you really notice too much of a difference between upconverted regular DVD and true 1080p. Anyways, why spend all that money to buy movies you already own in a perfectly acceptable format? Especially when there are 2 formats (and another one coming into the market very soon) that are both at least 1.5x as expensive as regular DVD.

Yup. I am a bit of technophile. But this all seems silly and counterintuitive to me. New formats have historically won on with the public because of obvious changes to a particular technological culture (i.e. tape->CD, VHS->DVD) that were unquestionaly advantageous, and fairly cheap for most people to adapt to. Attempts to push new formats have rarely, if ever, been succesful because of incremental, even debatable, improvements.

I see both of these formats dying as things stand. The next generation for video, whenever that may happen, will be something far different and clearly more impressive. That is if history is to be any kind of guide.

OUDoc
9/27/2007, 07:52 AM
Personally, I prefer to have a disc sitting on the shelf that I can watch any time I want.
Streaming seems, well, weak to me. I agree, I want a physical media in my hand that I can own if I want.
Seems to me Blu-ray wins, if only because of it's higher storage capacity.

Widescreen
1/5/2008, 03:16 AM
Well, I think the death-knell for HD-DVD was just sounded. Warner and New Line are going Blu-Ray exclusive as of 6/1. This gives BRD a 70/30 advantage over HD-DVD in terms of studio support. My advice is that, unless you absolutely have to have a Paramount or Universal HD disc right now, your best bet is getting a Blu-Ray player.

Disclaimer: I don't have a dog in this hunt as I don't have anything other than regular DVD players. I've just been sitting on the sidelines waiting for this format war to conclude.

Frozen Sooner
1/5/2008, 04:15 AM
As mentioned in the Consolidated thread....:D

Yeah, that's pretty much all she wrote.

bluedogok
1/5/2008, 12:06 PM
The new HD-DVD player that I bought at Christmas ($199 at Best Buy in OKC) does great at upconverting existing DVD's. It was also cheaper than the Denon upconverting DVD player that I bought over a year ago when Blu-ray was still $1,000 and HD-DVD was still $800. So if the format does die, it is still a useful device.

Frozen Sooner
1/5/2008, 12:13 PM
Plus, it's not like all your HD DVDs will stop working in it. I'm OK with the HD DVD players I own-they both still work just fine and I expect them to work for the next several years.

However, I'll probably stop buying Paramount and Universal titles so I don't eventually have to replace them when my HD DVD players finally DO die.

Widescreen
1/5/2008, 01:05 PM
Yep. Some people were able to get HD-DVD players for $100 recently. As bluedog mentioned, it also upconverts so it's definitely still a worthwhile device.

85Sooner
1/5/2008, 02:40 PM
Blu ray will be the winner.

85Sooner
1/5/2008, 02:41 PM
Well, I think the death-knell for HD-DVD was just sounded. Warner and New Line are going Blu-Ray exclusive as of 6/1. This gives BRD a 70/30 advantage over HD-DVD in terms of studio support. My advice is that, unless you absolutely have to have a Paramount or Universal HD disc right now, your best bet is getting a Blu-Ray player.

Disclaimer: I don't have a dog in this hunt as I don't have anything other than regular DVD players. I've just been sitting on the sidelines waiting for this format war to conclude.
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ding ding ding we have a winner ( for a short while)