Community poll forum: Who do you predict will win the HD format war?

I was in Circuit City the other day looking for a Blue Ray movie (I own a PS3), and I asked where the blue ray movies were. First the sales rep pointed me to a bin in the back corner of the store. When I went to go look, it was full of HD-DVD movies, but it was kind of hidden in the back. I went back and told him they were HD-DVD and not Blue Ray, and he said he didn't even know there was a difference. So, I went looking around the store, and in the department with all the wide screen HDTV's was a nice display of Blue Ray movies and all the TV's were showing a Blue Ray movie of some kind. It already seemed to me that HD-DVD has lost, and Blue Ray is going to come out on top. The stores have already decided that.

Unlike the past format battles of audio cassettes and eight-tracks or the video face-off between Beta and VHS, the coming high definition competition will be more than two sided. Emerging technology (faster transfer rates and greater memory capacities) will obsolete both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray before either becomes a dominant format.
Since September 2007 has already been mentioned, I predict that by this September the new video transfer medium will be announced and, even though it may not yet be commercially available, it will be seen as so superior to buying yet another library of soon-to-be-outloded movies, that many potential HD disc customers will hold off buying either current format.

HD is cheaper and the eyes really can't tell the difference from Blu-Ray and HD DVD. At least not as much of a difference that would make you shell out the extra dough to get a Blu-Ray

I'm guessing that HD DVD will lose based on the scientific premise that if CALVERS buys a Toshiba HD DVD Player for $500, the other guy, even if they bring Betamax back, will surely win. This scientific principal has applied many, many times in my life. So, to bring bad juju to Blue Ray, I say, GO BLU RAY< YOU'RE THE BEST!!!!!

Every 5 years or so, a new form of storage media hits the market. Rarely does this newcomer fully destroy or replace the former leader. If HD DVD ever becomes obsolete, it will not be any time soon. CD-R media is still here and has it's niche, so does DAT. With the advent of any new media solution, the choices and applications expand. But this is not necessarily at the expense of killing off other proven solutions.

Blu-Ray has a long way to go to gain acceptance in the general population, in part because of its price. The majority of Blu-Rays being used are hacked game stations. There just isn't any real advantage to spending the high price of a stand alone Blu-Ray, when other media choices still work, and work quite well.

If you want to know what will happen in the future, study the past. With few exceptions, older storage solutions seem to follow a similar path with similar time lines. Many are able to adapt by adding value and/or density to their product. This serves to slow the product's relagation as a former leader. Being 2nd best is far different from being dead. Just look at the sales numbers. Dead products don't sell millions of units.

We are a technologically starved society for new "geek" ware and anything new is gobbled up in a micro-second!

DVD we hear that since so many years and putting HD in front makes it like it was a re-patch thing.

Blue Ray is like news but experienced like Ray Charles Blues,blue skies, modern for kids adventures " he's blue ray gun saved him from martians" and Blue is every were we look, blue seas, blue sky...

That's why Blue Ray will win and it's not because their is one better than the other! Rest in peace HD DVD

The Bob!

As alot of us old school techies remember the VHS and Beta wars, 95% of us couldn't afford either one back in the day.
Today I would bet the Ranch on Sony, why? Because Sony has been down this road before and they have the resources to smash the competition.
Maybe they learned something from Microsoft too!

Untill the price comes way down I'm sure that the average person will stick with the current technology. Way too expensive for what you are getting in return.

My friend and I have been comparing HD DVD and Blu-Ray movies for months now.

With the second generation of players out, HD DVD is now available in 1080P like Blu-Ray, and are more affordibly priced.

In terms of image quaility, HD DVD looks very smooth because the current movies released are based on the newer codecs. Blu-Ray movies seem very grainy and are based on older codecs such as MPEG-2.

Many times, Blu-Ray movies are just a little better than their DVD counterparts. That is sad.

Also, Blu-Ray movies cost more than HD DVD. Just go online and compare pricing.

At this point, I think HD DVD is ahead and Blu-Ray might become the one headed towards extinction. But you never know.

I love Sony's ad on their Blu-Ray movies..."beyond high-definition". Sure!!

Nothing more needs to be said about Sony!

As, most others here have noted, this is the same song, just new players - Beta vs. VHS. With all due respect, I don't believe that Porn's favoring VHS made that big of an impact on the final result as much as the price of the players / recorders. VHS got cheaper faster and had longer record times if I remember correctly (I was 12 years old when this Beta vs. VHS was going on). The reason my lower middle class family bought a VHS system rather than a Beta Max was economics... cheaper price. If that was the criteria today concerning which one would prevail, then HD DVD would be kicking Blu-Ray's butt. However, the big difference today, as opposed to the Beta vs. VHS, is that the studios have, for the most part lined up on one format or the other, instead of releasing titles in both formats. The reason they can do this, is because they have the Standard DVD format to cushion them, which is still the big game on the block, due to the fact that nearly everyone has a standard DVD player, that watches movies at home on a recorded media. At $50 a pop for a DVD player, it will be a long time before HD DVD or Blu-Ray can threaten the hold Standard DVD format has on the market. It is also for that reason... all studios are still releasing their titles in Standard DVD as well as their pick of the HD formats, that will prolong this format battle, unlike Beta vs. VHS, when it was there was no cushion format so both formats were used by most if not all studios to get maximum consumer market saturation. That leaves the fate of the formats up to the techees and the folks that just like to try to impress the Jones down the street or the guys at work, as the affluence of these folks will likely decide the viability of the formats to continue. If we start to see the studios give in and start releasing their titles in both formats, it will likely come down to who has the cheapest and most reliable players available.

One last note, I have seen both Blu-ray and HD DVD players in demo displays at the local electronics stores, and both worked without pixeling (Tiling) or jitters. The only player I saw that had pixeling issues was the PlayStation 3's at Wal-Mart during game demos. Of course I haven't read any bad reviews from Home Theater magazine or other such publications concerning pixeling during Blu-Ray movies. Maybe I missed that article, but if it were a common problem with that format, I would have expected to have read about it somewhere other than here.

Anyway, the first of the dual-format players should begin arriving in the 2nd quarter of this year, I believe I read on CNet reviews. And while very expensive to begin with ($1300.00 SMRP), maybe by this time next year the dual players will be starting to get reasonable, and it will very likely drive the prices of both single format High Def players down enough for us tight-wads to buy one!

JMHO.

As the two formats battle, net delivery is progressing. I would not be surprised if buying movies on a piece of plastic becomes obsolete compared to the efficiencies of internet delivery and storage on home giga drives

David Lynch put it best at a recent screening of his new, shot on DV, motion picture, "Inland Empire": "The future of TV and film is on the internet."

That's why it really doensn't matter WHICH format "wins" - because its going to be a very brief victory. I personally know people who are developing the NEXT wave of content delivery over IP, and its all HD-DVD quality. What studio or distributor WOULDN'T want to leapfrog over the hassles of distributing actual discs with related manufacturing/packaging/shipping costs, when they can simply upload one copy-protected (DRM) file to a few content distribution websites (their own and/or5 someone else's) and start raking in the dough?

Read the writing on the walls people! Save your money on a "next generation" stand-alone player, and invest in a media savvy computer (like the dual-core Mac Mini - complete with HDMI [via DVI] and optical out ports on the back!) and hook THAT up to your HDTV instead!

That's the "other" in OTHER.

(And why should my opinion matter? Because, among other things, I have been designing and installing home theaters professionally for over 18 years now, AND, like I mentioned earlier, I know people who are actually doing everything I've discussed above, including developing those HD delivery websites... and we're not talking hours of download time, but minutes!)

Take THAT, "Blue-HD-Ray-DVD"...

LG announced that they would have a unit on the shelves by March 2007 that will play both Blue-ray and HD DVDs. LG demonstrated it capabilities at the CES show in January 2007. It worked perfectly. Warner Brother introduced a high definition video disc that would play in either player. There goes the format war, just like the super audio CDs and DVD-Audio.

Why? Because Blu-Ray is a stupid name. When someone sees HD DVD, you think, High Definition DVD. What the hell is Blu-Ray? It's doomed just like the Betamax--another stupid name.