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Media Data Storage

Gizmodo Declares Blu-Ray Winner 242

13.7BillionYears writes "Gizmodo has a special feature covering the many details of the Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD battle based on the technical, financial, and commercial merits of the two contenders. They conclude that Blu-Ray is the clear winner on all three fronts. Hopefully the movie industry and electronics manufacturers will see the same logic and avert a format war."
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Gizmodo Declares Blu-Ray Winner

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  • Dual Compatability? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 22, 2004 @03:08PM (#10601553)
    How feasable would it be to have devices support both formats, the same way most DVD-writers now are +/- R. Are blu-ray and hd dvd too different or could we end up seeing the same kind of thing where both formats are supported by most devices.
  • by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) * on Friday October 22, 2004 @03:15PM (#10601712)
    Did you read the bit where he said HD-DVD has NO web page yet?

    And resistant to consumer damage - What the hell does that have to do with ANYTHING? It comes down to hardware/media price and avialiablity.

    If 33%+ of the movie libaries are availiable in Blu-Ray, and NONE are availiable in HD-DVD - which would you image might be a more attractive purcahse? Even if HD-DVD discs can be run over by a truck and the Blu-Ray discs have to be kept in nitrogen cannisters between playing, the format that will get consumer marketshare is blindingly obvious.

    Finally, I would say that he did give a numbre of details for technical advantages of the HD-DVD format - which have then been met and worked around by the Blu-Ray companies.

    Sometimes an underdog is really, well, just a dog.
  • pat (Score:3, Interesting)

    by wikinerd ( 809585 ) on Friday October 22, 2004 @03:19PM (#10601803) Journal
    which standard has the less patents attached? I would chose that.
  • Re:Go beta! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Friday October 22, 2004 @03:24PM (#10601935)
    Advice for savvy high-tech consumers:

    STAY 5 TO 10 YEARS BEHIND TECHNOLOGICALLY

    (less for computers, but same idea)

    That way, when the early adopters are through spending their hard-earned cash on stillborn formats and their latest-and-greatest readers, and a format emerges as the winner, and a couple of clever hackers devise a way to get around the media companies' "niceties" (zoning anybody), then you'll enjoy dirt-cheap players and a great variety of content.

    Of course, the next SuperDuperThingamabobEverybodyNeeds[TM] will already be there, but don't think for one second you need to stress over getting current, that's an artificial feeling created by PR hype from the format pushers. You'll get the shit a lot cheaper than your neighbour in a few years, no worries...
  • What is in a name? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by clusterix ( 606570 ) on Friday October 22, 2004 @03:25PM (#10601942)
    HD-DVD could be lower quality than regular DVD and have a fighting chance against something called Blu-Ray.

    Since most people will recognize HD-DVD must be somehow better than DVD while Blu-Ray could be anything from enhanced color laundry detergent to insecticide. Without a ton of marketing and consumer education Blu-Ray will simple lose when the average couch potato goes to buy a new player from the local electronics megabarn.

    While this has little to do with why BetaMax (nor why every other Sony proprietary standard has failed), Blu-Ray has some serious marketing problems to over come.

  • I have an idea... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by ICECommander ( 811191 ) on Friday October 22, 2004 @03:28PM (#10602027)
    I too have a disc format:
    It can store 1 Petabyte of data (unfortunately due to quantum mechanics: some bits can be both 1 and 0)
    DRM'ed to the core
    Will go on sale in the next 2 to 40 years
    Should come down in price around 2050

    - There is always a focus on new media technologies and some can already predict the sucess of a a very volatile market. (Remember when BETAs and 8-track where 'in')

  • by CyberThalamus ( 822198 ) on Friday October 22, 2004 @03:50PM (#10602432)
    We hear a lot about speed and capacity, but what about errors? I've stayed away from DVD+-/?!@#RW because of the chance of not having a player read a disc (or worse perhaps it reading it wrong).
  • Re:Go beta! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by JAgostoni ( 685117 ) on Friday October 22, 2004 @03:53PM (#10602494) Homepage Journal
    ... which is exactly what I did with DVD. Had I jumped early and got a digital video player I may have been talked into Divx by the pushy salesman. By the time I got a DVD player, Divx was looong gone.

    Same held true for a DVD burner. I waited a VERY long time before getting a burner. It wasn't until last year when I was able to pick up a multi-format RW for real cheap.

    I'll plan on doing the same thing for HD-BlueRay-VD.
  • Why not a war? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by slapout ( 93640 ) on Friday October 22, 2004 @04:14PM (#10602774)
    "Hopefully the movie industry and electronics manufacturers will see the same logic and avert a format war."

    Why?

    Look what happened with DVDs. Computer DVDs were pushed back for a long time while we waited for the movie industry to work out their copyright stuff. What if the computer industry and movie industry chose different standards this time? Wouldn't that allow the computer industry to move ahead with new technologies instead of waiting for the movie industry to catch up?
  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 22, 2004 @05:43PM (#10603809)
    Which is why the Dreamcast is king today.

    Seriously folks, the format war ended when Sony announced the PS3 would support it. With many millions of Blu-Ray capable players already virtually guaranteed to be sold in the U.S. and Japan, no content producer has to worry about the installed base of players. It'll happen. The fact that Blu-Ray happens to hold far more than HD-DVD at this point is little more than a huge bonus for us geeks.

    A similar thing happened in Japan when the PS2 came out. DVDs were having trouble in that country because they were competing with laserdiscs, which were more popular there than the U.S. I know a lot of people that were frustrated by the slow adoption of DVDs there, but once the PS2 came out and 2 million Japanese consumers suddenly had DVD players, the Japanese studios started releasing shows on DVD much faster.
  • by PureCreditor ( 300490 ) on Friday October 22, 2004 @05:48PM (#10603868)
    Let's see :

    VHS vs. Beta was a war created by Sony.

    DVD-R/W vs. DVD+R/W was a war backed by Sony.

    DVD-Audio vs. SACD was a war created by Sony.

    Zip vs. HiFD was a war created by Sony.

    HD-DVD vs. Bluray is a current war created by Sony.

    Correlation IMPLIES causation in this case!!
  • by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Friday October 22, 2004 @06:03PM (#10604089)
    I appreciate the humor of what you are saying, but I really see these paper DVD's being in more temporary things like magazines or cerial boxes or in mailings (imagine all AOL CD's on paper instead of what they do now!!!).

    So for that reason I think it's pretty exciting and is a good reason to support it. I'm assuming the paper discs are relativley biodegradble though I have nothing to back that up with beyond the word "paper" and implications from that.
  • by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Friday October 22, 2004 @06:06PM (#10604116)
    In my various netflix mailings, I have seen some DVD's that looked like utah seen from space - but they still played. I think if you
    re seeing those kinds of issues it would more likley be the player having problems.

    I still find player oddnesses from time to time that I think are fringe implemntation differences of the DVD menu sysetm. U2's "elevation" is the worst in this regard, I've had problems with portions of it on a number of DVD players. I was kind of hoping with a new standard like Blu-Ray they had a better defined menu spec to go with it.
  • by bonch ( 38532 ) on Friday October 22, 2004 @07:06PM (#10604749)
    I found it hard to continue reading after the storage space part. "Blue-Ray has more storage space, so that makes it better," completely ignoring that HD-DVD uses MPEG4 while Blue-Ray uses MPEG2, meaning HD-DVD doesn't need as much space because the compressed data takes up less of the disc anyway.

    There's always more to it. This isn't a meaningful article. Personally, HD-DVD looks like it has more backing from the DVD forum and others like Microsoft (VC-9 is an accepted codec for it among others), while Blu-Ray is largely a Sony-pushed thing.

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