HD-DVD question

Why did all of the studios decide to back Blu-Ray and not HD-DVD? Last I heard HD-DVD was cheaper which I would guess to mean more people would buy the movies and therefore the studios would make more money. I also thought I heard that HD-DVD had more advanced features and that there were more problems with the Blu-Ray hardware. JcTonetti9

For one there was only one main person making hd-dvd players. Also Hd-dvd had less storage space and a couple movies had to be compressed more to fit on the hd-dvd, last the ps3 created a user base that was 10 times larger than hd-dvd.

The PS3 effect is probably the single biggest, it just led to so many more BR players on the market, and at least some of those people were picking up BR discs, thus leading to the disc sales advantage between the two.

I think, however, that the biggest problem really was warner borthers decision to go Blu-ray. Rumors, reported by IGN, as well as a few hometheater web sets, had WB negotiating with both camps, because they wanted to go exclusive. Blu-ray had the better deal. This important because VERY few people are buying either HD-DVD or Blu ray right now. It seems as though WB wanted to hurry along a resolution to the format war in order to encourage a quicker adoption.

As far as features go, HD DVD has been winning hands down, thanks to the HDi created by microsoft. Sony's BDJava is plae comparison, and explains the differences in quality of extras between the two on similar releases. (See a film like 300 for an example.)

While image quality was basically a draw, the early HD DVD's easily looked better than the 1st generation BD. Now they are similar, and the extra space on the blu-ray discs gives hope for less artifact than HD DVD on a very large movie.

It is interesting, however, to see the format war end so quickly. With high def discs (HD DVD + Blu ray) making up such a small % of the market, this could easily have continued for a while. That is my reasoning for blaming this on Warners as the deciding event.

Oh, and whoever said Blu-ray has better copyprotection, be aware that it has been claimed that both formats have been opened.

Blu-Ray has better copyright protection than HD-DVD. Also, Sony owns Sony Pictures, Tri-Star Pictures, Columbia, and MGM. So those studios would've never joined the HD-DVD alliance. The inclusion of Blu-Ray in the PS3 also was a big problem for HD-DVD. As PS3 owners didn't have good games so alot of them bought movies. Blu-Ray movie sales were almost double of HD-DVD movie sales.LoserMike

Well the Copy right protection dosent even fit into the catagory of witch is better because like the first week blueray was out it was cracked just like HD-DVD. if you do a google search you can see for youreself

[QUOTE="JcTonetti9"]Why did all of the studios decide to back Blu-Ray and not HD-DVD? Last I heard HD-DVD was cheaper which I would guess to mean more people would buy the movies and therefore the studios would make more money. I also thought I heard that HD-DVD had more advanced features and that there were more problems with the Blu-Ray hardware. Jacobistheman

For one there was only one main person making hd-dvd players. Also Hd-dvd had less storage space and a couple movies had to be compressed more to fit on the hd-dvd, last the ps3 created a user base that was 10 times larger than hd-dvd.

Which movies had to be compressed more?

o me, blu-ray was horrible. They started off with less space, only 25gig single layers, and using older mpeg2 and less extras than the DVD version. Now they are about even and both usually using the same codecs and even the same actual encodings files on both. So which was compressed more?

The HD-DVD camp basically handed the victory to Blu-Ray. HD-DVD had the potential to be cheaper from the get-go and the decided to keep prices as high as BR to make more money on individual disk sales. They should have just bottomed out the prices from day 1 to have an edge over BR in the market. This may have caused sales to pass BR, but instead they got greedy. They deserve the loss.

Had they kept their eyes on the price, they may have won.

Blu-Ray has better copyright protection than HD-DVD. Also, Sony owns Sony Pictures, Tri-Star Pictures, Columbia, and MGM. So those studios would've never joined the HD-DVD alliance. The inclusion of Blu-Ray in the PS3 also was a big problem for HD-DVD. As PS3 owners didn't have good games so alot of them bought movies. Blu-Ray movie sales were almost double of HD-DVD movie sales.LoserMike