HD-DVD vs. BluRay. Whatever!

Ok! Its time to bite the bullet! HD-DVD vs. BluRay: a topic in discussion for more than a year in few thousand forums and blogs. Yeah you probably may or may not be interested in continuing further. It may not even be a concern to some folks but if you are an electronics geek like me. It is of “Paramount” importance. Did I say “Paramount” it’s more like a “Universal Paramount” problem. I mean literally. If not for “Universal Studios” and “Paramount” (which accounts for half the HDDVD titles) HD DVD would be dust by now. Paramount jumped the gun after a 150million $ deal and went exclusive HDDVD providing oxygen leading to the format war.

HD-DVD vs. BluRay which is better?, there are several thousand websites that talk about intricacies of the aforementioned. I am not going to get into those details. I will stick to the selling points for each

HD DVD selling points
1. Price, Price and mainly price.
2. Internet Connectivity.
3. Content: Backed up Universal, Paramount & DreamWorks (Just exclusives).
4. Hardware/Tech: Backed by Toshiba & Microsoft (Just exclusives).

BluRay selling points
1. Better technology, higher storage capacity.
2. Integrated BluRay Player with PS3 gaming Console.
3. Content: Backed up Sony, Disney, Fox, MGM, LionsGate (Just exclusives).
4. Hardware/Tech: Backed up by Sony, Panasonic, Pioneer, Apple (Just exclusives).

Content: As of now Warner Bros is releasing titles in both formats. Speculations are that WB will go exclusive after CES 2008 (that’s Consumer Electronics Show) sealing the fate of either of the format.

Hardware: Few companies manufacture both players. Samsung, LG, Philips are some of the prominent ones. Currently there are more players that support Blu then HD.

If you ask me the only selling point for HDDVD is its price factor. Nothing else! You can get HDDVD player for under $200 whereas BluRay players are still in the $300 mark. Many cheap Chinese manufacturers are soon going to flood the HDDVD player market. So the price is to going to be a steal.

So which is better?

According to few forums the quality of video and audio is identical between the competing formats, now! I have a problem with that statement and here is why I think the quality is identical when comparing same title in both formats. (well there is a problem how can you compare 2 different titles)

If a studio releases a movie in both format then you should take a closer look at their title specifications, you will notice they are pretty much the same for both. Both formats will have the same bit rates and audio encodings, additional interactivity features may be present for HDDVD since BluRay is yet to support internet connectivity, (Blu Profile 2.0 is expected to be the final complete version that will have internet connectivity).

The company that is releasing titles for both formats does not necessarily try to exploit the additional storage capacity advantage that BluRay offers.

In simple terms the company just encodes the movie once and just saves it to be a HDDVD and BluRay. Since it’s the same copy you will hardly notice the difference between the two formats. On the other hand if you see the specification on BluRay exclusive title you will notice higher bit rates resulting in better picture quality.

If you happen to get your hands on a BD and HD Specification you will notice BluRay supports up to 54 Mbps whereas HDDVD supports just 36.55Mbps data transfer speed.

Here is what I think.

In a gist

• HDDVD falls behind in technology but has a strong hold because of the low price.
• BluRay is technologically strong but weak in their price factor.

When I first started using a computer the RAM in my pc was 16MB, HDD was 400MB (I think). The laptop I currently use has 2GB RAM and HDD of 160GB. You can see flash drives with 8GB storage capacity. You can even get 2TB external HDD and you are still out of space. Data storage is an important factor that drives the technology world and BluRay offers that, more storage capacity allowing lot more information to be burned on to the disc, more information consequently means better quality audio video.

So I will vote for Blu and go Blu.

Most consumers will decide from their heart since that’s where their pocket (money) is ;) and will probably buy HD DVD, but I am deciding to go Blu because of it’s superiority in technology, storage and quality and also because of the current studio support.

If BluRay fails to become the next gen format what the heck I will buy an HDDVD player which will be less than $75 by then.

Go Blu!!!