Majority Of Customers Prefer Blu-Ray

bonch writes "A poll shows Blu-ray as the preferred choice, as conducted by Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates. Customers were given a side-by-side comparison of HD-DVD and Blu-ray. The results were that 58 percent of the 1,200 polled chose Blu-ray, and 26 percent were undecided. Generally speaking, HD-DVD is preferred by those seeking to reduce manufacturing costs while Blu-ray is preferred by those more interested in features and data storage." Sony's PS3 is to use the Blu-Ray format.

Re:But what do the pornmongers think?`

[jurt1235]

Small error there: What does Sony (biggest backer of blu-ray)allow? is the better question. Philips (the inventors of Beta) did not allow porn to be published on their format. The VHS people did allow this, thus the public nicely bought the VHS (sex sells).

So if Sony allows porn on the blu-ray, they are at least equal in competition (on that level).

The price will come down with volume, and ps3 will mean volume enough to be competitive

Consumers also thought beta was better than VHS

[voss]

So what...

VHS didnt win because it had a better picture, VHS won because it was less costly.

HD-DVD has better backwards compatibility(hd-DVD players play older DVDs more easily)

Re:But what do the pornmongers think?`

[_Spirit]

Small correction:

Sony invented Beta, Philips invented Video2000, both were technically superior to VHS.

VHS won due to cheaper licensing.

[MtViewGuy]

The biggest reason why VHS won was the fact that JVC (the developer of the Video Home System format) and its majority shareholder Matsushita Electric offered extremely low licensing terms for other companies to manufacture VHS recorders--far lower than that of what Sony wanted for the Betamax format.

Besides, VHS had another huge advantage, notably longer recording times at all recording speeds, something highly desirable for recording complete TV seasons, miniseries or sporting events. And VHS easily matched Beta improvements in sound and picture quality with VHS Hi-Fi audio and Super VHS higher-resolution recording.

Re:I'm not so sure about Sony

[DarkEdgeX]

Sure, but that was a CODEC. ;) I don't think they're going to drop the ball with BluRay; and unlike ATRAC [MP3, etc], MemoryStick [CompactFlash] or MiniDisc [Compact Disc], the existing alternative(s) for BluRay [HD-DVD] are inferior.

Re:HD-DVD is retarded

[DarkEdgeX]

I already covered the capacity argument here [slashdot.org]. As far as the video CODEC's go, check out this [blu-ray.com] from the FAQ at www.blu-ray.com [blu-ray.com]--

The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) is still in the process of finalizing the BD-ROM specification, but they have stated that MPEG-4 AVC High Profile (previously called FRExt) and Microsoft's VC-1 video codec (the proposed SMPTE standard based on WMV9) will be mandatory. They will also include MPEG-2 support for playback of HDTV recordings and DVDs. Please note that this simply means that all Blu-ray players and recorders will have to support playback of these video codecs, it will still be up to the movie studios to decide which video codec(s) they use for their releases. The BDA expects the BD-ROM specification to be finished some time in the beginning of 2005.

Also of interest is the H.264 article [wikipedia.org] on Wikipedia, specifically the Applications [wikipedia.org] section--

Both of the major candidate next-generation DVD rival formats planned for product deployment in late 2005 include the H.264/AVC High Profile as a mandatory player feature -- specifically:

• The HD-DVD format of the DVD Forum
• The Blu-ray Disc format of the Blu-Ray Disc Association (BDA)

All things being equal again, that leaves capacity as the only thing seperating the two formats as far as I can tell.

Re:How much of it is just the name?

[Dogtanian]

Kind of reminds of when you had to decide whether you were going to get DVD+R or DVD-R discs. Now you can get a dual format drive for less than $50 and not have to worry about it. I'm guessing after a little while we'll see the same thing happen with the new formats and nobody will care which one you're using.

My understanding (gained mainly via my memory of /., so take it with a pound of salt) is that Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are far more different at a fundamental level, and it wouldn't be as simple to produce devices that support both formats.

Of course, it would probably be possible to squeeze technology to read both types of disks into a single drive, but in a worst-case scenario, this could involve (essentially) two separate mechanisms in the same case, costing at least twice the price.

Who'd buy *that*?

Re:Uh, that could backfire.

[cheesybagel]

People with diabetes have a higher glucose content in the blood. When they test diabetes in the blood or urine, that is what they are testing for. The more diabetes the sweeter the urine will be I guess. But I somewhat doubt it will cancel out the taste of salt.

Right...

[DaveCBio]

The number of "average" consumers that have a clue when it comes to is pretty damn low. They were given a bullet point list and keeping in line with the usual tendencies they chose the one with the most bullet points and do you want to bet that Blu-Ray had the most bullet points? Back in the early days of word processors I had a conversation with a software distributor as to why Word was starting to outsell Wordperfect and he said Word had a bigger feature list on the back of the box. From that day forward I always paid attention to that aspect of marketing and he was right. People always assume more is better.

Re:Maybe true, but the capacity is important

[benwaggoner]

And how the heck would you know that? The Blu-ray camp has made that assertion, but it simply isn't born out in real-world testing.

Last week, for a test, I put a 123 minute movie on a DVD-9 using MPEG-2, using the HD DVD format (via Apple's DVD Studio Pro 4). Average of around 8.5 Mbps. Looked pretty darn good at 1920x1080.

HD-DVD gives you 30 GB, and the use of H.264 and VC-1 for codecs. No problem AT ALL sticking "Return of the King Extended Edition" on a single side of HD-DVD. So using codecs that are 2x better and 3x more capacity, yeah, HD-DVD is just fine. Single layer HD-DVD will be fine for the vast majority of films, and even offers more minutes per disc at HD than DVD gives us minutes of SD today.

Re:What about C3D

[Anonymous Coward]

C3D presented this technology back in 1999 or even earlier, they even had working prototypes.

The prototypes demonstrated publicly only held 14GB, which is what current DVDs can do, albeit with two sides. This was all they got to work. Between the materials cost and the specialized laser (that couldn't read CDs or DVDs), it wasn't very viable. Blu-Ray/HD-DVD do exactly as current DVDs, just with a shorter wavelength. They are much, much, simpler.

As advanced as the technology may be, if it's not cheap enough to produce millions of units, it'll never catch on. C3D was just ahead of their time.

Re:Uh-huh.

[Mozk]

"A poll conducted by the group backing the Blu-ray next-generation DVD standard shows that the technology is supported by a majority of consumers, putting rival HD DVD on the defensive."

It's fairly obvious that they skewed the questions towards themselves. There's no way they were unbiased about it.

Re:Uh-huh.

[JLF65]

You obviously don't follow the news closely... Blu-Ray can do 100G now, and Toshiba's scratch resistant coating will be standard on all Blu-Ray discs. Since it will be used on all discs, it will add less than a penny to the cost of the disc.

You gotta keep a close eye on the news - things are changing almost daily.

Re:Content over technology

[bleaknik]

Ok. Not making shit up. The 24-bit/PCM comment was meant to reference to DVD-Audio. Sorry for the confusion. SACD actually encodes 1-bit audio at 2.8 MHz.

You're right, a lot of artists do record in analog and then copy to digital, but there is still a loss in the conversion. In fact, every conversion creates some loss. Not making that up, either.

You're right 16-bit/44.1 kHz records do sound quite a bit like 24-bit/192 kHz records. This is due to the physical limitations of the human ear. Most people can only hear sounds between roughly 20 Hz and 20 kHz. CDs have a theoretical frequency response up to 22 kHz, while DVD-As have a theoretial value up to 96 kHz. Since the human ear can only distinguish sounds up to 20kHz, DVD-A isn't providing much more for our ears to hear, but it does give a more precise reproduction of the sound wave.

I do have some issues about 5.1 sound. I like the theory, but I can't say I've ever been to a concert with theatrical 5.1 surround sound.

And "unbroken DRM"... I'm sorry, but all DRM is broken, by definition. Heh.

Get your numbers right

[BobPaul]

45GB for HD-DVD vs. 50GB for Blu-ray isn't that big a difference...

No, 5GB isn't that big of a difference. The problem is that in order to do 45GB, HD-DVD's need to use 3 layers, while they were only intended to ever do 2 layers. Yes, they did recently hit 3 layers, but they will probably never get to 4 layers and they will only be sold as 2 layers when they first come out.

Blue Ray was intended, right out of box to get to 8 layers. Right now with 2 layers they're at 50GB. They've already done 4 layers [slashdot.org] (100 GB) and wholey expect to get to the 8 layers in the future. This is a format with room to grow. HD-DVD just BARELY squeezed in 3 layers and still doesn't reach the capacity of a 2 layer Blu-Ray disk.

It's no contest.
200GB > 100GB > 50GB > 45GB > 30GB. (The two at the bottom are 3 and 2 layer HD-DVD respectively)
--
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