Majority Of Customers Prefer Blu-Ray 413
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.
How much of it is just the name? (Score:5, Interesting)
To be expected (Score:5, Interesting)
It might be an unfounded fear, but I won't know that for at least a year after I get blu ray stuff.
Re:Pepsi Challenge (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly the same codecs on both (Score:2, Interesting)
On the software side, they encompass the same codecs [pcworld.com]. It'd be nice if the BBC or some consortium of similar institutions could get the proprietary codec off the Blu-Ray spec and put an open standard on there instead. Dirac or Theora could do for video what the web (HTML+HTTP) did for the net.
Last I heard, the audio codec was not selected. That would be a prime use for Vorbis.
Re:History Repeats... (Score:3, Interesting)
The thing is, the hardware purchase is a single expense. AFAIK the media/materials used cost the same. Once you start manufacturing hundreds of thousands or millions of discs, the cost per disc of the all-new hardware quickly approaches zero.
Left with that reality, it comes down to which is technologically superior and offers the most bang for the buck, and the answer to that is BluRay.
I don't think Sony is about to repeat their Beta experience.
Will be obsolete before the dust settles... (Score:3, Interesting)
As Theotocopulos says in the H. G. Wells movie Things to Come: "Stop this 'progress!' Stop it, I say!"
Re:To be expected (Score:3, Interesting)
Based on personal and professional experience (friends and clients) this may be a misnomer. They could make the protection layer 2mm thick and customers would still use their discs as coasters (or skating rinks for mice).
Re:But what do the pornmongers think?` (Score:5, Interesting)
Kjella
Maybe true, but the capacity is important (Score:5, Interesting)
So it seems to me if studios favor HD-DVD its because they want to sell us all the movies on HD-DVD, and sell us the movies again on HD-DVD mkII which will have more capacity.
From my narrow perspective, Blu-Ray would make a good medium for backup now that 300-500G hard drives are increasingly common.
What about C3D (Score:5, Interesting)
C3D presented this technology back in 1999 or even earlier, they even had working prototypes.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c
These discs could hold as much as 140 gigabytes of data!
Compared to this, blu-ray looks kind of outdated.
But the company went banckrupt (I think), and now in 2005 we are presented a technology IMHO less advanced than C3D.
It's already been decided (Score:2, Interesting)
There will also be hell of a lot more people who won't what to upgrade from the DVD players they brought last year.
Over here in the UK we might have actually have PS3's by then and possible be in four figures for the number of people watching HDTV.
Re:Uh-huh. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Pepsi Challenge (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:the geeks will decide (Score:3, Interesting)
In other news ... (Score:2, Interesting)
Both are Stillborn due to Excess DRM. (Score:3, Interesting)
Infintesimally small percentage when you factor in the ultra DRM on these machines that require DRM connections everywhere in the chain or drops back to standard DVD resolution by downsampling.
I would be a prime candidate for next generation disk, I have been completely turned off by DRM overkill. So while at first I was drooling over the possability of HD LOTR goodness, I have completely given up caring as I won't be buying in for the DRM from hell setup.
And you can bet the vast majority of people like my Mom and Grandmother who only have DVD because I bought them one will NEVER swith.
I think it is toast just like the DRMd Super Audio CDs...
It's more expensive, more restrictive, more complicated, but hey you get better quality if you have all the right gear and the planets align.
A torrent to an actual HD DVD disc (Score:4, Interesting)
I also posted this as a reply, but I figured some non-nested browsers might want to see this as well.
If I could break with Slashdot tradition and post an actual example instead of half-understood innuendo, here's an actual HD-DVD for your edification
I made a HD-DVD a few weeks ago with Apple's DVD Studio Pro 4. Here's a torrent to a
It's nothing fancy, but I say a big advantage of HD DVD is that I CAN ALREADY MAKE THEM!
http://216.99.212.233:6969/torrents/HD_DVD_TEST.d
Re:I'm not so sure about Sony (Score:3, Interesting)
You lost me here. Why you're trying to persuade people on the next-gen uber HDTV movie format when your attitude is that lossless is a waste and that VC1/H.264 at low bitrates is "quality" is beyond me. What's your interest here? If you don't give a shit how it looks or sounds, you can stick with SD DVD and leave the rest of us to BluRay/HD-DVD.
As far as LOTR:ROTK:EE is concerned, that's a 251 minute long movie according to iMDB. That works out to 15,060 seconds. Assuming HD-DVD ships this fall with 2 layer discs being available (I don't think 3+ layer HD-DVD or BD is realistic just yet for mass production), that's 30 GB of space. 30 GB = 30,720 MB = 245,760 Mb. That works out to 16.32 Mbit/sec of bandwidth for the full movie. With VC1/H.264 at 1920x1080 you're going to want 15-19 Mbit/sec for maximal video quality.
I trust you see the problem with HD-DVD. No room left for audio let alone extras. With BluRay's 50 GB capacity we get the following numbers: 50 GB = 51,200 MB = 409,600 Mb. That works out to 27.2 Mbit/sec of bandwidth for the full movie. More than enough for the whole 251 minute movie plus some high quality multichannel audio tracks (maybe even lossless). Extras are still iffy, but you're still a lot better off than you were with HD-DVD.
In so far as HD-DVD being cheaper, that's a red herring. Economies of scale will make any cost associated with BluRay disappear in short order. AFAIK the materials involved cost the same for both formats, the only cost for BluRay that's beyond HD-DVD is the cost of the duplicator hardware itself (HD-DVD can be retrofitted onto existing DVD hardware IIRC). But when you're dealing with hundreds of thousands or tens of millions of units per movie, the cost of those duplicators quickly disappear.
I think HD-DVD is going to lose out here, I just hope this format war ends quickly so people can be saved the pain of having to rebuy movies in whichever format succeeds...
Re:How much of it is just the name? (Score:3, Interesting)
FireWire 400 does a lot better job of sustaining high bitrates of streaming data than USB2 does. Which is why non-real time tasks like copying files off a digital camera use USB, while real-time video transfer uses FireWire.
Re:Maybe true, but the capacity is important (Score:3, Interesting)
2) The codecs used for HDTV are a lot more efficient. (A normal MPEG4 can typically reduce a normal DVD movie to 1.5 or 2 GB.)
3) I got my numbers from a source at least somewhat related to BluRay.
4) It doesn't matter that BluRay has a lot more space. The topic was if it will fit a movie or not. Once it fits a movie all else is bonus, but not requirement.
My point here wasn't that HD-DVD was better than BluRay. It's quite obvious that BluRay can fit more data. The point was that HD-DVD is sufficient at least for the time being. Personally I don't care what we use, I'll just get a dual play which plays both formats.