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Media PlayStation (Games) Sony Technology Hardware

Majority Of Customers Prefer Blu-Ray 413

Posted by Zonk from the we-have-a-winnah dept.
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.
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Majority Of Customers Prefer Blu-Ray More

Majority Of Customers Prefer Blu-Ray

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  • Uh-huh. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Musteval ( 817324 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @07:56AM (#13071899)
    And what percentage were convinced by the cool name and blueness, rather than the fact that one is slightly different?

    • Re:Uh-huh. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by agraupe ( 769778 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @08:01AM (#13071949) Journal
      Umm... probably 80-100%. That's the point of marketing. Whatever speeds its adoption is a good thing, because it is technically superior.
      • The problem is that they're not identical. BluRay is technically superior. It can hold more content at the same bitrate HD-DVD uses, or it can hold the same amount of content at a higher bitrate than HD-DVD uses. I imagine that'll be especially useful for long movies like any of the Lord of the Rings films in their Extended Edition form.

    • Re:Uh-huh. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by surefooted1 ( 838360 )
      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.

      Yea, because the average consumer cares about manufacturing cost vs. features and data storage.
      This poll is about useless.

  • How much of it is just the name? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @07:56AM (#13071902)
    How much of this customer preference is just the name? "Blu-Ray" is easy to remember, and does not sound like much anything else. "HD-DVD" sounds like just more tech alphabet soup, or part of a features list string for a Dell desktop ad.

    • Re:How much of it is just the name? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DigitumDei ( 578031 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @07:58AM (#13071926) Homepage Journal
      Yes, and right now its just the name of the hardware.

      I bet whichever format gets more of the "cool stuff" to begin with will more than likely be the format that wins, regardless of the actual technology.
    • Probably most of it, in the consumer poll. Most people don't know much other than the name. That said, the two variants are basically the same except for the storage capacity and manufacturing process.

      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 he

      • Maybe true, but the capacity is important (Score:5, Interesting)

        by tkrotchko ( 124118 ) * on Friday July 15, 2005 @08:26AM (#13072150) Homepage
        The capacity of HD-DVD is not enough to hold movies and extras at 1080i.

        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.
        • 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:How much of it is just the name? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by theNote ( 319197 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @08:06AM (#13071990)
      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.
      • 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 produ

    • Re:How much of it is just the name? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dsginter ( 104154 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @08:11AM (#13072045)
      "Blu-Ray" is easy to remember, and does not sound like much anything else.

      Unfortunately, the plan is to call it a "BD-ROM" or "BD-RAM", depending on rewritability. I can see it now:

      CD-ROM
      CD-R
      CD-RW
      DVD-ROM
      DVD-R
      DVD-RW
      DVD +R
      DVD+RW
      BD-ROM
      BD-R
      BD-RW
      BD+RW
      HD-DVD
      HD -DVD-R
      HD-DVD-RW
      HD-DVD+RW

      I think the plan is to get the consumer to actually pass out when shopping for media. Then, the store clerks will just steal their wallets.

    • Re:How much of it is just the name? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jacexpo069 ( 521719 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @08:24AM (#13072139) Homepage
      Right, like how the name FIREWIRE blew the jumble of letters USB2 right out of the water, even if it was technically superior
      • Are you refering to iLink or to IEEE1394?
      • "Right, like how the name FIREWIRE blew the jumble of letters USB2 right out of the water, even if it was technically superior"

        You are comparing apples and oranges. These are two entirely DIFFERENT interfaces.

        More relevant is how the "better name" Firewire really eclipsed Sony's name for the same thing (something like IEEE-1394, I think).

      • Re:How much of it is just the name? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by NutscrapeSucks ( 446616 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @09:22AM (#13072709)
        Unfortunately, Apple restricted the use of the "Firewire" brand name in the early days, so most PC implementations were forced to use the unsexy "IEEE1394" moniker.

        However, the real reason USB2 was victorious is because it is free technology while Firewire still requires some sort of licensing fee. Hopefully now that Apple and Intel are in bed, they can come to some sort of agreement and 1394 will become a standard PC chipset feature.

  • Pepsi Challenge (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 15, 2005 @07:57AM (#13071910)
    This isn't like one of those setup Pepsi challenges where they would shake up a bottle of Coke making it flat so the people would choose Pepsi is it?

    Now why is it I think that all side-by-side comparisons can be equated to the Pepsi challenge? Well with a rhetorical question I'll be the one that answers it for you. If you're seeking a certain result you will find it; thus, whatever side-by-side comparison done always seems like a Pepsi challenge whereby the results are skewed by either a deliberate or unconscious malicious act in some way.
    • That's the one where the Pepsi rep makes sure that he pees in the Coke bottles before each and every "Taste Challenge".

    • Re:Pepsi Challenge (Score:5, Interesting)

      by sbrown123 ( 229895 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @08:02AM (#13071963) Homepage
      I liken this to more how TV resellers adjust the color and contrast settings on televisions so customers think one has a better picture compared to one next to it.
    • Funny you should mention that.

      My son was about 7 years old when they were doing the Pepsi Challenge in a mall.

      He took it very seriously. Tasted both and said that he preferred the one that turned out to be Pepsi.

      When they foolishly asked him "why," he says very seriously, "It's colder, and it has more carbonation."

  • History Repeats... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Manip ( 656104 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @07:57AM (#13071912)
    If history of technology has shown us anything, in a two horse race the cheapest normally wins unless their is a VERY good reason for it not to.

    This might be one of those cases; HD-DVD seems perfectly capable as a higher capacity DVD; why would people want to pay a premium for a few more features about 10% higher quality?
    • I think the economics argument is a red herring though. AFAIK the big argument against BluRay is that duplicators would need to purchase all-new equipment to produce BluRay discs. HD-DVD's claim to fame is that you can retrofit production onto existing DVD duplication hardware.

      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 approac

      • I'm not so sure about Sony (Score:5, Insightful)

        by tkrotchko ( 124118 ) * on Friday July 15, 2005 @08:30AM (#13072188) Homepage
        "I don't think Sony is about to repeat their Beta experience."

        They certainly haven't learned from their ATRAC experience.
        • 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.
          • Can you give a real-world example where Blu-ray would provide a better experience than HD-DVD for "Hollywood" style content. Sure, as a floppy disc replacement for rewritable files. But for read-only video content?

            Bear in mind that once you get a high enough peak data rate, higher data rates don't look any better. So it isn't that the capacity of Blu-ray means all discs will look better - for the vast majority of films, both formats would let you use a maximum legal bitrate throughout the file. It's only t
    • There are not just two competing standards. If I am looking for something to replace DVD, the biggest competition seems to be DVD, which itself has not really replaced CDs for many uses and will clearly be the cheaper price. The better the standard, the more compelling it could be to make inroads against CDs and DVDs. Who is going to buy either one? There needs to be more-compeling features, better capacity, more robust, etc., especially since there are so many other issues that are even less-well defin

    • Re:History Repeats... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Keebler71 ( 520908 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @08:39AM (#13072285) Journal
      You are right on. What people "want" or "prefer" is largely irrelevant. What they will pay for is all that matters.

      For instance, almost everyone I know complains about Southwest Airlines - particularly the dreaded "Cattle Call" seating assignments... yet when push comes to shove (pun) their planes are full of paying passengers and they are the only major airline to post a profit every quarter since 9-11.

    • Re:History Repeats... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )
      Well, the primary reason it's not quite like that is that the low-end is already covered by DVDs. HiDef DVD is only for those that have bought HDTV equipment, which is sort of pricy.

      The real decider here is indirect deployment. XBox 360 will have DVD. PS3 will have Blue-Ray. Revolution will have DVD. That makes me very comfortable that Blue-Ray is a format that will remain supported for a very long time. If HD-DVD flops, MS chooses BD for their next console after 360, what is left?

      When I buy a movie on Bl

  • From the very start of TFA (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Lord of the Wazz ( 636849 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @07:58AM (#13071917)
    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.

    Shock horror, the Blu-ray guys have come up with a poll that says their product is better. Next story please...

  • But what do the pornmongers think?` (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 15, 2005 @07:58AM (#13071920)
    As we all know from the VHS-beta wars, which format wins out depends not on what consumers want, but what the pornography industry prefers.

    • Re:But what do the pornmongers think?` (Score:5, Informative)

      by jurt1235 ( 834677 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @08:11AM (#13072042) Homepage
      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
    • Stop the fuck modding this shit "Insightful". I guess I've read this sentence almost verbatim at least 100 times here on slashdot (and I tend to browse at +4 or +5).

      Some reasons:
      1) Unlike VHS/beta these media is not only used for movies. Far from it. I guess most BR discs for PS3 would be games. And I guess at least half of my discs at home are not video (and most of the others are filled with *.avi but I digress).
      2) VHS was more practical. Really.
      3) Sony are nuts about their proprietary formats.
      4) Most of
      • Most of the people do _not_ purchase porno. If you're past-teen single loser

        Psst: Porno is sometimes purchaces by married people, including women. Shhhh! Don't tell anyone, though. It's important that we pretend the entire multi-million-dollar industry is driven by skeevy 40-something single pervs in yellow trenchcoats, so we can all continue to be morally outraged about it.

    • Re:But what do the pornmongers think?` (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @08:18AM (#13072098) Homepage
      The porn industry prefers SD over HD so you can't see the boob job scars, unclean skin and that the "20yos" are actually 30 and a thick layer of make-up. That is the norm. I'm sure a few high-enders like Playboy and such will come out with solid HDTV releases, but most of the industry don't want to. It screws up both the "cheap equipment" and "cheap actors" bit, the price of the DVD platter isn't the real issue.

      Kjella

  • I prefer 8" floppy disks (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    But that doesn't mean anything, since I'm a classic/vintage computer user (PDP-11)
    Seriously, though...how do surveys this early in the technology curve for the next-DVD-replacement mean anything?

  • If it were up to the customers... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jjeff1 ( 636051 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @07:59AM (#13071929)
    On DVD's we wouldn't have to sit thru FBI warnings or have region restrictions, or not allowed to fast forward thru scenes.
    That survey is good to make people think they're being listened to. They're not.
    • Actually, only certain studios seem to do that. I've found that most of the movies I watch don't have that problem (20th Century Fox and Miramax don't, while I seem to recall every Paramount or Disney movie insists on you seeing everything before reaching the main menu).

      You're not suggesting boycotting the competing formats at least, but if you want to complain, complain to the individual studios who can't seem to accept that you actually bought (and now own, or did I license it?) their product and just wa
    • That's one of the biggest things that tempts me to build a Linux media center to replace my current DVD player: mplayer lets me skip all that crap at the start of the disc.

      Maybe it's unreasonable of me, but I resent being forced to play some "Don't download DVD's, it's theft" crap before I can watch the movie that I bloody paid for.

      On a rental disc, I can accept it. I can even accept mandatory adverts on hired discs. But not on my own, paid-for discs, thanks very much.

      • What's even worse is the disks that disable the stop button. Can't remember what it was, but I'd put a DVD in, then suddenly something came up, so tried to stop it. And couldn't. I think I eventually got the standby button to stop the whole mess, but for goodness sake!

  • To be expected (Score:5, Interesting)

    by saterdaies ( 842986 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @08:01AM (#13071946)
    Blu Ray discs hold more data. Anyone hearing a run down comparison is going to go with blu ray. Personally, I'm still a bit scared about potentially loosing data because the layer of protection is so small. Of course, I'm sure the comparison didn't say "the protection layer is almost non-existant in blu ray discs".

    It might be an unfounded fear, but I won't know that for at least a year after I get blu ray stuff.

    • Re:To be expected (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Blkdeath ( 530393 )
      Anyone hearing a run down comparison is going to go with blu ray. Personally, I'm still a bit scared about potentially loosing data because the layer of protection is so small.

      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).

  • Of course they prefer it. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 91degrees ( 207121 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @08:01AM (#13071950) Journal
    Blu Ray has a sexier name. HD-DVD sounds like somethign for an IBM PC.

  • Not to be confused with... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 15, 2005 @08:01AM (#13071951)
    The study's editor insightfully removed the "death-ray" option from the final results, despite an 82% preference rate among the 12-32 demographic.
  • Seriously, if you're running your own biased survey, you've loaded the dice in your favour, and you still only get 58% of the vote for something most people can't tell apart anyway, something is wrong.

    What isn't said there, is that all 1200 of these consumers work for Sony.

    • Seriously, if you're running your own biased survey, you've loaded the dice in your favour, and you still only get 58% of the vote for something most people can't tell apart anyway, something is wrong.

      Wow, I know people don't usually read the article, but at least read the post. You're forgetting the hefty "undecided" number.

      According to the survey:
      Blu-Ray: 58%
      HD-DVD: 16%
      Undecided: 26%

      58 trounces 16 no matter how you cut it.

      Then again, you being skepticaly of an unbiased survey isn't exactly wrong.

  • Well, I'm convinced (Score:3, Funny)

    by BaudKarma ( 868193 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @08:07AM (#13072004) Journal
    Sounds like the Blu-Ray people have the clearly superior product. I guess I'll be stopping by Frys on my way home from work to pick one up.

    On second thought, they'll probably all be gone if I wait that long. I'd better swing by during lunch.

  • the geeks will decide (Score:2, Insightful)

    by aoty ( 533561 )
    Seeing how most consumers don't own televisions that support hi-def content, the only people who will care about Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD are the geeks, folks who are likely to understand the difference and who will extract benefit from one format over the other. Joe Sixpack is perfectly happy watching his full frame flicks that he rents from Blockbuster on his 27" set.

    This may be one format war where the best product actually wins.

    • Re:the geeks will decide (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Blkdeath ( 530393 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @08:24AM (#13072140) Homepage
      Seeing how most consumers don't own televisions that support hi-def content, the only people who will care about Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD are the geeks, folks who are likely to understand the difference and who will extract benefit from one format over the other. Joe Sixpack is perfectly happy watching his full frame flicks that he rents from Blockbuster on his 27" set.

      I'd be careful there; with no payments until 200x, no interest equal payments for 24/36 months, etc. you'd be surprised what kind of home theatre Joe Sixpack has in his house. 52" Hi-Def screen, 7.1 digital receiver with pre-amp, 1000w tower mains, 100w sub-woofer, 5-disc DVD player connected with Monster Component video and digital optical audio cables, XBox and PS2 with A/V upgrade pack, RFI filtering power centre, ...

      In short Joe Sixpack has a better theatre setup than I do.

      • Though it doesn't change your point, Joe Sixpack buys a $5000 TV and $200 home theater in a box from my experience. I sell TVs at a major electronics/appliance retailer and nobody realizes that theres better audio out there than the garbage we sell. We do have some awesome TVs though, and people do buy them.

  • Will be obsolete before the dust settles... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @08:08AM (#13072011) Homepage
    Sigh... not again...

    ...the early adopters who back the wrong horse will be punished and will learn a life lesson that will make them reluctant to embrace new technology...

    ...the general public will sit back waiting for the dust to settle...

    ...it will take five years before you can walk into a video store and see which format is the "normal" one, and see a choice of models at low prices stacked up in the local K-Mart or Costco...

    ...and just as I buy one, they announce the next pair of competing, incompatible (or compatible-in-"many"-but-not-mine) standards.

    As Theotocopulos says in the H. G. Wells movie Things to Come: "Stop this 'progress!' Stop it, I say!"

    • Sadly, I have already backed the wrong horse, by buying an HDTV early enough that it didn't have digital inputs. "Sure," I thought to myself, "It's not digital, but I'll bet component analog is the lowest-common-denominator standard that will work with everything down the road." Unfortunately, we already know for certain that HD-DVD won't output HD on component outputs or DVI. Sony doesn't seem like the type of company who'd open things up, either, so I'm not holding my breath there.

      I guess I won't be bu

  • Feature List (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bigmurd ( 884582 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @08:12AM (#13072052)
    Sounds like they missed the price tag out of the feature list. If you compared the feature list of Fords and Ferraris, you'd expect people to want the Ferrari more - but what do people buy? Getting slowly annoyed with these skewed PR surveys. Surely press hacks must be getting bored of filling space with meaningless copy?
    • "If you compared the feature list of Fords and Ferraris, you'd expect people to want the Ferrari more "

      Since most people since to prefer SUV's and pickups, I think Ford just might win that comparo...

  • Blue Ray (Score:4, Funny)

    by KrunZ ( 247479 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @08:14AM (#13072065)
    Maybe people who voted actually wanted these rays: http://www.crystalinks.com/bluecrystals.html [crystalinks.com]

    FYI: Google gives a ration 1:3 for "blue-ray" vs "blu-ray".

  • Consumers also thought beta was better than VHS (Score:3, Informative)

    by voss ( 52565 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @08:17AM (#13072086)
    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)
    • 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 match

    • Re:Consumers also thought beta was better than VHS (Score:4, Insightful)

      by almostmanda ( 774265 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @08:47AM (#13072366)
      No, VHS won because Sony wouldn't license porn. But, with the porn UMDs out there that Sony seemed happy to license, it looks like they have learned from their mistake on that one.
  • Sony's PS3 is to use the Blu-Ray format.

    Well that should be enough for 85% of the people who read /. -- seems like it's already a done-deal.
    The other 15% would probably go with whatever Xbox-360 comes with...
    • It's not just Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD... you also have to include DVD in there, which as far as most consumers think is just fine. They aren't going to upgrade their hardware without a compelling reason - and the only compelling reason considered here is image quality on HDTV. That won't push hardware sales.

      Video game console sales will, however. Folks will be a lot more inclined to buy next-generation disks if they've already got a player sitting around and don't have to buy an expensive separate unit.

      PC a
  • The majority of consumers have no opinion becuase they have no idea what either technology is and dont really care because they do not own HDTVs
  • 58% don't prefer Blu-ray. They prefer the appearance of Blu-ray images. The next question is the more important one: How much more money would you be willing to pay over the HD DVD to get the Blu-ray image. My guess is that ~85% would say less than 20% more money.

    Personally, I only buy DVDs on sale, at $10 or less.

  • I give (Score:2, Insightful)

    by theantipop ( 803016 )
    Honestly, the two technologies are close enough in features that I would much rather just avoid a format war than have to deal with the bullcrap I put up with to write to a DVD.
  • That's the main selling point of HD-DVD. Blu-ray has more data storage, but it's cheaper to make players for HD-DVD. If they're looking solely at features, of course blu-ray will win.

  • What about C3D (Score:5, Interesting)

    by zlogic ( 892404 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @08:38AM (#13072274)
    Remember the C3D company? They invented a CD which could hold a nearly infinite number of layers because each of them is completely transparent, but if the laser is focused on a layer and shining on it, the layer is self-illuminating.
    C3D presented this technology back in 1999 or even earlier, they even had working prototypes.
    http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ch ronicle/archive/1999/11/29/BU19966.DTL [sfgate.com]
    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.
  • Lest face it, this time next year there will be a few thousand HD-DVD players sold to early adopters and a few million Blu-Ray players sold disguised as PS3's.

    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.

  • Reliability? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @09:36AM (#13072847) Journal
    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.

    Personally, I'm the most interested in a format that can be at least as reliable (preferrably even more) than the DVD-R format. Now that would be something for data archival -- a common format that's reliable as hell. Especially as the storage size keeps increasing, I keep finding this to be an important factor. But for some reason you rarely hear about it in the Blu-ray/HD-DVD debate, but rather just what's more costly. If Blu-ray is more expensive but also clearly more reliable in addition to a greater storage, I'll happily pay at least 50% more for one of those than a HD-DVD.

  • Looking at history... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Chris Mattern ( 191822 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @10:01AM (#13073126)
    It's noticeably better quality, it's more expensive, it's backed by Sony...

    ...yep. It's doomed.

    Chris Mattern

  • Right... (Score:3, Informative)

    by DaveCBio ( 659840 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @10:48AM (#13073671)
    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.

  • Both are Stillborn due to Excess DRM. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by guidryp ( 702488 ) on Friday July 15, 2005 @12:47PM (#13075081)
    The market for those that have equipment that can show the resolution difference of HD content is pretty small. DVD offered something for everyone, HD offers something for a tiny percentage.

    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)

    by benwaggoner ( 513209 ) <ben@waggoner.microsoft@com> on Friday July 15, 2005 @12:56PM (#13075182) Homepage
    Folks,

    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 .dmg file of it. The only player I've tested this with is DVD Studio Pro 4.6 on a Mac G5, but I think there is a beta Moonlight player that could do this as well. I'd be curious to hear about anyone not on a G5 Mac that can get this to play.

    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.dm g.torrent?1C6B407CD6671B2BB03F55C49D67CEB584A74D90 [216.99.212.233]

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