Quote:
basementjack wrote:
 Sonnie,
I love my HD-DVD. I don't even own a BD player or movies or a PS3. And I'm not a sony fan. But I have to say, I think BD is going to win the war, and this saddens me greatly, because I don't think it's a better format, much like VHS wasn't better than Beta nor LaserDisk, and the original Xbox was better than the PS2. I've picked up BD titles and most don't even have Dolby Digital plus, let alone true HD. (And if you haven't tried the in movie commentaries, you're missing out!)
I'm doing my part to try and make HD-DVD win - at best buy I interrupted a salesman pitching Blu-Ray to talk up HD-DVD. I've steped up the pace on buying HD-DVD software in hopes it might make a difference.
But I'm being realistic about what I see in the market place. |
You are correct, bluray does not support Dolby Digital plus, but it does support Dolby Digital core at its highest data rate, which so happens to be the same data rate that Warner ports to DD+ on HD DVD titles(640kbps). However, what it does have, and chooses to emphasize is uncompressed PCM audio which is far better than any loseless codec. Bluray doesn't need Dolby TruHD nor DD+. It has the capacity to use uncompressed PCM at the studio convience, so I would not hold the lack of advance codecs against them.
HD DVD NEEDS these advance codecs, that is why they are supported on that format. If HD DVD where to use uncompressed PCM without the packing features of the advance codecs, then it would run out of capacity with longer movies, or the video would have to be further compressed to include extra's.
While I own the A1, I am a supporter of BOTH formats. I have no issues with Toshiba or Sony. Aside from the larger capacity of bluray, the are both technologically the same. However, studio support is not, and I think everyone is overlooking the fact that cheap players don't bring software. You can have all the cheap players in the world, but if there is little to very little to play on it, it won't survive.
CES was not good to HD DVD. The only real announcement they had was that three chinese electronic companies that specialize in cheap DVD players along with Onkyo are going to release HD DVD players in 2007. None had prototypes to show. Universal made no big release announcements, so HD DVD was visible with nothing to show. There were no additional studios going neutral, and the few that are going to support HD DVD in the future made no special titles announcements. You cannot spin this, and its not good for HD DVD, and something to worry about in the future.
I personally think that the studios have already decided for us the winner, and are going to push long and hard to make it a reality. BR exclusive studio are showing such enthusiasm(too much IMO), and putting out the word so loudly, that its all the reporters from my station could talk about. As a matter of fact, in talking with my counterparts from 3 other local stations in my area, their reporters also really talked up bluray when they reported back to the station from CES. That to me is not a good sign for HD DVD, it was as if they were not even there.
Toshiba really needs to ditch the idea that they are going to cheap their way to victory. They need content along with cheap players if they are going to win.