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HP only stopped supporting it because of technology they wanted included.  I believe that Blu-ray in the end will win - superior size and now managed copy.

I see another battle on the same level of the DVD+R/RW & DVD-R/RW war.

ScifiterX wrote:

I see another battle on the same level of the DVD+R/RW & DVD-R/RW war.

VHS vs BetaMax Round 2

MacBoy4139 wrote:

thunderscope wrote:

In the end I don't think It'll matter, we'll probably see drives that can play both

It has been reported that that really isn't possible, as HD-DVD uses a red laser, while blu-ray uses a blue laser, and the bits of data are smaller.

they will just make a drive with 2 laser... i think thats what the did with combo drives... one laser for DVDs and one for CDs

LLEVIATHANN wrote:

ScifiterX wrote:

I see another battle on the same level of the DVD+R/RW & DVD-R/RW war.

VHS vs BetaMax Round 2

Nah! That had a a clear winner. I mean this'll probably end with dual-standard compatible equipment and another format or group of formats vying to replace it in a few short years.

ScifiterX wrote:

LLEVIATHANN wrote:

ScifiterX wrote:

I see another battle on the same level of the DVD+R/RW & DVD-R/RW war.

VHS vs BetaMax Round 2

Nah! That had a a clear winner. I mean this'll probably end with dual-standard compatible equipment and another format or group of formats vying to replace it in a few short years.

OMG let's pray not and the clear winner wasn't the best technology either. I've got a feeling that with Sony's experience in Disc technology they'll win. I think one reason M$ isn't in Sony's camp is because of their competing consoles and the war for the living room. Mmmm solid state.....smurf optics.

HD DVD is much cheaper to produce...I'd back that if I were anyone because it is a standard backed by the DVD-Forum. Bluray is just sony smurf...

Hmm, what I found real interesting by reading two press releases is that Blu-Ray seems to want to keep the MPEG-2 compression format.  What happened to H.264? Since that is the case, then I think I'd rather see HD-DVD win out since it seems to openly support MPEG-2, H.264 and VC-9 (Windows Media).

It seems stupid that Apple is supporting Blu-Ray and Sony has given H.264 the brush off.

-mark

avkills wrote:

Hmm, what I found real interesting by reading two press releases is that Blu-Ray seems to want to keep the MPEG-2 compression format.  What happened to H.264? Since that is the case, then I think I'd rather see HD-DVD win out since it seems to openly support MPEG-2, H.264 and VC-9 (Windows Media).

It seems stupid that Apple is supporting Blu-Ray and Sony has given H.264 the brush off.

-mark

What!!   How can that be?  If that's true, the extra capacity of the Blue Ray disc wouldn't even come close to matching HD DVD in terms of video quality, dispite HD DVD's smaller capacity.

Movie studio support is much more important to these formats that computer company support.  More movie studios are leaning toward BluRay lately.

In the end, all computer companies will end up supporting whichever consumer format wins out, based on which one has the most software.

If I'm not mistakes, M$ has a vested interest in HD-DVD becuase they adopted WMV-10 as part of their standard.  H.264 is part of both standards, so Apple wins either way.

I think I'll just wait to see which one wins before I sink any money into any form of it. DVDs are good enough for now, at least for me. What would be even better is if Apple came up with a online distribution of movies in H.264, however, broadband speeds will need a thorough cranking before this is feasible.

-mark

LukeLucas wrote:

how is this gonna unfold?

for those to lazy to read it, the article is about HP switching to support for HD-DVD. MS and intel have already jumped on that bandwagon, while Apple remains in the BluRay camp. so if intel is supporting HD and apple is supporting BluRay, how much of a problem is this gonna cause? will apple be strongarmed into HD-DVD? or the other way around?

discuss.

So here's what went down for those not in the know.

Back before October of this year the studios that supported Blu-ray had the same number of titles as the studios that supported HD-DVD. Thus the content was split 50/50 and everything was nice and balanced.

But then Microsoft got winds that Paramount and Warner Bros. were going to switch to Blu-ray, and Bill was like "oh crap! Blu-ray hasn't adopted our proprietary iHD standard yet, and we'll loose money! Plus Blu-ray doesn't allow people to copy movies to their computers, so our godawful Media center won't be able get any content" ok... so maybe those weren't his exact words, but you get the gist.

So Microsoft said it would support HD-DVD which had adopted Microsoft's iHD (which is a standard for making DVD menus and the like). Intel was like "hmm... whatever bill says then" and said it supported HD-DVD too.

Paramount and Warner Bros. then said that they would support Blu-ray, totally unfazed by Microsoft. This means there is only one studio that exclusively supports HD-DVD (universal).

Back in computer world, HP was like  a kid that notices that all of his friends just went to another lunch table (HP had originally supported Blu-ray because it is technically superior, it has a theoretical max of at least 200GiB). So HP was like "hold on a second. if you don't adopt iHD and allow copying I'm going to the other lunch table."

The Blu-ray guys said "sure, we'll allow copying, but that Microsoft iHD is complete crap, we use Java which is 100x better." HP was then like, "fine then, I'm leaving!"

So here's where the situation is now. The vast majority of movie studios support Blu-ray, video game producers do, and computer manufactures do (like Dell and Apple). The only people supporting HD-DVD are HP, Intel, Microsoft and Universal. Here's the catch. Bill said that if Blu-ray implemented copying, that could be enough to get his support (remember, both require WMV). So HD-DVD is as good as dead, since they agreed to do that.

Also, that article had no idea what it was talking about, there never was a "networking technology" involved in this mess.