Blu-ray and HD-DVD: The facts
Tip 2: Which is best? Most of you will be aware of the format war between Blu-ray and HD-DVD. Echoing the VHS versus Betamax dust-up that rocked the video-cassette world in the 1980s, this conflict could well result in one of the new formats becoming at first marginalized and later completely obsolete. It's clearly in your interest to pick the right one--but which is it? Technical differences There's little to choose between the two formats when it comes to picture quality. Both support the MPEG-2, VC-1 and AVC (also called H.264) video-compression standards, although which one is actually used depends on the individual movie disc, so quality can vary. HD-DVDs almost exclusively use the more advanced VC-1 and AVC codecs, while the first generation of Blu-ray movies uses the aging MPEG-2 codec. This led to early criticism of Blu-ray's picture quality in some circles, but the more recent Blu-ray releases that utilize the advanced codecs look every bit as gorgeous as HD-DVD.
On the memory front, Blu-ray's greater storage capacity would appear to give it a slight edge. A dual-layer Blu-ray disc has 50GB of space, while the equivalent HD-DVD has "only" 30GB. In real terms, this means a Blu-ray disc can hold around 8.5 hours of HD video to HD-DVD's 5.1 hours. It's not as if you're going to have to spread single movies over multiple HD-DVDs, but more a case of Blu-ray having more space for extra features and additional audio tracks. There's also the possibility that the extra capacity could be used to encode video or audio at higher quality in the future. Content is king Since some time has passed since the launch of both formats, there are now the beginnings of a decent movie library available worldwide. HD-DVD is not currently region-coded, so any US discs you buy will work on an Asian player--you can go online and buy the likes of The Departed and Babel right now. Blu-ray movies are region-coded, however, so you'll have to stick with US discs for your local Asian player. This is a unique advantage for Asia because the US library of Blu-ray movies is far better than other regions, of which only the likes of Casino Royale and Kingdom of Heaven really do the format justice.
Blu-ray's superior studio support is certainly a major selling point, as Sony CEO Howard Stringer was keen to highlight in a January 2007 interview with CNET's sister site GameSpot. "The three biggest box-office winners of this year were, in order: Sony, Disney and Fox. Those are the three Blu-ray players. The fourth is Warner, and they release in both formats, so it doesn't hurt. If you are going to be buying discs, you are going to be buying an awful lot of Blu-ray discs going forward--if you want Pirates of the Caribbean or James Bond or Da Vinci Code or Spider-Man."
Sony PlayStation 3 has also done wonders for the Blu-ray cause. Prior to its launch in March 2007, HD-DVD players had been significantly cheaper than their Blu-ray equivalents. The S$799 (US$588.27) PS3 changed this, and the fact that it's also a games console makes it a significant Trojan Horse for getting Blu-ray players into living rooms--you buy it for games but end up using it to watch HD movies, too. Or at least that's Sony's hope. So, at the moment, things are looking very rosy for the Blu-ray camp. But the war is far from over--HD-DVD technology is cheaper and easier to mass-produce, and it's not inconceivable we could be seeing boatloads of affordable Chinese-made HD-DVD players hitting the shops by the end of the year. That could change everything. | ||||||||||||
1: Tip 1: The benefits
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