Hollywood is going to be HD or BD ?

[srfscenar]

Just out of curiocity...do we know the direction the Hollywood companies will take for dvd's? Is it going to be HD or BD?
The total cost to buy Scenarist to create both options is pretty big. Its will not be easy for small companies to follow especially if Hollywood is going to release some in HD and some in BD...
Thanx!

[jshumate]

Most companies support both, but there are some that only support BluRay. I'm not sure if there are any studios that only support HD-DVD, but if so, I think it's just one. Most companies will actually support both waiting to see if there is a clear winner.

[kingtim]

Studios and major corporations have certainly positioned themselve towards one or the other. From what I've heard, and I could be wrong, in the HD-DVD corner only Universal now. Plus support form Microsoft.
Blu-ray has Sony (of course), MGM & Disney. Paramount and Warner Bros. moved from supporting HD-DVD to Blu-Ray.

20th Century Fox is sitting on the fence accordingly. If HD DVD sees a strong launch, more Blu-ray-only studios may ultimately show where their true allegiances lie: making money. So it's anyones guess.

I'd like to show my support for Blu-tray. I hope after Beta Sony finally wins one.

[srfscenar]

i must say that i support for BD also...i hope though that we will have a winner soon...and just one please...! Too much trouble for everybody to have 2 formats...!

[Trahald]

so far concensus by reviewers is hddvd disks out now look better than the bd disks out now. sony says before 2006 is overe there will be some dual layer bd disks which should help things on the bluray end.

[mikesouth]

Considering what I am hearing from my pals in da biz BD is experiencing an almost 50% failure rate with D/L disks, I don't see this being fixed by christmas personally.

[Sharktooth]

All i can tell you is the BD is too much expensive and not ready for prime time. The only available option is the samsung player (that doesnt support dual layer discs) and every manufacturers (expecially toshiba) are trying to do "what they want" in their own way (custom BD media and players) instead of collaborating to define stardardized supports.
So all my support goes to HD-DVD that's more "standardized", not regionalized and less expensive (sounds weird coz there's M$ behind it... but sony is on the first entry of my black list).
Obviously that's my personal point of view...

[Blue_MiSfit]

Indeed. Maybe if BR was using a modern codec for HD and not MPEG-2 they would have a chance...

[peter100m]

@Blue_MiSfit: Indeed, all BR-discs so far has been mpeg2 but remember that the standard does support VC-1 and H.264/AVC

[jshumate]

Reviews of the latest batch of BluRay discs says that they finally began to use VC-1. The reason the original releases used MPEG-2 is because Sony couldn't get VC-1 or H.264/AVC to work in time for the original releases. I wouldn't be surprised if Sony goes back and redoes the original releases in VC-1. The reviews of the original BluRay discs were pretty mediocre. I didn't find any reviewers who were real happy with the product.

[Golgot13]

So all my support goes to HD-DVD that's more "standardized", not regionalized and less expensive (sounds weird coz there's M$ behind it... but sony is on the first entry of my black list).


It is same for me, I support HD DVD because it's "standardized",
less expensive and there is "Advanced Content", aka "iHD".
But I don't like, no I hate VC1 codec.

But if BD will be more cheaper (replication and player) and it will use
H264 video codec, may be I will support BD.


Golgot13
HDDVD membership

[Sharktooth]

BD cant be cheaper... the supports are necessarily more expensive than HD-DVDs.
however VC1 is similar in quality to MPEG-4 ASP... so it's not so bad, but h.264 is much better... :D
BD with h.264 is useless, plenty of wasted diskspace... HD-DVDs will be more than enough for storing movies with h.264 encoded videos.

[Trahald]

The reviews ive seen for the vc-1 bd disks bring it on par quality wise with hddvds. so that definately helps. the hybrid hddvds (dvd-5/hddvd-15 or dvd-5/hddvd-30 or dvd-10/hddvd15) will be a plus for hddvd even through the tend to be more expensive. so people will have hddvd collections even before they are ready to buy a player. if i already have 5 hddvd titles and i have a choice between blu ray and hddvd, i might be inclined to by a player that supports what i already own .

blurays extra capacity will be nice for backups, but as sharktooth mentioned the new codecs will have plenty of bitrate on a hddvd for most movies.

[kingtim]

I heard that BD had problems too. This may be a but nieve of me but I favour BD because of the larger volume and therefore potential for better quality and more content.

From a corporation point-of-view I just see it as Sony Vs M$. And since I'm a Sony man, I go with BD. I also heard that the quality of BD was far superior to HD-DVD despite it's DL problems. Obviously I heard wrong. I don't see this ending soon.