Poll results: Blu-ray or HD DVD? You say Blu-ray

In last week's Pocket-lint.co.uk reader Poll we asked you, "Is Blu-ray going to beat HD DVD in the high-def format war?" The answer came back as a resounding "yes" with 64% of you rooting for the Sony-led camp.

[nice_cuppa]

a siily internet poll ! ..........really !

nothing to do with games again.

who activated the sdf ?

ps3 is great....... fanboys aint !

[xbox360migs]

And to vote you had to register and disclose your details anlong with your email address , cos I nearly voted but don't like putting out my details to everyone. A poll should be simple, click a button and many more people will participate hence differnet figures. Blu-ray could have got more or HD DVD...Who knows, all I know is this poll is not to be taken seriously.

[gta_cb]

well the thing is, out of EVERYONE here, who actually knew about the poll? i know i didnt and i think these are stupid.

[cain141]

If you had asked which should win, I would say a resounding yes for Blu-ray. However, Sony may have backed themselves into another beta-max situation where the better technology may fail. Overall, this debate is rather pointless. We really will have no clue which “will win” until someone does win.

[DrWan]

don't look at who is superior/inferior then, look at number of major studio support. Pointless argument, BD is already victorious

[WilliamRLBaker]

i do believe stand alone players in hd dvd are beating blu ray.
then look at how much blu ray movies are beating out hd dvd...by a pretty small ammount last i checked it was less then 10k.

I think neither format will win:) cause the first player ill get is a dual format player.

[DrWan]

why look at stand alone players, arent' ps3 blu ray players?

there are more blu ray players and more blu ray sales.

gamers are potential movie customers, and when they have the technology readily available, why not take it to the next lv and get a blu ray disc instead of a ordinary dvd?

I do agree with what u were probably 'thinking', ppl that buys stand alone are movie-philes and they would probably buy "more" movies than PS3 owner who's a gamer. But it's really hard to say which PS3 owners are also movie-phil as well, right?

blu ray should come out to the top, its useless argument, i don't think there will be double format for much longer (especially during holiday seasons), retailers do not have enough self space. If you ever worked at a retailer before, their self spaces actually is a cost/return factor into. Something that does not sell well will not stay on self, and most likily will be back catalogue into their online store only.

[fenderputty]

people bought PS3's for movies alone. They were the best deal on the market for Blu-Ray for quite some time. With the recent update, they became one of the best players too.

Also ... I along with many other PS3 owners buy blu-ray movies. I have 3 so far.

[Chemical]

my Ps3 has blu-ray!

[Phantom_Lee]

this WILL start a flame war...

[bamdad]

"YAWN" man its true when they say, seein the scenes of war can disensetize you

[JIN KAZAMA]

That was a brilliant choice Sony made by putting Blu-Ray in the PS3. I love that it has Blu-Ray in it. All those stupid anaylsts, saying it was a mistake and all, what a load of crap. PS3 is the KING

[pshizle]

ps3= no games

[achira]

pshizle wrong. blu ray sells good, because it has really far better quality than a dvd. the ps3 has enough games, i mean how many games do you play ? do you want to say that you have played the most games ? i am sure you did not. so stop talking bs. the xbox360 has nothing more, only dumb fps games, which are by the way better on the pc.

[carlman23]

And all Sony had to do was sacrifice their humongous lead in the videogame sector. More money to be made on winning the format war. Unfortunately, it's all the PS3 owners who lose out with loss of exclusives and crappy ports. As a gamer, I'm not cheering Sony on (even if I do personally believe that Blu-ray is superior).

[FirstknighT]

Blu-ray or HD DVD???? The winner is...........good ole regular dvd!

[Covenant]

*yawn*

Tom-a-to, to-mah-to.

Most people just recently adopted standard DVD. Most people do not have an HDTV. Most people don't care about HD and BR.

Get back to us in about two years.

[Hydrolex]

Ok

[Lyberator]

I say DVD. and not hd dvd. nor blue ray. What do they both have now? like a gigantic 2% share in a market dominated by dvd's? yeh im sure one will win eventually (rolls eyes). Or downloadable "thorugh the pipe" content will take off and destroy both of them.

[neogeo]

now i can upscale DVD! so goodbye blueray into the price drops

[sak500]

What tv do you have? 29" CRT? GOod luck

[blackmagic]

How do you define Superior/Inferior when talking about film?

Studio Support?

Blu-Ray has Sony's support; Sony owns Sony Pictures and Screen Gems and Sony has large stakes in MGM, Columbia and Tristar so those are solidly in the Blu-Ray camp.
Blu-ray also has Disney (Beuna Vista) and Fox but they are non-exclusive deals ie if it looks like it will be profitable enough, there is absolutely nothing stopping either company from publishing on HD-DVD.

HD-DVD has Universal and Porn (enough influence to be treated as a studio). Microsoft owns large stakes in Universal so it's solidly in the HD-DVD camp. The Porn industry has many manufacturing roadblocks erected by Sony and Disney but if there was enough profit, it would be worked out.

I would say Blu-ray has an advantage but considering that Universal is larger than all the studios that Sony owns or has stakes in combined and also considering that at any point there is nothing stopping all other studios from publishing where ever they want, whenever they want, I would say this is a debatable advantage.

Or Picture quality?

Every reputable publication for home theatre has unanimously found HD-DVD to have better picture quality. All of them - Home Theatre Magazine, Ultimate AV, Home Entertainment, The Perfect Vision, Sound and Vision, Electronic House - All of them gave HD-DVD the edge. No exceptions.

All movies need to be compressed to fit on either disc format. To compress the video data one of three CODECs are used; Mpeg2, H.264 or VC1. These CODECs compress the video data by use of complex mathematical algorythms ie they replace repetive or predictive data with mathematical formulas. In general this works very well except for one thing; film grain. Grain is completely random and as such all codecs completely destroy it. Thompsons Film Grain Technology was invented to prevent this. HD-DVD has made support of it mandatory. Blu-Ray does not support it or anything else which is even remotely similar. Period.

Anyway, regardless of which is superior by whatever criteria you choose to evaluate, the simple truth is that I doubt either MS/Universal or Sony/MGM/Columbia/Tristar will sway and so the >only< possible outcome is dual format players. Samsung, Pioneer and LG are nearing production on a number of models and drives and a couple are already out. That's what I am waiting for. Everyone that has an HD-DVD player or 360 addon or Blu-Ray player or ps3 will be completely screwed I'm afraid.

[pshizle]

right now duel format is the way to go right now

and i do have an HD DVD add on =)

i dont think this war will end until 2009 when everything goes HD though...

[LoveHateTragedy]

but they were fairly recent. Only released about 5 months ago. I know that the older Blu-ray movies were pressed on 25GB discs (MPEG-2), which wasn't enough. MPEG-2 was easier I guess since all films have their digital masters stored on MPEG-2, but the format requires a lot of space. As soon as they implemented 50GB discs and used H.264, the visual quality remarkably improved.

BTW, my Circuit City has a Blu-ray home theater set up near the film section, and it's damn impressive. Maybe it's because MI:3 has explosions every five seconds, but the quality was awesome. =]

[ngg12345]

Because universial is the one in a non pact agreement to make hd dvd movies. Seeing how blu-ray is already outselling hd-dvd 3:1 in hi def dvd sales, it doesn't seem possible that one studio can even compete with 3 studios. Also about picture quality, hd-dvd and blu ray use mpeg-2 as a compression. Both of them use this and look the exact same. I wonder if you are a conspiracist to support hd-dvd or someone who copied off a blog that isn't true.

[blackmagic]

I have a custom home theatre installation business. Personally, I have an Optoma HD81 1080p Projector going up on a 120" Screen Innovations Screen With a NAD 7.1 receiver and PSB speakers. I have demo stand-alone units for both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray but am waiting until a fully featured dual format player comes out before I personally make a purchase.

It's true that HD-DVD also supports Mpeg2 but to date there has not been a single title to use it.

Thomson's film grain
http://broadcastengineering...
Also see attached image

Universal
5262 catalogue
130 in development
http://www.imdb.com/company...

Sony/mgm/columbia/tristar
5499 catalogue
37 in development

breakdown:

Sony Pictures
411 catalogue
18 development
http://www.imdb.com/company...

Screen Gems
515 catalogue
8 in development
http://www.imdb.com/company...

MGM
3851 catalogue
11 in development
http://www.imdb.com/company...

Columbia Tristar
722 catalogue
0 in development
http://www.imdb.com/company...

Edit:
Sorry, didn't address your comment on the universal pact. Universal is one of the founding members of the HD-DVD consortium. Also, Microsoft (another member of the consortium) owns a large stake in the MSNBC news channel obviously co-owned with NBC. NBC owns Universal. You can tie all the consortium together. Toshiba makes the zune, hd-dvd add-on and various 360 components for MS. All the companies in the consortium are bound in business agreements making it nearly impossible to break out. Sure, if Blu-Ray ends up controlling the market then obviouly Universal will come over. Similarly, if HD-DVD controls the market then vice versa. As long as HD-DVD and Blu-Ray >combined< amount to less than 2% of DVD sales then neither is anywhere remotely near domination. Sure Blu-Ray is showing a lead right now but Toshiba players can now be found for $250. How long before HD-DVD players reach the 'critical mass' price point?
http://www.engadgethd.com/2...

Once again, I state my belief in dual format players.

[Silver360]

Lower the damn prices. I am not paying $25 - $35 for a DVD Blu-Ray or HD-DVD.

[drtysouf21]

both the PS3 and Xbox 360 with HD-DVD add-on but i haven't bought a movie on either yet. I have Netflix and just rent Blu-Ray and HD-DVD's from there till the prices go down.

[LoveHateTragedy]

Blu-ray sales say it all.

[Skynetone]

so will blu-ray movies

its really simple

[Robotz Rule]

:)

[Bhai]

...it had no competition as a next-gen DVD medium. Blu-ray came out a
year later and is thoroughly outselling HD-DVD. Its a great feat.
360 fanboys say that its because PS3 is boosting its sales, well,
wasn't that obvious from day1, who said Toshiba to face Sony in DVD
format ? Blu-ray was a clear victor on day 1, its only 6 months PS3
launched and there aren't many games around, when there will be games,
more PS3s will be sold, which means more Blu-Ray players in people's
homes, more support from studios, and within just one year ahead,
Blu-ray will vanish HD-DVD in its entirety...and Microsoft will be then
supporting Sony's product HaHaHa !!!

[Fat Onion]

Less than $295.00 on amazon. Also has a rebate for 5 free HD-DVD. This is a much better deal than the 360 ad-on

[sonarus]

Basically universal is the only major studio supporting hd dvd exclusively. Porn used to have exclusive support but now porn will be coming to blu ray. Hd dvd gained tremendous amount of support from a lot of uk studios because they were more supportive but with the launch of the ps3 blu rays are currently outselling hd dvd 3 to 1 in that area so the uk studios will soon jump ship. Secondly Disney Fox and Sony release movies exlusively for blu ray. Blu ray has far more studio support so if you are looking to buy a high definition movie there is a greater chance that it will appear on blu ray than on hdtv. If microsoft had put in the hd dvd drive as a cumpolsory option in the 360 we might be singing a different tune but unfortunately we will never know. No matter how long Toshiba holds out pretty soon they will have to cut their losses and come to some kind of agreement with sony. Sony's done it before and they bounced back. The longer they drag this out the longer the whole format war is going to take.

[Nod]

Only problem is, the average person is quite happy to watch films the quality of current DVD's... Both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray will go the way of the SACD or UMD Movie before long...

[ReconHope]

i hope they make a standard for hdtvs like they're making a standard for standard tvs, so this war could come to an end.

of course that won't be happening for a couple of years.

[ReconHope]

this shouldn't even be in xbox369 section considering that hddvd does not come in the box. but hey nice way to start a flame war.

[timmyp53]

.

[bamdad]

i liked what you said 8))))

[Babylonian]

If the majority on the poll chooses Blu-ray then it's only for the better as it means the war is getting shorter and hopefully will end soon.

Heck people just want one format so the quicker it's over the better. If it was the same thing but then with HD-DVD then that would be good to, just give us 1 format.

I'm going with blu-ray and I think other people should do to to end this crap faster.

[gnothe1]

I think the reason why HD-DVD isn't winning or doing better is because of its advertising,everytime you see a new movie release, they hardly EVER say available on HD-DVD, but you always see available on blu ray!! they need to make it known that if you buy an HD-DVD disc that you can play it in a standard non HD dvd player( it just wont be in HD) to me thats a huge advantage of HD-DVD, because there's times I'll take a dvd into my bedroom to get away from the kids, so knowing that I can watch that dvd in any player is nice. but if you have a Blu ray disc, it only works in a blu ray player, so I HAVE to watch that movie where my blu ray player is, unless I take the player into my room.both players play standard dvds( hd-dvd an blu ray) so thats not an advantage.

they also need to advertise U-CONTROL, because blu ray doesn't have that feature either. there not showing that there(HD-DVD) the superior format, there letting the movie releases do the talking. the bad part about that is blu ray is talking the loudest!!

one last thing!! if blu ray is so much better than HD-DVD an 25 to 50 gigs is needed, how can HD-DVD with less space put the slightly better looking version of the film(better codecs at the moment)dual format HD an standard versions of the film, plus U-control features all on the same disc with less space than blu ray!! I guess people have gotten into the mind frame that bigger is better or more is better!!

[sonarus]

hd dvd always went dual format with 30GB while blu ray used to go single format 25GB. I am guessing it was during blu ray single layer days that it was releasing better quality videos. However the difference is still hardly noticable and blu ray has the most support. Unless they can get support from George Bush or sumthin am afraid they will lose

[ngg12345]

I don't care if it is hd-dvd or blu ray I just hope one format just goes away.It helps the movie industry to make money on the hd-dvd and blu ray sales, and hopefully the disc prices will lower.

[Maddens Raiders]

I voted for HD-DVD. =[ /end sarcasm

[HaKeRsCanRotINHEL]

eventually win-out over HD-DVD (major movie studio support+ Sony Pictures,)but you never know? Possibly a hybrid format?

[gh0st1492]

I currently work and a big name retail store, and this past week saw Hd-DVD selling 2 to None versus Blu-ray. Personaly, I do support Hd-dvd. It's cheaper, and produces the same quality. What's not to like? When someone comes into buy however, my opion doesn't matter. I give the pros and cons of both formats. And what I've notcied this past week is that money talks. I personally do not own a 1080p television, but I do have a High Def TV. For customers who come in and tell me that they are in the sam boat, I let them know that Toshiba has player just for them, where your not paying extra for a resolution your not gonna use. But, that only matters if they wanna upgrade there DVD player, in which case $300 is an easier decision than $700.