A lot of people are asking me what the deal is with the new DVD formats that will be coming sometime next year - HD-DVD and Blu-Ray technologies. Is this going to be Beta vs. VHS all over again?
Both technologies are expected to be on display at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in early January. Both will offer more storage on a video disc to allow for high definition quality playback, as well as added features on a disc. Both say they're the best. I'll try and sort it out.
First of all, Blu-Ray is the more popular - in terms of companies on board - of the two formats. Developed and championed by Sony (which, ironically, championed the less popular Beta format for video tape recording years ago), and embraced by other industry heavyweights such as Philips, Pioneer, LG, Panasonic, Samsung, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and many others. HD-DVD is backed by Toshiba, NEC, and, surprisingly, Microsoft. (However, scuttlebutt is that Microsoft is also developing a Blu-Ray format player just to cover its ass.)
Both formats use blue laser technology, which has a shorter wavelength than red lasers, enabling the laser to pick up smaller bits of information packed onto a disc. The differences are that HD-DVD uses a double thick layer disc that allows up to 30 gigabytes of information (compared to up to 9 gigabytes of info in today's DVD's), while Blu-Ray uses a thin layer disc that allows up to 50 gigs of information to be stored upon it. Sony is reportedly working on a disc that would allow up to 100 gig of information to be stored up on the disc. Wow.
The advantages of Blu-Ray are many - More backers, more capacity, more recording capabilities. And since Sony owns Columbia and MGM/UA studios; plus Twentieth Century Fox and Disney have committed to the Blu-Ray format bringing a wealth of movie and television libraries with them, the content initially available for Blu-Ray will be much better than HD-DVD.
HD-DVD, on the other hand, has a more consumer friendly name, and the discs will be appreciably cheaper than Blu-Ray, as will the machines you'll play the disc with. And HD-DVD claims their double thick discs can not be easily scratched enabling more plays than a thinner layer Blu-Ray disc (Sony denies this).
It's my professional opinion that Blu-Ray will win out in the long run, but don't dismiss the HD-DVD format just yet.
What does this mean to most people? Well, right now, not much. The HD-DVD machines will be lower priced initially. But there won't be the amount of movies or television shows available on HD-DVD. Most Blu-Ray machines will come in at a price point of between $1,000 to $2,000 dollars, the discs will be higher priced, but there will be much more content to view.
Are the electronics companies making you chose right away between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, and will they make you throw away your collection of regular DVD's and make you buy an expensive player and more expensive discs? Absolutely not. The regular DVD format is versatile enough that you won't have to worry about deep-sixing those movies you bought three years ago, or having to toss out your DVD player anytime soon.
Don't worry - by the time you really have to make a decision between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, the format war will probably have ended with Blu-Ray claiming victory. (For once, Sony wins a format war!) And you'll find that the price of both the players and the discs will have dropped appreciably from the initial prices we'll begin to see next year.
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