HD-DVD officially pronounced dead

Yup, it's dead. RIP.

What left now is waiting for price drop for Blue-ray drives. DVD drive still serves very well for me. Got quite a lot of DVD collection - feeling like a waste especially when blue-ray become more popular…

http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/0…-from-jap.html

I have an A-2. Not that upset as I got it for $100 about a year ago from a buddy that was moving to the UK and couldn't use it there. I'm disappointed though. Having used Blu-Ray as well, it seems the only technological advantage Blu-Ray had was the disc capacity, but as they started making dual and quad layered discs, that didn't really matter.

Hopefully MSFT will come out with a Blu-Ray 360!

There's another advantage compared to HDDVD -> Blue ray comes from the blue laser. This means that you actually have new technology unlike HDDVD. I don't know how it is today, but I heard that this does not only provide a larger disk capacity (BR can go dual and quad layer too -> 100GB compared to 60GB is a big difference) but also more stability. I'm quite happy that BR won, even if it's only because M$ went for the HDDVD.

Originally Posted by Bartacus
This means that you actually have new technology unlike HDDVD.

Yes - since the size of the physical areas and packing density scale with the wavelength of illumination, the blue laser has inherent advantages at this technology level and the ability to scale for the future.

So can anyone translate this into the practical for me? Am I looking at having to change all my dvd aps--TV, PC etc? That would suck.

I've been waiting for this battle to be decided

Originally Posted by magerette
So can anyone translate this into the practical for me? Am I looking at having to change all my dvd aps--TV, PC etc? That would suck.

There shouldnt be a need for that. The interface between the player and the TV will remain the same. Your old DVDs should also play just fine as the players are backward compatible. When you do upgrade it'll make sense to get a blue-ray player though. It wont be much more expensive and have a much greater capacity.

At some point of time it will become hard to find movies in the old DVD format, but that's a few years into the future.

The only ones who are screwed are those who bought HD-DVD players

I was thinking the same thing magerette when I saw that stuff on the news. Are all our gadgets here in the house going to be trash?

@magerette, Cm -- of course they will. Eventually.

The DVD killed the videocassette, and Blu-Ray will kill the DVD -- unless digital distribution gets there first and renders the format question moot to start with.

Your next TV will probably be a high-def one (unless you already have one). In a few years, broadcast TV will go largely over to high-def, as will film distribution, whether it's on-line or off-line. To get that, you will need new gadgets, but on the whole backward compatibility is good enough that it'll tide you over the natural lifetime of most of these contraptions.

Tx's guys. I have HD tv's ect all over, and a DVD recorder that I have put all the family movies and pictures on. I guess at some point I will have to redo those to BR format if we hope to see them years from now. I have not had any contact with BR stuff other then seeing the term. Glad to hear they have backwards compatibility for now.

Yes, thanks all. We can only hope that time will lower the price on this stuff--we recently priced tvs, and the HD units start at about 75%-100% more than SD. By the time I need it, hopefully it will be less of a financial leap.

Originally Posted by Bartacus
There's another advantage compared to HDDVD -> Blue ray comes from the blue laser. This means that you actually have new technology unlike HDDVD. I don't know how it is today, but I heard that this does not only provide a larger disk capacity (BR can go dual and quad layer too -> 100GB compared to 60GB is a big difference) but also more stability. I'm quite happy that BR won, even if it's only because M$ went for the HDDVD.

True that 100 GB is a lot bigger than 60GB, but most movies aren't even using the full single layers, and virtually none use the full dual layers.

While the blue laser is technologically superior, because of the synergies with DVD production, HD-DVD was cheaper to produce and existing DVD production lines were significantly cheaper to convert over.

I do agree that blue laser is probably better for the future, but for today, the technology doesn't seem to offer anything that will give the consumer a better experience. Until the next generation of HD hits displays, all the room in the world isn't going to make much of a difference.

There were two things that I really disliked about BR. First is that they retained the regional coding, which HD-DVD did not. Doesn't effect me too much here in the US, but I just don't care for anything that is anti-consumer. Second was the whole 1.0,1.1,2.0. It's why I didn't by a Blu-Ray player as well. I realize that the PS3 was upgradeable, but I also didn't want to spend (at the time) $600 for a game console I'm pretty much not going to use except for Blu-Ray.

Doesn't matter much now I suppose! We all lost out when they couldn't agree to merge the formats 3 years ago.

Originally Posted by Prime Junta
@magerette, Cm -- of course they will. Eventually.

The DVD killed the videocassette, and Blu-Ray will kill the DVD -- unless digital distribution gets there first and renders the format question moot to start with.

I'd like to see digital downloads sock it to Sony! However, at least in the US, our average download speeds are so poor that it will be a long time before digital downloads can replace hard media for the average consumer.

Originally Posted by blatantninja
Doesn't matter much now I suppose! We all lost out when they couldn't agree to merge the formats 3 years ago.

That's not true. There was a compagny that made a player where both formats could run on. The problem was that both Toshiba and Sony were against it … so it didn't stay long on the open market.

Originally Posted by Prime Junta
The DVD killed the videocassette, and Blu-Ray will kill the DVD -- unless digital distribution gets there first and renders the format question moot to start with.

Personally, I don't believe it will be here too soon.

Here in Germany PC sales are still higher than consoles, for example.

I personally see a tendency here to be rather conservative regarding new technical inventions - that's why I believe the DVD will still be sold during the next years.

The DVD had its breakthrough only a few years ago, as I see it, so why abandon all this new stuff so soon ? DVD players have *just* become "hip" …

Originally Posted by Bartacus
That's not true. There was a compagny that made a player where both formats could run on. The problem was that both Toshiba and Sony were against it … so it didn't stay long on the open market.

IIRC correctly it was LG and it had a lot of issues!

LG makes a dual format drive for the PC. They just dropped the price to $229, so I may pick one up. Only issue is that the software doesn't support the newest Blu-Ray discs yet.

Originally Posted by Cm
Tx's guys. I have HD tv's ect all over, and a DVD recorder that I have put all the family movies and pictures on. I guess at some point I will have to redo those to BR format if we hope to see them years from now. I have not had any contact with BR stuff other then seeing the term. Glad to hear they have backwards compatibility for now.

DVD will be available for a long, long time -- Blu-Ray is backwards compatible, and it won't take over the market overnight anyway. I have a feeling that you'll be moving your family movies and pictures onto completely different media (imagine a fully redundant 100 TB storage box that you can plug into a computer or TV) rather than Blu-Ray.

In any case, do back up those photos and movies -- bad things can happen to DVD's, and if you only have a single copy, you'll be out of luck.

Originally Posted by magerette
Yes, thanks all. We can only hope that time will lower the price on this stuff--we recently priced tvs, and the HD units start at about 75%-100% more than SD. By the time I need it, hopefully it will be less of a financial leap.

FWIW, I for one am in no hurry to go hi-def. I'm very happy with the performance of my current TV/home theater, and the kind of stuff I want to watch isn't (mostly) even available in HD yet. I figure it'll be good for several more years yet.

Originally Posted by Prime Junta
FWIW, I for one am in no hurry to go hi-def. I'm very happy with the performance of my current TV/home theater, and the kind of stuff I want to watch isn't (mostly) even available in HD yet. I figure it'll be good for several more years yet.

We as well are pretty happy with our level of technology. To me this rush to develop alternative tech isn't bad or anything, but sometimes it seems a bit out of joint with how people actually use it--kind of like the eight-core pcs they're starting to talk about. Have we really gotten all the benefits out of even dual core yet?

Dual core? Yes. Quad core? Not so much!

I'm not a super videophile by any means, but after using a Plasma HD screen for the past 2 years, I don't think I could go back to a normal TV. I still watch a lot of SD channels as well as DVD's, but my TV and DVD player upconvert nicely.

Originally Posted by blatantninja
Dual core? Yes. Quad core? Not so much!

I'm not a super videophile by any means, but after using a Plasma HD screen for the past 2 years, I don't think I could go back to a normal TV. I still watch a lot of SD channels as well as DVD's, but my TV and DVD player upconvert nicely.

That HD plasma screen will only look better than a regular plasma screen of comparable quality if your source is high-def. If you're watching DVD's and standard-rez TV, there is no benefit to the extra pixels on your screen, up-rezzed or not.

The trouble is that most regular TV's (and most HDTV's, for that matter) aren't very good -- and the signals usually fed to them are even worse. The only ways to get a really good signal to your TV is through component video or HDMI; if you plug your DVD player into it with SCART, S-VHS, or (shudder) composite video, the picture will look much worse than it could. The difference is dramatic -- I'd say even bigger than the leap from maximum-quality standard-def to high-def.