Home DVD-Audiobahn

New DVD-Audio music releases and talk about the latest players.

Re: First things first: HD-DVD has to survive as a viable format.

Yeah, I agree, though HD-DVD is off to a good start. The difference between the rankings on Amazon for Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD is astronomical at the moment:

Rankings:
Toshiba HD-A1 HD DVD -> #293
vs.
Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-Ray Disc Player -> #2661

Software:
#1 selling title for HD-DVD (Terminator 3) -> #211
vs
#1 selling title for Blu-Ray (Tears of the Sun) -> #6530

#5 selling title for HD-DVD (Serenity) -> #2005
vs
#1 selling title for Blu-Ray (Total Recall) -> #7665

Some points to be made about the above numbers - the software titles of the HD-DVD are outperforming the HD-DVD player, which is as it should be since the purchasers are filling up their libraries - ie. adapting to the format.

Software titles for Blu-Ray are way below the Samsung in performance, meaning purchasers of the Samsung (the only Blu-Ray player available) are not following up and purchasing software.

Also, the #5 best-selling title for HD-DVD outperforms the #1 seller for Blu-Ray SIGNIFICANTLY.

However, once Sony itself enters the fray, especially with the Playstation debut, things may change around. But Sony is already scaling back production because of the Blu-Ray laser shortage, so sales may not even scale up until next year.

And finally, I personally see no reason to root for Blu-Ray. First round tests found signicant playback issues with Blu-Ray discs. Also, head to head comparisons between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD titles have shown HD-DVD superior on almost all counts.

On top of this, the Blu-Ray players sell on average for twice as much as the HD-DVD players for inferior (or at best equivalent performance).

The main selling point for Blu-Ray is higher capacity, touting potential 4 layers of data ! However, the current Samsung has problems with the single layer discs currently available, and it is known that Sony has not released their player due to problems getting their 2 layer discs working properly outside of the lab (so it is almost laughable that they talk about 4 layer discs when they can't get 2 layer discs working properly after 10 years of research).

On top of that, all that extra data is not even all that necessary. Current HD-DVDs use less than half of their capacity for their current performance due to the superior VC-1 codec (current HD-DVD players can handle 2 layers - and soon 3 - but most titles are currently using only 1, since that already provides excellent quality plus room for plenty of extras).


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