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• Blu-ray player sales dominate HD DVD, 3 to 1
• Latest Japanese data shows Blu-ray outsells HD-DVD 9:1
• Blu-ray outselling HD DVD 2 to 1 this year
• Blu-ray Winning Europe 4-to-1
• Sony claims Blu-ray had 95% Australian HD market in October
• Blu-ray Dominates HD- DVD in Holiday shopping
• Disc Sales: 'Pirates' Leads Blu-ray to Decisive Weekly Win Over HD DVD
• PS3 to Go Blu-ray Profile 1.1 With New Firmware Update
• Blu-Ray Wins a Battle in the High-Def War

How fast can you read/write data on a Blu-ray disc?

According to the Blu-ray Disc specification, 1x speed is defined as 36Mbps. However, as BD-ROM movies will require a 54Mbps data transfer rate the minimum speed we're expecting to see is 2x (72Mbps). Blu-ray also has the potential for much higher speeds, as a result of the larger numerical aperture (NA) adopted by Blu-ray Disc. The large NA value effectively means that Blu-ray will require less recording power and lower disc rotation speed than DVD and HD-DVD to achieve the same data transfer rate. While the media itself limited the recording speed in the past, the only limiting factor for Blu-ray is the capacity of the hardware. If we assume a maximum disc rotation speed of 10,000 RPM, then 12x at the outer diameter should be possible (about 400Mbps). This is why the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) already has plans to raise the speed to 8x (288Mbps) or more in the future.

Yes it is. JVC announced hybrid Blu ray / DVD discs nearly 3 years ago. Why they're not used commercially I have no idea but the technology is not new. And flippers featuring HD DVD or DVD on one side and Blu Ray on another are also feasible. Warner have been talking of a Total HD which has HD DVD on one side and Blu Ray on the other.

All of which is largely irrelevant when considering if Blu Ray or HD DVD is more "compatible" with DVD. All Blu Ray players and all HD DVD players to my knowledge support DVD.

• Blockbuster, Target and BJ's Wholesale Club have all decided to promote Blu-ray exclusively in their U.S. retail store locations this holiday season

• Blu-ray hardware prices are expected to be as low as $399 by Christmas (and possibly lower).

• Retailers across the country are reporting that Blu-ray player sales have begun to outpace HD-DVD player sales over the summer.

• Sony, Pioneer, Panasonic, Philips, LG, Sharp, Mitsubishi, Denon, Samsung and a few others make or will make Blu-ray players (Official Blu-ray site.)

• Toshiba seems to be the only company making HD-DVD players ( Official HD-DVD site)

100% of the people who bought HD DVD players, bought them to play HD DVD movies. I can guarantee you that the vast, VAST majority of PS3 owners got it to play games.

Say only 10% of PS3 owners use the system to play Blu-Ray discs - that's still more than the total number of HD-DVD players, by a wide margin! And the PS3 alone continues to outsell the whole group of HD-DVD players (yes, even with lower sales) meaning that lead is only increasing.

Now what happens when a really popular title actually clicks with the public? Sales that swamp any HD-DVD releases, because there are simply so many more PS3's around than HD-DVD players. Yes PS3 owners are probably a much more casual buying group but with millions more, that simply does not matter when you have millions more people buying.

Whether they'll buy enough Blu-Ray titles in the future to match HD DVD is yet to be seen.

We have been seeing it all year, with continued Blu-Ray sales of three to one over HD-DVD! How can you wave those numbers away arbitrarily when the release schedule, and player sales figures, make it obvious that ratio will only increase? What happens if as rumored Star Wars comes out later this year on Blu-Ray, and more Pixar movies as well? But even without those with a fleet of movies like Pirates and Spiderman on Blu-Ray going against the best exclusive Blu-Ray has to offer (the Bourne Identity) it's pretty clear a sales advantage will continue.

Sony bundle the PS3 with Blu-Ray movies and put this in their sale figures. Again, notice the buyers didn't have much choice. They just got it with their PS3.

The trend in such a case may have nothing to do with current sales figures.

The free movie was only with the first 500k PS3's sold. That helped spike earlier in the year but does not explain the whole year, or even anything past January. How much of the HD-DVD sales figures are the FIVE FREE movies they give away with every Toshiba HD-DVD player? Seems like your argument is easily turned on its head.

How many studios (except Sony Pictures I presume) are only behind Blu-Ray?

The other major ones are Disney (perhaps you've heard of Pixar or Pirates) and Fox (perhaps you've heard of Star wars?). Also MGM and Lionsgate...

How many more do you need? Look at what the sole remaining HD-DVD exclusive studio (Universal) can provide in movies vs the five above. That there is a war at all is simply an illusion pulled over your eyes by the many people here on Slashdot who want to see Sony fail. I don't own a Blu-Ray player. I don't own a PS3. It means nothing to me if one format succeeeds over the other - yet the winner here is obvious just from studio support alone, even inn goring technical advantages Blu-Ray has (not that pure technical advantages have ever won a format war before anyway).

Anecdotal evidence alert. Also they just saw the match is kinda even so far, so it's normal they want to sell Blu-Ray players.

How is this anecdotal? How does it mean nothing when slowly HD-DVD backers peel away to support Blu-Ray - as it continues to enjoy a three to one or larger sales margin? With those numbers and that studio support eventually the reasons to keep building HD-DVD players will wane.

But they won't stop selling HD-DVD players either.

In order to stop, wouldn't they have to start? I'm not sure we've even seen HD-DVD players from Funai yet (I can't find any at Amazon under the brand names I know use them). They were in the HD-DVD consortium but that does not mean they were making players.

I guess I didn't make it clear: I'm not saying HD DVD will win. The format has barely started and current numbers don't mean shit. The studios have hardly released any titles and the total number of high-def discs sold so far is a tiny portion of the number of standard-def DVDs sold in one week.

I guess I didn't make it clear: I'm not saying HD DVD will win. The format has barely started and current numbers don't mean shit. The studios have hardly released any titles and the total number of high-def discs sold so far is a tiny portion of the number of standard-def DVDs sold in one week.

Like them or not, Microsoft (with their power) can have a large influence in HD DVD's favor. Other big backers of HD DVD include:

• Intel
• Toshiba
• NEC

• Dell
• Apple
• Panasonic

I think you forgot a few Blu-Ray supporters:
http://www.blu-ray.com/players/
http://www.blu-ray.com/drives/
http://www.blu-raydisc.com/general_information/Sec tion-14009/Index.html

Like them or not, Microsoft (with their power) can have a large influence in HD DVD's favor. Other big backers of HD DVD include:

• Intel
• Toshiba
• NEC

• Dell
• Apple
• Panasonic

I think you forgot a few Blu-Ray supporters:
http://www.blu-ray.com/players/
http://www.blu-ray.com/drives/
http://www.blu-raydisc.com/general_information/Sec tion-14009/Index.html

That's not the only one. The Samsung BD-P1000 is $500. Of course, it's so shit I'm surprised it is even allowed to carry the BD logo.

A quick look at the list of players on Blu-ray.com indicates four players below $1000. The Philips BD-P9000 seems to work well, but is a little woeful on CPU. The new Samsung BD-P1200 performs really well, as does the Panasonic. The PS3 is like a super-computer compared with them though. Sony must have lost $1 billion on it already. The PS3 is the only one with enough horse-power at the moment for decent BD-J authored titles to load in under a minute.

My personal choice right now (in order) would be: PS3, Samsung BD-P1200 and then Panasonic DMP-BP10 (this last one is rather pricey though).

Blu-ray: One or two 25gb layers.
Xbox 360: One 20gb drive.

How on Earth can you have full-quality movies on the Xbox marketplace?

I read some review that says that a 45 minute TV show is 2.2gb in their HD format. That's 4.4gb for a 90 minute movie compared to 25gb for a 90 minute movie on Blu-ray. That's 6.7 Mbits/s compared to 37.9 Mbits/s. Am I meant to believe that Microsoft has some secret video codec that is five times as efficient as VC-1 (or their own Media Player 9 codec)?

For the record, I do have broadband and an Xbox 360. And you must have horrible vision.

-Peter

That player hardly even works. This is a better list of players and release dates. The new Samsung player about to hit the shelves is reportedly vastly superior.

Hm, I see Sony has been singled out once again, whilst none of the other companies are mentioned (including Apple). Is it me, or is /. becoming more and more like Digg everyday? In other words, rubbish.

http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/#bluray_developers

Umm yes actually - however fair enough it claims 'basic' playback will not require it. (Where it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if 'basic' means 'not HD').

Blu-Ray also supports VC-1.

It's just that the people making Blu-Ray discs are smart enough not to use it.

So in that respect, Microsoft sort of wins in that everyone has to support that codec to be a fully compliant Blu-Ray player - even Apple, to include a Blu-Ray player with computers will have to pay them a small fee.

You had the last part right which is why it's better to support Blu-Ray, which does not give Microsoft as much leverage over the media industry. Consumers are not as stupid as you think though and so far have rejected media which is overly restrictive.

Trying to sound smart isn't the same thing as being smart. http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/#bluray_developers Hate on Sony all you want, just hate accurately.

You'd need to account for the time it would take to copy all that content from hard drive(s), onto the blu-ray discs, then again copy them to the target computer on the other side of the country.

Blu ray disc holds 25 billion bytes
That's 200 billion bits, and let's say you can read/write at 72 million bits per second (blueray@2x):

200,000,000,000 bits (bytes * 8)
/ 72,000,000 bits per second
2777 seconds per disc.
46 minutes per disc.
By 1000 discs
46,000 minutes to write all the discs. Or 766 hours, or 32 days. Assuming you have a 2x speed burner, and you have no downtime between discs.
And then another 32 days to read them all into the target computer :)

And I can't even calculate how many days it'd take to verify the data was written and copied correctly.

It used to be that if you wanted to play any game you merely had to purchase every console. Yes, it was expensive but we did it for the exclusive games that were only available on a single system.

Now they are trying to make it so that if you want to play every bit of a cross platform game you have to buy multiple copies? Screw that. When Soul Calibur II came out with exclusive characters on each system, I responded by not buying the damn game. Here it looks like Rockstar is trying to generate artificial demand for downloadable content; something else designed to extract money from gamers.

Yea, yea, feed me the line about games costing so much money to produce now. I don't care. Movies cost several million dollars to produce and you can buy the DVD for a single Andrew Jackson. Gamers are being charged three times that much for something that only cost a fraction of the price. Yes I understand that there are other factors here... I'm not that dense, it's just that they don't need to nickel-and-dime us afterwards.

I'm tired of companies raising prices and then charging more for the "privelidge" of playing online. I'm tired of companies cramming questionable tech down our throats that only raises cost and causes delays. I'm tired of games that are strictly service based even though you still have to pay full retail price. I'm tired of companies charging me yet again for games that I already own; I mean I already have two copies of Super Mario World, two copies of Super Mario 64, and three fricking copies of The Legend of Zelda and for only 23 more dollars, I can play them all on one console. Hooray for shovelware.

Yes I'm ranting. Sorry about that. The whole thing just makes me wonder why I play games anymore. Can I at least get an "amen"?

http://www.blu-ray.com/images/ifa2005/toshiba_08.j pg they had the image of a single side, dual format disc that you said they didn't do last year on the SAME site you refernce to prove your point. check the whole article out next time....

No, this is the perfect example of HD DVD fanbois eating propaganda without filters (like you)!

This "hybrid disc magic" might be considered high-tech and cutting-edge in the HD DVD world, but the exact same "features" was shown and demonstrated live back at last years IFA 2005 in Berlin in the Blu-ray Disc area ...

    http://www.blu-ray.com/ifa2005/

Hybrid discs are actually part of the offcial BD-ROM spec and was one of the selling points last year when all that HD DVD came up with was those lame "flippers" ...

I can't believe it - is the Slashdot populated by demented anti-Sony fanbois?

This "hybrid disc magic" might be considered high-tech and cutting-edge in the HD DVD world, but the exact same "features" was shown and demonstrated live back at last years IFA 2005 in Berlin in the Blu-ray Disc area ...

  http://www.blu-ray.com/ifa2005/

Hybrid discs are actually part of the offcial BD-ROM spec and was one of the selling points last year when all HD DVD came up with was those lame "flippers" ...

So don't buy into the Slashdot HD DVD hype, just accept the fact that everything you can do with HD DVD you can do better with BD. Storage capacity is 66% higher and the video interactivity is based on Sun's Java (just like the DVB standard).

Not to sound pedantic, but many/most people seem to be refering to Blu-ray discs as "BR" or "BR discs". According to the official naming convention the correct abbriviation should be "BD". Again, this is not meant to sound pedantic. It's just annoying to see people (and especially tech savvy people like on Slashdot who really ought to know better) use the wrong abbreviation. Reminds me of the whole "CD disc" thing of the ninetees before people started using CD as a proper noun.

From what I know, only HDMI/DVI are going to get you 1080p and bandwidth being limited you'll only get 30FPS on those cables.

That is incorrect. Do a search on AVSForums or other AV forums (like this post). Component cables actually offer significantly more bandwidth than is required for even 1080p (can handle up to 2048x1200, or something along those lines). There are TV's on the market today (a Westinghouse model for one) that does 1080p from component inputs, in the thread I pointed to a Barco is mentioned.

I have read that a number of different TV's that currently accept 1080p over component allow a maximum rate of 30Hz, vs. 60Hz for 1080p over HDMI. But a constant refresh of 30Hz, if achieved by a game, is still going to look pretty good - after all, it's what TV on HD is broadcast at!

This myth of 1080p not being usable over component cables is I think the biggest factor to not understanding why the $500 PS3 is actually a preferable model over the $600 one. We have all been fed that line to prepare for the need to switch to HDMI, when in fact there was never a need at all other than for the companies to try and protect video content from player to TV at great cost to the consumer.

Most importantly: More sound codecs supported. Blueray will allow multiple interface layers to operate at the same time, which means that when flipping through the chapter menus, we won't hear the same music starting over every time we hit "Next" You can use the internet for "additional features" For more, see: http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/

I'm really beginning to believe that, once again, Sony competition (HD DVD) will become the "normal" standard with Blu-ray being the standard for those with a Sony PS3 or Sony-compatible hardware. Statistically speaking, that's exactly what has happened in the past with various degrees of success (Beta, Memory Sticks, Mini-discs, UMD, etc.)

Sony has also failed to get a way to actually use any advanced codecs other than MPEG-2 working yet. Which means that for near-future HD titles, we're looking at:

HD DVD @ 30 GB running VC-1 (you can do all of LOTR:ROTK:EE on a single side of a single disc with that).

Blu-ray @ 25 GB running MPEG-2 (where anything much over 2 hours can start having some quality degradation compared to the source).

First: the price quoted does not reflect underlying manufacturing costs, just what Sony thinks it can get for premium titles. I can't find any information on production costs, which is kind of how things were in the early days of CD and DVD where the companies with the big factories (e.g. Sony) were also content owners (e.g. Sony) and hid all their internal cost structures.

You can make 500 DVDs, including packaging and inserts, for $1,395.00 -- that's $2.80 per unit in quantities of 500, e.g. http://www.digitalcdr.com/. To make 1000 CDs (including case and artwork) costs around $1,300.00, or $1.30 per unit in quantities of 1000.

Blu-ray disks are, ultimately, supposed to be no more expensive to produce than DVDs.

I would assume that Sony isn't going to compete with low-end titles (which will stay on DVD for the time being -- I assume that Blu-Ray players will be compatible with existing DVDs).

Bill Gates has referred to the Blu-Ray / HD-DVD format as "the last format". It may turn out that dual layer DVD is the last format at this rate, and that neither these formats will ever successfully establish the volumes necessary to drive their prices down to the point where they sell. A $100 hard disk can currently hold the equivalent of eight FULL single layer blu-ray disks (25GB each -- http://www.blu-ray.com/). It's not unreasonable to expect that in three years a $100 hard disk will be able to hold the equivalent of 32 disks... Will there be any significant Blu-Ray penetration by then? Will 32 blank disks cost less than $100?

Yea, but it's not _just_ Sony this time. They learned from that mistake. It's Sony and a whole mess of companies, the most notable to me is Samsung... although all of those companies are good, Samsung seems like it's firing on all pistons these days. Anyway, a big part of Sony's problems with Betamax supposedly were caused by the proprietary nature of the format, and that Sony was the only one making players and promoting the format... for Blu-ray, it wouldn't be just Sony losing to HD-DVD, it'd be Sony and Samsung and Pioneer and LG...

plus the manufacturing costs for HD-DVD are less, the manufacturing time is shorter, and it seems that more recording studios - the real manufacturers of media - seem to support HD-DVD. At least last I checked.

Um, yea, you might want to check that again... right now, it looks like HD-DVD has non-exclusively Paramount, Warner Bros, and Universal... while Blu-ray has those plus Disney, Fox, Lion's Gate, and of course Sony and MGM... some of those exclusively.

This is far from over and far from predictable. While Toshiba shocked everyone with their sub-$500 player at CES, Sony's PS3 should meet that ( and be a everyone-is-waiting-for-it killer game machine )... not that the players are the important bit, it's the media here, and I really, really, really don't think that the cost of making a Blu-ray disc vs an HD-DVD disc is going to matter when they're charging $50 a movie... but this battle is far from over. We'll see, but my point is that a blanket "it's Sony, history is repeating itself" statement is ignoring a whole lot of ways that this is totally unlike Betamax vs VHS.

Yea, but it's not _just_ Sony this time. They learned from that mistake. It's Sony and a whole mess of companies, the most notable to me is Samsung... although all of those companies are good, Samsung seems like it's firing on all pistons these days. Anyway, a big part of Sony's problems with Betamax supposedly were caused by the proprietary nature of the format, and that Sony was the only one making players and promoting the format... for Blu-ray, it wouldn't be just Sony losing to HD-DVD, it'd be Sony and Samsung and Pioneer and LG...

plus the manufacturing costs for HD-DVD are less, the manufacturing time is shorter, and it seems that more recording studios - the real manufacturers of media - seem to support HD-DVD. At least last I checked.

Um, yea, you might want to check that again... right now, it looks like HD-DVD has non-exclusively Paramount, Warner Bros, and Universal... while Blu-ray has those plus Disney, Fox, Lion's Gate, and of course Sony and MGM... some of those exclusively.

This is far from over and far from predictable. While Toshiba shocked everyone with their sub-$500 player at CES, Sony's PS3 should meet that ( and be a everyone-is-waiting-for-it killer game machine )... not that the players are the important bit, it's the media here, and I really, really, really don't think that the cost of making a Blu-ray disc vs an HD-DVD disc is going to matter when they're charging $50 a movie... but this battle is far from over. We'll see, but my point is that a blanket "it's Sony, history is repeating itself" statement is ignoring a whole lot of ways that this is totally unlike Betamax vs VHS.

Either way we're not talking about Blu-Ray-RW yet, so how does capacity help?

I don't know where you heard that Blu-ray players won't play DVDs, but you're mistaken. It's possible to make a blu-ray player that won't play DVDs, but it's highly, highly unlikely that anyone will make such a drive at this time.

That would translate to 9 to 12 hours of space on a traditional DVD with the new codecs, and approximately 27 to 37.5 hours of space on a single layer bluray disc.
You should definately be able to fit a full season of sd content on a blu-ray disc; the question is, does the format permit storing content at sd resolutions?

Well, if you did edit that section, you were correct. Here's the part from the Blu-Ray FAQ (which wasn't as convenient when I made my last post):

Will Blu-ray be backwards compatible with DVD?

Yes, several leading consumer electronics companies (including Panasonic, Philips, Pioneer, Samsung, Sharp, Sony and LG) have already demonstrated products that can read/write CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs using a BD/DVD/CD compatible optical head, so you don't have to worry about your existing DVD collection becoming obsolete. Although it's up to each manufacturer to decide if they want to make their products backwards compatible with DVD, the format is far too popular to not be supported. The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) expects every Blu-ray Disc device to be backward compatible with CDs and DVDs.

It amusing that the greed of the big media corporations which kickstarted this whole mess to begin with, is the same exact thing that is keeping them from developing effective DRM.
No matter what the media, I seem to wind up paying $17.00 for one hit song, and a bunch of songs that don't sound nearly as good. The "big media corporations" have to maintain that $$ momentum, don't they. With Blu-Ray, and 50 GB of storage, they seem to want to be extremely careful, less they give away the store. It is obviously greed on their part, but with a movie, one has to suffer through a popcorn-strewn theater full of sneezing and coughing patrons, to see it. Overpriced theater candy and all. Forbid that we get to see the movie(s) at home on a Blu-Ray device, possibly copied from an unpaid source.
Yes, they have to be really careful with Blu-Ray. Imagine, they make one copy, sell it, and all of a sudden, thousands of bootleg copies are produced, being viewed and enjoyed by the non-paying.

I'm a long time gamer, have bought nearly every system till now and am not buying the hype of either system yet. I waited a year or so to buy an xbox till it was cheaper and Jet Set Radio Future was out (I loved the Dreamcast verson). I waited to get a PS2 until Final Fantasy X was released. The last system I bought at launch was the Dreamcast because it wasn't badly priced and had something REALLY nice worth playing at launch (Soul Calibur and soon after NBA 2K and Jet Grind Radio).

The Xbox 360 does NOT use proprietary disc formats that can, at the vendor or manufacturers will, brick your box.
How is Blu-Ray propriatary? I see a bunch of recorders coming out and some major studio and vendor support. (http://www.blu-ray.com/) Sure they may try to lock it so you can't burn discs but what developer hasn't tried? If you think hard you'll remember when dvd recorders and discs were expensive, and if you think really hard you'll remember when cd-r's were expensive. I remember buying a 1X cd burner for $200 when the discs were too expensive to buy to really use. This is a silly argument.

WHO NEEDS SEVEN CONTROLLERS ON ONE BOX!?
Perhaps you don't play sports games Mr. FPS. Most sports games I know have at least 10 people on the field/court/rink. I've easily had 4 buddies over playing NBA 2K* or NHL. You can have direct user contribution in a party environment like this. I've also been at a friends house where they were playing Mario Party and we had 6 people but only 4 could play. Sure you could 'pass' the controller in that game, but I'm it's inconvenient, and I'm sure theres more ideas beyond that if you have a big screen hi-def TV, beyond splitting it into 6 mini squares. Maybe you never played Gauntlet? Or any of Konami's classic (6 player) arcade games like X-Men?

One fee. No ten bucks a month here, five bucks a month there... $50 a year.
Like most other people say, I still play Warcraft 3 and other FPS games on my PC for free, no bucks a month here. Most of the games that are online on the PS2 are free too, I've played a few rounds of burnout 3 when it was popular and even though the service isn't as nice as live you can still get going. It would be nice if microsoft 'had' a free option of some sort.

Time. Xbox 360 is here now whereas the PS3 is going to offer comparable hardware and games in a year.
While X360 has maybe 3 good games, 2-3 in the next 3-6 months and nothing ever comes out in the summer. And developers are still working on PS3 and Revolution games so they'll all be ready to ship at launch. X360 is a test development for 2nd gen X360 and 1st gen PS3.

Developer backing. Bungie and Rare are both developing for the Xbox 360, and that's only naming two big name developers.
Rare is releasing nothing but prettied up versions of old games (Kameo=Banjo Kazooie with transformations and particle effects, Perfect Dark Zero=Prettier Perfect Dark, don't even talk about the xbox games) and Bungie hasn't even shown anything yet.

Also Final Fantasy will be coming to Xbox 360 too.
Yea, Final Fantasy XI, a game thats been out on the PS2 and PC for over a year, WHOOPIE! PS2 is getting XII next year. Dragon Quest 7 is sweeter than any RPG that'll be exclusive anyway for awhile.

I know you're trying to justify your $400 purchase. Next year, when it's head to head with real competition 'MAYBE' they'll have real games, but I look at my shelf And I see some 8 xbox games and around 30 PS2 games. This was most of the 39 PS2 games that averaged over 90% on GR, there are 17 for the xbox.

The only XBOX 'exclusives': Halo 2, Ninja Gaiden, Project Gotham Racing 2, Forza Motorsport, Crimson Skies. (So basically Tecmo, Bizarre Creations, other internal MS teams) So like 5/17 exclusive and at the top.

The PS2 'exclusives': Gran Turismo 3, All the Konami Soccer games (Though most are out on the PC too, and 9 is coming to xbox), God of War, Guitar Hero

HP is just trying to strong-arm some more concessions out of Sony on Blu-Ray features like managed copy.

Actually, that has already happened.

Nov 16, 2005 - Blu-ray Disc to Support Mandatory Managed Copy

Everything you ever wanted to know about Blue Ray... http://www.blu-ray.com/

Funny within 1 minute i was able to find this ... http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/#1.11...as you see from thier own FAQ it says they are availible in japan and several companys have them for sale (that are not prototype models..All that in less then 1 minute..

Blu-Ray has mandatory MPEG-4 support. Note that MPEG-2 is also supported - for the playback of HD-DVD recordings, which do in fact use HD-DVD (they come that way over the air or on cable). But movie studios can use whatever codec they like for movies.

Now does anyone think it a plus that you HAVE to transcode HD-DVD to MPEG4 to store on an HD-DVD? Is it really better to have a compressed version of an already compresed video file, or just store the first generation compressed version? I would almost think that HD-DVD would have to support MPEG-2 as well, and they are just quoting figures for MPEG-4 compression. I agree they are probably playing loose with bitrates though. If Blu-Ray holds twice as much data and supports the same codecs, then it can hold twice as much video - end of story.

You take the blue laser and the story ends. You wake in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red laser and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the data pits go.

The bottom line is which format holds more data, is cheaper and is consumer-friendly, IMHO.
From http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/#1.5 and http://www.hddvdprg.com/hddvd/hddvd_3.html

---How much data can you fit on a Blu-ray disc?
A single-layer disc can fit 23.3GB, 25GB or 27GB.
A dual-layer disc can fit 46.6GB, 50GB or 54GB.
HD-DVD can hold 15, 30, 32GB

---How much video can you record on a Blu-ray disc?
Over 2 hours of high-definition television (HDTV) on a 25GB disc. About 13 hours of standard-definition television (SDTV) on a 25GB disc.
HD-DVD can hold 4hrs HDTV on 15GB disc, 8hrs HDTV on 30GB disc

---How fast can you read/write data on a Blu-ray disc?
According to the Blu-ray Disc specification, 1x speed is defined as 36Mbps.
HD-DVD speed is 36.55Mbps

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000943061481/ http://news.techwhack.com/2182/041013-toshiba-unve ils-a-laptop-with-hd-dvd-drive-to-showcase-technol ogy/

So... a 1x read-only HD DVD drive vs. Pioneer's BDR-101A which reads and writes and is faster than 1x. Oh, and it's only just been shown in the past 2-3 weeks. Bravo!

http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2005_06/pr080 1.htm

Fair enough, you got me. They talk about mass production, but they don't put any timetable out for when they'll ramp up production. For a press release directly from Toshiba, it's sorely lacking in details you'd think they'd want to tell the whole world about.

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/hardware/ne xt-gen-dvd.ars/2 http://forum.ecoustics.com/bbs/messages/10381/1451 10.html

An Ars Technica article written by someone who failed economics, and a press release touting HD DVD replication hardware by a Swedish firm. Not exactly what I was hoping for...

How is there aren't sites like blu-ray.com that have pictures of tons of HD DVD hardware and media? Why is this stuff so hard to come across? It's almost like... it doesn't exist.

http://www.blu-ray.com/media/

From the Blu-ray FAQ:

http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/#1.10

"1.10 Will Blu-ray discs require a cartridge?

No, the development of new low cost hard-coating technologies has made the cartridge obsolete. Blu-ray will instead rely on hard-coating for protection, which when applied will make the discs even more resistant to scratches and fingerprints than todays DVDs, while still preserving the same look and feel. The adoption of hard-coating will also allow manufacturers to downsize players/drives and lower their overall media production costs."

Plus, last I read, HD-DVD doesn't have anything even in the lab that is bigger than 30 GB, whereas Bluy-ray has a prototype of 100GB. MS ought to screw off. They are supprting it for two reasons. One is the whole console war, and the second is HD-DVD will use Micorsofts own codec whereas Blu-ray will not. MS just has their panties in a wad.

And to all those who think this is a propietary Sony product, they should read this FAQ. Sony, HP, Pioneer, Hitachi, TDK, Samsung, Philips, etc. were all in on the process. In fact it was TDK that made the 100GB version. HD-DVD is a very shallow replacement and will only require a new replacement in just a few years time. Blu-ray has potential, not just as a media disk, but also as a storage disk. With people having full hard-drives over 250 GB now, would you rather back that up on 9 HD-DVDs, or 3 Blu-rays. Shutup and die MS and Intel.

From reading the FAQ on the Blu-ray.com web site (not same as Blue-ray association) there are already players supporting Blu-ray in Japan, but we are unlikely to see them in North America until 2006.

From reading the FAQ on the Blu-ray.com web site (not same as Blue-ray association) there are already players supporting Blu-ray in Japan, but we are unlikely to see them in North America until 2006.

Both formats support backward compatibility:

http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/#2.4

Anything else would be commerical suicide. I don't put it past Sony, but in this case they aren't that stupid.

The playstation 3 is set to have blu-ray players.
http://www.blu-ray.com

he he. Ya, good point. Beta was supposedly better and Sony killed it (from what I've read), and I hate Minidisk.

However, I don't think Blu-ray (spelled it right this time) is Sony's format. According to their site, http://www.blu-ray.com/info/, it is a partnership. Although, I wouldn't be supprised if one company (like Sony or maybe HP) had more control over production and the technology than the others. Some of these companys are probably just financing (like it says 20th Century Fox is on the board, what do they know about hardware?).

Yes, Except that Blu-Ray has already reached 100GB. And there are rumors of a 200GB version. At 1080i there are over 21 million pixels to account for, which is more than 7 times as much as the current resolution. DVD's hold 9.4 GB. Mutliply by 7 and your over 63GB. Yes there is a new compression technology, but it would have to be able to just about halve the current compression in order to fit it on either disc you mentioned.