HD DVD vs Blu-ray Direct Comparisons

An anonymous reader writes "With today's release of three movies on Blu-ray, Warner Home Video has become the first studio to release movie titles on both high-def formats, making it finally possible to do an apples-to-apples comparison of the same titles on both formats . High-Def Digest has just posted reviews of all three titles — 'Training Day,' 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang' and 'Rumor Has It' — comparing video, audio and extras to the previous HD DVD releases. Their verdict? Due to issues with image cropping, audio selection and supplemental features on the Blu-ray discs, the HD DVD versions win this first face-off."

Comments

More concise

[LotsOfPhil]

Here are the summaries:
Training Day

Whatever its merits as a film, 'Training Day' has made history by becoming one of the first titles to be released on both the Blu-ray and HD DVD formats. In our first head-to-head comparison, we found the HD DVD to be superior. The unfortunate cropping of the Blu-ray image, coupled with more noticeable compression artifacts and an overall darker cast, can't compete with the more consistently pleasing presentation of the HD DVD. Also a strike against the Blu-ray version is that both the Dolby TrueHD and Dolby Digital-Plus soundtracks have been dropped in favor of plain old Dolby Digital, and even the disc's menu navigation is more clunky and with less interactive functionality. Certainly, this Blu-ray release delivers fine video quality in its own right, but the format's backers will need to step it up if they are going to win the hearts and minds of early adopters over HD DVD.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

With our second Blu-ray versus HD DVD battle on 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,' we again declare victory (although by a smaller margin) to the HD DVD verison. Most of the same problems we found with 'Training Day' on Blu-ray -- namely the picture cropping (though it is likely a player issue) and darker cast -- reappear again here. The absence of HD DVD's Dolby Digital-Plus tracks on Blu-ray is problematic, and I still find Blu-ray's clunky menu navigation quite irritating. Though with 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang' Blu-ray has proven it can deliver moments of stunning high-def as good as HD DVD, it is still not delivering that level of quality as consistently. Very close with this one, but still no cigar.

Rumor Has It

I must say, our first Blu-ray versus HD DVD comparisons continue to yield surprises. I wasn't expecting to see much difference in video quality between the two formats with 'Rumor Has It...', yet the two discs did bear noticeable differences, with the HD DVD boasting better detail and a more film-like look. And Warner has again dropped the Dolby Digital-Plus option from the Blu-ray version. However, the Blu-ray is a good $5 cheaper than the pricey $39.95 list price the studio is charging for the HD DVD/DVD combo version, so at least Blu-ray has that going for it. But even with its higher list price, in this reviewer's opinion, the HD DVD release delivers overall better bang for the buck.

Re:So what do we make of this?

[iainl]

There are two problems at the moment. Firstly, it seems that the Samsung player just isn't terribly good, despite costing twice as much as the Toshiba. But by far the largest aspect is that the current batch of BluRay discs are mastered with the MPEG-2 codec, rather than the superior VC-1 that HD-DVD discs are using. This is because Sony's initial mastering software did not support the use of the more advanced codecs.

This has just recently been fixed, so discs should start appearing toward the end of the year with exactly the same encode as the HD-DVD, and the only remaining aspects will be the quality of the player, and any necessary culling of extra features or audio formats to make the film fit on a 25Gb BluRay instead of a 30Gb HD-DVD.

disc capacity and codecs

[green pizza]

AFAIK, BluRay holds 25 GB (GigaBytes) per layer, and HDDVD holds 15 GB (GigaBytes) per layer. I have already seen 50 GB BD-ROM blanks at Frys (albeit for $39) so I know the dual layer BluRay discs are already possible. I've also heard that many HDDVD movies are shipping on 30 GB (dual layer) discs. That said, it is entirely possible that the current BluRay movies are shipping on single layer 25 GB discs to save money in manufacturing as it would be cheaper to stamp a single layer disc and "25 GB is close enough to 30 GB".

AFAIK, both BluRay and HDDVD support the same three codecs: MPEG-2, H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC), and VC-1 (WMV9).

AFAIK, the current BluRay authoring software only supports MPEG-2 at this time, so the initial discs were encoded with MPEG-2... even though VC-1 and H.264 codecs have been on the market for several years...

AFAIK, the current HDDVD authoring software supports MPEG-2 and VC-1, and the initial discs have been using VC-1.

We won't be able to see a true Apples to Apple comparison until we can compare two discs that used the exact same codec at the exact same bitrate, or even the exact same H.264 / VC-1 data.

Format capacities

[WebCowboy]

Hold on I was sure the blueray was the bigger size?

The biggest CURRENTLY AVAILABLE format is HD-DVD:

BluRay: 25GB/layer * 1 layer = 25 GB
HD-DVD: 15GB/layer * 2 layers = 30 GB

Furthermore, the video encoding scheme used by HD-DVD is more efficient--BluRay is still encoded similar to standard DVDs though in a few weeks some BluRay discs using identically encoded video as HD-DVD will start showing up. I'm not all that certain studios will spend extra money to produce excluseinve content to take advantage of the extra 5GB on HD-DVD.

One thing that isn't discussed much is that although the two formats can use identically encoded video, IIRC they have different DRM schemes and different programming methods (for interactivity/menus). The reviewer was quite disappointed with the performance of BluRay for interactivity--its responsiveness was much poorer than that of the HD-DVD release, so much so that it more than erased the benefit of faster initial start-up of Blu-ray. Combine the inferior quality of these releases with the fact that there is less selection of BluRay players, and they cost much more than HD-DVD, and the smaller number of titles than HD-DVD, and BluRay has an uphill battle on its hands to escape the fate of becomeing the Betamax of the 21st century.

Take note that BluRay has the largest POTENTIAL size. I THINK current BluRay players are dual-layer capable, but even if they are this capability isn't well tested as there is no capability to mass-produce dual-layer discs yet. That'll take another year, at which time there will be an ample 20GB extra room on BluRay vx. HD-DVD. If BluRay can hang on for another year then this could be what it needs to come out on top. More importantly studios will have to actually take advantage of the space for meaningful exclusive content, and hardware vendors will have to bring down the price of BluRay players to be much closer in price to HD-DVD. Consumers will pay a premium for the extra capacity, but only a small one, and the quality had better improve from the current offerings.

In the end though, content will win this war. Given how things are shaping up BluRay will be second fiddle for a couple of years IMO. I don't know if either format will win total domination either--in another decade it won't matter how the bits are patterned on the little shiny plastic discs, because even today the little shiny plastic disc as a distribution medium is slowly going extinct. The kind of people who have HDTV sets today are also the kind of people who have digital cable or sattelite, and digital HTDV service offers video-on-demand and/or PVR digital recording. Just as iTunes and similar services are surging as CD sales flatten out and decline, electronic distribution of video content will change the industry.