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Media Fight - PS3 Blu-ray vs. 360 HD DVD Add-On
An anonymous reader sent a link suggesting we might enjoy High Def Digest's next-gen console media comparison. They take a look at the PlayStation 3's Blu-ray playback capabilities, and compare it to the performance of the Xbox 360's HD DVD add-on. The article offers a number of technical details for the movie, audio, and gaming buff. As you might expect, given the companies involved, both products basically perform their functions very well. From the article: "That doesn't mean both aren't without their drawbacks. The Xbox 360 add-on suffers from a lack of HDMI and analog outputs, though it still delivers excellent results despite those limitations. The PS3, meanwhile, also lacks analog outs, but it does have HDMI 1.3 support and can decode Dolby TrueHD. The lack of 1080 upconversion of 720p sources on the PS3 is a huge issue, though, so unless you have a 1080p-capable HDTV, you may suffer buyer's remorse."
An anonymous reader sent a link suggesting we might enjoy High Def Digest's next-gen console media comparison. They take a look at the PlayStation 3's Blu-ray playback capabilities, and compare it to the performance of the Xbox 360's HD DVD add-on.
A comparison of the actual games might be a bit more relevant. To be perfectly honest, I don't think anyone buys a gaming console BASED ON THE FUCKING PERFORMANCE OF THE OPTICAL DRIVE. They buy it because it has the games they want to play.
Push Button, Receive Bacon
This will probably be the first time a large number of customers begins to "get it" in regards to having DRM force-fed down our throats.
In addition, this will probably be the first time that the lack of a analog hole will actually result in a large number of people being screwed.
(its a joke)
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
... usually end in failure.
-Sega CD, 32X, etc.
No one wants to buy extra hardware to play games and these add-ons better be dirt cheap if they expect anyone to pick them up for HD-DVD playback. That and why is there even a need to replace DVD as it stands for most people?
I understand the benefits of blue-ray and HD-DVD for computer storage for applications like games, archiving, etc. But console history is filled with failed peripherals.
It seems probable to me that the primary motivation for the PS3, is to put a blu-ray drive under every expensive TV. Perhaps that is why there is no 720p downsampler, they want people to look at blu-ray disks and say wow. Rather than creating a cheap console that will do the job, they went overkill (I want one, by the way, even if I may never get one). With high prices, and low cost alternatives, you can expect that the early owners of PS3s are going to have their displays up to date as well. Demand for blu-ray grows, more studios sign on, Sony Pictures can put out more movies in Blu-ray, and pretty soon the profits destroy the losses on the PS3. More of an "investment" than a "terrible blunder" if you consider not just game sales, but blu-ray proliferation.
I have freaks! I did something right...
Look.. the formats are stillborn.
they were announced months ago, and despite being advertised everywhere sales are lack luster to non-existent.
everyone on slashdot got it right.. it didn't offer anything substantially different to dvd.. was much more expensive, and imposes incredibly confusing, draconian, and prohibitively expensive DRM schemes.
heck.. in my local area theyre running ads trying to get people interested by directing them to a website where they explain the rediculously complicated HDTV crap.. (why your component won't play at full 1080 p---probably lying about it too to gloss over the whole DRM point like all the ad nazis do)
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
I've been saying this from the beginning, but Blu-Ray will be the winner of the HD format war simply because it has a cooler name. HDDVD is hard to say and sounds like obscure computer nerd bullshit. Blu-ray on the other hand sounds like a devastating weapon that has fallen into enemy hands, putting the world at risk and now needs to be saved by a commando soldier who was recently kicked out of the army for disobeying orders and saving a village of orphans, but now is the world's only hope to avoid sure destruction. Coming to theaters near you, this July 4th.
I think the choice is obvious.
More FUD from the Sony bashers. PS3 does 1080p just fine. What it doesn't do is upscale 720p content up to 1080i if the TV only doesn't do 1080p. So what it does is feed the 720p content directly to the TV to do what it can with it, provided it supports 720p. If it doesn't, the PS3 downscales the content to 480p.
So in order to suffer the downscaling, you need a really crappy HDTV which doesn't support 1080p AND 720p.
Personally, I'd be more frustrated at a lack of HDMI on my HD content player as any moderately decent HDTV support either of those two modes fine.
The format that first/most conviniently gets ripped and XvidD'ed.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
The two models of the PS3 are $500 and $600.
No, actually, they are $UNAVAILABLE and $SOLD OUT.
Remember that in "HD vs not HD," resolution isn't the only factor in video quality.
Anyone can release a good DVD or a really bad DVD of the same content. It's not a difference of resolution, but in compression and other factors. Cable and satellite feeds that are Standard Def are commonly compressed to the point of being blocky, just so they can force as many channels as possible through the pipe. They might be the same nominal resolution as DVD, but that doesn't mean they deliver the same (or the potential) video quality of that resolution.
HD obviously has higher potential quality, but a poorly mastered Blu-ray could easily be no better than DVD; consider the source quality and the technical expertise dedicated to it (shovelware) as potential factors.
Since broadcast is heavily compressed, the low-end of Standard Def programming can approach VHS quality. Since those same opperators want to sell HD, they can make the difference look far more dramatically different by providing decent HD and poor SD feeds. Conversely, until there is a huge demand for BR or HD-DVD, they won't necessarily offer some huge leap in quality over DVD, particularly since the majority of TV watchers don't have high end HD capacity anyway.
The market also has a reputation for settling on "good enough." Standards fixated on overshooting good enough have a long history of going nowhere.
BetaMax was technically and mechanically superior in certain ways to VHS.
LaserDisc was clearly and obviously superior to VHS.
CD offered outstandingly superior sound over cassette tape, but didn't catch on for many years (82-89)
SACD, DVD audio, and DAT offered various advantages that were overwhelmed by excessive DRM and a general disinterest in the high end.
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Weird, slashdot ate half my post on submission. Here's the whole thing, in its entirety:
Lots of FUD floating around this response thread. I happen to own both a PS3 and an XBox 360 with HD-DVD add-on, along with a television that does them both justice. Here's some facts:
1. The difference in picture and sound quality between HD-DVD / Blu-Ray and DVD is roughly the same as the jump in quality from VHS/LD to DVD. I've run numerous side-by-side comparison tests using the King Kong DVD & HD-DVD, as well as older films like Casablanca and Blazing Saddles. Much depends on the master & source material, but the difference is undeniable.
Now, that might not be enough to save either format. Most people didn't buy DVD for the increased quality, they bought it for the convenience of random access, and the decreased physical size / increased durability of the media vs. VHS tapes. HD-DVD / Blu-Ray don't offer any of these increases over the standard DVD.
2. The formats are almost identical in many key areas. Both play back the same video codecs (MPEG2, VC1, H.264), so when it comes down to it the films available on both formats are often identical. It all comes down to how the source material was mastered. Early blu-ray releases (5th Element) took a lot of knocks because the films are still mastered in the older MPEG2 format. Most newer films are encoded in the nicer Microsoft VC-1 standard, and look absolutely stunning.
3. The Playstation 3 absolutely does 1080p playback for blu-ray movies, when equipped with an HDMI cable. (Get a quality one for less than $10 at monoprice.com.) The XBox 360 absolutely does 1080p playback over component or VGA. Most HDTV's don't support 1080p over component or VGA (even my 2006 model Sony doesn't). Sadly, since the HDMI folks demand that all HDMI connectors be HDMI-only, and they disallow meta-connectors like the one on the 360, it seems unlikely that there will ever be an XBox 360 HDMI connector.
4. Some older HDTV's only do 1080i or 480p, and won't process signals in 720p up to 1080i. The hoohah is because the Playstation 3 also won't process 720p signals up to 1080i, but instead will downprocess these signals to 480p. Sony's already stated that they're working on a fix for this that will be pushed down via mandatory firmware update in the near future.
5. The newer audio formats, Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD, are decoded at the player and then sent to the receiver for playback. The lack of analog outputs means that these decoded formats can't be sent from a ps3 or a 360 to an older receiver. With a newer receiver, the PS3 can send these audio formats out via HDMI. The lack of HDMI outputs from the 360 means that these decoded formats can't be sent out from that system at all. That's too bad, because the difference in sound quality is pretty nice, and a definite upgrade over existing DTS / Dolby Digital. However, the 360 does downconvert these new signals to the highest bitrate of Dolby Digital possible (640K). There's an improvement over the sound quality of a DVD here, but not a big enough one you'd notice without listening to A/B comparisons.
6. The 360 HD-DVD drive has nothing to do with gaming. It's for movie playback only. It's also a terrific value. For $200 ($160 with a sneaky coupon last month), you get a $35 remote, a $35 movie, and an external USB2 drive that's recognized by both macs and PCs as well as an XBox 360. This thing has been flying off the shelves since it was released. Since the major argument against using a game console as your primary playback device is that you're putting undue wear on the system's drive, this means that I can now use the 360 as my primary DVD / HD-DVD playback device. That's great, because the 360 is a fantastic DVD player.
7. The formats are far from stillborn. Around 100 titles have been released for each format in the first year. Amazon sales data is tracked at http://www.thedvdwars.com/inde
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.