Big Releases Heat Up High-Def Format War

An anonymous reader writes "Choosing sides in the high-def format war becomes that much harder today, as two powerhouse movie franchises hit store shelves on opposing formats. Exclusive to Blu-ray are the first two 'Pirates of the Caribbean' flicks, while exclusive to HD DVD are two different configurations of the 'Matrix' Trilogy. So which format wins this battle? According to High-Def Digest, this one's a draw. The article has capsule reviews of the four releases ('The Ultimate Matrix Collection' & 'The Complete Matrix Trilogy' on HD DVD, and 'POTC: Curse of the Black Pearl' & 'POTC: Dead Man's Chest' on Blu-ray) with links to excruciatingly in-depth reviews. In the end the site says both sets of releases boast benchmark video and audio, but a preponderance of standard-def supplements prevent all of the above from being the perfect high-def package."

Comments

Blu-ray the winner?

[jshriverWVU]

I'm not in favor of one over the other, but from everything I see blu-ray seems to be the winner. I have only seen once place sell HDDVD, everyplace has at least a few blu-ray, even the mom-pop store down the road has some blu-ray movies for rent.

Several PS3's out there, plus isnt walmart even going to be selling a bluray player for under $600? I've seen bluray blanks and burners at Best Buy and a couple other places, yet I have never seen even a regular HDDVD player.

They're just ahead, and sales seem to agree.

Just my $0.02

Re:Blu-ray the winner?

[elrous0]

HD-DVD has two big advantages--it's a lot cheaper (you can get HD-DVD players for almost half the price of Blu-ray players, and HD-DVD discs run about $5-$10 cheaper than Blu-ray) and it's not a Sony format (does anyone really want those control-freak DRM fanatics to gain a monopoly of the next-gen home video market?).