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

Moot point?

[RobertM1968]

This may all become a moot point if the multi-format drives (by Samsung and LG) mentioned earlier on /. (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/13/19332 01) become a reality, thus allowing end-users to buy content on HD-DVD or BluRay or regular DVD and run any of them on their drives/players. This would also allow the studios to release in whatever format they are geared up for instead of in both formats - or instead of hoping the format they selected "wins the war" (as the war would essentially end in a "it doesnt matter anymore" scenario.

-Robert