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BluRay or HDDVD
Posted: Thu Dec 28, 2006 10:05 am
by Burrito
my trusty old DVD player (of 4 years) finally decided to commit suicide last night and I am going to step up to the next generation of players. I can't decide between a BluRay or HDDVD and wanted your opinions of these two.
Any personal experience you have with them would be helpful. Any models / brands you can suggest would be helpful too.
right now I'm leaning toward BluRay because I have a nice BluRay disk burner in mind for my next PC that I build (sometime early next year).
I'm gonna head out at lunch today to make a purchase and would like to go to the store with some 'ammunition' of sorts.
Posted: Thu Dec 28, 2006 10:46 am
by feyd
In my book they both stink.
However my plan is/was to get a PS3, which takes care of playing BluRay. So I would likely get a HD-DVD player. I'm not interested in the HD-DVD addon for the 360.
Honestly, I don't really want to get either as both have some issues (ignoring the studios releases often siding with one or another, rarely both.) I'm overall perfectly happy with current DVDs run through an unconverting player. Until there's more of a winner in the format war (or they stop fighting and join forces for a single standard) I really just don't see the point.
Posted: Thu Dec 28, 2006 12:47 pm
by Kieran Huggins
There's a ton of $20 dvd players you could buy as a replacement for your dead DVD player.. then wait until the format war is over. The new ones are only going to get cheaper!
Check out
http://videohelp.com for user reviews of cheap players you can find locally.
FYI - Some half-decent $20 players even support mp4/divx these days... make an even tougher argument for upgrading, IMO.
Posted: Thu Dec 28, 2006 1:09 pm
by Burrito
yeah, I've been doing a lot of research since I posted that this morning and I think I'm just going to get a regular old dvd player that does upconversion and also plays divX.
Do you know the connector types for the upconversion ones? Sadly I don't have an HDMI input on my TV, but I do have 3 available component inputs and a DVI input.
Posted: Thu Dec 28, 2006 1:18 pm
by Kieran Huggins
Most cheap players will have your choice of composite or component video, plus RCA audio.
In Canada, there's been a bunch of good cheap magnavox players for $20 lately... look in flyers for model numbers, then on the videohelp site for reviews.
Good luck!
Posted: Thu Dec 28, 2006 1:20 pm
by Burrito
I'm off to frys right this second to see what they got!
thanks for the info.
Posted: Thu Dec 28, 2006 4:13 pm
by m3mn0n
Personally I'm sticking with DVD until the battle is over. I can't stand when exclusives are a tool of battle in a war about next generation formats. It's all good for game systems, but something that's supposed to be a de facto standard can't have some studios refusing to release movies in their format.
If you really did want to take the plunge, I'd say go with HD DVD. Sony has a good history of losing these format battles. Remember the mini-disc and how influential that was on your life? Or remember the slaughter of Betamax to the VHS format? Or in modern times, how studios are pulling out of releasing things on PSP format because of how low sales are?
The only proprietary format they've mad that I personally think kicks ass is the memory stick duo which is only really nice if you have a lot of Sony products. With having a HandyCam, Vaio, and PSP in the family, it's nice trading files between those platforms (would be even more handy if we had a PS3 a Sony Ericsson phone or
another one of the support products).
But in regards to BluRay, I think it'll go the way of Betamax where Sony will eventually call it quits and simply adopt the format themselves, like they eventually adopted VHS.
I think so because for me the odds on the successs boil down to how well the Xbox 360 will do vs PS3 and who gets the best/most exclusives from studios. Sony has a distinct advantage since it owns a major hollywood studio and has connections, but right now Xbox 360 is still the market leader and it backs HD DVD and HD DVD I think will have better/more exclusives (currently WB, Paramount, HBO, New Line & Universal) because it's widely held that it has superior audio/visual quality.
Here is an article about it:
http://blogs.business2.com/utilitybelt/ ... blura.html
Posted: Thu Dec 28, 2006 7:03 pm
by thiscatis
Posted: Thu Dec 28, 2006 10:00 pm
by alvinphp
I would also wait. At the moment though I am leaning more towards a Blu-Ray as it is built into the PS3 and it is better technology. In saying that the Betamax was also better technology, but then Sony was much smaller then also. If MS was to bring out the next XBOX in HD-DVD format then I could see a real format war starting.
Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2007 1:32 am
by Luke
Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2007 3:03 am
by Maugrim_The_Reaper
Like most people, I'm just going to sit out the format war and sit on my nice comfortable fence...

Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2007 3:44 am
by matthijs
Aren't there any plans for new open source formats like FireDVD or LinRay?
Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2007 9:15 am
by shiznatix
Doesn't matter anymore! Just buy one of those LG dual players and your set
Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2007 9:29 am
by Kieran Huggins
I'll be damned if I'm going to buy ANOTHER format that's even MORE crippled than the last when there's NO guarantee it will even be around in 5 years.
I put together a mediabox with spare parts and a few new ones from tigerdirect for around $200 CAD. I own many DVDs and media player classic will play them fine. DivX and DVD scale well on a PC (macs included), it supports my 42" 1080p monitor natively, and best of all it's future-proof. I don't even have the DVD player hooked up anymore... I think it's in my closet!
Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2007 10:05 am
by jayshields
shiznatix wrote:Doesn't matter anymore! Just buy one of those LG dual players and your set
Yeah, NEC have developed a chip that supports both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD.