The Energon Pub

BigBot wrote:Blu-ray is far superior. More space per disc, more backing from hollywood, more backing from the electronics industry and a format that has been clearly winning and would have won by early 2008 if Microsoft hadn't paid off Paramount and Dreamworks.

npk wrote:Blu-ray is far superior. More space per disc (to put what on nobody knows yet), more studios owned by Sony, more expensive to manufacture media, more prone to media corruption, more expensive to manufacture readers, readers more prone to breakdown, uses same exact compression on most releases. Yup, far superior to HD-DVD.

Sloptank wrote:To 99% of the people watching movies, the difference between the two is insignificant.

TheStarScreamer wrote:Blu-Ray... superior? HAHAHAHAHA!

I needed that kind of joke this morning. Anyone who thinks Blu-Ray s superior obviously doesn't remember the last few format war spearheaded by Sony *cough* (betamax) (minidisc) *cough*

Betamax sales dwindled away and VHS emerged as the winner of the format war — despite being the least sophisticated of the three main rivals. VHS benefited from continuous development from multiple manufacturers (including Sony) over the years, and innovations such as high speed picture search, Hi-Fi stereo sound and fast-load tape mechanisms saw it keep pace with and eventually surpass Betamax.

When it became clear that Betamax had lost the video format war, controversy switched from which technology was better to why VHS had triumphed so completely. The video format war is now a highly scrutinized event in business and marketing history, leading to a plethora of market investigations into why Betamax failed. As mentioned above, Sony was first to release their format, but was followed only a year later by JVC and their affiliates.

Sony, being the first producer to offer their technology, thought it would establish Betamax as the leading format. This kind of lock-in and path dependence is exactly what economists point out as the Betamax weak link (Liebowitz, 1995).

What Sony didn't take into account was what the consumers wanted. Sony believed that having better quality recordings was the key to success, whereas it soon became clear that consumer desire was focused more intently on recording time and compatibility for easy transfer of information (Besen, 1994). The video recording market was an unknown when VCRs first came on the market; as such, Sony and JVC were both developing technologies that were unproven. As a result of the desire to get into the marketplace faster, the firms both spent less time on research and development, and tried to save money by picking a version of the technology they thought would do best without really exploring all the options (Cowan, 1991). This is why there was more than one format on the market and why they continued to reinvent them with longer playing times and better quality.

In 1988 Sony began to market their own VHS machines, and despite claims that they were still backing Beta, it was clear that the format was dead -- at least in Europe and the U.S.. In parts of South America, Beta continued to be popular, and in Japan, the format was developed into ED-Beta and SuperBeta, and was still produced up to the end of 2002. The rise of DVD finally took away the niche market that Betamax had survived in during the 90s, giving the home format a total lifespan of 27 years.

Today, the only remaining aspect of the Betamax system is the slang term 'Betamaxed', used to describe something that had a brief shelf life and was quickly replaced by the competition. Despite the failure of Betamax, its technological successor, the Betacam tape would become an industry standard for video recording, production and presentation, and continues to be used to this day, only now beginning to be supplanted by direct hard drive storage of video.

After the videotape format war the major electronics corporations agreed on a single standard for DVD in December 1995, but a format war resulted from a failure to agree on a single standard for DVD's high-definition successor in May 2005 [4].

eggshen wrote:You see the facts because you are a blu ray fanboy. Why did Transformers HD DVD just win an award for best audio?{/QUOTE]

Just wondering where this award was won? Considering the HD DVD version of Transformers does not have a true HD audio package (5.1 Dolby Digital Plus), That seems a poor award to win.

Show me one movie where the 50gb dics improves picture quality. Why does HD DVD usually have better extras?

Point of opinion there.

Oh that's right..cause Blu Ray can't play java.

Blu-ray can't play Java?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray#Ja ... re_support

Most of the Blu Ray exclusives that I'm interested in are available over seas. Underworld 1&2 Terminator2, Reign of Fire, Total Recall, Reservoir Dogs, Resident Evil 1&2, Mr and Mrs Smith, First Blood and Rambo's..the list goes on. It's great that ALL HD DVD players are region free...something Blu Ray is missing. Enjoy your DRM fanboy.

Ravage XK wrote:One thing I do know is THAT I AM SICK OF THE BITCHING THAT GOES ON between supporters of the different formats.