The Energon Pub

News Credits: 2 · by **Tekka** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 12:42 pm

From reading these posts it doesn't really seem to be a case of HD-DVD vs Blu Ray in people's minds, but of Microsoft vs Sony.

by **BigDude** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 1:03 pm

It's official: Michael Bay is the biggest PS3 fanboy ever.

News Credits: 1 · by **Chindogg** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 1:05 pm

What he neglects to mention is that Microsoft helped design the software architecture of HD-DVD during its inception. HD-DVD uses Microsoft's HDi codecs for its menu system, unlike Blu-ray's Java-based BD-J system. In short, Bay should stick with making movies and not rambling about business that he knows nothing about.

News Credits: 2 · by **Sid Burn** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 1:07 pm

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.

Glad to see someone has the facts. To all those using the Betamax/VHS war as a crutch for their argument that Sony will lose this format war, get over it, that was decades ago. It is not a valid point today with how huge and influential Sony is.

Bottom line is this, more capacity = better HD quality, for picture AND sound. Bluray discs hold 50 gigs, HDDVD hold 30 gigs. If you cannot do that math then I cant help you.

Blu is outselling HDDVD worldwide at a ratio of 3 to 1. Even on the week Transformers came out on HDDVD, Bluray STILL outsold them despite being denied Transformers for a period of 18 months (the amount of time viacom bought exclusivity for TF on HDDVD)

Bluray will see Transformers and it will probably be some kind of ultimate edition, only Bluray can handle a perfect HD encoding and true lossless audio.

Micheal Bay is speaking the truth.

by **npk** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 1:10 pm

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.

News Credits: 2 · by **Sid Burn** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 1:42 pm

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.

Oh man, this is a hilarious argument. Lets break it down shall we friends?

HDDVD limited capacity has already shown that they will be unable to support lossless audio because it takes up too much space. This means the best audio from HDDVD will never be theatre quality.

HD encodings are also very space consuming and again we see that HDDVD is at its limit, the majority of current HD discs need at least 25 gigs to do a decent HD transfer, that means that HDDVD is already releasing titles with multiple discs for the extras. This format was supposed to eliminate the need for multidisk movies but the storage capacity is tapped.

Regardless of how expensive the discs are to manufacture, Bluray and HDDVD discs are offered at the same price, so I cant imagine why the consumer would care since they arent seeing a higher price. Sony is absorbing the cost until the technology becomes cheaper.

In terms of compression, it is true that many releases have the same compression RIGHT NOW. But in the future, when transfers require more than 30 gigs to be fully realized, HDDVD enthusiasts are going to be feeling the burn of buyer's remorse. This isnt far away, HDDVD already admitted that they were not able to offer lossless audio on some of their recent releases due to space limitations.

I am not sure if you are citing Sonys ownership of many film studios as a negative or a positive but either way, it is great news for Blu. HDDVD will NEVER see Pirates, James Bond, Spiderman and a list of other highly regarded franchises.

In terms of breakdown and media corruption, this simply isnt the case and I dont know who you are gleaming this information from. With HDDVDs greatest supporter being Microsoft itself, known for Xbox's red ring of death, it is HDDVD that has the reader issues.

Thanks for the laughs, hope you learned something.

by **Sloptank** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 1:48 pm

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

by **devil prime** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 1:52 pm

Blu-Ray and Hd-DVD are the same thing

by **Ariannus** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 2:00 pm

It isn't a issue of Microsoft vs Sony its the HD-DVD Promotion Group (http://www.hddvdprg.com/eng/about/member.html) vs the Blu-ray Disc Association (http://www.blu-raydisc.com/general_information/Section-14009/Index.html).

For that matter if the Blu-ray Disc Association hadn't voted against licensing Microsoft's HDi system for Blue-ray instead of Java, the two groups would have reached a deal and we wouldn't even have HD-DVD now.

by **Tyrenol** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 2:05 pm

This "Michael Bay" flesh cheature... He sure knows his oily residuals.

I agree, though. We now have HDMI upconvert DVD players; and MP3 players capable of playing movies. Let us wait until the prices go down before we hand the crown to the winner.

News Credits: 8 · by **Megatron Wolf** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 2:10 pm

This hole DVD war is stupid. They should just combine the two formats. that way every one makes money and the whole industry is happy. Except those who want the retarded digital downloads to win. But thats a good thing. Digital Downloads take to much effort, time and hard drive space. And why is it every time something like this happens Bay has to comment? I hope he gets axed from the TF franchise soon because im getting sick of this moron.

News Credits: 2 · by **Sid Burn** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 2:14 pm

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

Well the percentage of people who care about HD content know the difference.

Thats why it annoys me to see soooo many uninformed posters making statements like "HDDVD and Bluray are the same."
Some of the responses on this topic have no basis in reality whatsoever.

For a videophile like myself, the differnence between the two formats is a gap in quality that cannot be ignored. I dont expect the average guy to give a ****, it is the early adopters like me that make or break these format wars.

News Credits: 8 · by **Liege Evilmus** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 2:35 pm

More of Bay's tricks!

But seriously, it's not like a movie can only be released once!?!

Do it again with better special features too.

News Credits: 8 · by **NuclearConvoy** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 2:41 pm

BluRay forever!

News Credits: 2 · by **Crosscheck** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 2:51 pm

When tri-layer HD-DVDs start popping up, people will be singing a different tune about Blu-Ray being superior.

Besides, the vast majority of Blu-Ray disks are the twenty-five gb disk, not the fifty gb disk. That is even less than 30 gb version of the HDDVD, which almost all HDDVDs are released in.

News Credits: 3599 · by **Seibertron** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 3:02 pm

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*

Not sure I agree with the comment about Betamax, despite it losing to VHS tapes back in the 80s. Here's an interesting read about Betamax on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betamax

News Credits: 3599 · by **Seibertron** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 3:06 pm

Here's a fun quote from Wikipedia's Videotape Format War page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videotape_format_war

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].

News Credits: 21 · by **dragons** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 3:37 pm

i say just combine the 2 fromats so battle can be over and there will be just 2 fromats hd/blueray and regualr dvds

by **eggshen** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 4:32 pm

SidBurn wrote: "Glad to see someone has the facts. To all those using the Betamax/VHS war as a crutch for their argument that Sony will lose this format war, get over it, that was decades ago. It is not a valid point today with how huge and influential Sony is."

You see the facts because you are a blu ray fanboy. Why did Transformers HD DVD just win an award for best audio? Show me one movie where the 50gb dics improves picture quality. Why does HD DVD usually have better extras? Oh that's right..cause Blu Ray can't play java. 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.

News Credits: 9 · by **Zeds** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 4:43 pm

Michael Bay and his rants want to make me compare him to a disgruntled postal worker just needing one last push to be sent over the edge :BOOM:

News Credits: 4 · by **Blitzwing the warrior** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 4:51 pm

I bet tomorrow Bay will come out and say "Sorry guys, I was drunk again and digital downloads are awesome"

News Credits: 7 · by **BigBot** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 4:59 pm

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.

OK, I agree with the region coding thing, I hate it, but not all disc are region encoded and studios like the fact that Blu-ray discs have far better security and still play when scratched.

News Credits: 11 · by **Robinson** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 5:11 pm

The world has become so spoiled with this Hi-Def crap. We forget how content we were 15 years ago when Vhs was the king of home entertainment, then comes dvd and we get 5 hours of bonus features that majority of casual viewers really don't care all to much about. There are those of use that watch the features and like them but there are many more that could care less. Thats why studios still put out bare bones versions of movies. Now do we really need dvd's that have 30,50,100 gigs of space just so people can hear if an extra farted on set? I know I don't.

I have better things to spend money on than whether or not I can see a bolt's thread pattern on primes thigh.

News Credits: 15 · by **Ravage XK** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 5:28 pm

Blu Ray is far out selling HD DVD in Europe (according to reports). I imagine the PS3's pretty top notch player has something to do with it and now the price has finally come down I expect its position to grow.

To judge a new format on those that have some before it (UMD etc)is completly wrong as they have little in common other than they are Sony formats and the UMD only exists to serve the PSP.

So far as bitching about storage space on a disc goes, it will only make any real difference when it comes to storing PC files. Who cares if a disc can store 50gig over a 25gig when there is nothing to put on it. Very few movies come with enough extra content to fill them as it is.

I didnt choose to own a Blu Ray player, I got it when I bought my PS3. Now that I have it I will feed it with discs for as long as I can. Maybe that will be until HD DVD beats it or maybe it will be when Blu Ray 2 launches,I dont know. One thing I do know is THAT I AM SICK OF THE BITCHING THAT GOES ON between supporters of the different formats.

News Credits: 11 · by **Robinson** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 5:32 pm

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.

That right there is why I am perfectly fine with my standard dvd's. People have favorites and thats fine with me but it's going to suck in the end for the format that does eventually lose out or if in 3 years something superior than blue ray or hddvd comes out.

P.S.And I don't need my video game system to play dvd's either when I already have one hooked up.