For the Techies (and non techies) on the board: HD DVD and Blu Ray

[DaemonSeid]

Alright all...for those of you that know...regular DVDs as we know now may be replaced in a few year by one of 2 new formats Blu ray (produced by Sony) or HD DVD (HD stands for High Density) by Universal. What makes these formats different from regular DVDs is that that capacity is larger than current formats. The avg DVD holds between 4 to 9 gigs of info for the movies that we currently watch whereas HD DVD and Blu Ray can hold up to and in some cases beyond 5x as much.

So...What does that mean?

You get a much clearer audio and visual aspect on these formats as opposed to current formats.

Let me put it another way...the average movie that gets released to DVD goes thru what's called compression meaning that the move video and audio is shrunk down and squeezed as much as possible to fit onto DVD...so while you may have a clear pic (depending on what type of TV you watching it on) you still may not have a 'great' picture....ever notice on some movies when it get dark you may notice black pixels or jagged edges on some of the parts of the movie? or...it may just plain look crappy? That's a result of compression. Also because of this, movies and extras usually are split across 2 or more disks.

With the newer formats, movie studios don't have to compress movies as much and as a result you get a crisper more vibrant picture and the sound in some cases are better.

I picked up a HD DVD drive to go with my Xbox 360 (I got an excellent deal BTW of course) along with the Matrix Trilogy and King Kong.....I cannot think of enough superlatives to describe how both of them looked...now..I watched King Kong on HBOHD and it was crisp there, but on HD DVD? WOW.....when you can see the detailed scars and bumps and etc....you really get an appreciation on the fact this is the closest thing you will get to actually being in the theater. BTW...I watced the scene where Kong fought the T Rexes and with the surround sound almost really made u feel like u were there.

I popped in the Matrix Reloaded...watched the Burly Brawl (Neo vs Angent Smith x1000) and it was incredible....so....for any one that is thinking about doing this...HD DVDs are cool. I have a friend that recently bought a blu ray and I will pop over his way during the weekend to peep that out.


Be mindful of this tho....this is the same thing happening now that happened years ago when there was VHS vs Betamax. 2 different high quality formats 2 different companies...so there may actually be some titles that will come out for one format and not the other. Another thing is price.

On average, blu-ray players are a bit more expensive than HD DVD players but a few places on line may sell them cheaper....blu ray players average about 500 to 600 bucks.....HD DVD are about 200 bucks cheaper and actually I saw some at tigerdirect.com that have them around the 200 dollar mark. Or if you want to play both sides of the fence and you have the dough for it, you can get a hybrid player that plays both for around 800 to 1000 dollars.

It's been about a year so movies are steadily trickling in ( I personally am waiting for 300 at the end of the month) and in some cases u may have to make a decision whether to replace your DVD version with the newer ones....OH!!! and YES the new players WILL PLAY your old DVDs so don't throw them out yet!! And some of the players can do what's called 'upcoverting' meaning it can increase the picture resoluton of a regular DVD to near HD quality but that is dependent of the machine.

If you don't want to actually 'buy' the formats they are available for rental from blockbusters or netflix.

If you want to see one in action, I recommend checking out Best Buy or Circuit City and tell them that u wanna see the basic set up....and lastly, if you decide to invest in a player...make sure you already have a HDTV and a good home theater system....cuz you can't do nothing if you have your regular ol' 20 in. with the rabbit ears in the kitchen.....