Blu-ray vs. HD DVD
Matt posted in Xbox 360, Playstation 3 on June 5th, 2006

Sony and Microsoft have chosen opposing sides on the next gen video format war. Some people speculate that the next gen console wars either decides or depends on the outcome of the next gen media format. I disagree with this. The average consumer doesn’t have an HDTV, and if he/she did, he/she probably wouldn’t value the higher quality picture enough to spend the extra money on the Blu-ray or HD DVD disc. I, on the other hand, love the higher quality so much that I’m probably going to re-buy many of my favorite films in a HD format. But, which format is better?

Despite a number of technical differences, the formats are very similar when it comes to the consumer. Both support 1080p. Both use the same video and audio codecs. HD DVD is required to be backwards compatible with DVD and Blu-ray is not, but I imagine all Blu-ray players will be. There are a few differences that may play significantly in the format war. The first difference is the cost. Blu-ray discs are more expensive for a number of reasons. The first reason is that the manufacturing techniques to create them are completely different than for DVDs. You can retool a DVD factory to make HD DVDs, but you have to create a new factory for Blu-ray. The other difference in cost is that all Blu-ray discs need to have a hard coating layer on them. The advantage of this is that they should be even more scratch resistant than DVDs, but the disadvantage is that adds to the cost.

 They have different disc sizes. HD DVDs hold 15 GB a layer whereas Blu-ray discs hold 25 GB. Is the extra 10 GB necessary? Is it worth the extra cost? Let’s look at the format from two perspectives. The first perspective is the home PC manufacturers. Of course for the PC you want more space. A lot of the home PC manufacturers are siding with Blu-Ray, but that doesn’t have too much of an effect in the home video market. The PC market will probably be stuck with both formats until the holographic disc technologies get cheap enough to replace them. This doesn’t really matter for gamers because most PC games are still released on CD anyway. For video, I’d say the size difference doesn’t matter all that much. Maybe the special features will be released on another disc like they are on DVD. Still, I’d rather have a cheaper two disc edition than a one disc assuming all the other factors were the same.

Although HD DVD and Blu-Ray have essentially the same read speed (actually HD DVD is 0.55 Mbps faster), Blu-ray seems to require a 1.5x at least (54 Mbps) for movies, so movies can be encoded at higher quality, but it’s uncertain if movie studios will use this because at that rate, they can only fit a 2 hour movie on a 50 GB disc. I imagine that most content providers will try and fit everything on a 25 GB disc if they can help it because of the cost. In fact, since Blu-Ray is significantly more expensive, it may be cheaper to release a dual layer HD DVD (30 GB), so  HD DVD might be higher quality for some releases. I’ve not used the video codecs myself, so I can’t tell you if 36.55 Mbps will be high enough quality for all HD digital files at 1080p, but that’ll probably be just fine because the DVD forum uses AVC at 8 Mbps as reference, so I imagine that the extra space and bitrates won’t give a noticeable quality boost. Certainly, that’s a biased figure, but everyone’s given good reviews to the released HD DVDs so far, and I believe they are all single layer.

Although I’m speculating the potentially higher bitrates that Blu-ray can hold won’t be noticeable, even if there are quality differences is that enough to sell Average Joe consumer on the format when the cost is more? Many people compare this to the VHS and Betamax war. Betamax was better quality (probably much more so than Blu-ray might be over HD DVD), but it was more expensive so consumers opted for the cheaper one. To even further the comparison Betamax was backed by Sony and they are the driving force behind Blu-ray. There’s a lot of hardware vendors that are part of the BDA (Blu-ray Disc Association, not British Dental Association), so in that regard, it’s dissimilar to Betamax. Also, a lot of console providers (Sony owned Sony Pictures, Columbia Tristar as well as 20th Century Fox) are part of the BDA also, so there will be a lot of content exclusive to the format. However, Universal is backing HD DVD, and they have the rights to a lot of my favorite movies, so HD DVD is quite appealing.

So, in the end, who will win? Cost is definitely a factor. Quality and size is probably not as much of a factor as the Blu-ray camp would like us to believe. But really, it comes down to the content. As far as currently announced titles, there are exclusives to both formats that I’m excited about. For Blu-ray, I’m interested in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Reservoir Dogs and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. For HD DVD, I’m excited about 12 Monkeys, Dark City, Dune Theatrical ( Blu-ray is getting the sci-fi channel’s Dune, which was closer to the books, but the acting was quite bad, so I’m not interested in that one), and La Cité des Enfants Perdus. I have all these movies on DVD, but I’ll rebuy them in HD, so I can enjoy them with much better picture quality. Even though Blu-ray has more content providers behind it, I’m more interested in HD DVD titles just because I prefer those movies. Once 20th Century Fox starts releasing Simpsons and Family Guy on Blu-ray I might be more interested in that format.