Which is More Consumer Friendly: HD DVD or Blu-ray?

[free2speak]

You can try to update the firmware anytime. If you are current the screen tells you that the process will end then you just press OK.

[free2speak]

Gandalf - Blu-ray AND a lot more storage which means best possible picture quality, every possibily for garanteed lossless audio, consistent 1080p 24FPS commitment, and features/uses of the Blu-ray disc we probably haven't even thought of yet with the 200gb limit, that seems like the best solution for everybody IMHO.

Blu-Ray does not have better picture or sound. The extra capacity does not mean you will get a richer movie experience. The 200GB is a dream machine from the future which is not available for sale until maybe 2010 so it has no relevence to your Blu-Ray experience.

I have read many positive HD DVD reviews. I just purchased the Harry Potter movies. High-Def Digest gives HP - Order of the Phoenix a "Highly Recommended" on HD DVD compared to a "Recommended" rating for Blu-Ray. Read the review below then tell me Blu-Ray is better with the extra capacity.

High-Def Digest
http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/1122/har ... oenix.html

[free2speak]

You will always have a ethernet connection on every HD DVD player because it is part of the HD DVD hardware specification. You may have an ethernet connection, but you have the option of using it or not. If you don't use ethernet to connect to the internet then firmware updates will be harder. But more important you can download new content and interactive stuff online when your player is connected. Many people have home networks now so it is easy to add the HD DVD player to the network and it works great.

[dabhome]

Gandalf - Blu-ray AND a lot more storage which means best possible picture quality, every possibily for garanteed lossless audio, consistent 1080p 24FPS commitment, and features/uses of the Blu-ray disc we probably haven't even thought of yet with the 200gb limit, that seems like the best solution for everybody IMHO.

Blu-Ray does not have better picture or sound. The extra capacity does not mean you will get a richer movie experience. The 200GB is a dream machine from the future which is not available for sale until maybe 2010 so it has no relevence to your Blu-Ray experience.

I have read many positive HD DVD reviews. I just purchased the Harry Potter movies. High-Def Digest gives HP - Order of the Phoenix a "Highly Recommended" on HD DVD compared to a "Recommended" rating for Blu-Ray. Read the review below then tell me Blu-Ray is better with the extra capacity.

High-Def Digest
http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/1122/har ... oenix.html

I am an HD DVD fan. However, I don't think this review proves your point. There are pluses and minuses between the two formats and depending on what is more important to you would determine which one is better. If you happened to want one of the languages provided on the Blu-Ray disk then HD DVD would be a waste. Also, I am disappointed that some extras are not in Hi-def. Both of these point to the advantage of the extra Blu-Ray space. However, Warner could have given us two disks (a technique often used in the DVD space)

[beatdrum]

From the "off" mode, I pushed the "open /close" button on my Toshiba A2, and it took 36 seconds to open. I inserted a disk and pressed "play", and it took 23 seconds to actually start the video. Lets say about a minute total time to start the movie.
What is the problem? Why is this an issue? Do others get the gang in to watch the movie, sit them down, pour the refreshments, and pop the corn? When everyone is ready to watch the movie, comfy with their eats and drinks, does someone then go and push the "on" button and load a movie (delaying viewing pleasure by at least a minute)?
Duh! Why not push the button first and then do the above activities? This approach should work with either format and any number of members in the audience.
P.S. This approach works well for PCs and MAC computers, either format. Push the "on" button about a minute before you actually want to use the computer.

[free2speak]

dabhome -I am an HD DVD fan. However, I don't think this review proves your point.

I give this review as an example only. I can find a lot of other highly ranked HD DVD titles, but this review and the Blu-Ray review give a clear comparison. According to High-Def the HD DVD title is best. The only advantage the Blu-Ray has is the extra languages which could easily be put on a different disk for extra languages.

The point is many people incorrectly state that the extra capacity of Blu-Ray will give them the best picture and sound which is not true. At best the two standards are equal for video and sound. You will always find small variations between players, but Blu-Ray quality is clearly not superior to HD DVD.

The extra capacity is only as good as the content on it. If a studio makes a disk for both platforms do you think the spend a lot of time making it so much better on one than the other? Sure I guess it would be nice to have the extra languages on a disk, but it won't help me with English. Again they could release a different disk for these languages in other areas which is not difficult.

[free2speak]

All of the HD players in both formats are slow in comparison to DVD. Some are faster then others, but all would be easily beaten by a DVD player. The Toshiba is going through a boot cycle just like a PC. You can see the video mode changing on your TV as the unit starts up. The software is more resource hungry too so the player has to move much more data than DVD. The players will get faster in the future. Like you said turn on the player one minute to movie time it isn't difficult. It's the price we pay for being early adopters.

[DavidEC]

My orignal Toshiba DVD player from 1997 (yes I still have it and it will not load any DVD-/+ disc's and it also seems not able to load any current "Sony {Or sub-studio's like Columbia}" discs made after 2002) takes longer to load a DVD than my Toshiba HD-A20 takes to load a Web Enabled HD-DVD that has to connect to the web before loading movie menu...
So I am sure that once firmware gets settled that the programers will be able to get the load time shortened.
--David

[free2speak]

Only the boot time from power up seems too long on HD-A2. Most of the performance is very good. The internet connection seems to work at decent speed also. Only firmware updates take a long time. I have seen many "Web Updates" for the new HD DVD's I purchased and it always happens in a few seconds. Overall, I am happy with performance.

[hharris4earthlink]

I agree with all the arguments presented, but Blu-ray will be my format of choice. Why? Because Blu-ray is the best multi-use format because of its larger capacity. If watching movies was all I was going to use it for, HD DVD would definitely be my choice, but video games need the extra memory. Why invest in two formats when all you need is one?

Henry