Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD

The next movie medium is already hitting shelves around the word and we are seeing the battle lines being drawn beween two standards that's looking to be the next VHS vs. Betamax.

In the blue corner we have the HD DVD. Backed by Micrsoft, NEC, Mitsubishi, Canon, Kenwood, GE, Toshiba, Onkyo and Teac most of which I personally associate with cheap and nasty, with the exception of Microsoft who are just nasty and Canon who have clearly been misled. HD DVD holds up to 30Gig on a single layer and 60gig on a dual layer, or at least you'll find some people trying to tell you that. The fact is that 30/60Gig is the theoretical limit and they really only have 15Gig capacity for single layer and 30Gig for the dual layer.

In the red corner we have Blu-ray Disc or BD. Supporting this format is Philips, Pioneer, Apple, Panasonic, Samsung, Sharp, Dell, LG, Hitachi and Sony. I identify these companies as I have seen quality products from them all... except Samsung who have clearly been misled. Blu-ray weighs in at 25Gig for a single layer and 50Gig for a dual layer disc. And they really do have 25Gig and 50Gig discs. Blu-ray, unlike HD DVD, requires a hard coating on its discs. The polymer coating it uses, called Durabis, was developed by TDK and is supposedly extremely resilient and fingerprint resistant.

So I thought Blu-ray would kick HD DVD's arse in this race, if only for the fact that Sony are releasing their Playstation 3 on the 23rd of this month and it's going to sell like hell. Within a year there will be Blu-ray player in a lot of houses in Australia in the form of a PS3. That is if it plays everyones old PS2 games...

But HD DVD isn't going to die without a fight... Betamax didn't!

HD DVD is cheaper to make. And it is the choice of next-generation media for the porn industry.

Yes. It's true. Currently 10% of all DVD sold in the world are porn according to the Herald Sun. Anyway, Sony has apparently forbidden their media to be used for porn which means the porn industry can't use Blu-ray discs anyway and didn't have much of a choice. Interesting that Sony would even comment on what gets recorded on their media though... I wonder how much porn is shot with Sony video cameras?

Anyhoo, it basically boils down to this. Blu-ray holds more, is tougher but it's more expensive. Time to sit back and watch the big gorillas beat each other sensless.

Have fun!