Poll results: Which video format will prevail?

I want Blu-Ray to win. I mean that's like....50+ episodes of anime I can put on ONE disk instead of 4 DVDs!!! Think of the space I'd save! So for the sake of space and PCs Blu-ray!

HDDVD over Blu-Ray, simply because of name recognition and its cheaper, but I doubt DVDs will ever die out until we move on from discs. Digital distribution will never be a dominant format, people like to feel like they actually own their property, myself included.

Just to piss Microshit fans and Nintendophiles, I want Blu-ray to win. Besides, I support mitsuos opinion.

By the way, I own a 360 and a Wii, not yet a PS3. Bash and flame away.

Mitsuo-

you can jam all that onto an HDDVD as well for the most part. Actually, with the unveiling of 45gb triple layer HDDVD discs back in may, once those discs are ready the capacity of HDDVD will actually be 45GB.

Another thing that the movie studios who support HDDVD are doing is releasing dual sided discs that have the DVD version of a movie on one side and the HDDVD version on the other. This way people can buy one disc to use in all their players. Pretty good idea if you ask me.

I still think right now HDDVD has the better library. It may have less studio support from Hollywood, but in terms of the best classic library of titles, I'd have to go with HDDVD. Newer titles, like the new Pirates of the Caribbean will help Blu-Ray though. It's tough to say at this point to be honest who will win. It all depends on the PS3. If it doesn't catch on to the masses before standalone HDDVD players hit budget price levels (i.e. sub $200) then I still think it will have a tough time. Some studios like disney are already talking about supporting HDDVD as well instead of just blu-ray because they are worried that they are missing out on sales.

HD and Blu-Ray are just a middle format when Holographic Versatile Discs (HVD) hit the market sometime in 2007-2008, 50gb will be tiny compared to the 1.6TB storage capability of these discs, 200gb or 300gb will be the first discs released.

HD-DVD and Blu-Ray both lose.

@3 I think you are right on about the budget HDDVD players role in this format war. If they get them to around that 200 price point, while ps3 is still struggling and Blu Ray players are still hovering closer to 1000 or 750, then there is no way HDDVD doesnt win. Even now alot of people seem to be saying that HDDVD video looks better (due to how its compressed vs how blu ray is currently compressing video)..so that coupled with a cheap price will make it a brainer for an average joe looking for a high def movie at home

There's a rumor rolling around the Internets that Wal-Mart may be dropping Blu-Ray support next year.

If that's true, the battle is over, and possibly Sony's status as a profitable company, too.

Even if that's a bunch of nonsense, I still think HD-DVD will win, largely because it's cheaper and easier for the average consumer to understand. "Oh, HD-DVD, that must be a stronger DVD." Coupled with Wall Street's decreasing confidence in Sony's ability to maintain it's position as industry leader, I'd guess that HD will gain some powerful backers.

We'll know within the first half of 2007 which one will win. Retailers are already pissed off about having to add extra shelf space for two formats that are more or less the same.

saying blu-ray is going to fail is the same interweb conjecture that would lead you to believe that sony is a sinking ship and that the ps3 wont do well in the end.

I prefer HD-DVD over Blu-ray due to the features. Blu-ray may have some additional storage space, but HD-DVD supports features that its competition does not. I am enjoying some of the special features right now such as the picture in picture "movie experience" and what not and know that those same features are missing from the Blu-ray counterpart. Blu-ray is only about storage space. HD-DVD was at least trying to do something a little different and new.

such poll is rather pointless in my opinion. You can pretty much guess who would come up top. People diss the blueray simply because of the animosity towards sony not based on technology. Costwise at the moment hddvd has the upperhand because of its similarity to current generation dvd. Would the same translate in the future when blueray's manufacturing/development stabilises? Arguing the blueray advantage of high capacity from hddvd side by claiming additional hddvd layer is moot. Blueray could add layers as well. News of hybrid technology are interesting but I do not see the practicality due to the cost on both consumer, manufacturers and most importantly movie studios who ultimately releases the videos.

Fanboyism/preferences/etc/etc aside, I firmly believe the king maker in this "alleged" format war would be the movie studios.

#8 - Sony is not close to being sunk yet, but it IS in trouble. It's stock HAS plummeted dramatically over the massive battery recall and the PS3's production woes - that's not conjecture. They have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into developing Blu-Ray and have included a player in their flagship game console at added cost of around $200-300 per system - that's not conjecture. Their reputation as an 800-pound gorilla in the electronics industry has been rattled and their competitors, not the least of which being Microsoft, smell blood.

Much of Sony's future - at least its immediate financial profitability - is riding on Blu-Ray. If HD-DVD is selected as the next-gen DVD format, guess what? They've dumped millions into a dead technology and their hyper-powerful game console now uses the 2007 equivalent of BetaMax.

The stakes for Sony in this are huge. And as much fanboy snark gets thrown around here - including by me - to deny that Sony would not be severly injured by the failure of Blu-Ray is totally wrong.

One additional point I wanted to make... Generally I find that if you ask someone which is better, people who pick Blu-ray say it's because of the storage capacity. I find it interesting that it seems to be the only reason people are backing it up. If one were to look at content and capability (and practicality), I think the HD-DVD alternative is much more interesting. Is storage space really that relative right now? I'll watch Batman Begins and wonder what good is an extra 20 gigs when it'll have absolutely no impact whatsoever on the quality I'm seeing now... And remember that studio support is based on perceived market share. That can most definitely change...

Just so you guys know, Joystiq represents the whole world.

I'm not a fan of either format. It has been said that most consumers don't feel that they need anything better than DVD-quality videos. Additionally HDTV owners make up less than 15% of the market. By the time HDTV owners make up half the market a newer and better technology, HVD, will be available. I see Blu-ray and HD-DVD as being nothing more than a temporary upgrade to a small market. I doubt either one will topple DVD. Perhaps one may beat the other but I don't see DVD going away for quite a while.

Least.Scientific.Poll.Ever.

With Apple and most of the major studios supporting it, I see Blu-Ray as the eventual winner in the next-gen video format war.

P.S. HD-DVD Players sold to date: Approx 150,000 Blu-Ray players sold to date: 250,000 (200,000 of those were probably the PS3's sold at launch). Still, if they can crank more of these PS3's out quick enough, Blu-ray will have a serious market penetration advantage, and publishers should follow suit.

Here's the thing. I've noticed with the release of Superman Returns that it is coming out on both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. If that becomes the norm, HD-DVD will win simply on the merrit of price. If I can get the same movie on either a $500 player or a $1000 player with no noticeable difference to the average consumer, the cheaper price will always win.

In all honesty though, it really depends which format the porn industry picks. I'm being dead seriou. They basically decided the VHS / Betamax war, were the first to seriously adopt digital distribution, and were the first to really push HD filming. It's hard to believe, but the porn industry really dictates home video technology.

I agree with TopaZ
Sony has market penetration just buy including blu ray in every ps3, all they need to do is produce and sell to trojan horse them in
(plus which ever side the Porn industry picks will ultimatly win and so far one company has picked bluray which caused E! to make the choice on bluray)

I'm not sure if the world is ready for HD porn.

I like Blu-Ray because it offers more storage capacity, but the one I want to win is digital distribution. But, unfortunately, the Internet connections in the U.S. just aren't fast enough to make that a viable solution as a content distribution method.

#18 - Funny thing about the porn industry, they adopt just about any new form of media whereas most other businesses try to steer consumers to their preferred method of distribution. The porn industry sees new mediums as new opportunities to sell their content whereas other businesses tend to see new mediums as a loss of control. It's funny to think about it this way but it'd be nice if other companies were more like the porn industry when it comes to embracing new methods of distribution and new mediums.

My vote is for DVD or HD-DVD. I'd love just to see Sony fail once more. Maybe I'm risking putting my foot in my mouth, but can anyone name a format other than the CD that Sony has been successful with? I can name a few that have failed: Betamax, Minidisc, UMD. Plus, as #2 pointed out, the name recognition means a LOT for the average, idiot consumer. Being able to deduce what an HD-DVD is would be a lot quicker and closer to the point than being able to deduce what the hell a Blu-ray is.

DVDs still have quite the lifespan if you ask me. Sure, I'd love to be able to keep an entire season of a show on a single disk, but I don't mind the current setup. And obviously, all that extra space is not needed for older shows which are non-HD anyway.

Who the hell cares and the numbers are showing. http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/Disc_Sales/Mission:_Impossible_III_Sets_Blu-ray,_HD_DVD_Sales_Record/348

20,000 combined for both formats in 1 week and that is a record. While DVD sells how much?? 3.7 million in the same timeframe. DVD's Aren't going anywhere anytime soon. Not in these generation of gaming. I for one hate both formats as I think we dont need it yet. But if where to put money on one would be HD DVD due to better video and has a dual hybrid dvd and hd dvd on the other side. Oh by the way here is another site that talks about movie sales for both formats and guess who is selling more movies.?
http://www.thedvdwars.com/index.cfm

#22, "better video"? Where'd you pull that from? Perhaps in the first month, when a rush to market led Blu-Ray publishers to encode in the inferior MPEG2 codec. That codec has since been all but abandoned. Both standards call for support of the exact same codecs, H.264 and VC-1. Quality depends therefore on the source, the transfer, and the bitrate. The bitrate is where blu-ray shines with the extra 25GB of headroom for higher-quality (less compression). TDK is also readying 8-layer Blu-Ray discs (that's right, 200GB) for 1st Quarter of 2007.

Bluray used mpeg2 a 10 year old technology. HDDVD while smaller in capacity used mpeg4 a much better compression method. I vote HDDVD because its not a proprietary format so the prices will be more competitive and alot of them have the standard DVD on one side and the HD DVD on the other, making them a great purchase for when I eventually upgrade.

#21, let's not forget that Sony was part of the original DVD Consortium, and in fact developed the tracking technology that became part of the original DVD specification.

#25 (Tack), Ay-ay-ay!

Blu-Ray SUPPORTS mpeg2, it is not mandatory. For your information, HD-DVD SUPPORTS mpeg2 as well! As I stated before, PUBLISHERS chose that codec in their rush to market. Over 90% of the newest releases on Blu-Ray are encoded in either AVC (mpeg4) or VC-1 (the favored codec on HDDVD). And with the added headroom of blu-ray, most of the newer releases are encoded at higher bitrates than their HDDVD counterparts.

wasn't this poll bound to be like this? Whats new, the internet is swarming with 360 gamers, or have ppl forgotten :)

Anyone who believes either of these "HD" formats will succeed is too young to remember BETA.

Electronics manufacturers and movie studios do NOT determine the success of a product - the consumers do. It really can't be stated in simpler terms than that.

Anybody who chooses HD-DVD over Blu-Ray is misguided, and perhaps deluded by either their derision towards Sony,

Blu-Ray has a larger set of sponsers, is more advanced, will enjoy a much larger audience (thanks to the PS3)... it has too many advantages.

Now, I'm not a huge Sony fan... but use your heads. Blu-Ray has all the advantages, here.

HD-DVD is just as proprietary as Blu-Ray is. Both have industry associations supporting them and contributing technology to them. The difference is that Blu-Ray has more companies supporting it than does HD-DVD, which is largely Toshiba's baby.

Im still waiting for someone to make the comment "but.... but.... hd dvd was supported by the dvd forum while blu ray wasnt".

Why do people assume that PS3's having blu-ray make blu-ray the winner? Did umd win because it was in the PSP? How many PS3 owner's even have a hdtv? Of those, how many even care about buying blu-ray movies?

From everything I have read and seen hd-dvd looks better than blu-ray. Sony will never use VC-1 codecs because they were developed by Microsoft. If you have an xbox 360 you can pick up a hd dvd for $199 plus King Kong on hd dvd and a nice remote. I actually got mine at Circuit City for $159.00 using a $40 coupon found here http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/2546/editedym4.jpg
That's a great deal if you ask me. Retailers all over have been sailing out of xbox 360 hd-dvd. Plus anyone buying the xbox 360 hd-dvd is going to support that format or they would not be buying it. Oh and by the way the movies in hd-dvd look amazing, and I didn't have to buy any cables to make it work with my xbox 360. I don't even have 1080p but the hd-dvd's look amazing in 1080i. They look much better than dvd's.

#34 (Mikesonline), About 40% of all new releases on Blu-Ray are encoded using VC-1. Sony's movie studio, Columbia, will probably not use it, but every studio makes their own decision and most are choosing either VC1 or MP4. Highdefdigest.com has reviews of all new discs and gives detailed information on what codecs are used.

#35 (TopaZ) I was only referring to Sony not using VC-1, but according to you 60% of the blu-ray movies are not encoded in VC-1. I knew a lot of blu-ray movies were not encoded in VC-1, but I had no idea it was 60%. To me that is just as bad as putting out a video game controler without rumble. That to me is a deal breaker. To be honest I don't really cares if blu-ray makes its or not. I just really like what I have seen from hd dvd so far and wanted to point out what a deal it is if you already have an xbox 360.

#36 -- Don't forget that another 50% are encoded using the AVC implementation of MPEG4, which in all shootouts is virtually identical to VC-1.

i personally want hd-dvd to win. it's cheaper, i'm a 360 fanboy (granted, but doesn't really mean much), and the extra storage of blu-ray isn't all too enticing. but i don't have too strong of an opinion on it.


who do i think will win? beats me. maybe blu-ray b/c of the whole ps3 thing going out for it. but really it's still up in the air.

but really, i think dvd will remain the king b/c the next gen doesn't really provide as many incentives as dvd did from vhs. the average consumer won't give a hoot about hd video and 50 gb discs.
is that kind of a cop-out to avoid taking sides? eh, maybe. but still it's how i feel.

HD-DVD, Sony is the king of dead media formats.

Also something that has not been brought up people who do purchase a HD player will not buy a 360 or a ps3, think of a 60 year old man buying a PS3 for its movie playing ability, and adding that thing to his home theater, its not going to happen, those types will not even travel down the "toy" video game isle to get thier HD player

I have never used either my PS2 or Xbox as my main DVD player, they are not as good as stand alone players, and it will be the same with the current formats, for the HUGE majority of people who do buy HD players, it will be a stand alone player

HD-DVD is cheaper and has no downside quality wise, also including regular DVD's inside is a great idea

Sony will sell a ton of PS3's but not to the movie viewing public, but to gamers