This Week in HD DVD: the final edition

There are releases scheduled all the way through May at this point, and those should most likely happen.

There are more coming but the bloggers here are sure that our HD players are going to stop working now that the "war" is over.

I am Legend, Sweeney Todd, No Country for Old Men, and in the Valley of Elah are just a few of the big titles that are still coming out on HD-DVD.

It's not over til it's over. No one should be forgetting about the German 2 disc HD DVD import release of Terminator 2: Judgment Day coming March 20th. Its shaping up to be beyond awesome.

I know, I know, T2, seen it a million times, been released in every format from here to the moon, blah blah blah, but this might be the last real "new" hoo-rah for HD DVD.

true mate. MS sadly seems to be lacking vision in these sort of things though, they just wanted to make a gaming console. still you have to realize not going with either formats is why they made it into the next gen console ace a year earlier.

HD-DVD has better picture quality than Blu-Ray? How is this possible when both formats share the same codecs and Blu-Ray has more disk capacity?

In my view both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray had the same audio/video quality. Where HD-DVD definitely lost was industry support. They didn't have any support from other hw companies and not enough support from Hollywood. And they didn't have the PS3 factor. If MS had launched the 360 with an HD-DVD drive, the current console war might have had a different outcome.

Actually, that is false. Much like much of the information behind HD DVD and BluRay, Blu-Ray initially used MPEG2 as their Codec while HD DVD used VC-1. If you take an HD DVD version of The Italian Job and a Blu-ray version of the same title, you'll notice how horrible the picture quality is on the blu-ray version.

That is because MPEG2, being a 20 year old codec, is inferior to VC-1 in all respects. In fact, some would same that anything encoded in MPEG2 is about DVD Quality. Unfortunately, these initial releases count in the hundreds and have yet to be remastered. Why do you think the original blu-ray version of The Fifth Element was re-mastered?

This is the perfect example of how the consumers did not decide this war, the deep pockets of the BDA did. Blu-ray was shoved down the throats of the public and since they don't know any better, thats what they believed. The movie studios only care about $$$ so thats why Warner went Blu. Don't kid yourselves people, we had no say in this war at all. The marketing machine and big money buyouts issued by the BDA ended the war in what I think to be the most distasteful way possible.

Also remember Blu-ray had to copy the ideas from HD DVD for both a good codec AND an interactive online experience (BDi). Makes you wonder what else the BDA forgot in their haste to make money....

JW, your spouting nonsense and FUD. There aren't hundreds of those initial substandard MPEG2 movies on Blu-Ray. There have been just a handful of those, namely the first couple of titles. Like The Fifth Element which was published as a launch title when the first Blu-Ray players were released. (The movie was reviewed on June 15 2006 on highdefdigest.com, according to Wikipedia Blu-Ray launched in the US on June 20)

Sony got a lot of deserved criticism that the PQ of this movie wasn't reference quality and only got average or below average ratings. So they worked on it. The vast majority of Blu-Ray movies use VC1 and H.264 these days, MPEG2 isn't used that much but still looks *really* excellent.

There's no real problem with MPEG2 in terms of picture quality - if you've got enough disk space. That's where VC1 and H.264 shine, because these codecs can compress so much better while retaining superb image quality. That's why MPEG2 didn't work out on HD-DVD, there just wasn't enough room for a MPEG2 transfer.

If you want to know what codecs current Blu-Ray movies use, check out the reviews on highdefdigest.com. If you still harbor an irrational hate for MPEG2, you'll be pleasantly surprised.

ymmv, you're the one spreading the FUD. MPEG 2 encoding does suck. And there are 100's of blu ray movies out there that are encoded in it.

Not only did 5th element get re-done, I also remember Robocop having the same thing done because of bad picture quality. Let me give you a small list of MPEG2 encoded bluray's

Black Hawk Down
Click
Enemy of the State
Fantastic Four
Four Brothers
Hitch
Mission: Impossible 1,2,& 3
Pearl Harbor
Resident Evil: Apocalypse
Saw 1,2,& 3
The Transporter 1 & 2

Plus about 100 other movies. Dont believe me? here's the link straight from blu ray's own site http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=3338

You are correct with the space issues with mpeg2. But the bitrates must be MUCH higher to make up for the difference and bluray does not. That site lists the bitrates as well. 17 fps with mpeg2??? Not gonna cut it

MS would have put an HD-DVD player in it if Toshiba would have given them a big enough price break, instead Toshiba decided against it. In retrospect I am sure they wish they would have.

Tony, you're bending the truth to try to make your flimsy point seem stronger.

I'll take HD DVD over Blu-Ray 110 times out of 100, but saying that HD DVD "looks better than Blu-Ray" thanks to the MPEG-2 factor is total nonsense at this point.

Many, many of the new Blu-Ray releases have moved on to more efficient codecs. Those that are/were on MPEG2 at this point aren't really hurt due to the higher storage space/bitrate, aside from some of the early (ie first 6 months or so) releases, ie The Fifth Element which you mentioned.

The two formats are nearly identical in picture quality, and it has been like that for quite a while now.

Christ, look at you. I can't stand Blu-Ray and you've got me defending them.

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No idea why this is the "final edition" of the This Week in HD DVD entry, there are still several weeks of releases to go. Seems pretty arbitrary to me, why not forego it last week if it was going to be when Toshiba bails out?

highdefdigest.com has news and release dates, and avsforum.com has a fairly strong HD DVD forum, and there's a decent non-uberenthusiast thread over on the cheapassgamer.com forums in the XBox 360 section.

I agree. I don't give a crap about this. This is why video game systems should just play games. The best years of gaming were in the NES/SNES days, and I don't remember popping any VHS tapes into those. They had it right back then.

why do you feel sorry?

I know, its surprising, but i just went and tested it and my HD player still played all my movies.

I feel sorry for you that you cant experience the HD glory.

dont feel sorry i just bought mine for 50 bucks, and ima get 5 free movies plus king kong..gonna get planet earth next, there are plenty of good titles already out, i guess there goes my tax refund

Bandai Visual has announced they will still come out on HD-DVD, but they will likely only be availible for sale from the official site when they come out:
http://www.dot-anime.us/

I hope so, I'm sending my rebate in on Wed. I am snatching up movies left and right on the cheap now. I don't care if they aren't making anymore players. I'm happy to watch a good HD movie and replace my DVD's on the cheap with their HD versions.

When MS releases a BR-DVD player I'll pick that up as well. I won't have to re-buy them at a premium for HD because I'll already have it on HD-DVD.

So please don't feel sorry for the ones that have a HD-DVD player, I'm very happy at the moment. I'd be much happier if HD-DVD would have one, but there are already 500+ HD-DVD movies out currently with releases all the way through May, maybe longer...so I won't be getting bored anytime soon.

tiremfej

My thoughts and feelings exactly.

i agree to be honest, with the above, as well as the note about "cheap HD dvd deals"

the utility of telling about HD-DVD releases outweighs the smug sony 3 fanboyz that come in here to make fun because their bluray player is better for movies than our game console.

yea, you made a good investment, you bought the cheapest bluray player available (too bad its poor quality)

if you ever need a game console, 360's just got a $50 price cut.

@ xenocidic

Actually, while the cheapest, the PS3 is also the most efficient blu-ray player on the market as far as Im aware, as its one of the only BR players that support Blu Ray version 2.0

Also, the "no game" argument was kinda relevant in 2007. When it was true.
The 360 and PS3 share a lot of the same games now, and both have their equal number of exclusives.
Can we all drop this retort now?

@xenocidic

how is it poor quality?
i own a ps3 & 360 elite, and have never had problem with my ps3 being of poor quality.
i hear alot of rrod talk when it comes the the 360 though.

now as i said before ive never had problems with either of them. so your point?
i know he started it first, but theres no need to bicker back and forth.

also $50 for a hd-dvd drive isnt bad at all.
there are a few titles i want that arent on bluray.
but will i buy one? dunno yet.

bigboss81, its not a wise investment no matter what, whether you bought bluray or hddvd because none increase in value. Its buying what you enjoy and is easiest. The HDDVD attachment was cheapest so i got one and now i enjoy my HDDVDmovies and i always will.

eh, i just heard that the ps3's blueray player isnt' the greatest quality : tbh, i'm talking out of my ass.

as for the ps3 catching up to the 360 in terms of games and exclusives...

two words

MASS EFFECT

oh

two more words

ALIEN SIDEB00B!!

to rabbitc
not all the same blu-ray has uncompressed audio hd-dvd did not

Remer - check your facts PLEASE! Both formats had 'lossless' audio including TrueHD and DTS Uncompressed - in fact, HDDVD included as standard before before Blu-ray did.

More fanboy b.s.