Prominent high-def enthusiast Josh Zyber has taken a few moments to share his thoughts on all the recent commotion about last week’s Paramount news, as well as the hyping of disc sales numbers.
Some of Josh’s points have already been made in comments or articles at this site (and by a lot of High-Def fans on various forums), and it’s nice to see that these opinions are actually shared by a more authorative person like Mr. Zyber.
Pop on over to High-Def Digest to read his piece, and even post your thoughts for him to respond to over in the associated discussion thread in their forum.
Here are just a few of Josh’s points:
- Zyber’s early reviews of Blu-ray titles were negative because the studios were putting out lousy discs compared to HD DVD. He’d like to think that criticism like his has led to an improvement in Blu-ray quality, both formats are much more directly comparable today.
- Comparing sales numbers between Blu-ray and HD DVD is “like boasting an ant is larger than a flea, just before the big shoe of DVD comes down to smoosh them both into oblivion.”
- Business is business and if you’re going to point fingers at the Paramount deal, then don’t be hypocritical about Blu-ray’s deals.
- Both formats are going to be around together for a while, get used to it.
For some unknown reason, Blu-ray titles would come out in MPEG2 encoding, while the HD DVD version used VC-1.
Josh is referring to the fact that DVD heartily outsells Blu-ray and HD DVD combined, and points out that 300 sold more copies on DVD in one week than both formats have sold of everything combined in 6 months of 2007. One format would have to start selling way better before trying to proclaim itself the winner.
He points out that Disney was a contributor to the HD DVD interactivity features, but “surprisingly,” they don’t even use this stuff because they’re Blu-ray exclusive.
That’s how it has worked for many years in the video game world, and all of the competition forces everyone to make better products (at better prices too).
There’s even more food for thought in his article. To a Blu-ray supporter, Josh’s article is going to come off as an anti-Blu commentary. He promises that his next commentary will take on various problems with HD DVD. And I’ll be happy to report on that piece as well. Please do yourself a favor and read his article for yourself over at High-Def Digest.
September 2nd, 2007 at 6:30 am
I read Josh’s column and on the whole I thought it was quite well balanced. I was interested to see that he hit on the point that I have made to many people that until HD DVD and Blu Ray capture a LOT more of the marlet than they have to this point, it is a bit silly to be talking about who won the “war”. At this point it would be generous to even call High Def a niche market. It is not even that big yet. Don’t get me wrong, I could never go back to SD but as an early adopter I am not representitive of the marketplace as a whole.
September 2nd, 2007 at 9:25 am
Blu-Ray has one thing that HD-DVD never will, PCM 7.1. For any serious audio gurus Dolby Digital Plus just won’t cut it. And even though both discs will offer DTS MA and DOLBY TRUEHD Blu Ray’s bit-rate is a LOT more than HD-DVD’s will EVER be. So anyone who thinks HD-DVD is the best format, have fun with your inferior movie experience.
September 2nd, 2007 at 9:42 am
Are you one of these audio gurus, Chris?
HD DVD can decode 7.1 PCM. What you’re pointing out is that it’s unlikely that a major movie would be released on HD DVD with a PCM 7.1 audio track.
Chris, go check on the Blu-ray movies and their specs. Far less than half of them featured this kind of audio.
September 3rd, 2007 at 8:29 am
Boo hoo show me the movies that have pcm, you wont exceed a handful. DTS-HD is unheard of on HD-DVD and True HD barely supported. And yes, most Blu Ray PCM’s are 5.1, it still blows Dolby Digital Plus out of the water. I’m not even convinced there is a real difference. Thing is Blu Ray’s have so much room on them i wish all movies were 7.1. Right now the only one that is is Daddy’s Little Girls, pretty sad.
September 3rd, 2007 at 9:40 am
I think you’re seriously uninformed about the number of Dolby True HD discs that come out on HD DVD. In many cases, Paramount and Warner put movies out on HD DVD with better audio than on the Blu-ray version. I have no idea why they’d do that, but they did. Go read up at a review site like HighDefDigest where they compare these kinds of things, and see for yourself.
September 5th, 2007 at 10:12 am
Oh kind of how Transformers(the biggest Paramount movie for the year) is getting Dolby Digital Plus? Where’s True HD on the biggest title for HD DVD in this quarter? Probably one of the best soundtracks ruined with HD DVD’s worthless audio codecs. Shame, wouldve sounded fantastic on Blu Ray’s 50GB disc with uncompressed PCM, considering Paramount releases better audio for HD DVD than Blu Ray, we’ll never know as of now. Wonder if it would’ve been more than 5.1? Should be in my opinion.