HD DVD and Blu-ray releases on March 27th, 2007
By Ben Drawbaugh 
posted March 26th 2007 11:35AM
posted March 26th 2007 11:35AM
As we near the one year anniversary of the format war, HD DVD gets back in the game this week with four new titles, but only one exclusive; Children of Men. Blu-ray has five this week with two exclusives, if you count music videos. It's hard to say which exclusive is better, but IMDB has Children of Men rated above The Pursuit of Happyness, so the tie this week goes to HD DVD. Warner continues its trend to release on both sides with a few documentaries and Happy Feet. The Warner HD DVD titles continue the trend of having better audio than the Blu-ray versions. Maybe this will change with TotalHD discs or when the new BDA rules for player hardware goes into effect.HD DVD 167 vs Blu-ray 193.
Blu-ray
- Happy Feet (Warner)
- Incubus: Alive at Red Rocks (Sony Music)
- March of the Penguins (Warner)
- National Geographic: Relentless Enemies (Warner)
- The Pursuit of Happyness (Sony)
- Children of Men (Universal)
- Happy Feet (Warner)
- March of the Penguins (Warner)
- National Geographic: Relentless Enemies (Warner)
Children of Men is great exclusive for the HD DVD group, nothing really great from Blu-Ray this week. War wages on?...
Ok, who stole Ben's login information and posted this article under his name? It's actually fair and balanced, which we know isn't what he writes. ;)
I kid, I kid... Mostly :)
Children of Men is an excellent movie. #1 on my Netflix Cue.
Yeah, Children of Men was my movie of the year in 2006. This is a great winner for HD DVD owners!!
Ha, I don't know what you guys are talking about. Sure back in the day I was pretty biased, but in the past 3 or 4 months I have really made a point to see both sides, even though I still think Blu-ray will win.
"Ha, I don't know what you guys are talking about. Sure back in the day I was pretty biased, but in the past 3 or 4 months I have really made a point to see both sides, even though I still think Blu-ray will win."
That last statement is exactly why we say stuff like this, to be honest. Youa re biased in favor of Blu-Ray, and you even said it. The thing about bias' is that the person who has it is usually the last to know about it. On the other hand, is there a such thing as a non-biased reporter these days?
In any case HD DvD wins this week. Children of Men was an amazing movie. I preordered the HD DvD on amazon 3 weeks ago, hopefully it wont take too long to get to my house.
Warner screwed it this time... :(
LOL
I, for one, thought Children of Men was terrible and Pursuit of Happyness was a fantastic, heartwarming movie.
Just got my email that told me my "Children of Men" and "Happy Feet" HD DVDs just shipped out and will be in my hands by Wednesday :) Can't wait to see both of them!
there are titles they did not list which are also out they missed like atleast 5 titles. Plus i don't think they included other small ones that i happen to own. go to bestbuy.com or amazon.com and you will see (no they are not imports they are our own releases just small under the radar ones but actually show case the quality better since they are shot in HD and not upconverted like other movies.)
upconverted? once again a quality 35mm and etc are actually higher resolution than 1080p
sorry for the double post but do you think they should include porn titles in the count?
Anyone note that Amazon is now quoting 4-6 weeks on CHildren of Men?
Ben, if you're going for the fair and balanced reporting, then there should be a front page article stating that Children of Men has broken the Amazon top-25 (it's currently #23). An article about Casino Royale doing it was posted on the front page when it happened, so fair reporting would show that HD-DVD has done it as well. :)
First off, Matt posted that Casino Royale post and he is the HD DVD fan too.
Also, being the second title to hit the top 25 isn't as big of a deal is it? Or maybe the angle is the first HD DVD to hit the top 25?
You might have a point.
1080p is something like 2MP. film is much much higher res.
Children of Men
and
Matrix Trilogy
are both on Amazon's top 25 list. Placing 19th and 20th, respectively. In fact they are the only HD titles on the list at all. No BluRay titles today. Good to see HD DvD finally getting some sort of boost.
Sort of surprised about the positive response on Children of men, if it seems to be as good as you guys say then i have to get it too!!:-)
Note that Happy Feet HDDVD/Combo is outselling the Blu_ray version handily. Amazon 30th place to 42nd for Bluray.
Not sure why people are saying HD DVD doing well is a good thing...It's like they enjoy prolonging this pointless format war. Comebacks are not a good thing for anyone in this case. Both formats do essentially the same thing, both sets of backers are essentially greedy, self-serving groups of corporations who want only to convince you to part with your money. Blu-ray is technically superior, so it might as well win. There's no "lesser of two evils" here. You may be more familiar with Sony, but Toshiba is also a giant corporation. Plenty of people are quick to point out that Sony pushed Blu-ray out of greed, neglecting the other side of that truth: Toshiba pushed HD DVD out of greed as well. In fact, this time Sony actually moved first, and got broad industry support and Toshiba dissented, last time (DVD) it was the other way around, except that Sony didn't linger trying to push their format long after it became obvious that most of the industry had sided with Toshiba, they immediately dropped it and got on board with Toshiba et al. This time Sony had the better product, and the industry support, but Toshiba decided to go it's own route and push it's own tech despite everyone being on Sony's side this time. The format war is entirely Toshiba's fault this time around. Also, in case you're still thinking "Yay Toshiba, Boo Sony!" It's worth noting that Toshiba's producing the Cell chips for the PS3...You can take sides if you like, but the mega-corporations are just going to to keep making money one way or another.