The Blu-ray fans plan a counter attack
By Ben Drawbaugh 
posted Apr 19th 2007 10:08AM
posted Apr 19th 2007 10:08AM
Recently HD DVD retook the lead from Blu-ray according to the Amazon rankings, because of the very well organized "buy day" by HD DVD fans in celebration of the one year anniversary of HD DVD. Well the Blu-ray fans aren't going to take this lying down and have planned their own "buy day". While the charts are dead even as of today, we will see if the Blu-ray camp has the same level of grass roots support that the HD DVD camps has on April 21st. This is the day some members of the PS3forums have decided to all buy Blu-ray movies from Amazon to show their support. While we're not sure how much of an effect this will have on the overall outcome of the format war, it certainly is fun to watch and for all the HD DVD fans who wish we didn't write this post, let us know in advanced next time will ya?
Wow. Anybody who is participating in these "buying contests" are corporate tools. I propose we organize a day where we all buy Doritos in support of Frito-Lay so we can show our love for triangle chips and work towards finally resolving this snack chip war...
^
^
^
Obviously this guy is a HDDVD plant. Don't listen to him.
Oh, wonderful. The whole HD/BR battle has now degenerated into a purile game of one-upsmanship. How disgustingly childish. It's because of actions like this that I refuse to buy either type until this settles down.
Amazon.com must be LOVING this.
AND the fruity West Side Story of HD format cheerleaders gets even more pathetic...
This reminds me of when my grandfather staged a huge Betamax buying day at Sears to stick it to those "VHS BASTARDS".
Good times.
So how much does Sony pay you Ben?
I mean advertising a BluRay "buy day" must come at a high cost right? Especially when posted on such a prestigious site as EngadgetHD.
The blind fanboyism is rampant on your part Ben. You claim to be fair despite openly saying you prefer BluRay. You know who also calls themselves "Fair and Balanced"? Fox News, perhaps you could go take some notes off their channel for a bit, they seem to be pretty good and making false claims.
I would never accept money from anyone to write a post and if I ever did, Engadget wouldn't hesitate to fire me in a second.
Speaking of Fox news, my favorite show is "The Oreilly Factor" because at the end of every show he reads comments and half say is is a republican the other say he is a democrat, while he claims neither.
Geoff, get over it....
Why does it have to be war, I just want to watch a movie.
Ben,
I would expect you to post any details on the next HD-DVD 'buy day' with a title as interesting as the one you've posted on this article.
"This is the day some members of the PS3forums have decided to all buy Blu-ray movies from Amazon to show their support."
But how many first-person-shooter movies are there? Oh. Doom. But that's only on HD DVD.
I don't see how "being fair" and "supporting Blu-ray" are in conflict. It is perfectly fair to support a superior thing, in fact, that is pretty much the definition of fair. What would be unfair is supporting a thing that is inferior for reasons outside of a direct comparison of the things in question. Supporting Blu-ray because Sony paid you, or because the person you hate most works at Toshiba, that would be unfair. It is unfair to say HD DVD is better than Blu-ray, because Blu-ray is superior. It's fine to say "you like HD DVD better," but let there be no question about which technology is superior.
Please explain how BD is "technologically advanced" over HD DVD. It stores a few extra gig per layer. That's like saying my 500G harddrive is "technologically advanced" over a 250G harddrive. Ridiculous.
I suppose you could argue that it has better copy protection, but why is that a good thing?
I can't believe anyone would support BD when the freak'n spec isn't even finalized. Yes, all players that are currently purchased (aside from, perhaps, PS3s?) will be worthless at the end of this year. How is that "technologically superior?"
I just don't get it...
I'm trying to follow all of this... do the blue dorito chips figure in somehow?
Well it's obvious you don't get very much... you did say this...... "Please explain how BD is "technologically advanced" over HD DVD. It stores a few extra gig per layer. That's like saying my 500G harddrive is "technologically advanced" over a 250G harddrive. Ridiculous"
You do realize how much technology goes into developing Hard Drives, there is a war just like this "war" that goes on in the HDD market, and will never stop, and it costs a lot. Wow, mabye try reading some actually books on things instead of having you brains washed by HDdvd fans on the net
A few extra.... try a ton extra. And eventually 1920x1080 wont be the biggest res out there. Eventually we are gonna need to turn to these. Have you ever been to China or the Phillipines and seen a V-CD? I'm sure they are used in those regions because of the cost of living, but that is a prime example of a potential future of us with hd-dvds. cds can't compete with the standard we hold video to today, vcds are crappier, often split onto two discs. The capacity WILL be needed. As for why so many people insist on dwelling in the past, I don't know. Bluray isn't just a little more spacious. And the full potential of the technology hasn't even been reached yet.
Yes, I realize that technology is involved in increasing the drive density. However, FROM AN ENDUSER PERSPECTIVE, there's no difference between storing data on a 250G drive or a 500G drive. It's the same, and nobody cares what goes on under the hood.
Convenient that you didn't answer any questions that I posed, nor did you address the fact that current BD players will be useless when the official spec is finalized.
Those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, even if they're "technologically advanced" stones.
Its simple. The HD DVD fan boys had a buyout day for the 1st anniversary of the format, and it made some waves. It's making HD DVD look like its back on top. So now the Blu Ray fan boys want to do the same thing. It's only fair, whats so wrong with that?
Marco,
I guarantee it, but I may miss it like I did the first time, so be sure to tip us off. I'll email you via your confirmation address if you want, to make sure you know how to contact me.
Hmmm....a 250G or a 500G for what will eventually be around the same price? Yeah I'll take the 500G, thx.
Hey, Ben. You sound like Gonzales. "I'm not partisan. I'm not partisan." How surprising that you like to watch Bill-O. Isn't he the guy who made a loud, abusive arse of himself recently?
Anyway, yeah, I'm waiting for some concrete info on whether or not the Bluray version of Planet Earth uses any extra bandwidth for the video. If not, well, HD-DVD has a lot more features, like bookmarking. So it wins.
people downplay how much capacity Bluray has over HD-DVD. And in the future, that is gonna be needed. More capacity also means not having to compress the crap out of your movie.
30 gigs is plenty for movies. I'm also loving my Dolby TrueHD, how's that working out for you BD guys...oh wait...
pfff...technologically superior...
This is really ridiculous. If your format is the dominant one, you don't NEED to have a "buying day" to support it. You should be able to just make your purchases anytime.
>But how many first-person-shooter movies are there? Oh. Doom. But that's only on HD DVD.
I bought my PS3 specifically as a Blu-ray Disc player. And I own a standalone HD DVD player. I haven't bought Doom. Just because its primarily a Video game machine doesn't mean some people haven't bought it primarily as a cheap Blu-ray player.
Blu-Ray is already back on top on Amazon...
It was a very temporary lead...
o comon Jon the statement of yours is showing how much of a hddvd fanboy you are. Besides Tom was just saying that bigger space means it could store even higher res in the future. It wasn't like he said bluray is defeintly the best.
I wasn't replying to Tom. I was replying to tim claiming that Blu-Ray is superior. I'm tired of hearing how "superior" Blu-Ray is. For all intents and purposes the only difference between the two formats is content selection. Calm down, it's an internet blog.
I don't know about you guys, but I'd rather pay $10-15 to download a HD movie on a TB HD that cost $400 that pay an extra $15/movie for packaging and distributing. Looking forward to when those days come :)
"I don't know about you guys, but I'd rather pay $10-15 to download a HD movie on a TB HD that cost $400 that pay an extra $15/movie for packaging and distributing."
Not me. I like lending my disks out to friends or taking them with me on trips. Can't really do that with a drive solution, unless they let you duplicate the data to some sort of disk somehow (and with the restrictions we've been seeing, I would doubt that would happen :( ).
Plus, you have to handle drive crashes as well -- or do I lose my whole collection is the drive fails? XboxLive lets you re-download, but do I want to redownload a terabyte of data? And who keeps track of what I'm allowed to re-download?
I think we're a long way off from that, even though I do see some of the benefits.
I often buy discs knowing they have the extra printing etc. involved. That's the reason I still buy CDs and DVDs and not download from iTunes etc. or pirate them. Seriously, without the extra decorations I probably wouldn't buy those discs.
The important thing to note here is that a few days after the HD-DVD 'organized buy', Blu-ray is back on top again. Blu-ray, with no organized buying, is outselling HD-DVD and it's only a matter of time before Universal wants a piece of the BD pie.
When that happens, it's really really over.
Hmmm...enter WAL-MART.
Wally supports HD-DVD so much that they are willing to order a branded device to sell
at a discounted price.
They did it with Toshiba and will do it again with a different vendor.
That will put over a million more HD-DVD players on the market by the end of 07....
I can't say I like one more than the other, I don't have either, and when I think about buying one or the other....all the "BD/HD add blogger, cry baby, media hypers" cloud the feild and make my brain hurt.
I wish I could get some form of a straight answer on the issue. A black and white...here is the difference....not "oh the future"....skrew the future...all the players will be $50 in the "future"
So if I buy the wrong one now..who cares...
I just want whats gonna work best now....piss on everything else
Kittin, logical conclusion.
What I always suggest to people is to come and take a look at both of formats at my home on the same 50" Pioneer Elite. You see, you should do the same, you need to take a look at both formats and then make a decision.
Sony has dirty tactics with marketing, they not only pay retail chains like Best Buy to show BD players on better displays, but they actually pay them to push HD-DVD stuff somewhere at the back of the store on some Vizio display that's 720p. Fortunately this is changing as they can't really spend that much money anymore, so stores like Ultimate Electronics and a few others have HD-DVD all over the place now, on big screens, expensive plasmas and LCDs and promo videos and movies look MIND BLOWING.
So inspite of that, you need to look at both on similar displays and really experience both.
Personally there's absolutely no brainer that every person that looked at both on my top of the line display, $15k sound system said HD-DVD all the way. The reason is simple. It's half the price, EXACTLY same quality, the bookmarking features, the interactivity, PiP etc etc blow them away every time. And the kicker is, when I show them HD-DVD Combo feature and put the same disk in the regular DVD player they are completely swayed.
I don't really understand people supporting Blu-Ray, I really don't. BDA hasn't even come out with solid specification for Christ Sake. Most features and functionality is not ironed out. I understand people saying higher capacity might play the role, but for movies it's really not important. It won't give you better picture, you can fit 2 movies if you wanted to on even 30gb and HD-DVD is also capable on expanding, it's not like Blu-Ray can go to 200gb and HD-DVD will stay at 30gb. The capacity can really play a role in archiving and if 1440p standard becomes a reality, but that's not going to happen in a while and even that a 50gb disk will just do fine.
The overall superiority in size for Blu-Ray is just paper spec and flash. By the time you, as a consumer, can see the benefit of that increased size, Blu-Ray would've been gone. In a few years we will see HD movies and services replace media as we see it today anyways. It's not ready now, but in 5 years, yes it will be. So it's completely apsurd to go "long run" idea. We are a much more progressive society now and what happened in the past just doesn't work. This is the danger of Sony. Once they get a format, they stick to it and will do everything to prevent anything else to interfere and bite into their standards. We have so many alternatives that actually work, we have HD content being already served over broadband, can you even imagine where we will be in 5 years.
Go with a great format, now, today, cheaper without sacrificing quality, better features. Think with you heads for Christ sake. HD-DVD gives us quality hi-def now, for cheap, enjoy it. I strongly support a regular person with not so big salary being able to watch hi-def movies too. They can't buy $600-$1000 Blu-ray player. I'm pretty sure that most Blu-Ray trolls don't even have Blu-Ray but just talk out of their ass to support something that doesn't make sense.