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Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD: The War of the Formats

The high definition world is split between two camps: HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc. Which of these offers the better viewing experience and has the ability to deliver HD to your home theatre both now and in the future?

High Definition and You

It is estimated that one half of the 24 million households who own HDTVs don’t watch high-definition (HD) content. Simply buying an HD set and hooking it up to a cable signal doesn’t provide any more detail than a regular TV set. To enjoy HD to its fullest you need HD programming, either through an HD broadcast antenna or an HD cable service.

With those services, home viewers are stuck with whatever’s on TV, though. DVD proved to be a television revolution after its release, and with thousands of titles released so far, entertainment choices are more varied than ever. But how do people utilize and connect the HD capabilities of their HDTV with an optical disc format? Last year both Sony and Toshiba-Samsung unveiled solutions in the form of Blu-ray and HD-DVD respectively. Both formats offer HD content for the home theater environment, but the way in which they deliver that content is fundamentally different, placing the two camps in a format war hearkening back to the VHS vs. Betamax struggle in the late-70s/early-80s.

With hardware costs for both camps being relatively high, not to mention the fact that there are very few dual format players (LG recently brought the first to the market at the staggering cost of $1,200), most consumers are forced to decide between Blu-ray or HD-DVD for their high definition needs. But which format is worth the investment? Which format will provide the best quality and stick around to make the investment worthwhile? We’ll take a look at the answers to those questions for both formats.

Round 1 – Quality

High-definition content takes up a lot of space, far more space than what is available on regular DVDs. DVDs can hold 4.7 gigabytes of data on a single-layer disc and up to 8.5 gigabytes on a dual-layer disc. By contrast, HD-DVD can hold 15 gigabytes on a single-layer disc and 30 gigabytes on a dual-layer disc. As far as storage space, Blu-ray is the clear winner as it holds 25 gigabytes on a single layer, and 50 gigabytes in a dual-layer format.

While Blu-ray’s 50 gigabytes of storage may sound impressive, it is simply not enough for “real” HD, which takes hundreds of gigabytes to store. It must be reduced in size while retaining as much quality as possible using compression. The real test of video quality is based on the HD video codec used to compress the video. The two most commonly used codecs are VC-1 and MPEG-2. MPEG-2 is the exclusive codec for DVD technology, and Sony initially tried to adapt it to handle the higher bitrates needed to encode HD content. While MPEG-2 is competent at its job, the VC-1 codec is generally recognized as being more advanced and able to deal with some of the quality issues that MPEG-2 video suffers from. While HD-DVDs are nearly all encoded with the VC-1 codec, the first batch of Blu-ray movies were made using MPEG-2. This gave an early edge to the quality of HD-DVDs. However, HD encoding using MPEG-2 has gotten much better since the initial release, and Blu-ray movies that make use of the VC-1 codec look essentially identical to their HD-DVD counterparts. The initial edge that HD-DVD had over Blu-ray in video quality has quickly diminished.

Round 2 – Studio Support

The best video format in the world is worth little if no one releases any movies for it. The key to the format war is getting the studios to back a particular brand. The two Hollywood studios in HD-DVD’s camp are Universal and The Weinstein Company. Blu-ray has five studios backing it: Columbia Pictures, MGM, Disney, Lionsgate, and 20th Century Fox. As Sony owns both Columbia and MGM it comes as no surprise that they would be behind Blu-ray.

A positive for HD-DVD are the four major studios that have committed to releasing their films on both formats: Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks, Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema. Even so, the number of titles released for HD-DVD has dropped off in recent months, and with the recent exclusive Blu-ray release of some big films, the sales numbers have swung in favor of Sony’s format.

Universal Studios may be stubbornly behind HD-DVD, but if more desired films are available on Blu-ray than HD-DVD, consumers may be willing to temporarily forego Universal films in order to invest in Blu-ray technology. If this becomes the case and Universal withdraws its “HD-DVD only” stance, that could quickly spell the end for that format.

Round 3 – Porn

Since comparisons with the VHS/Betamax war over 20 years ago have been inevitable, we have to look at the factor that some consider responsible for deciding that particular outcome: the pornography industry. Legend has it that the porn industry’s embrace of the VHS format left Betamax out in the cold. When people bought adult videos on VHS, they were deciding the format on which little Suzie and little Johnny would view their Disney movies for the next couple of decades.

Not quite.

All of the film industry, including adult entertainment, experienced a revolution once a home video format was released. Before VHS, people had to resort to visiting an adult movie theater (the lack of privacy is something Paul Reubens can attest to). VHS allowed one to watch porn in the privacy of his or her own home, thus removing the potential embarrassment of being seen walking out of the wrong theater on a Sunday afternoon.

These days, thanks to the Internet, porn is everywhere and only a mouse click away . It’s something to be experienced on a small computer monitor measured in inches, not a large screen that could be measured by the foot. Those subscribing to the theory that the porn industry could decide the HD format war initially declared victory when the first adult film was released on HD-DVD, but a top porn studio will cross the picket line and release the highly anticipated sequel to the venerable “Debbie Does Dallas” in both Blu-ray and HD-DVD.