Sunday 18 November 2007

Blu-Ray or HD-DVD? That is the question...

I haven't really been tempted to upgrade to either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. Certainly not until a clear winner from the hi-def war emerges. But more than that, I have a DVD collection which I am perfectly happy with. The quality (apart from some of discs from the very early days of the format) is more than acceptable for the size of my television. HOWEVER, I see that Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (my favourite Spielberg movie) is coming out on Blu-Ray in all three versions (I have a Criterion laserdisc of the original and best cut, already) with tons of extras and suddenly I'm starting to think, Is now the time?

Has anyone out there had experience of either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD? And what do you think of them? Are they worth the extra investment? Or should I stick with what I've got?

All opinions gratefully received.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm jumping in as well... I've been waiting for this Panasonic blu-ray player, which is the first one to play the final Blu-ray specification (I know, it's retarded that they took so long to come out with it... all previous players are now obsolete).

The reason I went with blu-ray is because 1. it supported 1080p from the get-go (although since I've waited so long this is somewhat moot), and 2. has a much larger storage capacity per layer (25gb versus 15gb). Also, I don't trust Microsoft, the main pusher of the HD-DVD format, and maker of the software that plays on HD-DVD discs.

Slowly but surely some good films are on blu-ray: Dog Day Afternoon, The Shining, Oldboy, The Lives of Others, The Fly, the restored Blade Runner.

Once we get used to 1080p (as opposed to 480i), and 2000 lines of horizontal resolution (as opposed to 700ish), I don't see how we'll be able to watch our DVD collections (except for TV series)....

Mark Salisbury said...

Thanks so much for the info. Your last para is certainly food for thought. I suppose it's the same as watching a VHS nowadays (which I still do occasionally) and finding the picture quality so horrible, whereas once it was not just acceptable but the norm.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I got rid of my VHS a while ago... and recently I've been holding off on watching certain DVDs (from certain studios) since I know the blu-ray version is around the corner.

Film snobs really need a HD disc format... there's just so much more information in the film itself that could never come across in the (comparatively) low definition of DVD.

Let us know how you fare...