HD-DVD vs. Bluray

Who's Winning? Does it even matter?








Matthew Schultz Reporting for NCC News

Syracuse, NY

Now that more than 35% of American households have high-definition televisions, everybody wants to experience movies in HD. But with the current format war between Bluray and HD-DVD, no one wants to buy the technology that will soon be obsolete. "If we could define the format that's going to win," said Tom Coughlin of Coughlin Associates, "it would be extremely important to the industry because then I think that would free up consumers to start making decisions on their purchasing systems."

Now that consumers - especially movie buffs - want to experience movies in HD, Bluray has become a household word. But what is a Bluray? Well, it's Sony's version of a high definition movie player, and was named after the blue-violet light used to read the discs. Despite it's strange name, it is winning the format war thanks to support from major movie studios.

"Bluray manipulates about 75% of the movie market right now," said David Baselli, a home theater expert for Bestbuy. The reason the movie studios chose it was that it has more storage space...which means it can hold more advanced audio and video.

Upconverters
There is another player in this battle. DVD upconverters make regular old DVDs look better on HDTVs. They are included in Bluray and HD-DVD players, but can be found as standalone units for less than $50. Upconverters do NOT make your DVDs high definition, though. In an informal survey of Bestbuy shoppers, only one person could not tell the difference between a bluray disc and an upconverted DVD. So HD is noticeably better. But is Bluray worth the price? Said Anthony Hankelman, "If you have money to throw out, definitely (I would buy one), but, if you don't, you should save up."

Does it Matter?
Although HD movies look better than regular ones, and Bluray appears to be winning the war, you may still want to hold off on purchasing one. The reason? According to Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Pop Culture, "The idea of a disk may be...it's alreayd sounding old fashioned to me, so by the time the HD-Bluray battle finally gets finished, the victor may not have that many spoils to be dealing with because we may have moved on to something else. There's no reason why we can't speculate, in the very near future, you couldn't carry around the Warner Brothers library on something about the size of a thumb drive and pop it in when you feel like, and who needs to bother with this ancient technology of a disk?"

Apple TV already offers high definition movie rentals. It's only a matter of time before we'll be buying movies online and saving them to a flash drive from the comfort of our own couches. A time will likely come when the DVD will have gone the way of the VHS tape, and be forgotten.