The Firmware Page

With the recent taking of sides of multiple big companies (Microsoft for HD-DVD, 20th Century Fox for Blu-Ray) to either format and announcements like the unsurprising "Sony will use Blu-Ray technology in the upcoming PS3", I guess it's time to take a poll on which of the contenders has your money on.
For information on the upcoming formats, have a look at the always excellent DVD FAQ

Nice poll >NIL:, I think it's about time we replace the old "Do you own a DVDR drive?" poll on the portal so I'll move this to the Portal Polls section.l

I won't say how I voted because I don't want to influence the results at all...

Hehe. I don't have that problem and since I don't mind a little confrontation, let me just add that anybody who votes for anything else than Blu-Ray is an idiot! Go, Blu-Ray, go!!!
Now, let the flamin' begin

And yes, it's about time we replaced the portal poll...

I feel it's too late for either standard to disappear at this time. Many very large manufacturers, therefore, have supported both for long, just to be on the safe side. I don't think Sony doesn't have teams for HD-DVD development.

HD DVD players will be backward compatible with present DVDs and play them in redefined HD. In case of Blu-ray this is not possible, so the DVDs will become obsolete once we throw off our dvd players. Its upto Hollywood and the Tech industry which format will prevail.

"Despite the different type of lasers used, Blu-ray Disc recorders can be made backwards compatible with current red-laser technologies and allow playback of CDs and DVDs."

Check http://www.blu-ray.com/info/

Technology... I still love my cds.

I'm still looking for those cool Storage Crystals we all grew up seeing on Star Trek or the Holographic Rings from The Time Machine.

while you're making a debate around which format will be predominating in near future, the tehnology is passing you;
check here:
http://www.engadget.com/entry/0805782712412113/
or
http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/10860

regards

The things you have linked are VAPOUR.

HD DVD and Blue-Ray are real and existing.

Ever heard about term "Time To Market"? Look it up sometime, and try to find out the Time To Market of this format...
Hopefully, we'll have a discussion actually going in a decade or so.

I voted BluRay, but I gotta ask, are there any actual good points to HD-DVD? I know that supposedly it's simpler to manufacture, and it's got the backing of the DVD Forum, but I can't find anything else that's at all compelling about HD-DVD.

Someone wanna play Devil's advocate and come up with something remotely redeeming about HD-DVD?

(plays superhero-style music) "Someone called for a Devil's advocate?"

Well, one obvious advantage of HD-DVD is its capacity.
I mean, the fact that it's 5 GB less than it's Blu-Ray counterpart will come real handy when everybody downloads pirated HD-DVD's off the internet. Think about it, how about using the few hours you gained over a Blu-Ray content to download some more HD-DVD's - this is an MPAA's nightmare come true!

More seriously, I'm just taking the twist at this article Do they really think that 20 GB, in the world of ever increasing broadband bandwith, HD capacity and unattended download software will really detter people from movie piracy?

I choose "All, coexisting" I beleive I paid for all my writers for a purpose, I'd be glad to be able to use them all for a purpose... CD Writers still co-exist with DVD Writers which write CD's and DVD's, however they still find CD Writers do the job better for that particular format due to write speeds. Although this may not be the case with the newer tech, are people certain that BLU-RAY will allow the writing of DVD -/+R SL & DL as we know it aswell as the BLU-RAY media?

blu-ray allows more complicated copy protections than hd-dvd. i prefer a simpler technique that still allows me to copy dvds - hd-dvd (imho). however, most people will only compare the storage space, thus preferring blu-ray. the riaa and mpaa will love to hear this.

quote from
http://dvd.ign.com/articles/524/524681p1.html :

"One of the biggest problems for DVD right now is encryption since, thanks to DeCSS, there isn't any. HD-DVD's backers have not settled on an encryption routine, but Blu-ray does. It uses an AES 128-bit key that changes every six kilobytes, with technologies to prevent bit-by-bit copying and bus encryption for Blu-ray-based ROM drives for PCs.

If one key is compromised, as was the case with DVD, the BDA can simply revoke that key. Finally, only licensed Blu-ray manufacturers can make or copy a Blu-ray disc."

I recently saw in an article that around 70-90 titles available on DVD-Video will be released under the HD-DVD standard at Q4 of 2005.Maybe the movie industry, or at least a a part of it, reveals which side they prefer. It is early to predict which of the two standards will be the strongest but I guess things are going in a two-standards market in a year or so (three considering existing DVD's!).

Why wouldn't it? It might not at the outset (but I suspect that's a worse case scenario), but it will eventually. DVD burners, afterall, eventually (if not at the outset) burned CD. It's kind of inevitable to me that BD-R drives would eventually burn DVD as well as CD.

the UV-Ray disc

I hope HD-DVD because they told me you could copy it easier then blueray.

What they told you is not true...

Anyway, I voted for HD-DVD

who told you?

Sooner than later we will have "triple" drives and burners for Blu-Ray, HD-DVD and DVD aswell as CD formats...

Blu-Ray had a really bad start with movies in the oldish mpeg2 format, ugh.
Whoever ordered to manage that earned a spank or something.

Hi,

I rarely join these discussions. And this one's an old one.
The way the key changes often mid-stream, and then can be revoked / disabled, is suspiciously close to the way DTCP/5C works. Please see http://www.dtcp.com/ and read the "whitepaper" PDF linked in the left-hand column there. The PDF explains the firewire (IEEE-1394) concepts, but they clearly intend for the DRM to work the same way no matter the interface.

fwiw I want to vote for HD-DVD because it is suppose to be closest and cheapest for current pressing plants to switch to that format. But I'm hoping for an "all in one" model that will do 'em all.

After that, if someone needs to store sheer huge amounts of data on optical media, let's hope for holographic storage. I actually have seen older film samples that could be used with "plain" light sources to recreate the 3D image. If the film became damaged, a clean portion was enough to recreate most if not all of the original image. I'm hoping this can be used to recreate data that would otherwise be lost on a damaged Holo-DVD.

But as for sharing data, who is going to have enough time & bandwidth to copy any of these? Never mind the DRM.