Disney Upgrade To Blue

November 30th, 2008 · No Comments

disney upgrade to blue
I want to upgrade my DVD player. HD or BR?

But I’m unsure about whether I should get an HD-DVD or a Blue-Ray. I’ve heard that they’re coming out with players that do both, but I can just imagine what the cost is going to be. My plan is to upgrade the TV, soon, to a 1080p but the DVD player will come first.
I’ve done a little research and here’s what I know so far.
- They are both available at the 1080p
- Some companies (i.e. Disney) will only release their movies on one or the other.

What else do I need to know?

First … buy the display (HDTV or HD projector) before you buy the HD disk player.

Whether or not you will get significant benefit from HD disks (HD DVD or Blu-ray) will be largely dependent on the size of the screen and where you sit relative to it.

Ideally you need a 40″ or larger 1080p HDTV connected to an HD player via HDMI and viewed from the optimum distance (~1.5x -2x screen size … typically half what most people think). At 720p and greater than optimum distance the benefit of increased resolution decreases.

Some considerations re which format to buy (and perhaps why you should wait)

- HD DVD and Blu-ray are incompatible formats with native 1080p/24 fps output (from movies). Both use a more advanced colour space (more colours) than DVDs.
- Video and audio quality from the two formats are both essentially identical.
- Both formats upconvert DVDs
- There are technical differences, but for most people irrelevent.
- Studios are split on which format they support (and as you note many movies are only available on HD in one or the other format), nevertheless there are approximately the same number of movies available in the two formats … although both are limited relative to DVD (~800 HD disks vs 80,000 DVDs).
- Disks typically cost $5-10 more than the equivalent DVD.
- HD DVD players start at ~$180 while Blu-ray starts at ~$280 (Both include “free” disks — details of the offer vary and change)
- The HD DVD spec is stable and complete, while the Blu-ray spec is still only partially implemented. As a result all HD DVD players support all extra features (e.g. Picture in Picture, secondary audio, on board storage, Internet connectivity) while most existing Blu-ray players will not. Tellingly, the Blu-ray advertising does not tell consumers this. Future Blu-ray models will be more “complete”.
- Blu-ray disks are often missing extra features that HD DVDs have.
- Blu-ray is encumbered by region coding and a DRM mechanisms (BD+) that can make disks unplayable in some players. HD DVD have neither.
- Extra features on HD DVD are programmed in HDi, while Blu-ray features are in BD-Java. HDi is far easier to program than BD-java, and Blu-ray disks all too often have clunky interactive feature menus.
- Blu-ray disks currently outsell HD DVD disks, but relative to DVD neither are selling very well. For example a single DVD — Transformers — sold more disks in one week than all titles of all movies in both HD formats, ever. So relative sales at this point are not that important. Absolute sales are only enough to ensure niche status for Hd DVD and Blu-ray.
- The majority of consumers are unlikely to benefit from HD disks for a variety of reasons(no HDTV, HDTV too small, too low resolution or no HDMI connection to benefit) or will choose not to because they don’t feel the relatively small benefit justifies the costs (hardware and software).
- Rental of HD disks is still relatively limited.

Combo (HD DVD / Blu-ray players exist but cost more than 2 separate players.

At this point it is probably still 6 months too soon to choose a format, but if you really want to buy now I’d suggest you choose based on which format supports more movies you prefer. Then buy the lowest priced player in that format as “an upconverting DVD player that also plays xxx HD format”. When the war is over with a winner or a truce you can then proceed accordingly.

So … buy your HDTV with the requirements of benefiting from HD disks in mind. To minimize costs … wait to buy an HD player.

If you need a new DVD player now, buy an HD-A2 or A3 HD DVD player for $180 or less (it’s a good upconverting DVD player and costs about the same as a good DVD only upconverting player).

If you can afford to be choosy … buy whichever format you prefer.

Hope this helps.