Blu-Ray query?

Question

I know Blu-Ray won the war but, didn't HD-DVD hev much better audio format support? and Blu-Ray the better picture side of things? and as Blu Ray won, have all the audio formats that HD-DVD and the other best bits from that format been moved over to Blu-Ray? Cheers Sam The Bam

Answer 1

No, I'm not sure that HD had actually better audio, I'd say there were about the same with HD DVD being cheaper to produce. No, Blu-Ray didn't get anything from HD

Answer 2

HD DVD does have a higher quality of audio, but only on paper. Meaning the average home audio enthusiast can't hear the difference. It's another case of my specs are better than your specs.  Blu ray won because money won.  HD DVD originally had a better movie base along with menuing that is interactive within the movie (a big no no in BLU RAY).  My biggest peave-another try by SONY (same company that lost their VHS vs. Beta gamble) to create a monopoly for their gain. Another reason i don't buy their products.

Answer 3

Actually, the Blu-ray and HD-DVD could both support the same video codecs (MPEG4, VC-1) and the same audio formats (DolbyTrueHD, DTSHD Master Audio), giving them similar audio/video capabilities.

Where the Blu-ray differed is that is could support "Uncompressed PCM" which offers similar audio quality to DolbyTrueHD and DTSHD Master Audio.  Unfortunately, Blu-ray's first releases only used MPEG2 video compression (the same as standard DVD) and looked terrible compared to HD-DVD.

Sony got its act together and realized with nearly twice the space on their Blu-ray Disc format over HD-DVD, they could "squeeze" more audio/video information into their titles.  The end result (for example) was the same title (300), with the same audio (DolbyTrueHD), sounded a bit better and had better contrast (detailed shadows) on the Blu-ray Disc format because there was a bit more room.

A final note.  The HD-DVD-exclusive studios (Universal), when forced to make the switch to Blu-ray Disc, found that all of their hi-res film transfers they'd been using for the HD-DVD format didn't measure up to Blu-ray Disc's video standards and all their films had to be re-mastered.