Which in your opinion is a better investment? HD DVD player or BLU-RAY DVD player?

Question

Which in your opinion is a better investment? HD DVD player or BLU-RAY DVD player?

Answer 1

The industry is still shaking out.  If you're old enough to remember the VHS vs. Beta flap of about 20 years ago, it's "here we go again".  There is at least one player that will play both, and that's your best bet for now, but it won't record.  At this time, seven movie studios have gone with Blu-ray, but the two largest have gone with HD-DVD.  

VHS won out over beta because you could put three movies on a VHS cassette, as opposed to two on Beta, even though beta was the superior technology.  That will likely be the case with Hi-def as well.  Blue-Ray disks can hold 50GB whereas HD-DVD only holds 30GB.  If you're a gambling person, I'd go with Blu-Ray.  But be prepared to dump whatever you get five years from now and get the other one.

Answer 2

blu-rays the way. basically because it already has a deal wit Sony and their PS3 so there future is already set. (i.e. Sony gives money to blu-ray, blu-ray invests money in their future, blu-rays future looks very stable to a lot of producers (which it is) so the producer decide to sell their movie on blu-ray along with reg. dvds.

Answer 3

The best investment is a dual format player like the one from Samsung....you can play both HD DVD and Blu-ray on them. It won't be for another couple of years before the movies that are on HD DVD get re-released on Blu-Ray.

Answer 4

I think HD DVD is near death.  Only a few studios carry it now.  I got a Sony PS3 and it works great and does a lot more than blue ray

Answer 5

Blu-ray, as it has the support of these stuidios exclusively:

Time Warner

  -Warner Brothers

  - Newline Cinema

  - HBO

New Cooperations Fox

  -20th Century Fox

   - Fox Search Light

Buena Vista

  -Walt Disney

  - Pixar Animation

  -Miramax

- Touchstone Pictures

- Hollywood Pictures

Sony

-Columbia

-Tirstar

- Screengems

MGM

Lionsgate

While HD DVD only has

Universal Studios

Viacom

-Paramount Pictures

- Dreamworks Animation

-Dreamworks Pictures

(minor parts of Viacom  -Nickolodiam, MTV)

and other minor studios such as The Weinsten Co, and Focus Features.

Blu-ray is supported by the worlds leading electronics companies, and has more licensing, unlike HD DVD, where virtually Tohsiba makes all of the stand alone players, along with a few dual format players.  It should be noted in the VHS/Betamax wars, VHS won as it had more licensing, like Blu-ray, as VHS had more support, unlike Sony who at that time, didn't make licensing easy. Also VHS, had started to show that it was going to win, when it had around 70% of the market, and now Blu-ray has 70% of the market share, in Hi-def movies, with HD DVD only having 30%. Also recent Nielson Video Scans, show the 83% (around) brought Blu-ray in Hi-def media, and in hardware another company shows that Blu-ray had over 90% share of the hardware brought after Warner's anouncement.

  After all of these facts supporting Blu-ray Disc, I can't imagine how you couldn't go Blu, anyway, Blu-ray Disc, sounds way better than plain HD DVD (marketing!).

Answer 6

It's clear that Bluray will be the format for watching movies. Warner Bros., Paramount and Universal are making HD-DVDs still but Warner is quitting in May. Paramount and Universal are on exclusive contract to make HD-DVD but will almost certainly jump ship when their contracts expire.

HD-DVD may continue as a computer storage format, or Toshiba may find other uses, but the format war has been decided.

I remember the VHS/Beta wars well. There are other reasons for Beta's demise though. Sony would not allow p**n on Beta, which is a huge market! Also, it was more expensive to build the Ampex style loading mechanism used on Beta machines than it was to build the M-load system employed in VHS. Consequently, VHS was always less costly to purchase. Beta was always a better format, offering a substantially better picture, but people were so ignorant about video quality back then.

Answer 7

Blu-Ray already won, but if you want to get an HD DVD later I'm sure you will be able to get one for $50 soon.

When a giant dies it take awhile for it to hit the ground. HD DVD has already been delivered the killing blow, it just hasn't hit the floor yet. The week after Warner announced that it was going to back Blu-Ray exclusively BD players took 90% of the High Definition movie player market. The final 2 major studios, Paramount and Universal, backing HD DVD are no longer "exclusive" to HD DVD although they haven't had time to announce any BD movie releases yet. It took them 3 whole days to start playing hot potato with HD DVD. Remember, as publicly traded companies they have to look good to shareholders. Shareholders panic if they think your format is dieing.

I know people are saying "but look at how Toshiba lowered the prices to $150 for the basic HD DVD player! Now they will gain ground!".....WRONG! Cutting your price in half only happens when things go on clearance. Price drops when value drops. Toshiba had NO CHOICE in the matter. What were they going to do? Keep the price the same? Then their sales would have dropped to 0. No, the price drop was evidence of the deathblow they had been dealt.

Toshiba will flounder around with some special deals and free movie give-aways for a bit, but it is over.

If you want a player that accesses the Picture in Picture function on some movies comming out later on then get a profile 1.1 player. The Samsung is only 1.0 and $399 now. Panasonic has a 1.1 for $499 and Funai is releasing a profile 1.1 later for $299. If you want one that updates online automatically and allows for gameplay online (not a PS3 but a stand alone BD player) Panasonic will release one soon.