Well… Its been a long battle. At least in tech years. HD-DVD seemed to have alot of things going for it. It seems Blu-ray has more. HD-DVD’s physical format is closer to DVD so it was a little cheaper to upgrade fabrication facilities. This also made set-tops cheaper. For Bluray, format specifications aside, Sony has released a slew of recent movies to cinema and of course had every intention to release these movies in their format. The third profitable studio 2007 was BV/Disney which was Bluray only. The second biggest studio Warner Bros. was also releasing software in Bluray format. While they also released in HDDVD, for a consumer, the choice was not to just choose from Harry Potter or Pirates of the Caribbean, it was either to just have Harry Potter with HDDVD, or have both with Bluray. Then the ‘X’ factor. The PS3. The biggest reason i originally gave HDDVD a chance was the other X factor, Its SONY format curse.

Bluray:

Sony has been notorious for producing new formats yet having them fail. Betamax, SACD, UMD… With that track record, I think its reasonable to ask them to prove themselves winners before i go out to buy a player.

Advantages: With Bluray, Sony had the better format (capable of higher max bitrate and larger capacity.) The larger capacity doesn’t necessarily equate to better quality as the size of HDDVD is sufficient to hold a movie and extras at high quality, but perceptively it looks better on an advertisement. Bluray has the software as stated earlier. Just like with games, a high powered machine can get beat by a lesser machine that has better games. As far as studios, Bluray has Sony (which includes a bunch of smaller studios with hits), Warner Brothers, NewLine, BV/Disney which represents a wealth of kids movies and recent blockbusters. and FOX. I’ll leave gaming console advantage for later.

Disadvantages: Bluray players are more expensive than HDDVD players.

HDDVD:

Advantages: Less expensive set-top players. Early reviews of VC1 encoded HDDVD disks reviewed with better quality over Blurays mpeg2 releases of the same movies. Although few recent releases are in mpeg2 . The adult movie industry has seemed to have adopted HDDVD as its choice. Sony denies not allowing adult content on its disks and there are movies in both formats. Movie studios backing HDDVD are Paramount/Dreamworks which represents the highest earning studio of 2007, Warner Brothers/New Line which is second highest but until recently released disks in both formats, Universal and a few others.

Disadvantages: Smaller capacity. Lower max bitrate. A red herring but perceptually a loss. Less (and lessoning) Studio support.

Gaming consoles: The biggest weapon Sony has is the PS3. Some predicted that the expense putting a Bluray drive into the console would scare people away. And perhaps it has. But not enough to prevent giving Sony impressive numbers to quote for Bluray capable players sold. Perhaps not everyone with a PS3 plays movies on it, but they own software for it and this all helps the numbers for a perceived win and sometimes thats all that matters. The XBOX 360 could have helped the HDDVD format by including a HDDVD drive internally, but Microsoft didnt have anything to gain from losing XBOX sales due to the higher expense and delay waiting for the technology would have caused. Sony had more to gain with a win so it bet the house on this one and they had to go all out to protect that bet.

Now with Warner Brothers and New Line dropping HDDVD, and with Paramount with a big out clause that allows them to dump HDDVD at any moment if Warner Brothers drops the format, things dont look good at all. Sony learned from its past mistakes and got studio support early and put all the might they have behind this format and it looks like its paying off. Im still rooting for HDDVD. There will be sub $100 HDDVD players probably before the end of 2008 but it wont matter if there isnt anything to play on them. Bluray players under $300 are now available making price less of an issue. But I’ll hold out hope. I’ll watch Paramount careful before making a purchase decision. And heck, maybe dual format machines will drop in price enough that both formats can exist. I fear, however, the sentiments coming from Warner Brothers executives about consumer confusion will cause the remaining Studios to join the popular format.

Maybe Sony finally joins the Red Sox and finally gets the rid of their curse.