News Games win for Blu-ray DVD format

More support for the best (IMHO) next gen DVD format - this time from the Game giants. From the Beeb:

The next-generation DVD format Blu-ray is winning more supporters than its rival, according to its backers.

Blu-ray, backed by 100 firms including Sony, is competing against Toshiba and NEC-backed HD-DVD to be the format of choice for future films and games.

The Blu-Ray Association said on Thursday that games giants Electronic Arts and Vivendi would both support its DVD format.

The next generation of DVDs will hold high-definition video and sound.

This offers incredible 3D-like quality of pictures which major Hollywood studios and games publishers are extremely keen to exploit in the coming year.

More here

 

sweet, but jeez, they push vhs out for dvd, now they will push dvd out.

Same with music, pushed LP's out for tapes, tapes for cd's, cd's for mini disks.. now mp3:|.

- Sc0rian

 

I think Blu-Ray is a better format than HD-DVD as well.

Blu-Ray sounds cooler than HD-DVD anyway.

 

Its all a money spinner for them. you had your favourite film on VHS then you bought a DVD player so you bought it on DVD. Along comes Blue-Ray so you upgrade to that and then buy your favourite film on Blue-Ray. 1 film bought 3 times by the same consumer = big bucks for holywood.

Plus it gives them a breathing space before blue-ray burners become available to the masses and piracy kicks off again.

Is blue-ray not supposed to be able to play ordinary DVDs too?

 

Yep - Blue-ray players (and HD-DVD players IIRC) will be backwardly compatible with normal DVD discs, according to the manufacturers.

So you won't immediately have to replace your DVD collection, unless there's some extra or new directors cut or something that you can't live without on the new Blue-ray version.

 

Blu-Ray logo:


HD-DVD logo:


Ok you can't judge two technologies by their respective logos, but frankly which logo would you rather have on the front of your drive ?

Blu-Ray has support for 25/50GB discs compared with 15/30GB with HD-DVD, and it has the potential for multi-layer discs offering up to 200GB of space. Interestingly one company managed to get both a Blu-Ray and DVD layer on one disc, meaning you could put it in either type of drive, which would greatly help adoption of the standard.

I did find an interesting bit of information that the base speed (1x) of Blu-Ray is 36MBit/s, but the specification could allow for up to 8x discs in the future or a full 25GB in under 15 minutes.

 

I dont know why people keep saying "oh, its all a money spinner"
all these new formats offer an advantage over the previous format.
DVD has reached the end of its developement, they wont be able to make drives much faster now and already the data capacity is getting to the stage where it will be limiting the content included.
And why do you have to rebuy a film!? Its not like you can't have your vhs dvd and bluray all plugged into your tv is it!?

 

I agree Most tvs have at least 4 inputs on them some have more also there is always a input switcher and if you have that movie on that format you should have the player. But this should be good for games as modern game are ever increasing is size. Also if they make re writeables for a computer it would make a nice SOHO backup solution

 

Phillips has a dvd writer which also supports Blu-ray coming out second half of this year.

perhaps it's better to wait for the Tapestry drives with capacities ranging from 200Gb up to 1.6Tbytes

 

But jeez, games are still comiNg out on CD!! I bought the Painkiller expansion pack today, and rather unsurprisingly, it came on 2 CD's. Why not a DVD? The only big games I know off that use DVD's are UT2004, FarCry and Half-Life 2. Why are we being so hasty to negotiate the move to new media, if multiple discs seem to be the current favourite. Bang it on 2 DVD's, I say!

PS: I say that until blu-ray/HD-DVD drives become cheap. Then I take it back.
PPS: "Whay not a DVD?" Compatibility. Not everyone has a DVD-ROM drive. *sigh* Price...maybe.

 

Well not so much minidiscs, that was jsut a sony thing and didn't last long at all. Although the players do have great battery life.

Xp they're trying to keep their market as open as possible, but chances are if you don't have a DVD drive in your machine then it's not capable of running those games anyway.

 

i wouldn't say md didn't make it big they were not that big in the us but its been more that ten years and they're still selling. in japan they sell like cds.

 

I think you hit the nail on the head, there

JADS, between those two logos, frankly I'd rather see the HD-DVD logo on my player. It may look a little bit naff when you see it's a rip-off of the original DVD logo, but next to that Blu-ray logo, it's positively sexy, in my opinion.

Minidiscs came out in the 80s as a replecement for audio cassette tape. You can get albums on MD (I've seen them on the shelves in the larger stores here), but frankly you'd be a fool to buy them when they cost the same as an uncompressed audio CD, which you can just copy to a blank MD yourself. Sony introduced Hi-MD at the end of last year, which upgrades the storage to 1GB per disc. And it's not just a Sony thing: Sony designs and licenses the standard, but quite a few other Japanese consumer electronics giants make MD players and player/recorders, such as Panasonic and Sharp.

Spot the MD fanboy Frankly, anything I can find without much trouble on store shelves here in Australia (something of a backwater in terms of electronics fads) is something I count as not dead by a long stretch of the imagination.

Nezuji

 

Yeah, actually, I think that Blu-Ray logo is damn ugly. As for which one I prefer, to me it doesn't really matter, as long as one of them becomes the standard pretty fast (which I think Blu-Ray is gonna do).

 

I agree that Blu-Ray sounds 'cooler' but remember who we are. Anything with 'blu' and 'ray' in the name is bound prick a modder's interest. But it's the consumers who will be the determining factor as to which format becomes succesful. I think most people will recognise the DVD name of HD-DVD and prefer to stick with that rather go for something new and technical sounding. In other words HD-DVD does exactly what it says on the tin and that's what people like.

 

Consumers will buy what happens to be in the big stores, and the big stores will buy the hardware that has the most backing, especially from Hollywood studios. On this front Blu-Ray is the clear winner.