HD-DVD soon
Back in July, I posted my thoughts on HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray. Personally, I’ve chosen to go the HD-DVD route with the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive. I pre-ordered it on Amazon, and it ships this week. I’ve seen many articles comparing the two, and I still see HD-DVD as ruling the format war, at least in the short term. There are four main reasons for that: 1) It’s cheaper – at least until the PS3 rolls around 2) The ability to have HD on one side of a disc and SD on the other really appeals to home users 3) The standards are higher for HD – required ethernet capability, required multiple video streams for Picture-in-Picture, quicker menus, etc. 4) The compression format – again, Blu-ray is using a 10 year old compression algorithm (MPEG-2) hindering its storage capablities. HD-DVD has been using the brand-new VC-1 by Microsoft since day one.
That doesn’t even go into the production process – where Blu-ray media is burned on the top of the disc, and is therefore more prone to damage….Anyway – I’m excited to get my drive in!
