Blu-ray & HD-DVD Hybrid
June 23rd, 2006 by Gibran Nawaz in News
Samsung and Toshiba have joined forces to end the format wars for good. They are releasing a hybrid player that plays both Blu-ray and HD-DVD formats. But that’s not all! Sony and NEC are also releasing a dual-format player of Blu-ray and HD-DVD. This is back-up for Sony, since they did lose miserably with Betamax.
Why is this happening? Sony’s contract for partners says that they can’t release HD-DVD hardware. It’s all a mystery for us. It is unclear if this will affect the Playstation 3 or Xbox 360. What if Microsoft releases a Blu-ray add-on, or Sony a HD-DVD add-on? Sony is delaying the launch of regular Blu-ray players so when the PS3 is out, people will notice that it’s quite cheap. For a Blu-ray player. And Nintendo? How are they going to compete with their optional DVD player add-on?
Tags: News
June 27th, 2006 at 4:46 pm
Well, that just goes to show you, when potential BILLIONS of dollars in gaming and hardware is at stake, neither camp wants to lose even a tiny sliver of market share. So they compromise. I’m just waiting for these hybrid players to drop down to $400, and then there will be more titles available. Until then, I’ll just sit back and watch my old DVDs, thank you very much.
June 27th, 2006 at 4:48 pm
If Samsung is involved, the product will just die a few weeks after purchase anyway…
June 27th, 2006 at 5:32 pm
I don’t get it. They’re releaseing a combo-drive, yet “Sony’s contract for partners says that they can’t release HD-DVD hardware. It’s all a mystery for us.”
It’s a mystery to me… where is this news coming from?
June 27th, 2006 at 5:44 pm
I thought I was at SPONG for a moment. You would think that the most important piece of news regarding next format would longer than 2 paragraphs. No sources, no facts. If it was April 1st it would be easier to swallow this crap. Just the facts sir, just the facts.
Brutal.
June 27th, 2006 at 5:57 pm
dikturbo:
You tried to click the links perhaps? Have you even read it?
The article links bit-tech.net and tomshardware.
Who’s the idiot now?
June 27th, 2006 at 7:31 pm
Anyone else think the player pictured is hideous?
June 27th, 2006 at 7:43 pm
the babe or the player???
June 27th, 2006 at 11:12 pm
Nintendo doesn’t have an add-on planned for the Wii. It’s just going to play DVD’s right out of the box. Besides, all this talk of format wars is a bit premature, since pretty much nobody is going to buy Blu-Ray or HD-DVD right when they come out because not enough people own HD-TV’s to make it worth the money.
Eventually, this stuff will matter, though. Bottom line is that I’m not buying either until A) one format is the clear winner and B) the players are less than $200.
June 28th, 2006 at 12:14 am
nintendo is still gonna kick their asses come october/november. even with “only” a dvd add-on, you still have to think: if i buy my nice ps3 ($600) or even just a blue-ray player (also $500-$600), where the hell am i gonna find the money to buy a tv that will actually be able to play hd/blue-ray? in other words, i refuse to spend $3000+ just so i can game. yes, it may look realistic as all get out, but who has that to drop on top of the holiday season shopping?
from what i understand, blue-ray movies don’t look as good as hd anyways. (i don’t have the link but there was a review that someone did about a best buy store being told to not play blue-ray movies next to hd for comparison as corporate wants to push blue-ray). the wii will be excellently priced, and will win out. just goes to show that “next-gen” doesn’t have to mean better graphics (thats why i have a PC!)
June 28th, 2006 at 2:03 am
all i have to say is hd-dvd and blu-ray will both suck. for one there are barley any tv’s out that will play anything in 1080p. and what makes matters worse, 720p looks alot better than 1080p. and yes this is completly true. and the reason why is that 1080p is underdeveleoped. 720p has been played with many times to give faster frame rates and refresh rates. but the fact of the matter is that 1080p hasnt been used for jack yet and its a waste to buy a $3000+ tv when its still in the premature stage of life. to tell the truth if your that hyped or worried about having 1080p just wait a few years so that companys tinker with 1080p to give it the refresh and frame rates it needs to be the best of the best. so for now love your 720p hdtv’s cuz man are they some bad mofo’s.
plus $1000 for a blu-ray player. (best buy price and circuit city price) get the eff out of here with that. picture quality isnt that important as long as you can see what your watching and it looks good. may not be top notch but its good.
June 28th, 2006 at 1:46 pm
To understand the HDDVD vs BlueRay vs DVD argument you need to understand the formats, and take account of the whole market not just TV/Video/Film or just Games or just PCs. Plus you need to think about copyrights and copy proection and always remember who is selling you what and why?
HDTV format is 1080i. It’s interlaced as the TV industry has always worked with interlaced video and they like it, this is because of the historic way CRT tubes have worked scanning odd and even lines in 2 separate fields. Because LCD/TFT screens don’t scan they simply refresh (normally 75-100 times per second), whether the input is interlaced or progressive makes a difference but is not really the most important factor in picture quality. The most important thing is the display resolution of your TV. In order to see HDTV properly you need a display capable of 1920*1080 pixels. If your TV is marked “HD-Ready”, but has a resolution in the order of 1366*768, then when you feed it a 1080 signal, the TV has to lose lines of resolution, when you feed it a 720 signal the screen is much nearer the native resolution of the screen and therefore the image will appear sharper.
So when it comes to the HDDVD and Blue Ray, vs Normal DVD, you need to remember Standard DVD is 720i, and so the image quality improvement of the new DVD formats over old DVD will only be noticeable if you own a 1920*1080 HDTV. In the UK there are currently only 3 models available capable of this display resolution, a Toshiba (nnWLT66) and Philips (nnPF9830) and a Sharp (LC45GD1E), however there are loads of others with resolutions in the order of 1366*768. The improvement of the new DVD formats on these “HD-Nearly-Ready” TVs will be negligible, however on a 1920*1080, it should be much clearer.
Another other area HDDVD and Blue Ray will improve things is in terms of capacity, and therefore theoretically compression artifacts should be decreased. But you need to remember uncompressed 1080i is approximately 1Gbit/s in uncompressed SDI format, so even with a 4 layer, 100Gb, BlueRay disk you wouldn’t be able to store 2 minutes worth of uncompressed video. 1080p (which I don’t believe is a “real standard” yet?!?) because you are storing twice the data ultimately you need more compression, so there is always a trade off.
Also, I’ve been working in the broadcast industry for the last 5 years, and I doubt many people pick up many of the compression artifacts on standard DVD anyway. And how much more bonus content do you want on your DVDs anyway? I recommend going to HD very very carefully, make certain you have the right TV for the content you wish to display, otherwise you could end up disappointed.
So that leaves the PCs, how will these new disks interact with the PC industry, I think they’ll do okay, you always need more storage capacity for PC data, but you need to be able to Write and well as Read, so if the difference in writable capacity is 15Gb vs 25Gb (Single Layer), I think the cheaper (no license with HDDVD) format will win there, the PC market is super-competitive and the cheaper the option for the same order of magnitude of storage capacity will always win. However I just bought a 2GB USB-memory stick for £35GBP, and I prefer those devices to CD/DVD technology for portable data storage anyway.
Online digital content delivery technology is growing day by day, I can download 100s of movies from SkyByBroadband and stream the picture out to my TV in my lounge (or my HDD recorder) right now for free, okay I need to download the night before, but it’s getting quicker and quicker. Google have ambitions in digital video providing. Surely this technology is the future, not buying/renting DVD / HDDVD / BlueRay titles from your local blockbuster!
I think both the new HD-DVD and BlueRay technologies may well be obsolete before large scale take-up occurs unless the industry artifically drives the prices down very quickly (Maybe the PS3 will help this). But I am skeptical that the main reason HD-DVD and Blueray are being hyped so much whilst 1366*768 displays are being sold as “HD-Ready”, is a move to change the market from DVDs (where the copy protection has been broken) to the much more secure HDDVD and Blueray formats, rather than for viewer enhanced experience.
Please select your purchase of HDTV equipment very carefully!
July 1st, 2006 at 7:13 am
wow this pretty much proves that the HD-DVD format is dead…
it was a pieco crap and pain in the ass anyways.
may blue-ray and ps3 prosper in eternal glory
July 3rd, 2006 at 3:45 pm
I need point out an error in John Bengston’s explination above.
“So when it comes to the HDDVD and Blue Ray, vs Normal DVD, you need to remember Standard DVD is 720i, and so the image quality improvement of the new DVD formats over old DVD will only be noticeable if you own a 1920*1080 HDTV”
Normal DVD is not 720i it is in fact 480i (This is the number of Horizontal Lines shown on the TV)
Most of the new “HD-Ready” Tv’s that dont meet the 1080i requirement of 1920×1080 pixels resolution, will downformat the 1080i signal into 720p (720 Horizontal lines) Loosing alternate horizontal lines to create the new progressive signal.
Remember that 720p tv images carry 2x the information of 720i, this combined with the extra 240 horizontal lines of resolution of the current DVD format, means what you see on your sceen will be vastly better than a normal DVD.
July 5th, 2006 at 5:28 pm
If you have an HDTV with a resolution of 1920×1080, then it can display 1080p. because 1080i is interlaced, you’re technically not getting 1080 pixels, as it displays 540 pixels alternately, which is why screens with 1366×768 resolution can display 1080i signals as 1080i (they don’t scale them to 720p, which would tehcnically be upsacling).
Most modern movies are mastered in 1080p, which is why it’s considered the pinnacle of HD. 1080i isn’t just the interalced version of 1080p, it’s also a lot lower res. 720p is a better signal than 1080i as it’s technically higher res too, and is progressive. Unfortunately, 720p signals need more bandwidth than 1080i, which is why most HDTV is 1080i and not 720p.
July 7th, 2006 at 9:48 pm
The comment above is mislead. If the above statement were true then typical television (480i) would only have 240 lines of vertical resolution. We all know that isn’t true becuase it would look like a cell phone screen blown up.
The difference between 1080i and 1080p is not that one has a better resolution, it’s only how the screen is refreshed. 1080p is considered better because each frame is refreshed as a whole each time, which reduces visible flicker. 1080i has lines 1,3,5,7.. refreshed then lines 2,4,6,8… refreshed. So there are still the same number of pixels used, just they are refreshed differently.
August 2nd, 2006 at 5:55 pm
Just to throw my two cents in…..
I agree with JMAN. 1080p looks better to the naked eye because it is refreshed more “efficiently” I guess you could say than 1080i. And to add to that statement, and this is probably the obviously, the best you can do from a DVD would in fact be 480p rather than 480i….which is what I watch on the BRAVIA with the Panny DVD player.
October 28th, 2006 at 5:42 am
Well i feeel very interesting to here the details of hddvd.So i take HDDVD as my seminar topic.
Sreyas
November 10th, 2006 at 6:27 pm
Brian: Well actually you can do better than 480p from a regualar 480p DVD movie. Buy a DVD player that will upscale to 1080p, or let you TV upscale to 1080p which I currently do. I have a 1080p 61″ JVC LCOS technology HDTV which makes all my 480p movies look like 1080p, because it has a internal scaler. And let me tell you there is remarkable difference between 480p and 1080p upscaled. When I play my 480p DVD movies they look alright, but when my TV uscales them to 1080p they look remarkable, they look like full HD. I have fooled all my friends when they came over, they thought they were watching HD DVD, but in fact it was just 480p upscaled to 1080p. I agree who needs HD DVD or Blue ray right now when you can have near HD output by upscaling your current 480p DVD’s to 1080p. But then again, you will need a TV that can output 1080p to do that.
November 10th, 2006 at 6:47 pm
I also forgot to mention that there is difference to my eye between 1080i and 1080p and 720p and 1080i, 1080p. 1080i to 1080p there is a smoother flicker free picture (the refresh rate is different, but the resolution is the same). 720p to 1080i, there is a difference. HD Hockey is broadcasted in 720p and HD Discovery and other channels are in 1080i. When I compare both both channels and analyze what I’m seeing is: 1080i is still a much sharper clearer picture. Even though 720p is progressive and 1080i is interlaced there are more lines of resolution in 1080i which make the picture look more nicer and clearer than 720p. This is what I see. Now when I change my settings to take the 1080i signal and let my TV upscale it to 1080p, I can actually see the difference as the picture is more smoother and clean looking. My cents worth on this topic, since I have a 1080p TV.
November 26th, 2006 at 8:06 am
If your TV is 1080i and your HD DVD is 1080p what is your dvd playing as? Is it playing in 1080i or back to 480i? Our tv is 1080i and when we select 1080p to play the DVD it won’t do anything, just puts lines on the tv so we have to select 1080i in order to play it.
November 29th, 2006 at 11:03 pm
Yes that is correct. Your TV can only display 1080i not 1080p since its a 1080i TV. The HD DVD is playing at 1080p, but it will not display 1080p if your TV isn’t 1080p, yes you will get lines on the TV. Since the resolution of your TV is only 1080i, you must select 1080i to display it. The only way to display 1080p is to have a 1080p capable TV, just like I do. There is no other way around it. That is why I invested in 1080p, because of this problem. I wanted to future proof myself with Blue ray and HD DVD since they are recorded in 1080p
December 27th, 2006 at 9:49 am
I just bought the kdsr50-xbr1 and was told it was 1080P tv. I have been reading and found out is upscales the picture to 1080P. Does that mean if I buy a blu-ray it will not work? Will it display at 1080i? or 720P? Or will it upscale to 1080P? I am quite confused and pissed off. I am considering returning it and buying the sxrd instead because it says it plays true 1080P. Please help…
Thanks
Andre
December 27th, 2006 at 10:04 am
I thought that as long as you can at least upscale to 1080p then you would get 1080p picture quality … but that is a good question. What really is the difference between this “updscaling” to 1080p and “true” 1080p … probably this is somewhere on the web but if vagos knows it would save all of the work of Googling for it.
December 28th, 2006 at 8:24 pm
The debate over HD DVD vs Blu-Ray will continue. Blu-Ray apparently has more storage capacity. However, Microsoft backing the HD DVD with their Xbox 360 will cause movie developers to think hard in which format that they will ultimately back. I am going to go with HD DVD to win the Blu-Ray vs HD DVD poll.
See for yourself: http://todayspolls.googlepages.com/bluray_vs_hddvd_poll
December 28th, 2006 at 9:10 pm
As much as I am a HUGE proponnet of HD-DVD I can’t help but think that Blu-Ray has a very good chance of being around for a long time. It is just too early to say who will win imo. Of course though I have the MS HD-DVD player and have ZERO plans on purchasing the PS3 or any Blu-ray player. But who knows what will happen once Sony irons out the problems of the PS3 … I sure don’t at this juncture. Plus Spiderman 3 will only be on Blu-ray so that may really help spur its acceptance forward.
January 3rd, 2007 at 7:58 pm
Interesting stuff all this, I bought the sharp 1080p model LC42 I already had a dvd player that upscales to 1080i but also plays 720p which is pretty good. What I would dearly love to know is, is there anything out there that will upscale normal tv to 1080p?. I was going to go down the HD route with sky but talking to one of their guys today I found out that they only broadcast 1080i so what is the point of paying big bucks to them for an HD box when they only have 10 or so HD channels to watch on it.
If anyone knows of any hardware that does the job I would be most grateful
January 3rd, 2007 at 8:04 pm
As far as I know the answer to your question is there is nothing that can upscale from 480i/p to 1080p. Really 1080p is for taking advantage of Blu-ray and HD-DVD movies and also SOME (supposed to be ALL in the near future) PS3 and SOME X360 games. Other than that if you are only watching regular TV or even HD channels you aren’t going to see any big benefits over a 1080i/720p TV.
January 3rd, 2007 at 8:15 pm
There is a DVD player that upscales to 1080P. Samsung makes it. I do believe the model # is DVD-HD960. This unit has some mixed review however it seems to be a good perfomer. It claimes to upscale to 1080P.
January 3rd, 2007 at 8:30 pm
Found a CNET review of that model:
An excerpt:
“CNET editors’ review
Reviewed by: Matthew Moskovciak
Edited by: David Katzmaier
Reviewed on 11/6/06
The 1080p resolution, which combines the benefits of lots of pixels and progressive-scan smoothness, is the latest craze in TV technology, and it wasn’t long before upconverting DVD players jumped on the bandwagon. The Samsung DVD-HD960 is one of the first players that can upconvert DVDs to 1080p resolution over its HDMI output, and unlike some of the other high-performance DVD players we’ve reviewed, this one has a sleek and slim design along with its technological prowess. Don’t expect miracles, however; as always, the image quality benefits of upconversion won’t make DVDs look like Blu-ray discs or HD-DVDs, and those benefits can vary depending on how well your HDTV itself performs upconversion. Although the DVD-HD960 has a lot going for it–its handling of nonanamorphic wide-screen DVDs is the simplest we’ve seen–it isn’t quite as feature packed as some other players that have memory card slots and support for high-resolution audio formats. On the other hand, its performance is generally very good, though a few issues might disturb eagle-eyed videophiles”
February 1st, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Can somebody help me out? I don’t understand all the technical jargon I am reading about Blue-Ray vs HD DVD, but I need to make a decision on which to buy because soon I am purchasing a 52″ Sharp LCD TV. If someone could just tell me in laymans terms the advantages and disadvantages of those two units, I would truly appreciate it. Please email me at ju2346@yahoo.co.uk I thank-you very much……..Pat Riley
March 18th, 2008 at 5:36 am
just got a bush 37inch hd tv and a wafendale upscale dvd player from argos. the majar prob is it won’t play any film dvds in full screen???!! is there an upscale player that plays all 2.35+ in full screen??? thanks.