I have been looking through my HDDVDs and watching a few and am really wondering why blue ray won. I know why, but really, the HD discs are so much nicer then the blue rays. It usually takes anywhere from 1 to 5 minutes for a blue ray to load on my PS3. I popped the HD into my Xbox and poof, it was ready to play in under 30 seconds. The picture is very nice, the sound is excellent and the ability to play in the video is pretty cool. It is such a nicer format. Dont get me wrong, blue ray is nice, it is just that HD seems to be so much better.

By that criterion, MUSE LD should have been the format of choice. No delay, it plays as soon as the spindle motor gets up to speed.
But, you know, honestly I got tired of the "format war" talk the first time around. Now that one 12 cm high-density digital disc type has definitively captured the market, why bother revisiting it?

It seems to be that Blue Rays are taking longer and longer to load. The longest I have had one take is 10 minutes. What is up with that. It was not the machine either. I let a friend try it on his and it took 10 minutes as well. I did have an anamoly once and the disc took an hour to load. That is plain stupid. As stated, I was just wondering why one captured the hearts of the world and not the other. All it does for me is make it so I can get 900 some odd movies for a buck each, which in the end is fine with me.

I guess it has something to do with the way its encoded. That doesn't make sense for a disc to take an hour to load. I use a PS3 and some Disney's take a while to load from inserting the disc to the opening scene. Some movies seem to hang on the capabilities of the player where it might take 2 to 3 minutes for switching layers or something. HD DVD didn't seem to have that though I am in the process of getting back in after being away from the format for a few years. I am realizing I should have kept my stuff to begin with but oh well. can't have everything...

When I get back from Tahoe Oct 21, I'll put in here some of an article I wrote about why BR beat out HD. It had little to do with public interest or quality.

I think, (or I should say assume), that the marketing regarding 1080P vs. 1080i was largely responsible. Most people I know didn't understand the difference but went with 1080P even though their some of their displays were 1080i.

Ron

Sony was using Blu-Ray in the PS3 (requirement, not option) and in a professional system. Hence, drives & discs were going to be made whether or not it succeeded as a consumer product, which was not true of HD-DVD. Costs being lower to manufacture equipment & discs for one format than two, the logical decision for the other firms was to cut their losses & go with the one that was guaranteed to be there, not the one that was dependent on their support for its existence. Simple as that.

The ironic thing was p0rn could have saved them as producing HDDVDs was a lot cheaper and easier to retool and manufacture. However, that didnt happen, lol.

I wouldn’t buy a HD-DVD or bluray at the time of the format war for the sakes of mindless wank off p0rn titles! They’d be better of off on VHS tape.

Well I brought bluray not because I wanted too but looks like I backed the wrong hoarse? I wish HD-DVD was around at least we can have mandatory DOLBY TrueHD and DOLBY has done far more in the past 40 years and what has dts done besides stealing every DOLBY produced film mix under the sun and brain dead kiddies that don’t no squat about cinema sound history think dts hd ma is the best thing ever. SIGH

I’m sick and tired with dts monopolizing DOLBY produced films for cinema so they can be cocky on facebook bragging how great it is to have such and such film on bluray when in FACT it was produced in DOLBY and dts pay no credit towards the real pioneers of CINEMA SOUND!

I’m tempted to buy a HD-DVD player and track down some back catalogue DOLBY titles.

Want to know an odd fact about cinema sound? The first digital surround format for theaters wasn't Dolby Digital or DTS. It was by Kodak, called Cinema Digital Sound . . .

Web Conversion of the CDS Promotional Brochure

. . . it didn't last long though after Dolby and DTS did their thing.

The sad thing is, out of all the digital surround systems in theaters the one that sounds best to me is SDDS--especially 8-channel SDDS (when Gladiator came out in theaters, I went to see it in all the formats; DD, DTS and SDDS--SDDS won hands down.) But it seems that one is going the way of CDS.

It seems like the next great thing is always 1/2 better then the previous thing and then when people realize it is expensive they say we tried, if that makes sense.

The problem with HD DVD is its so buggy. Even under final firmware update of my HD A3 I have movies that just have strange issues.

Thats strange. I have never had issues with HDDVDs. But then again, I play them on my xbox.

At the time, Microsoft had made the decision for me. I could buy a $600 PS3 for Blu-rays or spend $200 on the Xbox HDDVD drive. I bought the HDDVD the day it came out, showed it off to my friends and they were jealous.

Still prefer HDDVD to this day, but then again I still prefer LD too. What does that say?

Blu ray won because hd dvd had way too many glitches. I know some keep saying they never had a problem. But what about the many thousands that did and had to regularly call Toshiba for "help". A firmware upgrade(which many people did) was not going to stop freeze ups on discs that would play great for 4 months then suddenly freeze in the same spot all the time. That issue was some kind of disc degragation or rot with the mostly non universal movies. The players themselves crapped out a lot and had many hangups with scene changes and loading.

I still like the quality of hd dvd but never found it to load any faster then blu ray as some have claimed. This is speaking from the perspective of many models later. Hd dvd damn near put Toshiba out of business. The film "The Thing" on hd dvd is better than the blu ray along with a few others. Green Lantern on blu ray takes so long to load that it is hard to believe that this is the "newer" technology.

Bottom line for hd dvd-wrong hardware, bad disc manufacturing and sloppy spot checking on their units. I bought the film The Island five times on hd dvd because it always froze up. Two European versions, two US versions and a Canadian version all bombed on three different high end hd dvd players. Thats just a portion of how I know (along with those still stuck with an hd dvd player that they want to succeed).

That is so weird, I have run though about 200 HDDVDs and have never had a issue. I have had a lot more issues with my blu rays. The HDs play right off the bat. But then again it is off my xbox.

Dito, never ran into a HD-DVD that did not work properly.

I run into Blu-rays that don't work all the time (though those are not defects of discs, but rather Firmware problems it seems).

Anyhow I am a strong believer that Blu-ray won because the drive was right inside the PS3, while HD-DVD was only an
optional component for the X-BOX without any real benefit whatsoever. What I liked about HD-DVD was that it is region free.
My Toshiba Player has the so-called WELCOME-Bug in the meantime. Means you switch on the Player, and the display says
"WELCOME", and that never changes. Meh. I'll stay away from Toshiba products in the future I guess.

I've only just started exploring the world of high definition, unfortunately as I don't own an xbox360 it'd be difficult for me to watch HD DVD but so far my experience with BD is mixed. The actual films are great (when they're not smothered with DNR) but so far I'm really disliking the menus and variable loading times per disc...why do discs have loading times at all?!

I had Casablanca that didn't work. it was like there was no movie after a certain point. The BD was a nice welcomed sight to see Casablanca again:)
now having the HD-D3 it seems take longer than my PS3 to boot up and play movies though I've not actually time them.

Hi Guys,

The HDDVD was a more finished product from the start than Blu-Ray was and the Sound & picture is excellent.

Regards to all