The Format Wars Begin - HD-DVD
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You may be asking yourself what happened to HD-DVD. I told you that format wasn't going to win. No, it didn't take the turn of Betamax, at least not yet. Right now they appear to be neck and neck as to which format will win. Both formats appear to have the same relative amount of movies out. The price is slightly less good for Blu-Ray as far as players and movies go.
The specifications of the HD-DVD aren't as glorious as Blu-Ray. They are smaller with only 15 GB per layer, 10 GB less then Blu-Ray. Its maximum data transfer rate is 36 MBit/s. You may be thinking, well Blu-Ray has more space on the disc and is quicker, so why are companies still backing HD-DVD? At this time there isn't a need for that much space, and HD-DVD transfer speeds are fast enough for sending the video to the TV. To hold the official HD-DVD sticker on its case, the player must be able to handle Picture in Picture as well as an Internet connection. While these extra features aren't required in Blu-Ray, they may still find their way there. The interactive menus will use HTML, CSS, and XML as well as a few others. This makes it simpler for programmers than Blu-Ray's Java based menus.
One of the big boosts for going to HD-DVD instead of Blu-Ray is production. For Blu-Ray, companies need all new machines to print discs. HD-DVD doesn't require new hardware, only modification to the existing hardware on which companies already make DVDs. Also emerging is a new format called 3X DVD which is still in the designing stage. It is essentially a normal DVD, with HD video on it. They do this with a few changes along the way when recording the movie; they use new types of compressions, as well as 720p instead of 1080p. While both are considered "HD," the end result is a reduction in quality. This format, even though it uses the same discs as regular DVD, will only be playable on HD-DVD players. While this is a cheap way to produce movies, the loss of quality will probably mean that 3X DVD has little influence on the format war.
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