Bluray and HD DVD - I've missed something!

scurr

Hi, please help - I think I must have been living in a cave or something because I've no idea what bluray and HD DVD are!

I have a HD ready TV but only an ordinary DVD/VCR combo - should I just be buying ordinary DVDs or would I get any benefit from an HD DVD? Or bluray?

Hope someone can help because I'm starting to feel stupid!

DatabaseError

there has been a battle waging, similar to the vhs vs betamax one in the 80's?
the winner is:- Blueray, almost certainly because ps3 consoles come with a blueray player built in. so, if you want to watch HD content on your tv, you need to buy a dedicated player, either the ps3 or a standalone, neither hd-dvd nor blueray disks will play in your dvd player.
hd-dvd players are coming down in price, and will probably be almost given away in the coming months, but they are not a wise investment!

Little_John

LOL
HD DVD and Blue Ray are the new formats for multimedia disks and players. HD DVD was developed by Toshiba and Hitachi, Blue ray was by Sony and Philip's and for once Sony has won the battle.

The formats both store huge amounts of data which means they can store video in High def formats. Just to correct the post by tonyhaugh the reason bluray won isn't due to the fact the PS3 uses it it is a better format, it has a higher capacity believed to be up to 200GB compared to the maximum 60GB of HD but I think that is some time in the future with additional layers etc. The film studios adopted blue ray quicker but some of the really big ones opted for HD DVD some did both they are now moving over the blue ray format.

spud17

Hi, please help - I think I must have been living in a cave or something because I've no idea what bluray and HD DVD are!

I don't know where I've been living then, I've never even had a VCR.

Cricri

HD DVD is dead. It has been officially discontinued by Toshiba. Hence prices dropping.
If you want to get any movies in the future in HD format, it's Blu Ray or nothing, unfortunately.

mostly

although the toshiba stand alone players do an excellent job of upscaling standard dvds so might be worth a punt. I'll be getting one once they reach 50 notes.

scurr

So I would need a new DVD player to play bluray disks? Thanks for help, everyone!

System

will these new thing-a-me-bobs work on black and white tely's ?

DatabaseError

islandman, they may struggle on one of these

rancid-a

scurr wrote: »

So I would need a new DVD player to play bluray disks? Thanks for help, everyone!

Careful scurr, it's NOT a new DVD player you need, it's a BluRay/DVD Player. A few examples here...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=sr_kk_1?ie=UTF8&search-alias=aps&field-keywords=blu%20ray%20player

Cheapest BluRay player seems to be around £199. HD-DVD on the other hand (the dead format already mentioned in above posts) is selling for around £78.

To summerise -
a new BluRay/DVD player will also play your normal DVDs.
a new DVD player will NOT play BluRay discs.

superscaper

tonyhague wrote: »

islandman, they may struggle on one of [URL]file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/dor/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/moz-screenshot.jpg[/URL][/IMG][IMG]file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/dor/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/moz-screenshot-1.jpg[/IMG]http://www.tvhistory.tv/1930BairdTelevisor.JPG]these

Methinks you need to clean up your link.