Another great episode guys and another great comp.

good show guys!! esp liked the Blu Ray vs HD DVD part. GO FIFA it has melbourne victory!!!

The triple layer HD DVDs are maxing out at 51gb so that’s about 17gb per layer. The manufacturing costs for Blu-Ray are so high that for any Hollywood studio it would cost them $2 million just to convert their production plants from DVD to Blu-Ray and only $150,000 to convert the same plant from DVD to HD DVD. If you were a studio exec there’s no way you would spend $2 million for an extra 20gb of space over HD DVD.

The reason why there are so many good games using 1 DVD is because for multiplatform games game developers are forced to develop for the lowest common denominator. That and that the 360 and PS3 have different hardware architectures and coding systems means that the 360 is easier to develop for because the hardware is closer to PC as well as using Direct X while the PS3 uses OpenGL for their graphics rendering. The only reason why PS3 games are on Blu-Ray only is because Sony wants royalties from the use of Blu-Ray Discs.

On the movie side HD DVD is more complete because their specs are complete and unlike Blu-Ray Disc players new movies will work on first gen players while the first gen Blu-Ray Disc players are screwed because they lack specific hardware components because the Blu-Ray specifications are not complete yet.

About Target US not stocking HD DVD, that’s false. Sony bought an end-cap for Blu-Ray and made that exclusive so Target US is still selling HD DVD. But note that Blockbuster in the US also closed down 250 stores in order to compete with Netflix.

MS has repeatly stated that no Blu-Ray drive has been planned for and even if HD DVD fails they’ll just focus on downloadable films through video marketplace.

Also, most Blu-Ray exclusive movies are available on HD DVD in Europe and since HD DVD is region free it means the HD DVD library is larger than Blu-Ray through the restriction of region coding.

The 2:1 sales lead by Blu-Ray in the US should not be taken out of context. If you compare the sales for 300 on Blu-Ray it sold 1.6 million, on HD DVD it sold 175,000, on DVD it sold 5.1 million. So the real battle is between DVD and HD DVD/Blu-Ray and in order for HD DVD or Blu-Ray to win they have to move stock numbers similar and higher than DVD and it’s not happening.

The reason why UMD failed as a movie format is because it’s like HD formats, they ain’t gonna spend the extra cash on a movie they have on DVD when they can convert it and put it on a memory stick.

Porn, now, is not the deciding factor because people want to download it rather than walk into a store and been seen buying the stuff.

This format war is no longer VHS vs. Betamax but it’s looking more like SACD and DVD-Audio. Samsung have also released news that they’re also making a dual format player that supports BD-J and HDi, the LG player doesn’t support either interactivity scripts.

I own both PS3 and 360 + HD DVD addon and think that HD DVD is far better because it is more complete in specifications than Blu-Ray is and that HD DVD stand alone players are going for sub $200 US a piece.

Sorry for the long post I was typing as I listen to the podcast.