HD DVD >>>>> Blu-ray, don't @ me To potentially win $20,000 for a Gaming Rig and support a great cause go to omaze.com/91Tech - thanks to Omaze for sponsoring today's video!
I know us tech nerds sometimes love to be hipsters, but HD-DVD really is not better than Blu-ray. Of course, none of this actually matters because HD-DVD failed, but nevertheless HD-DVD discs can only store 15GB (or 30GB dual-layer) compared to Blu-ray's 25GB (or 50GB dual layer, 100GB triple-layer, 128GB quadruple-layer; HD-DVD never supported triple or quadruple layers) meaning HD-DVD either has less playtime or theoretically more compression (i.e. worse video and audio quality) than Blu-ray. HD-DVD only supports a maximum bitrate of 30.2Mbit/s while Blu-ray supports up to 48Mbit/s (in practice both use compressed video, usually AVCHD at 13Mbit/s, so these maximums are never hit), and Blu-ray data is stored with error-correcting code (ECC) whereas HD-DVD data is not. Blu-ray is better physically as all Blu-ray discs are hardcoated to help protect against scratches, HD-DVD hardcoating was optional. The only real thing HD-DVD did better than Blu-ray is that HD-DVD never had region codes whereas Blu-ray has 3, although I've noticed many Blu-rays tend to be region-free these days anyway, and HD-DVD only ever supported AACS for encryption which was cracked very early on, making HD-DVD movies easier to, uh, "legally back up" ;)
Oh man, I absolutely loved HD DVD back in the day as a teenager. Ironically, this was because it failed so hard. See, I wanted to watch HD content, but Blu-ray was way out of my price range, but when HD DVD flopped it became SUPER cheap. I got a boxed 360 HD DVD add on plus 6 movies for $50 (the boxed player also came with the 360 media remote which was $20 by itself). Then after that the actual movies were dirt cheap. They were going for literally one cent on Amazon, retailers couldn't wait to get rid of them, so even with my nonexistent teenage money I was able to put together a small collection. Another creature comfort was that if I was spending an afternoon binging a TV show I had on regular DVD, I could put a disc in the regular drive and the HD drive and switch discs without getting up. Truly, I was living the high life in 2010. It was kind of sad though to watch it fall into irrelevancy though, every dash board update would see the app get pushed down into more menus and off the main screen.
That's why I purchased the PS2. I figured, Why just buy a standalone DVD player, when I can buy a gaming system that plays DVDs too? That was my "reasoning" for buying the PS2.
Microsoft never planned a built in HD-DVD drive because they were banking on digital media licensing. They were just a generation too soon on that one.
I mean...... Michael Bay did state literally this when he was venting how the first Transformers was going to skip Blu-Ray for HD-DVD as a result of Paramount going exclusively red (a move that was seen as mind-boggling, and how its theorized that Microsoft paid Paramount to switch)
I had the very first HD DVD player from Toshiba rushed to market in 2006. It was really slow and took forever to play movies. It also looked like a 1980's VCR. I signed up for the firmware update program, and they had to mail discs directly to me to update the player. Once support was pulled for HD DVD and Blu Ray won, Toshiba sent out one final firmware disc that, unbeknownst to me, would brick the upscaling capabilities of the player. Every time I put in a DVD, a message would pop up alerting me that the disc was would be shown in 480i. I bent the remote into a slight U shape out of frustration and took the player to my local Goodwill.
@@comput3r Thanks for the information. You have to remember that this was way back in 2007, and I wasn't smart enough to do something like that, plus, the Toshiba firmware wasn't widely available at the time. We still had to update the devices via a mail-in disc. The players had ethernet connections, but the firmware never got advanced enough in the time they existed to even make those work. I doubt the thing is even in use, today, having become ewaste years ago, before ewaste was even a consideration to the general public.
CDs were very popular by 1995. I was a kid and got my first Sony Discman in 1994. Sony did not advance CDs in the 90s with the PlayStation. The Sony Discman was the thing that did.
Yeah very weird thing to say, I don't remember anyone that didn't already have a cd player before they had a PlayStation, but i doubt he would of been old enough to know lol
my dad was a relatively early adopter of CD. While not buying them when they were over 500$ for a cd player, he did get one either in late 80s or early 1990s and joined one of those scammer CD clubs. The funny thing is he legitimately bought enough from the CD club to make being a member worth it.
HD DVD content looks as good as it ever did on HDTVs, and many people purchased their HD DVD collections on the cheap when it was being phased out. There are upsides despite it being a defunct format with no new releases.
Yeah, but I'd argue the majority of people who watched either HD-DVD or blu-ray movies did so on consoles. On PS3, it was built right in, while on 360, you had to spend an extra $200 for it. Not to mention, the original 360 models didn't have wi-fi or HDMI whereas PS3 did.
The toshiba hd dvd player also had an ethernet cable port which theoretically would have gotten updates online. Our first gen sony blu ray player wouldn't play the latest blu rays because they needed the decrypt keys updated so you had to go to a pc to download files, make a data disc iso and burn it and put that in the bluray player to do a firmware update to play the blurays. I would say the toshiba was a much more pleasant experience.
@@PatrickDKing but the PS3 even tho its a console from 2006, it still receives updates to this day for the encryption keys. Hell the PS3 pre-dates Blu Ray 3D, yet it supports it via a firmware update
@@absolutium You still get better image quality from the increased storage space. Whether the release comes with 1 disc, or 3, you're still getting more space per disc. And thus better quality.
At the time, I stayed out of the Blu-ray/HD DVD format war and bought exclusively DVDs. I did keep up with it however and secretly hoped HD DVD would win. It just made the most sense to me going from DVD to HD DVD, and the “Blu-ray” name kind of sounds like a fish.
Keep buying blu rays my friend, we'll be the ones enjoying ourselves when the zombie apocalypse happens. Everyone else will have nothing because they think streaming is the way forward.
Digital distribution is a suckers game. I have hundreds of Blu-ray and HD-DVD in my collection and have tangible assets I can watch anytime I want with lossless quality.
When I was a kid my family was not into technology, a huge plus to me was when my first pc (in 1998) had a CD drive. It was our 2nd CD player and was a very big value add for me. If I had a ps1 back then it would have been a very big deal to me to have a CD player in the living room.
Music CDs and CD players were as common and inescapable as microwave ovens in 1995. CD had been the dominant music format for years (it accounted for 80% of physical media sales) and was near its all-time crest, with global sales of about 700 million in 1995 alone. The PlayStation was released at a time when used music stores were starting to have $1 CD bins near the front door for lightly scratched discs. Best Buy had become a goliath in part by selling CDs below cost. I had my first CD player when I was a kid (cheap, and bought at Target, where CD longboxes had already replaced cassettes). When the PlayStation came out, I was in college. CD was a total nonfactor for PS1, and I’m not sure I’ve ever even heard of someone using the system as a music player.
@@bubba842 yeah I learned those releases have disc rot. I collect them cause they're so cheap and it's a weird format. So it's ok if those don't work. But to my surprise some of them still work!
@@csdarlington86 it's not actually disc rot. It's a shitty pressing technique and faulty equipment at one of Warner's subsidiaries plants that caused this issue. There is way to see if your WB discs are affected. If you look on the inner clear plastic part of the disc, there will be small writing stamped into it. If you see 01FF stamped on it, it came from the Cinemax plant in Olyphant Pennsylvania. The source of the problem. Warner used two other plants, one in Toronto and one in Mexico, that didn't suffer these issues. If your discs say something different than 01FF on them, then they were probably pressed in one of the other plants and will probably work. You will probably need a magnifying glass to read it as the stamp is tiny. You should check your WB releases to see if you have any non 01FF discs.
The HD DVD add-on was actually pretty good. On a 32 inch TV, which was my first HD Ready TV in 2006, movies like King Kong looked really good. I then got Toshiba's HD-EP30. I still have it plugged in to my modern 4K TV. The only major drawback today, after all this years, is that it boots up very, very slow.
It's pretty fascinating what Sony learned from the failure of the Betamax, they implemented into Blu Ray and the Playstation line in general. Convinient and plentiful features and eventually pricing. I was a PS3 guy so I didn't even realize how much Microsoft expected you to buy seperately. The PS3 had WiFi, wireless controllers, HDMi, and a snazzy new video player format out of the box. Playing into the general western idea of "I already have a device that does this, so that's what I'll use" (which is a concept they refused to pander to with Betamax) instead of buying a new one. There's no way I would have been able to convince my parents to get me an additional hundred box to play movies and have wifi when we had a perfectly good DVD player and a computer already, but the PS3 I eventually got played them already and also could stream video. I think all of these consumer friendly actions was part of what smade PlayStation and Blu Ray dominate over Microsoft in the gaming console sales for generations (even the PS3 eventually outsold the 360).
PS3 being thought of as expensive or not, Blu-ray players that were being released at the same time as the system retailed for $500 as well making the purchase of a PS3 a no brainer if you wanted to watch HD movies on your new HD TV.
I believe that was Sony's strategy: subsidize the PS3 with an eye to recouping the losses through later sales and royalties. It proved a winning strategy.
One minor complaint. DVD still outsells Blu-ray in 2021 so Blu-ray isn't what people buy the majority of the time if they are still buying physical media.
I think it's weird how DVD a format from 1997 and 480i is still going strong...I mean look it up SpongeBob except for the movies isn't even available on Blu-ray just DVD.
This instantly reminded everyone alive back then of the VHS and Betamax war. When I was a kid, my family had a VHS player, and I didn't know about Betamax until I saw my Grandpa's unused Betamax player in his movie closet. He still kept it, even after switching to VHS in the 90's. Unfortunately, he got rid of all his Betamax cassettes, so we could never try it out.
I remember seeing HD DVD back in the video aisles in the mid-to-late 2000's and reading a CONSUMER REPORTS article about it, but at the time, I didn't know what to make of it. As it was, I was still building up my DVD collection, and I read that some of the HD DVD titles still didn't play as well with uneven color quality on certain players. Now, already having made the transition to Blu-ray, I'm finding it hard enough to keep up with the transition to 4K!
A little known fact as to the demise of HD-DVD. Sony paid millions of dollars to major retailers including Best Buy to make sure two things happened. 1. They buried any and all HD-DVD movies and hardware in more obscure parts of the store and HD-DVD could never have an end cap, EVER. 2. Sony mandated that Best Buy employees could not acknowledge that HD-DVD was high definition. They were told to tell customers that HD-DVD was “fake” HD and that there was a “new” technology called Blu-ray that was much better. The fact is that at launch HD-DVD was the far better viewing experience as the features, menu system and overall experience was more refined. Most Blu-ray at the time had zero features or menu options, just the movie. 🤦♂️ I know all this as I used to be a journalist and distributor in the video game industry in the 90s and good friends were in executive management at Best Buy, Circuit city, Frys, etc. Sony are ruthless and masters of corporate fuckery. Ask Sega.
7:40 actually, for people who just paid a couple of grand for a new hdtv and who happened to have the xbox, paying 200 bucks for add on player doesn't sound too bad, considering that both standalone bluray and hddvd players costed much higher back then. And also, bear in mind that 1080p tvs back then were very rare and expensive, the vast majority of hdtvs sold before 2010 were hd ready.
I've bought plenty of blu-rays but can't be bothered jumping into 4K Blu-Ray, 4K Players are still too expensive and I can't see them adding much over digital 4K
I have an immense collection of HD-DVD and a Toshiba player. I run it on a Sony 4K projector to a 140” CinemaScope screen and it looks great. A little known fact as to the demise of HD-DVD. Sony paid millions of dollars to major retailers including Best Buy to make sure two things happened. 1. They buried any and all HD-DVD movies and hardware in more obscure parts of the store and HD-DVD could never have an end cap, EVER. 2. Sony mandated that Best Buy employees could not acknowledge that HD-DVD was high definition. They were told to tell customers that HD-DVD was “fake” HD and that there was a “new” technology called Blu-ray that was much better. The fact is that at launch HD-DVD was the far better viewing experience as the features, menu system and overall experience was more refined. Most Blu-ray at the time had zero features or menu options, just the movie. 🤦♂️ I know all this as I used to be a journalist and distributor in the video game industry in the 90s and good friends were in executive management at Best Buy, Circuit city, Frys, etc. Sony are ruthless and masters of corporate fuckery. Ask Sega.
Definitely the PS3 was the single biggest reason that Blu-ray won the format war with HD-DVD. But it’s also worth noting that Blu-ray also a more technically advanced technology. For example, it could store data more densely which have it a higher capacity. It also offered faster bitrates than HD-DVD.
Are you for real? The PlayStation was brought out when 'CD players were super commonplace yet...' CDs were introduced 15 years earlier in 1980 and 'annual global sales surpassed 1bn in 1992 and 2bn in 1996.' Yeah, we all went out and bought 2bn CDs the following year just to look a how shiny they were because 'CD players weren't super commonplace yet.'
I love HD DVD, I collect them. Something that has plagued the collecting scene is that a good percentage of Warner Brother films were made very cheaply and have experienced The phenomenon of disc rot. I’ve had several Warner bros movies crap out on me. A lot of the time you can look at the disc and see the damage. It’s a bummer since there’s a lot of really good movies on HD DVD by then. Oh well
it's pretty obvious that this was done from a video gamer perspective... there were plenty of pros and cons with both technologies, few of which were covered in this video. This video made it seem like the only HD-DVD player existed on the Xbox 360. In some ways, HD-DVD was superior in terms of technology. Since the HD-DVD had less storage, it had to use new codecs in the form of VC-1, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, or H.262/MPEG-2 Part 2. At the time, BluRay was using inferior older codecs like MPEG-2 which produced inferior images (refer to early Bluray movie reviews where they discussed this). Later on, BluRay did adopt newer codecs but not when HD-DVD existed. In the end, it wasn't really technology that resulted in the "victor." And while the PS3 eventually sold more worldwide due to being out a year longer, in the regions that Microsoft cared about (North America and UK), the 360 outsold the PS3 2:1 and that never changed in the 360/PS3 era. And the reason why Microsoft prefers those markets were many fold including easier and cheaper distribution, a consumer base that spends more money, currency rates, etc.. It's similar to how Apple dominates North America even though worldwide, Android dominates. Apple prefers selling in the NA region more for the same reasons. This was a strange video talking about BluRay and HD-DVD from a video game perspective. In the end, BluRay wasn't really successful either since the true successor to DVD was streaming. BluRay sales never approached DVD levels and was quickly replaced by streaming.
. A little known fact as to the demise of HD-DVD. Sony paid millions of dollars to major retailers including Best Buy to make sure two things happened. 1. They buried any and all HD-DVD movies and hardware in more obscure parts of the store and HD-DVD could never have an end cap, EVER. 2. Sony mandated that Best Buy employees could not acknowledge that HD-DVD was high definition. They were told to tell customers that HD-DVD was “fake” HD and that there was a “new” technology called Blu-ray that was much better. The fact is that at launch HD-DVD was the far better viewing experience as the features, menu system and overall experience was more refined. Most Blu-ray at the time had zero features or menu options, just the movie. 🤦♂️ I know all this as I used to be a journalist and distributor in the video game industry in the 90s and good friends were in executive management at Best Buy, Circuit city, Frys, etc. Sony are ruthless and masters of corporate fuckery. Ask Sega.
Sorry, but you're wrong on component out. The X360 supported 1080p on component, and while some older TVs didn't accept 1080p over component, all new ones do. So you don't loose anything by watching over component vs. HDMI.
@@wright96d Really? a 1080p signal? No, it won't look worse. Assuming you have good cables you most certainly won't be able to tell the difference. And even if you could, the difference would be in the noise floor that comes from the source the HD DVD was encoded from anyways. There's this opinion out there that 'digital is always better', I feel it mostly came from early compact cassette and VHS experiences. Analog, given enough bandwidth, looks just as good, it's just easier to screw up.
I have said it before and will say it again. The 360 really had a leg up on the PS3 in: 1) Launched a year earlier 2) Significantly more affordable 3) Better lifetime backwards compatibility support If they had managed to do any or all of the following, history of the BD vs HDDVD format war may have been very different: 1) HD DVD integrated into the console from the start and games shipped in that format (even if it pushed the price to 399) 2) HDMI integrated into the console from the start 3) WiFi integrated into the console from the start Honorable mention: factory rechargeable wireless controllers (that was not an oversight, rather a deal with Duracell I believe)
But the entire reason that the Xbox 360 could release earlier and cheaper was because Microsoft cut corners by maintaining DVD and leaving out HDMI and Wifi.
Lay the HD-DVD player on its concave side with the convex side up, orienting the drive tray like the 360 DVD drive tray would be in its vertical orientation. You butt the rubber feet of the HD-DVD against the 360, on the right side. With the 360s that have the chrome DVD tray, it's a perfect match. You had it right when you had the player on the top of the 360, just rotate both 90° clockwise.
Interestingly not the first HD formats. Japan had High Definition Laserdisc called "MUSE LD" in the early-mid 90's. Meanwhile here in the US we had an HD format from 2002-2004/5, called D Theater, based on Digital VHS, up to 1080i with DTS and Dolby tracks on a VHS tape.
Blu-ray also supports 24fps progressive scan natively for films, where as HD DVD supported 60fps interlaced and was then pulled down to 24fps potentially causing some conversion artifacts.
Though early on HD-DVD was ahead in terms of the technology. They already were using 30gb discs, when Sony only had 25gb. HDDVD has better menus, used DD+/LPCM and the VC-1 codec was superior at the time. Blu ray had a slow start using MPEG2 compression and LPCM tracks. Though when use of AVC and a 50gb disc maxed out, blu ray was superior because of that extra 20gb capacity.
HD-DVDs were 15GB single layer, 30GB dual layer. Blu-rays were 25GB single layer and 50GB dual-layer. HD-DVD needed 30GB dual-layer discs earlier because of the fact standard single Blu-ray discs were already had 10GB extra capacity right from the start.
@@conchobar yeah I don’t think any of them used it for storage concerns, but early Blu Ray used LPCM. HD-DVD would usually use a high bitrate DD+ or TrueHD track.
Xbox 360 actually launched at $400, the PS3 was $600, its possible the 360 dropped to 360 a year later by the time the PS3 launched just to really push consumers to the 360s since it was 1/2 the price. If you think about Microsoft adding the HD DVD player to the console and charging $600 at launch I think the gap between PS3 and 360 at the end in sales numbers would be even more in favor of PS3.
1:33 I really have to disagree with the point made with the Playstation (1st gen). While the console being a DVD or Blu-Ray player in the case of the PS2 and PS3 respectively was a very strong selling point, since such devices were still expensive at launch time, CDs and CD players were so extremely common in 1994-95 that it was, in fact, the preferred medium for music playback, for original albums at least. As a matter of fact, CD sales were not far from their peak, which took place at the end of the '90s.
In a second earth, HD DVD reigned supreme in peace until 6K video players and movies began to emerge. It be nice to see what that would have looked like.
I have an immense collection of HD-DVD and a Toshiba player. I run it on a Sony 4K projector to a 140” CinemaScope screen and it looks great. A little known fact as to the demise of HD-DVD. Sony paid millions of dollars to major retailers including Best Buy to make sure two things happened. 1. They buried any and all HD-DVD movies and hardware in more obscure parts of the store and HD-DVD could never have an end cap, EVER. 2. Sony mandated that Best Buy employees could not acknowledge that HD-DVD was high definition. They were told to tell customers that HD-DVD was “fake” HD and that there was a “new” technology called Blu-ray that was much better. The fact is that at launch HD-DVD was the far better viewing experience as the features, menu system and overall experience was more refined. Most Blu-ray at the time had zero features or menu options, just the movie. 🤦♂️ I know all this as I used to be a journalist and distributor in the video game industry in the 90s and good friends were in executive management at Best Buy, Circuit city, Frys, etc. Sony are ruthless and masters of corporate fuckery. Ask Sega.
@@Gorilla_Jones yea. Makes sense. We can see it happening again and again with any tech really… 😏 that’s why I’m so annoyed when sales managers promote one brand over others by using obscure words and false claims.. like “this phone is the fastest, because it’s an octa core” 🤦♀️
Hot take: the PS3 was better value at launch than the Xbox 360. Most people bought the $399 360 model because they wanted the 20GB hard drive, adding on the $200 HD-DVD player and $100 wi-fi adaptor made that console come out to... $700. Whereas for $500 on PlayStation 3, you got the same sized hard drive along with a built-in blu-ray drive, wi-fi, and HDMI which Xbox didn't get until June of 2007. Additionally, you could spend $600 and get the 60GB model, 40GB more than the Xbox 360 and still $100 less if you wanted all the same features. Not to mention, blu-ray ended up winning the format wars at the end of the day. To this day, if I wanted to, I could pop in a brand new blu-ray into my PS3 and watch movies at a crisp 1080p. You can't do that with a 360. And, while it was sadly removed less than 2 years after launch, the PS3 was initially backwards compatible with 100% of PS1 and PS2 games, giving it a library totaling over 10,000 games right out of the box.
While it’s not the reason Blu-ray “won” the format war, it is worth noting that Blu-ray was better than HD-DVD. Standard Blu-rays can hold up to 50GB while HD-DVD’s max storage was 30GB.
I started with the 360, but quickly moved on to the Top of the range stand alone player. Another thing to note Is HD-DVD Up-Scaled your old DVD's to High Def. Also some of the Titles are only available on HD-DVD. And some like Unleashed come with a Huge 5.1 sound, where It Is only In stereo on DVD and Blu-Ray. Still have the 480 Titles released on UK pal and play them all the time. The Music Video collections and Live performances are amazing to watch, and listen to, Like You are really there. Thanks for Sharing.
HD DVD was far superior technology. Disc's could hold 96gb vs Blu ray 54gb. HD DVD can play data at variable speeds. Blu ray plays at ONE slow speed and requires data to be installed on computers vs being played straight from the disc. HD DVD was cheaper to manufacture. The reason Blu ray won? The DEEP pockets of Sony and Disney.
A little known fact as to the demise of HD-DVD. Sony paid millions of dollars to major retailers including Best Buy to make sure two things happened. 1. They buried any and all HD-DVD movies and hardware in more obscure parts of the store and HD-DVD could never have an end cap, EVER. 2. Sony mandated that Best Buy employees could not acknowledge that HD-DVD was high definition. They were told to tell customers that HD-DVD was “fake” HD and that there was a “new” technology called Blu-ray that was much better. The fact is that at launch HD-DVD was the far better viewing experience as the features, menu system and overall experience was more refined. Most Blu-ray at the time had zero features or menu options, just the movie. 🤦♂️ I know all this as I used to be a journalist and distributor in the video game industry in the 90s and good friends were in executive management at Best Buy, Circuit city, Frys, etc. Sony are ruthless and masters of corporate fuckery. Ask Sega.
Why wouldn't you be able to play HD DVDs in 1080p, via component? I am able to set my video setting to 1080p, via component cables. I also own the same Xbox 360 as you. This should be the same for you, unless a firmware update nerfs 1080p for component video cables. I upgraded to HDMI, a looong time ago.
@@Bobby-cm7vu Sony would have still had a market advantage. They do have one of the biggest movie studios in the world, so why not invest on your format with your own movie library. Toshiba didn’t have that edge and struggled to get media deals to take interest.
@@shockwaveexp3465 Sony's movie studio wasn't as huge back then as it is now. They had a lot less pull which is why the format war lasted as long as it did.
I thought that HD DVD would win the war of the video formats. Because everyone know what DVD is. And everyone know what HD is, even back then. So HD DVD is self explanatory, but Blu ray is not.
I remember watching the TV series "Chuck" 3 or 4 years after the HD DVD was discontinued and they had a large stack of Toshiba HD DVD players in their fictional store. I wondered if they were empty boxes from a promotion before the fall or if the prop department got a real good deal on actual units after they were discontinued.
It can be somewhat argued that Apple helped to kill both HD-DVD and Blu-ray since Apple decided to keep using standard DVD drives (due to HD-DVD and BD drives being too expensive), then by the time BD drives were cheaper, Apple had already started to phase out disc drives on their computers. Many people were expecting Blu-ray to appear on Mac computers due to Apple's reputation at the time of adopting new technologies quickly, but Apple simply never cared about it. Apple never released Blu-ray player software, never released Blu-ray authoring software, and never properly supported the format in Final Cut Pro 6 or 7 (aaand then they released Final Cut Pro X and everyone jumped ship to Media Composer or Premiere Pro).
I have an immense collection of HD-DVD and a Toshiba player. I run it on a Sony 4K projector to a 140” CinemaScope screen and it looks great. A little known fact as to the demise of HD-DVD. Sony paid millions of dollars to major retailers including Best Buy to make sure two things happened. 1. They buried any and all HD-DVD movies and hardware in more obscure parts of the store and HD-DVD could never have an end cap, EVER. 2. Sony mandated that Best Buy employees could not acknowledge that HD-DVD was high definition. They were told to tell customers that HD-DVD was “fake” HD and that there was a “new” technology called Blu-ray that was much better. The fact is that at launch HD-DVD was the far better viewing experience as the features, menu system and overall experience was more refined. Most Blu-ray at the time had zero features or menu options, just the movie. 🤦♂️ I know all this as I used to be a journalist and distributor in the video game industry in the 90s and good friends were in executive management at Best Buy, Circuit city, Frys, etc. Sony are ruthless and masters of corporate fuckery. Ask Sega.
this is actually true. During the yearly walmart black friday sales the bigger sellers are still dvds. Most people do not care enough about image quality and still think dvd is "good enough". The last dvd I bought were probably anime dvds are salvation army. I really want 4k hdr blu-ray to get with my LG C9 Oled, but convincing the wife is a different story. She has no idea that the reason why the C9 doesnt impress her for what we paid for the tv is because 4k streaming is WORSE than 1080P blu-ray in regards to bitrate and and just overall quality.
I still have my phone toshiba HD-A2 and about 70+ hddvds. I even have my hddvd player for my 360 still. I use it still to this day despite having some of the hddvds being bought later on blu-ray. Oddly enough a lot of hddvds that came in the 2006-early 2008 were 1080p while a lot of blursys at that time we're 1080i. Planet earth being one example
All HD DVDs were 1080p. Unfortunately the first generation of HD DVD players were 1080i. This changed with the second generation of players when they all supported 1080p. Although I'm not sure if there was any Blu Ray players that didn't support 1080p.
Great video, but there is one inaccurate thing in it. First batches didn't had hdmi but there was official VGA cable that can support nice crisp 1080p if you had vga input in your tv/pc monitor.
It's really interesting to learn more about the history of this brief format war which has almost been totally forgotten now. I was 11 in 2006 and after getting a PS3 the following year my family started buying a few Blu Rays, although they felt very expensive at the time compared to DVDs. We would usually shop in my nearest ASDA supermarket for them, there was also a HD DVD section, noticeably a lot smaller than the Blu Ray one. I vaguely remember picking up and looking over the red cases out of curiosity and then them totally disappearing from the shelves not long after that. Technology moved so fast in the 2000s and I'm glad I lived my young years through them.
You need to do a little bit more research pal. The laser is not blue on Blu Rays or HD DVD players. The laser is actually violet. It is 405NM which makes it a violet on the electro magnetic spectrum. And the X Box 360 does support 1080p over componant.
They're often called "blue lasers" for convenience. Even the DVD Forum (HD-DVD's inventors) sometimes called it a "blue laser", despite it actually being violet. As for supporting 1080p over component - indeed 91Tech was wrong about that. To dissuade piracy of HD content through the analogue loophole, both HD-DVD and Blu-ray players only allow 480p over component, requiring HDCP to allow 1080p. Not 1080i as 91Tech said, but only 480p so that pirates (at least until AACS was cracked) would only get something similar to standard DVD.
@@babyboomertwerkteam5662 I'm pretty sure they called it Blu Ray because it sounded better than Violet Ray when they did their marketing research. Violet Ray sounds like someone's name. It's all marketing. But at the end of the day if someone is doing a video on this topic then they should know what color laser the technology emits. It just screams of lack of research.
@@bubba842 I totally agree, 91Tech videos are often poorly researched. There are numerous errors in this video. Like when he said that the PS1 came out when CD players weren't all that common. In 1995, CD players were everywhere and CDs had been outselling vinyl records every year from 1986 - 2020!
@@babyboomertwerkteam5662 I think the Discman was the thing that took CDs into the mainstream. I remember Christmas 1994, every kid seemed to get a portable CD player that year. The Discman definitely made me ditch tapes.
For anyone saying anything about blu rays and playstation ending up better think about this, blu rays can get small holes in the LABEL rendering them either useless or virtually unwatchable/unplayable
I actually still have season 1 of ST:TOS on combo. Unfortunately I got rid of my 360 but since the drives work perfectly well as USB hubs and CD/DVD drives I still use one for my PC. I've heard you can play HDDVD's on PC but despite trying I haven't found a way to do it. Has anyone else had any success? Also, about what you said at 7:10, DVD's were such a hinderence to being able to play HD games that in 2008 when they were starting to design the "slim" model of the 360 the early designs actually included an HDDVD drive biult in. The format died before they got too far into development though. And as to what you said at 7:50, Iactually found my drive in the box and it mentioned that movies could play in 1080p only when using HDMI *or* VGA, so it's not true that you couldn't get 1080p on the original 360. You just had to use VGA instead of Component.
@@adamsultana8380 You do know that higher bitrates and higher quality rips are available right? As for TV shows, I hardly watch anything after the 2000s since in my opinion most shows became garbage. The same with movies. I get free Netflix, Amazon and Hulu. I also have access to a ton of "other" streaming sources. I have no desires to pay $23 - $35 a pop for a plastic disc that I'll likely only watch 2 to 3 times at most.
@@Mr-Clark well that might seem like it in the first place but consider the cost of storage of these mkv files that you'll likely just watch 2-3 times like you stated yourself. Buying used BluRays is the way to go for me.
Our first DVD player was a DVD/VHS player (or was the PS2 bought first? Not sure). Actually it was probably the family computer. It played DVDs. Then we had the PS2 which also played DVDs. The. The 360. First Blu Ray player was either the Blu Ray player I bought or my gaming PC
You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and belive whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland. And I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.
If I recall, HD DVD had a maximum capacity of 25GB, whereas Blu-Ray was already capable of 50GB. Couple that with the fact Sony went all-in with Blu-Ray and Microsoft half-a***** it, the writing was on the wall from the very start. Also if I recall correctly... Sony missed out on licencing on DVD (or only got a small percentage). They didn't want to miss out on that sweet royalty money, which is why they went all in to push Blu-Ray to crush the competition so they get a kick back on every Blu-Ray disc sold.
HD DVD was 30Gb dual layer. Most HD DVDs were 30Gb. 15Gb single layer 30Gb dual layer. Blu ray was 25Gb single layer and 50Gb dual layer. But that isn't the full story. Both formats used 3 different codecs. MPEG2, VC1 and AVC. By far the best codec is AVC. Most Blu Rays now use AVC. MPEG2 is by far the worst. It's what DVDs used. HD DVD did not use MPEG2 due to its inefficiency in size. But early Blu Rays, most notably Fox and Sony/Columbia did use MPEG2. MPEG2 gave a worse quality picture for a massive size in Gb. For this reason alot of early Blu Ray releases looked barely better than DVDs. HD DVD mostly relied on the VC1 codec (Universal and Warmer Bros) and, with (Paramount) the AVC codec. This led to HD DVD, although being based on smaller discs, to actually have an early advantage in the format war. Most HD DVDs looked better than Blu Rays due to the shitty MPEG2 codec used by Blu Ray at the time. Although this was not the case for all Blu Rays. Warmer mainly used the VC1 codec and it pretty much looked identical for both formats at the time. At the time, considering the difference in disk size, there was really no difference. A lot of people would say that HD DVD had a slight advantage in quality due to the codec used by Blu Ray, at the time. Although, now pretty much all Blu Ray discs use the AVC codec, Blu Rays are a lot more efficient than they were between 2006 - 2008. HD DVD used the technology to its max to compete. Blu Ray didn't at the time. Blu Ray had a lot to offer, but studios at the time got lazy and did shitty ports that showed on the quality of the movies on Blu Ray.
A little known fact as to the demise of HD-DVD. Sony paid millions of dollars to major retailers including Best Buy to make sure two things happened. 1. They buried any and all HD-DVD movies and hardware in more obscure parts of the store and HD-DVD could never have an end cap, EVER. 2. Sony mandated that Best Buy employees could not acknowledge that HD-DVD was high definition. They were told to tell customers that HD-DVD was “fake” HD and that there was a “new” technology called Blu-ray that was much better. The fact is that at launch HD-DVD was the far better viewing experience as the features, menu system and overall experience was more refined. Most Blu-ray at the time had zero features or menu options, just the movie. 🤦♂️ I know all this as I used to be a journalist and distributor in the video game industry in the 90s and good friends were in executive management at Best Buy, Circuit city, Frys, etc. Sony are ruthless and masters of corporate fuckery. Ask Sega.
I always thought that Microsoft messed up by not integrating the HD DVD into their Xbox 360 Slim consoles. That would have made the developers happier.
After it failed. I bought the 360 player for 20 dollars new. And I still get lots of these films for as little as 25 cents a piece. Nobody wants them. But they are very affordable and still a good find. As for alleged disc rot and films that don't work?. All are in perfect working condition in 2021.
I pay for RUclips Premium rather than using ad-blockers so that I can support content creators, and then content creators double dip and make me watch ads. Pricks will be pricks.
HD DVD >>>>> Blu-ray, don't @ me
To potentially win $20,000 for a Gaming Rig and support a great cause go to omaze.com/91Tech - thanks to Omaze for sponsoring today's video!
Digital download >>>>> blu ray
Dude, the sponsor on this video kinda bit suspicious though. A lot of RUclipsrs covered that Omaze is scam.
Let's hope the HD DVD player is more reliable than the original Xbox 360
@Ean Elijah De Guzman Yeah, I recently watched some RUclipsrs talk about Omaze after watching this video.
I know us tech nerds sometimes love to be hipsters, but HD-DVD really is not better than Blu-ray. Of course, none of this actually matters because HD-DVD failed, but nevertheless HD-DVD discs can only store 15GB (or 30GB dual-layer) compared to Blu-ray's 25GB (or 50GB dual layer, 100GB triple-layer, 128GB quadruple-layer; HD-DVD never supported triple or quadruple layers) meaning HD-DVD either has less playtime or theoretically more compression (i.e. worse video and audio quality) than Blu-ray. HD-DVD only supports a maximum bitrate of 30.2Mbit/s while Blu-ray supports up to 48Mbit/s (in practice both use compressed video, usually AVCHD at 13Mbit/s, so these maximums are never hit), and Blu-ray data is stored with error-correcting code (ECC) whereas HD-DVD data is not. Blu-ray is better physically as all Blu-ray discs are hardcoated to help protect against scratches, HD-DVD hardcoating was optional. The only real thing HD-DVD did better than Blu-ray is that HD-DVD never had region codes whereas Blu-ray has 3, although I've noticed many Blu-rays tend to be region-free these days anyway, and HD-DVD only ever supported AACS for encryption which was cracked very early on, making HD-DVD movies easier to, uh, "legally back up" ;)
Here’s something to think about...
Toy Story 1 - VHS
Toy Story 2 - DVD
Toy Story 3 - Blu-Ray
Toy Story 4 - 4K Blu-Ray & Digital
toy story 1 also came out on laserdisc!
Toy Story 5 - Disney+ lol
@@Banom7a 4*
@@112188Francisco that was the joke, if toy story 5 ever came out
@@Banom7a Nah😂
Oh man, I absolutely loved HD DVD back in the day as a teenager. Ironically, this was because it failed so hard. See, I wanted to watch HD content, but Blu-ray was way out of my price range, but when HD DVD flopped it became SUPER cheap. I got a boxed 360 HD DVD add on plus 6 movies for $50 (the boxed player also came with the 360 media remote which was $20 by itself). Then after that the actual movies were dirt cheap. They were going for literally one cent on Amazon, retailers couldn't wait to get rid of them, so even with my nonexistent teenage money I was able to put together a small collection.
Another creature comfort was that if I was spending an afternoon binging a TV show I had on regular DVD, I could put a disc in the regular drive and the HD drive and switch discs without getting up. Truly, I was living the high life in 2010. It was kind of sad though to watch it fall into irrelevancy though, every dash board update would see the app get pushed down into more menus and off the main screen.
Take your victories where you can. I assumed their prices would shoot up again, but it hasn't happened yet
@@tadpolegaming4510 They're not a penny anymore, but yeah, they aren't super expensive collector's items either
👍
This is great
I wonder if there was a similar phenomenon in the Betamax vs VHS war.
The ps2 ended up being my first dvd player it was awesome being able to watch movies and play games in my bedroom tv.
That were the days
That’s awesome I remember my friend lying to his parents it played dvds 📀
That's why I purchased the PS2. I figured, Why just buy a standalone DVD player, when I can buy a gaming system that plays DVDs too? That was my "reasoning" for buying the PS2.
My first dvd player was my 360 e
The DVD player on my PS2s never worked correctly, constantly dropping dark scenes...even on a Sony TV!
This hurt. I was team HD DVD. I bought all the titles. I’m not over it 😂
You can still use it as a dvd player? I think
Same
I still collect HD DVDs. I have over 40 of them now. Picked Babel up last Sunday.
@@bubba842 that’s dope!
@@bubba842 cool
Microsoft never planned a built in HD-DVD drive because they were banking on digital media licensing. They were just a generation too soon on that one.
How ironic
I mean......
Michael Bay did state literally this when he was venting how the first Transformers was going to skip Blu-Ray for HD-DVD as a result of Paramount going exclusively red (a move that was seen as mind-boggling, and how its theorized that Microsoft paid Paramount to switch)
I had the very first HD DVD player from Toshiba rushed to market in 2006. It was really slow and took forever to play movies. It also looked like a 1980's VCR. I signed up for the firmware update program, and they had to mail discs directly to me to update the player. Once support was pulled for HD DVD and Blu Ray won, Toshiba sent out one final firmware disc that, unbeknownst to me, would brick the upscaling capabilities of the player. Every time I put in a DVD, a message would pop up alerting me that the disc was would be shown in 480i. I bent the remote into a slight U shape out of frustration and took the player to my local Goodwill.
There was a firmware update just to remove the HD capabilities? That's sounds harsh.
@@aaronlane8276 It just took away the upscaling for standard DVD. It would still play HD DVDs like it was supposed to.
@@comput3r Thanks for the information. You have to remember that this was way back in 2007, and I wasn't smart enough to do something like that, plus, the Toshiba firmware wasn't widely available at the time. We still had to update the devices via a mail-in disc. The players had ethernet connections, but the firmware never got advanced enough in the time they existed to even make those work. I doubt the thing is even in use, today, having become ewaste years ago, before ewaste was even a consideration to the general public.
CDs were very popular by 1995. I was a kid and got my first Sony Discman in 1994. Sony did not advance CDs in the 90s with the PlayStation. The Sony Discman was the thing that did.
Now, if the PlayStation had used MiniDisc, that would be a different story. Imagine that alternate universe.
That's it.
Yeah I think I played a music cd like once in my ps1 just to try it. But that was it
Yeah very weird thing to say, I don't remember anyone that didn't already have a cd player before they had a PlayStation, but i doubt he would of been old enough to know lol
my dad was a relatively early adopter of CD. While not buying them when they were over 500$ for a cd player, he did get one either in late 80s or early 1990s and joined one of those scammer CD clubs. The funny thing is he legitimately bought enough from the CD club to make being a member worth it.
HD DVD content looks as good as it ever did on HDTVs, and many people purchased their HD DVD collections on the cheap when it was being phased out. There are upsides despite it being a defunct format with no new releases.
Is there most of the WB releases had disc rot because of cheapskate discs
I remember going to Best Buy multiple times during this era, there were Blu-ray and HD DVD sections right beside each other. What a time to be alive
If we still had HD-DVD, I can only imagine what he'd have now, UHD-DVD would be a horrible name.
I dont know for sure but that's a actual thing right
LMAO
4K DVD
At least it would make more sense than “4K HIGH DEFINITION BLUERAY ULTRA + HDR 10 DOLBY VISION”
@@moonlightw6 wrong!! you should say HDLMAO!!
The first Blu Ray player was $1000
The first HD-DVD player was $259
The HD-DVD player was launched 2 months before the first Blu Ray player.
Yeah, but I'd argue the majority of people who watched either HD-DVD or blu-ray movies did so on consoles. On PS3, it was built right in, while on 360, you had to spend an extra $200 for it. Not to mention, the original 360 models didn't have wi-fi or HDMI whereas PS3 did.
If you bought a Toshiba A1 at release and paid MSRP (Like me) you would have paid $499.99 (plus tax)
The toshiba hd dvd player also had an ethernet cable port which theoretically would have gotten updates online. Our first gen sony blu ray player wouldn't play the latest blu rays because they needed the decrypt keys updated so you had to go to a pc to download files, make a data disc iso and burn it and put that in the bluray player to do a firmware update to play the blurays. I would say the toshiba was a much more pleasant experience.
@@PatrickDKing but the PS3 even tho its a console from 2006, it still receives updates to this day for the encryption keys. Hell the PS3 pre-dates Blu Ray 3D, yet it supports it via a firmware update
@@LennyQUMFIFprobs as old people still use it as a bluray, dvd player, and a console when their grandson comes
One thing to note. Bluray could fit up 25 and 50gb per disc respectively. HDDVD only 15 and 30gb.
So Size definitely mattered too (pun not intended)
Considering that current Bluray box ironically comes with 2-3 Discs.. that was irrelevant.
@@absolutium How do you mean only for TV shows and odd long movie like Braveheart or Lord of the Rings😂
@@RobertK1993 half of my movies include "extra material" in one or two more discs.
@@absolutium You still get better image quality from the increased storage space. Whether the release comes with 1 disc, or 3, you're still getting more space per disc. And thus better quality.
Quite a few errors & some big omissions in this video.
DVD is 480p
The Xbox add-on is only 1080i
Blu-ray's Laser isn't blue.
...to name a few
At the time, I stayed out of the Blu-ray/HD DVD format war and bought exclusively DVDs. I did keep up with it however and secretly hoped HD DVD would win. It just made the most sense to me going from DVD to HD DVD, and the “Blu-ray” name kind of sounds like a fish.
91: While the market has moved on to digital
Me, who buys a Blu-ray every week: 😢
I still buy DVDs, Blu-ray, 3D Blu-ray, and UHD discs too. I stream and still buy discs.
Keep buying blu rays my friend, we'll be the ones enjoying ourselves when the zombie apocalypse happens. Everyone else will have nothing because they think streaming is the way forward.
it's true ownership versus a studio allowing the rights to stream on the various platforms, shows/movies come and go on Netflix etc
And me who buys 4K Blu-rays now. 4K rocks. The next big thing
Digital distribution is a suckers game. I have hundreds of Blu-ray and HD-DVD in my collection and have tangible assets I can watch anytime I want with lossless quality.
CD players where big even before PS1 in 1994/1995.
When I was a kid my family was not into technology, a huge plus to me was when my first pc (in 1998) had a CD drive. It was our 2nd CD player and was a very big value add for me. If I had a ps1 back then it would have been a very big deal to me to have a CD player in the living room.
Music CDs and CD players were as common and inescapable as microwave ovens in 1995.
CD had been the dominant music format for years (it accounted for 80% of physical media sales) and was near its all-time crest, with global sales of about 700 million in 1995 alone.
The PlayStation was released at a time when used music stores were starting to have $1 CD bins near the front door for lightly scratched discs. Best Buy had become a goliath in part by selling CDs below cost.
I had my first CD player when I was a kid (cheap, and bought at Target, where CD longboxes had already replaced cassettes). When the PlayStation came out, I was in college.
CD was a total nonfactor for PS1, and I’m not sure I’ve ever even heard of someone using the system as a music player.
I checked out of the video when he tried saying PS1 made CDs a thing.
I just bought 75 HD DVD's on ebay for $35. Not a bad way to watch some good movies on the cheap.
Watch out for Warner Bros releases. They probably won't work.
@@bubba842 yeah I learned those releases have disc rot. I collect them cause they're so cheap and it's a weird format. So it's ok if those don't work. But to my surprise some of them still work!
@@csdarlington86 it's not actually disc rot. It's a shitty pressing technique and faulty equipment at one of Warner's subsidiaries plants that caused this issue.
There is way to see if your WB discs are affected.
If you look on the inner clear plastic part of the disc, there will be small writing stamped into it. If you see 01FF stamped on it, it came from the Cinemax plant in Olyphant Pennsylvania. The source of the problem.
Warner used two other plants, one in Toronto and one in Mexico, that didn't suffer these issues.
If your discs say something different than 01FF on them, then they were probably pressed in one of the other plants and will probably work.
You will probably need a magnifying glass to read it as the stamp is tiny.
You should check your WB releases to see if you have any non 01FF discs.
@@bubba842 That's very interesting! Thanks for the tip and the info!
@@csdarlington86 no worries.
The HD DVD add-on was actually pretty good. On a 32 inch TV, which was my first HD Ready TV in 2006, movies like King Kong looked really good. I then got Toshiba's HD-EP30. I still have it plugged in to my modern 4K TV. The only major drawback today, after all this years, is that it boots up very, very slow.
I think it’s actually faster to plug in my Xbox 360 & HDDVD drive, then boot it up and play a disc rather than pop a disc in my Toshiba player 😂
It's pretty fascinating what Sony learned from the failure of the Betamax, they implemented into Blu Ray and the Playstation line in general. Convinient and plentiful features and eventually pricing.
I was a PS3 guy so I didn't even realize how much Microsoft expected you to buy seperately. The PS3 had WiFi, wireless controllers, HDMi, and a snazzy new video player format out of the box.
Playing into the general western idea of "I already have a device that does this, so that's what I'll use" (which is a concept they refused to pander to with Betamax) instead of buying a new one.
There's no way I would have been able to convince my parents to get me an additional hundred box to play movies and have wifi when we had a perfectly good DVD player and a computer already, but the PS3 I eventually got played them already and also could stream video.
I think all of these consumer friendly actions was part of what smade PlayStation and Blu Ray dominate over Microsoft in the gaming console sales for generations (even the PS3 eventually outsold the 360).
Universal Studios definitely made the move to Blu-ray Disc after seeing HD DVD in the media graveyard
I won a HD DVD player at a community raffle with Transformers and 300; I sold it and bought a used PS3 and never looked back. 🤣
PS3 being thought of as expensive or not, Blu-ray players that were being released at the same time as the system retailed for $500 as well making the purchase of a PS3 a no brainer if you wanted to watch HD movies on your new HD TV.
I believe that was Sony's strategy: subsidize the PS3 with an eye to recouping the losses through later sales and royalties. It proved a winning strategy.
One minor complaint. DVD still outsells Blu-ray in 2021 so Blu-ray isn't what people buy the majority of the time if they are still buying physical media.
I think it's weird how DVD a format from 1997 and 480i is still going strong...I mean look it up SpongeBob except for the movies isn't even available on Blu-ray just DVD.
More stuff released on DVD they should discontinued DVD fucking obsolete by 2015/16
This instantly reminded everyone alive back then of the VHS and Betamax war. When I was a kid, my family had a VHS player, and I didn't know about Betamax until I saw my Grandpa's unused Betamax player in his movie closet. He still kept it, even after switching to VHS in the 90's. Unfortunately, he got rid of all his Betamax cassettes, so we could never try it out.
I remember seeing HD DVD back in the video aisles in the mid-to-late 2000's and reading a CONSUMER REPORTS article about it, but at the time, I didn't know what to make of it. As it was, I was still building up my DVD collection, and I read that some of the HD DVD titles still didn't play as well with uneven color quality on certain players. Now, already having made the transition to Blu-ray, I'm finding it hard enough to keep up with the transition to 4K!
A little known fact as to the demise of HD-DVD. Sony paid millions of dollars to major retailers including Best Buy to make sure two things happened.
1. They buried any and all HD-DVD movies and hardware in more obscure parts of the store and HD-DVD could never have an end cap, EVER.
2. Sony mandated that Best Buy employees could not acknowledge that HD-DVD was high definition. They were told to tell customers that HD-DVD was “fake” HD and that there was a “new” technology called Blu-ray that was much better. The fact is that at launch HD-DVD was the far better viewing experience as the features, menu system and overall experience was more refined. Most Blu-ray at the time had zero features or menu options, just the movie. 🤦♂️
I know all this as I used to be a journalist and distributor in the video game industry in the 90s and good friends were in executive management at Best Buy, Circuit city, Frys, etc. Sony are ruthless and masters of corporate fuckery. Ask Sega.
7:40 actually, for people who just paid a couple of grand for a new hdtv and who happened to have the xbox, paying 200 bucks for add on player doesn't sound too bad, considering that both standalone bluray and hddvd players costed much higher back then. And also, bear in mind that 1080p tvs back then were very rare and expensive, the vast majority of hdtvs sold before 2010 were hd ready.
Team Blu-ray starting with the original 60GB PS3. Now I'm buying 4k Blu-rays!
The PS3 still makes a great Blu-ray player
@@rac1equalsbestgame853 even if it's never been a great console
@@yaboidustin2447 It IS a great console.
R&C
Uncharted
Infamous
MGS
So much more.
It just wasn't that great as a console untill 2009
I've bought plenty of blu-rays but can't be bothered jumping into 4K Blu-Ray, 4K Players are still too expensive and I can't see them adding much over digital 4K
@@rac1equalsbestgame853 The PS3 is a shitty Blu-Ray player
I have an immense collection of HD-DVD and a Toshiba player. I run it on a Sony 4K projector to a 140” CinemaScope screen and it looks great. A little known fact as to the demise of HD-DVD. Sony paid millions of dollars to major retailers including Best Buy to make sure two things happened.
1. They buried any and all HD-DVD movies and hardware in more obscure parts of the store and HD-DVD could never have an end cap, EVER.
2. Sony mandated that Best Buy employees could not acknowledge that HD-DVD was high definition. They were told to tell customers that HD-DVD was “fake” HD and that there was a “new” technology called Blu-ray that was much better. The fact is that at launch HD-DVD was the far better viewing experience as the features, menu system and overall experience was more refined. Most Blu-ray at the time had zero features or menu options, just the movie. 🤦♂️
I know all this as I used to be a journalist and distributor in the video game industry in the 90s and good friends were in executive management at Best Buy, Circuit city, Frys, etc. Sony are ruthless and masters of corporate fuckery. Ask Sega.
“Technology is a lot like time, it stops for no one” that’s not going to stop me from going back to cassettes and cartridges!
"If you do want to buy a physical copy of a movie, Blu-Ray is what you'll be getting."
DVD still overwhelmingly outsells both Blu-Ray and 4K combined.
DVDs are way cheaper to make and they are way more stablished and popular in the market
That erroneous comment jumped out at me also.
I wonder how different it would have turned out if the HD DVD was built into the 360
now im curious
Still would have lost to Blu ray disc.
It would’ve definitely lasted a lot longer but I still believe Blu-ray would eventually still win
on xbox 360, component cables do support 1080p output too, it was a limitation by old dashboards which was removed later
Definitely the PS3 was the single biggest reason that Blu-ray won the format war with HD-DVD. But it’s also worth noting that Blu-ray also a more technically advanced technology. For example, it could store data more densely which have it a higher capacity. It also offered faster bitrates than HD-DVD.
Are you for real? The PlayStation was brought out when 'CD players were super commonplace yet...' CDs were introduced 15 years earlier in 1980 and 'annual global sales surpassed 1bn in 1992 and 2bn in 1996.' Yeah, we all went out and bought 2bn CDs the following year just to look a how shiny they were because 'CD players weren't super commonplace yet.'
I love HD DVD, I collect them. Something that has plagued the collecting scene is that a good percentage of Warner Brother films were made very cheaply and have experienced The phenomenon of disc rot.
I’ve had several Warner bros movies crap out on me. A lot of the time you can look at the disc and see the damage. It’s a bummer since there’s a lot of really good movies on HD DVD by then. Oh well
Still use hd dvd alongside my vhs, blue rays and DVD’s
So do I. I still actively look for them too.
it's pretty obvious that this was done from a video gamer perspective... there were plenty of pros and cons with both technologies, few of which were covered in this video. This video made it seem like the only HD-DVD player existed on the Xbox 360. In some ways, HD-DVD was superior in terms of technology. Since the HD-DVD had less storage, it had to use new codecs in the form of VC-1, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, or H.262/MPEG-2 Part 2. At the time, BluRay was using inferior older codecs like MPEG-2 which produced inferior images (refer to early Bluray movie reviews where they discussed this). Later on, BluRay did adopt newer codecs but not when HD-DVD existed. In the end, it wasn't really technology that resulted in the "victor." And while the PS3 eventually sold more worldwide due to being out a year longer, in the regions that Microsoft cared about (North America and UK), the 360 outsold the PS3 2:1 and that never changed in the 360/PS3 era. And the reason why Microsoft prefers those markets were many fold including easier and cheaper distribution, a consumer base that spends more money, currency rates, etc.. It's similar to how Apple dominates North America even though worldwide, Android dominates. Apple prefers selling in the NA region more for the same reasons. This was a strange video talking about BluRay and HD-DVD from a video game perspective. In the end, BluRay wasn't really successful either since the true successor to DVD was streaming. BluRay sales never approached DVD levels and was quickly replaced by streaming.
Great comment.
. A little known fact as to the demise of HD-DVD. Sony paid millions of dollars to major retailers including Best Buy to make sure two things happened.
1. They buried any and all HD-DVD movies and hardware in more obscure parts of the store and HD-DVD could never have an end cap, EVER.
2. Sony mandated that Best Buy employees could not acknowledge that HD-DVD was high definition. They were told to tell customers that HD-DVD was “fake” HD and that there was a “new” technology called Blu-ray that was much better. The fact is that at launch HD-DVD was the far better viewing experience as the features, menu system and overall experience was more refined. Most Blu-ray at the time had zero features or menu options, just the movie. 🤦♂️
I know all this as I used to be a journalist and distributor in the video game industry in the 90s and good friends were in executive management at Best Buy, Circuit city, Frys, etc. Sony are ruthless and masters of corporate fuckery. Ask Sega.
@@Gorilla_Jones HD DVD lost because nobody supported it Warner Bros Pictures preferred Blu ray disc and it sold more Blu ray discs
Sorry, but you're wrong on component out. The X360 supported 1080p on component, and while some older TVs didn't accept 1080p over component, all new ones do. So you don't loose anything by watching over component vs. HDMI.
No, you certainly do. One is a digital signal, the other is analog. The analog one is going to look worse.
@@wright96d Really? a 1080p signal? No, it won't look worse. Assuming you have good cables you most certainly won't be able to tell the difference. And even if you could, the difference would be in the noise floor that comes from the source the HD DVD was encoded from anyways. There's this opinion out there that 'digital is always better', I feel it mostly came from early compact cassette and VHS experiences. Analog, given enough bandwidth, looks just as good, it's just easier to screw up.
I found my hd-dvd player at goodwill for $8 and it came with a season of smallvile 😁
Score
I have said it before and will say it again. The 360 really had a leg up on the PS3 in:
1) Launched a year earlier
2) Significantly more affordable
3) Better lifetime backwards compatibility support
If they had managed to do any or all of the following, history of the BD vs HDDVD format war may have been very different:
1) HD DVD integrated into the console from the start and games shipped in that format (even if it pushed the price to 399)
2) HDMI integrated into the console from the start
3) WiFi integrated into the console from the start
Honorable mention: factory rechargeable wireless controllers (that was not an oversight, rather a deal with Duracell I believe)
But the entire reason that the Xbox 360 could release earlier and cheaper was because Microsoft cut corners by maintaining DVD and leaving out HDMI and Wifi.
Lay the HD-DVD player on its concave side with the convex side up, orienting the drive tray like the 360 DVD drive tray would be in its vertical orientation. You butt the rubber feet of the HD-DVD against the 360, on the right side. With the 360s that have the chrome DVD tray, it's a perfect match. You had it right when you had the player on the top of the 360, just rotate both 90° clockwise.
Interestingly not the first HD formats. Japan had High Definition Laserdisc called "MUSE LD" in the early-mid 90's. Meanwhile here in the US we had an HD format from 2002-2004/5, called D Theater, based on Digital VHS, up to 1080i with DTS and Dolby tracks on a VHS tape.
Yeah Techmoan did an awesome video on that format.
Studios and broadcasters actually used a digital version of Betamax.
Oh boy, oh boy... HD DVD and it's hopeful success was melted into pure nothingness by the end this format war!!
I KNEW THIS WAS A THING! For the longest time tho I thought it was just something my imagination made up! 😂😅
So basically a Mandela Effect 😅
Holy crap you gotta be young... O_o
I remember seen those drives being sold for like 20-30EUR when the format was discontinued. Kinda sad that I didn't get one as a collectible.
Blu-ray also supports 24fps progressive scan natively for films, where as HD DVD supported 60fps interlaced and was then pulled down to 24fps potentially causing some conversion artifacts.
Later HD DVD models (Toshiba XA2) would output 24fps
I love my PS3! Sometimes I talk to him with his older brother saying how much of an amazing system they were.
Though early on HD-DVD was ahead in terms of the technology. They already were using 30gb discs, when Sony only had 25gb. HDDVD has better menus, used DD+/LPCM and the VC-1 codec was superior at the time. Blu ray had a slow start using MPEG2 compression and LPCM tracks. Though when use of AVC and a 50gb disc maxed out, blu ray was superior because of that extra 20gb capacity.
HD-DVDs were 15GB single layer, 30GB dual layer. Blu-rays were 25GB single layer and 50GB dual-layer. HD-DVD needed 30GB dual-layer discs earlier because of the fact standard single Blu-ray discs were already had 10GB extra capacity right from the start.
@@babyboomertwerkteam5662 and supposedly HDDVD was working on a triple layer to better compete for when Blu Ray started using 50gb discs
I'm not familiar with HD DVD using LPCM for audio, just DD, DD+, and Dolby TruHD (Warner Movies).
@@conchobar yeah I don’t think any of them used it for storage concerns, but early Blu Ray used LPCM. HD-DVD would usually use a high bitrate DD+ or TrueHD track.
@@CrashCarson14 Triple layer HD DVD incompatible with HD DVD players on the market at the time.
Xbox 360 actually launched at $400, the PS3 was $600, its possible the 360 dropped to 360 a year later by the time the PS3 launched just to really push consumers to the 360s since it was 1/2 the price. If you think about Microsoft adding the HD DVD player to the console and charging $600 at launch I think the gap between PS3 and 360 at the end in sales numbers would be even more in favor of PS3.
Xbox 360 launched with 2 models in North America. One was $299 and the other $399. The difference was the inclusion of a 20gb HDD.
The fact that the consumer would have to buy an add on to watch their movies vs having it built into the system killed it on arrival if you ask me
Blu ray didn't make the ps3 expensive it was the cell processor that made the ps3 expensive and overly complex to program.
Blu ray disc drives where costly too.
1:33 I really have to disagree with the point made with the Playstation (1st gen). While the console being a DVD or Blu-Ray player in the case of the PS2 and PS3 respectively was a very strong selling point, since such devices were still expensive at launch time, CDs and CD players were so extremely common in 1994-95 that it was, in fact, the preferred medium for music playback, for original albums at least. As a matter of fact, CD sales were not far from their peak, which took place at the end of the '90s.
10:25 wasn’t that WiFi adapter shown plugged in the back in literally every official picture it was in?
In a second earth, HD DVD reigned supreme in peace until 6K video players and movies began to emerge. It be nice to see what that would have looked like.
At the time I was hoping HD-DVD would win
I have an immense collection of HD-DVD and a Toshiba player. I run it on a Sony 4K projector to a 140” CinemaScope screen and it looks great. A little known fact as to the demise of HD-DVD. Sony paid millions of dollars to major retailers including Best Buy to make sure two things happened.
1. They buried any and all HD-DVD movies and hardware in more obscure parts of the store and HD-DVD could never have an end cap, EVER.
2. Sony mandated that Best Buy employees could not acknowledge that HD-DVD was high definition. They were told to tell customers that HD-DVD was “fake” HD and that there was a “new” technology called Blu-ray that was much better. The fact is that at launch HD-DVD was the far better viewing experience as the features, menu system and overall experience was more refined. Most Blu-ray at the time had zero features or menu options, just the movie. 🤦♂️
I know all this as I used to be a journalist and distributor in the video game industry in the 90s and good friends were in executive management at Best Buy, Circuit city, Frys, etc. Sony are ruthless and masters of corporate fuckery. Ask Sega.
@@Gorilla_Jones yea. Makes sense.
We can see it happening again and again with any tech really… 😏 that’s why I’m so annoyed when sales managers promote one brand over others by using obscure words and false claims.. like “this phone is the fastest, because it’s an octa core” 🤦♀️
@@maxroman2010 Gorilla Jones is Microsoft fanboy spounting anti Sony nonsense.
I bought an HD-DVD player for $7 a year after it lost. Still one of the best purchases I’ve ever made!!!
Hot take: the PS3 was better value at launch than the Xbox 360. Most people bought the $399 360 model because they wanted the 20GB hard drive, adding on the $200 HD-DVD player and $100 wi-fi adaptor made that console come out to... $700. Whereas for $500 on PlayStation 3, you got the same sized hard drive along with a built-in blu-ray drive, wi-fi, and HDMI which Xbox didn't get until June of 2007. Additionally, you could spend $600 and get the 60GB model, 40GB more than the Xbox 360 and still $100 less if you wanted all the same features.
Not to mention, blu-ray ended up winning the format wars at the end of the day. To this day, if I wanted to, I could pop in a brand new blu-ray into my PS3 and watch movies at a crisp 1080p. You can't do that with a 360.
And, while it was sadly removed less than 2 years after launch, the PS3 was initially backwards compatible with 100% of PS1 and PS2 games, giving it a library totaling over 10,000 games right out of the box.
While it’s not the reason Blu-ray “won” the format war, it is worth noting that Blu-ray was better than HD-DVD. Standard Blu-rays can hold up to 50GB while HD-DVD’s max storage was 30GB.
I started with the 360, but quickly moved on to the Top of the range stand alone player. Another thing to note Is HD-DVD Up-Scaled your old DVD's to High Def. Also some of the Titles are only available on HD-DVD. And some like Unleashed come with a Huge 5.1 sound, where It Is only In stereo on DVD and Blu-Ray. Still have the 480 Titles released on UK pal and play them all the time. The Music Video collections and Live performances are amazing to watch, and listen to, Like You are really there. Thanks for Sharing.
HD DVD was far superior technology. Disc's could hold 96gb vs Blu ray 54gb. HD DVD can play data at variable speeds. Blu ray plays at ONE slow speed and requires data to be installed on computers vs being played straight from the disc. HD DVD was cheaper to manufacture. The reason Blu ray won? The DEEP pockets of Sony and Disney.
A little known fact as to the demise of HD-DVD. Sony paid millions of dollars to major retailers including Best Buy to make sure two things happened.
1. They buried any and all HD-DVD movies and hardware in more obscure parts of the store and HD-DVD could never have an end cap, EVER.
2. Sony mandated that Best Buy employees could not acknowledge that HD-DVD was high definition. They were told to tell customers that HD-DVD was “fake” HD and that there was a “new” technology called Blu-ray that was much better. The fact is that at launch HD-DVD was the far better viewing experience as the features, menu system and overall experience was more refined. Most Blu-ray at the time had zero features or menu options, just the movie. 🤦♂️
I know all this as I used to be a journalist and distributor in the video game industry in the 90s and good friends were in executive management at Best Buy, Circuit city, Frys, etc. Sony are ruthless and masters of corporate fuckery. Ask Sega.
HD DVD could hold max capacity of 30GB where do you get your facts from.
Why wouldn't you be able to play HD DVDs in 1080p, via component?
I am able to set my video setting to 1080p, via component cables.
I also own the same Xbox 360 as you.
This should be the same for you, unless a firmware update nerfs 1080p for component video cables.
I upgraded to HDMI, a looong time ago.
Fun Fact: Setra (Currently Largest Bus Brand) Released Their First Coach Bus With Blu-ray PlayBack!
Imagine if HD-DVD had come out before Blu Ray and was actually what we had today
@Daniel Long oh my bad. But still, imagine what would've happened to Sony if Blu Ray didn't catch on
@@Bobby-cm7vu Sony would have still had a market advantage. They do have one of the biggest movie studios in the world, so why not invest on your format with your own movie library. Toshiba didn’t have that edge and struggled to get media deals to take interest.
@@shockwaveexp3465 good point.
It’d be no different really
@@shockwaveexp3465 Sony's movie studio wasn't as huge back then as it is now. They had a lot less pull which is why the format war lasted as long as it did.
I thought that HD DVD would win the war of the video formats. Because everyone know what DVD is. And everyone know what HD is, even back then. So HD DVD is self explanatory, but Blu ray is not.
I remember watching the TV series "Chuck" 3 or 4 years after the HD DVD was discontinued and they had a large stack of Toshiba HD DVD players in their fictional store. I wondered if they were empty boxes from a promotion before the fall or if the prop department got a real good deal on actual units after they were discontinued.
I read that Microsoft said they only supported HD DVD to try to split the market because they always wanted the future to be ditigal download.
Finally someone recognizing the Dreamcast 5:06
You can talk about pirate DVD’s too😏
It can be somewhat argued that Apple helped to kill both HD-DVD and Blu-ray since Apple decided to keep using standard DVD drives (due to HD-DVD and BD drives being too expensive), then by the time BD drives were cheaper, Apple had already started to phase out disc drives on their computers. Many people were expecting Blu-ray to appear on Mac computers due to Apple's reputation at the time of adopting new technologies quickly, but Apple simply never cared about it. Apple never released Blu-ray player software, never released Blu-ray authoring software, and never properly supported the format in Final Cut Pro 6 or 7 (aaand then they released Final Cut Pro X and everyone jumped ship to Media Composer or Premiere Pro).
Nope. Apple's personal computing marketshare was small even at its peak.
Blu-Ray's victory must've made for quite the boost to the PS3's profile, especially given that console's rocky start.
The PS3 was quite literally the cheapest Blu-ray player for a long while, which was crazy
@@jjws600 Reminds me of how the PS2's doubling as a DVD player helped with sales alongside brand recognition.
I have an immense collection of HD-DVD and a Toshiba player. I run it on a Sony 4K projector to a 140” CinemaScope screen and it looks great. A little known fact as to the demise of HD-DVD. Sony paid millions of dollars to major retailers including Best Buy to make sure two things happened.
1. They buried any and all HD-DVD movies and hardware in more obscure parts of the store and HD-DVD could never have an end cap, EVER.
2. Sony mandated that Best Buy employees could not acknowledge that HD-DVD was high definition. They were told to tell customers that HD-DVD was “fake” HD and that there was a “new” technology called Blu-ray that was much better. The fact is that at launch HD-DVD was the far better viewing experience as the features, menu system and overall experience was more refined. Most Blu-ray at the time had zero features or menu options, just the movie. 🤦♂️
I know all this as I used to be a journalist and distributor in the video game industry in the 90s and good friends were in executive management at Best Buy, Circuit city, Frys, etc. Sony are ruthless and masters of corporate fuckery. Ask Sega.
The craziest side aspect of all this is that dvd is STILL a common retail format lol.
this is actually true. During the yearly walmart black friday sales the bigger sellers are still dvds. Most people do not care enough about image quality and still think dvd is "good enough".
The last dvd I bought were probably anime dvds are salvation army.
I really want 4k hdr blu-ray to get with my LG C9 Oled, but convincing the wife is a different story.
She has no idea that the reason why the C9 doesnt impress her for what we paid for the tv is because 4k streaming is WORSE than 1080P blu-ray in regards to bitrate and and just overall quality.
@@pauls4522 yeah totally, the principal remaining market for physical discs are old people basically!
@@marcusmalone correction, smart people. Digital distribution…..LOL
I still have my phone toshiba HD-A2 and about 70+ hddvds. I even have my hddvd player for my 360 still. I use it still to this day despite having some of the hddvds being bought later on blu-ray.
Oddly enough a lot of hddvds that came in the 2006-early 2008 were 1080p while a lot of blursys at that time we're 1080i. Planet earth being one example
All HD DVDs were 1080p. Unfortunately the first generation of HD DVD players were 1080i.
This changed with the second generation of players when they all supported 1080p.
Although I'm not sure if there was any Blu Ray players that didn't support 1080p.
Y'know you can use the player vertically with the disc tray facing forward?
12:10 FMJ! Love it! (You will not laugh, you will not cry! You will learn by the numbers I will teach you!)
I own the OG PS3 and I liked my 360 more that generation. But no matter how many times Sony screwed up, they did Blu-Ray right!
4k blu-ray is now the best way to watch movies
100 GB discs with 3840x2160p
Warner brothers HD DVDs have pressing issues now
Nah bluray cause ps3 so beat it
Great video, but there is one inaccurate thing in it. First batches didn't had hdmi but there was official VGA cable that can support nice crisp 1080p if you had vga input in your tv/pc monitor.
I wish there was more footage of the interface of HDDVD. It's pretty different than Blu-Ray.
The interface was more consistent between titles. For example, every title allowed you to access the disc menu without leaving the movie.
It was flat out better.
@@conchobar Blu-Ray does that as well.
9:06 u literally can? just rotate it a bit...it looks great next to the 360 stood up vertically
It was Toshiba that produced HD DVD with support of Microsoft and other studios.
It's really interesting to learn more about the history of this brief format war which has almost been totally forgotten now. I was 11 in 2006 and after getting a PS3 the following year my family started buying a few Blu Rays, although they felt very expensive at the time compared to DVDs. We would usually shop in my nearest ASDA supermarket for them, there was also a HD DVD section, noticeably a lot smaller than the Blu Ray one. I vaguely remember picking up and looking over the red cases out of curiosity and then them totally disappearing from the shelves not long after that. Technology moved so fast in the 2000s and I'm glad I lived my young years through them.
You need to do a little bit more research pal. The laser is not blue on Blu Rays or HD DVD players. The laser is actually violet. It is 405NM which makes it a violet on the electro magnetic spectrum. And the X Box 360 does support 1080p over componant.
They're often called "blue lasers" for convenience. Even the DVD Forum (HD-DVD's inventors) sometimes called it a "blue laser", despite it actually being violet. As for supporting 1080p over component - indeed 91Tech was wrong about that. To dissuade piracy of HD content through the analogue loophole, both HD-DVD and Blu-ray players only allow 480p over component, requiring HDCP to allow 1080p. Not 1080i as 91Tech said, but only 480p so that pirates (at least until AACS was cracked) would only get something similar to standard DVD.
@@babyboomertwerkteam5662 I'm pretty sure they called it Blu Ray because it sounded better than Violet Ray when they did their marketing research. Violet Ray sounds like someone's name.
It's all marketing.
But at the end of the day if someone is doing a video on this topic then they should know what color laser the technology emits. It just screams of lack of research.
@@bubba842 I totally agree, 91Tech videos are often poorly researched. There are numerous errors in this video. Like when he said that the PS1 came out when CD players weren't all that common. In 1995, CD players were everywhere and CDs had been outselling vinyl records every year from 1986 - 2020!
@@babyboomertwerkteam5662 I think the Discman was the thing that took CDs into the mainstream. I remember Christmas 1994, every kid seemed to get a portable CD player that year. The Discman definitely made me ditch tapes.
As a gay black man, I have to agree
For anyone saying anything about blu rays and playstation ending up better think about this, blu rays can get small holes in the LABEL rendering them either useless or virtually unwatchable/unplayable
I actually still have season 1 of ST:TOS on combo. Unfortunately I got rid of my 360 but since the drives work perfectly well as USB hubs and CD/DVD drives I still use one for my PC. I've heard you can play HDDVD's on PC but despite trying I haven't found a way to do it. Has anyone else had any success?
Also, about what you said at 7:10, DVD's were such a hinderence to being able to play HD games that in 2008 when they were starting to design the "slim" model of the 360 the early designs actually included an HDDVD drive biult in. The format died before they got too far into development though.
And as to what you said at 7:50, Iactually found my drive in the box and it mentioned that movies could play in 1080p only when using HDMI *or* VGA, so it's not true that you couldn't get 1080p on the original 360. You just had to use VGA instead of Component.
I had hundreds of DVD.
I had about 25 HD-DVDs.
I only bought about 7 BluRay movies.
Today I have thousands of MKV files.
🤢🤮
You must not like picture and audio quality then.....
@@adamsultana8380 You do know that higher bitrates and higher quality rips are available right?
As for TV shows, I hardly watch anything after the 2000s since in my opinion most shows became garbage. The same with movies.
I get free Netflix, Amazon and Hulu. I also have access to a ton of "other" streaming sources.
I have no desires to pay $23 - $35 a pop for a plastic disc that I'll likely only watch 2 to 3 times at most.
@@Mr-Clark
Fair enough, to each their own I guess. Enjoy man.
@@Mr-Clark well that might seem like it in the first place but consider the cost of storage of these mkv files that you'll likely just watch 2-3 times like you stated yourself. Buying used BluRays is the way to go for me.
Our first DVD player was a DVD/VHS player (or was the PS2 bought first? Not sure). Actually it was probably the family computer. It played DVDs. Then we had the PS2 which also played DVDs. The. The 360. First Blu Ray player was either the Blu Ray player I bought or my gaming PC
Pretty much the first format war that Sony actually won. All their previous and subsequent formats ultimately flopped.
You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and belive whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland. And I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Real OGs know the best game in the PS3 library at launch was Talladega Nights on Blu-ray 😏
If I recall, HD DVD had a maximum capacity of 25GB, whereas Blu-Ray was already capable of 50GB. Couple that with the fact Sony went all-in with Blu-Ray and Microsoft half-a***** it, the writing was on the wall from the very start.
Also if I recall correctly... Sony missed out on licencing on DVD (or only got a small percentage). They didn't want to miss out on that sweet royalty money, which is why they went all in to push Blu-Ray to crush the competition so they get a kick back on every Blu-Ray disc sold.
HD DVD was 30Gb dual layer. Most HD DVDs were 30Gb. 15Gb single layer 30Gb dual layer.
Blu ray was 25Gb single layer and 50Gb dual layer.
But that isn't the full story.
Both formats used 3 different codecs.
MPEG2, VC1 and AVC.
By far the best codec is AVC. Most Blu Rays now use AVC.
MPEG2 is by far the worst. It's what DVDs used.
HD DVD did not use MPEG2 due to its inefficiency in size. But early Blu Rays, most notably Fox and Sony/Columbia did use MPEG2. MPEG2 gave a worse quality picture for a massive size in Gb.
For this reason alot of early Blu Ray releases looked barely better than DVDs.
HD DVD mostly relied on the VC1 codec (Universal and Warmer Bros) and, with (Paramount) the AVC codec.
This led to HD DVD, although being based on smaller discs, to actually have an early advantage in the format war. Most HD DVDs looked better than Blu Rays due to the shitty MPEG2 codec used by Blu Ray at the time.
Although this was not the case for all Blu Rays. Warmer mainly used the VC1 codec and it pretty much looked identical for both formats at the time.
At the time, considering the difference in disk size, there was really no difference. A lot of people would say that HD DVD had a slight advantage in quality due to the codec used by Blu Ray, at the time.
Although, now pretty much all Blu Ray discs use the AVC codec, Blu Rays are a lot more efficient than they were between 2006 - 2008.
HD DVD used the technology to its max to compete. Blu Ray didn't at the time.
Blu Ray had a lot to offer, but studios at the time got lazy and did shitty ports that showed on the quality of the movies on Blu Ray.
A little known fact as to the demise of HD-DVD. Sony paid millions of dollars to major retailers including Best Buy to make sure two things happened.
1. They buried any and all HD-DVD movies and hardware in more obscure parts of the store and HD-DVD could never have an end cap, EVER.
2. Sony mandated that Best Buy employees could not acknowledge that HD-DVD was high definition. They were told to tell customers that HD-DVD was “fake” HD and that there was a “new” technology called Blu-ray that was much better. The fact is that at launch HD-DVD was the far better viewing experience as the features, menu system and overall experience was more refined. Most Blu-ray at the time had zero features or menu options, just the movie. 🤦♂️
I know all this as I used to be a journalist and distributor in the video game industry in the 90s and good friends were in executive management at Best Buy, Circuit city, Frys, etc. Sony are ruthless and masters of corporate fuckery. Ask Sega.
@@bubba842 MPEG 2 actually looks good at higher bit rates yes less efficient but AVC very expensive back then
I always thought that Microsoft messed up by not integrating the HD DVD into their Xbox 360 Slim consoles. That would have made the developers happier.
HD DVD was dead by early 2008 so Xbox 360 slim came out 2 half years later.
OMG... i remeber my friend having one of these back in the day and i remember us watching movies on it! right after we played Halo3
After it failed. I bought the 360 player for 20 dollars new. And I still get lots of these films for as little as 25 cents a piece. Nobody wants them. But they are very affordable and still a good find. As for alleged disc rot and films that don't work?. All are in perfect working condition in 2021.
Has anybody found a way to play these on windows 10 via 360 add-on drive?
I think the red cases look a lot nicer than the blue ones.
I pay for RUclips Premium rather than using ad-blockers so that I can support content creators, and then content creators double dip and make me watch ads. Pricks will be pricks.
"Who would pay a extra $200 for this thing?!" .... Me.... Yup, me.
At least it was a short battle... VHS vs Beta vs Video 2000 wasn't helping anyone.
i remeber the format war between VHS and Betamax Betamax had better quality, but VHS was cheaper so VHS won the format war.
Betamax had a max 2 hour recording, VHS had a max of 6-12 hours
Also VHS tapes could record for longer