Babylon 5 on HD DVD or Blue Ray, the battle may be over?

[raw_bean]

Turning the tide of battle? Err, I hate to break it to you, but the format war has been over - officially - for some time. The HD-DVD camp threw in the towel after Blu-ray got an overwhelming majority of Hollywood studios on its side. No more HD-DVD drives are being produced (although existing ones will still be maintained where warranties and such apply), and the last few films are being released in HD-DVD before the studios that were making them get their Blu-ray production up and running.

[Orta]

Well the price of the HD-DVD adapter for the XBOX360 has dropped from ú100 to ú40s, a sign of the turning tide of battle?

Plus I went into HMW today and the Blu-Ray section was almost double the size of the HD-DVD section!

[Milkman]

While this whole HD DVD vs Bluray battle was going on I completely forgot about something until now.
I was asked to develop some training materials for work and thought that I would test a few of the previous training videos that I had done in Video CD first, to remind my self how I did them. Yet, none of these Video CD's would play on my Toshiba HD DVD player. They would all play on my previous Panasonic DVD player though.
Does anyone know if this is standard for all HD DVD players and also if Video CD's will play on the Bluray players?

I will see if i can digup a video CD to play. I haven't used those in quite some time, but will let ya know what i find out.

[circularREASON]

I don't know. My PS3 upscales standard DVD to 1080i on my high def TV - and B5 really looks OK (only OK - would be nice to see it in 1080p but thats never gonna happen unless we get a B5 movie in the future, or lost tales in high def).

At this moment Blu-ray (not the now dead HD-DVD) doesn't really justify its price difference over traditional DVD. The Quality is better but the price hike - err.... no thanks i'll upscale for now.

[Orta]

I wasn't convinced over HDs leap over standard definition originally. It seemed like a big expensive waste of money. DVD movies were costing twice as much and you had to pay extra for the Sky channels that supported it.

Then I played my friend's XBOX360 on his HD tele and I must say... WOW! It is a massive improvement in quality. Any1 who says it isn't enough of a leap forward haven't actually seen it working in familiar surroundings!

That said, it's still OVER expensive. Remember when VCRs were ú500??? But I've decided I'll upgrade everything as soon as they re-release Babylon 5 in all HD boxsets, and not until.

[Truth66]

While this whole HD DVD vs Bluray battle was going on I completely forgot about something until now.
I was asked to develop some training materials for work and thought that I would test a few of the previous training videos that I had done in Video CD first, to remind my self how I did them. Yet, none of these Video CD's would play on my Toshiba HD DVD player. They would all play on my previous Panasonic DVD player though.
Does anyone know if this is standard for all HD DVD players and also if Video CD's will play on the Bluray players?

[Joe Nazzaro]

Funnily enough, I just had an e-mail ad from Comp USA offering Toshiba HD-DVD players for well under a hundred bucks, with 7 DVDs thrown in for free. Basically they were selling them on the basis that Toshiba had just discontinued the format, but the players were still cheap ways to up-convert your normal format discs. Interesting marketing strategy: get your discontinued machines before they're gone forever!

[NotKosh]

These machines could be the way to go if it is not already too late. There are actually two companies making hybrid players (LG and SAMSUNG) and the latter is, I am told, quite a neat player. However, now that HD DVD has even less studio backing, just how long these machines will remain on the market is any body's guess.

This whole thing was started by SONY who broke away and decided they wanted a proprietary HiDef format all of their own. There, first and foremost, is the reason we have had a format 'war'.

Um, that isn't my recollection. Mine is that Sony pitched forth BR with higher capacity. Toshiba pitched lower capacity HD-DVD. Toshiba had the patent on DVD. The different camps wouldn't agree. Format war.

[Shabaz]

There are, but they are not cheap... and its my understanding the the blueray DRM hasn't been cracked yet... but i could be wrong. When i can to go wally world and get a $99 blueray player i will likely switch over. Sadly i don't see that happening for a few years yet as the competition has just died.

AACS, the DRM scheme that HD-DVD and Blu-ray shared, has been circumvented, and there are tools to get around it. However, it seems the BD+ DRM scheme that runs on top of it is a tad more problematic. Not all discs use both schemes though. And SlySoft claims they have something to get around BD+ (Slysoft's circumvention, from what I understand, allows ripping and playback in a specific player of BD+ discs, transcoding support is still in the works).

And the burners aren't cheap, but they are going down in price from the initial super expensive price points. I can find one for 270 euros over here.

[Milkman]

There are, but they are not cheap... and its my understanding the the blueray DRM hasn't been cracked yet... but i could be wrong. When i can to go wally world and get a $99 blueray player i will likely switch over. Sadly i don't see that happening for a few years yet as the competition has just died.

[Shabaz]

Im sad... i hope blue ray drops in price... and their becomes a way to make backup copies of their media.

I guess back to standard DVD for me for a while. My $99 HD player still upverts well, so im really not out much. Just need to grab another HD player cheap somewhere as a backup.

I'm pretty sure there are BRD-25 writable and rewritable discs out there, and that you can buy Blu-ray burners. And there are ways to get around the AACS copy protection that HD-DVD and Blu-ray use, even some ways that are pretty user friendly.

[Milkman]

Im sad... i hope blue ray drops in price... and their becomes a way to make backup copies of their media.

I guess back to standard DVD for me for a while. My $99 HD player still upverts well, so im really not out much. Just need to grab another HD player cheap somewhere as a backup.

[Shabaz]

Yup, you can find the press release on Toshiba's site. The format war is over, Blu-ray has won.

[raw_bean]

Toshiba have announced in a press conference that it's over, they're getting out of the HD disc market. Production on HD-DVD players/recorders is stopping over the next month, and after the end of march they'll no longer be selling anything HD-DVD related (though they'll continue to offer after-sales support on previously bought items). Work on the second season of HD-remastered Start Trek: TOS has stopped because Toshiba was part-financing it in return for it being HD-DVD exclusive, and Paramount and Universal are expected to announce the end of their releasing of HD-DVD movies (and presumably the starting - or restarting in the case of Paramount - of Blu-ray releases) shortly.

[Shabaz]

I seem to remember that CES, one of the biggest trade shows of its kind, had most of the HD-DVD related things suddenly canceled. The WB move to Blu-ray was pretty shortly before the show started, and I suppose it must've hit pretty hard.