[Stuart Wright]

AVForums Movies Podcast : 8th October 2007
Play now or

(you may need to right-click and save).

Time: 1:04:55 Size: 59.4MB

In this months edition:

01:00 Movie news
05:20 DVD, HD DVD and Blu-ray news
10:30 Review of Knocked Up on HD DVD
14:30 Review of House Of A Thousand Corpses on Blu-ray
25:00 Review of We Were Soldiers on Blu-ray
34:30 Round table discussion over the ongoing HD DVD vs Blu-ray format war

Please reply to this thread with your feedback.

[GuestOfHonour]

Thanks for a great Podcast.

It always amazes me that during these HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray discussions that nobody mentions the fact that a large number of Blu-ray films are subject to region encoding. IMO a major inconvenience that does not exist on the HD-DVD format.

FTR, I don't own either formats at the moment but see the region restriction in the same negative light as when it was first implemented on standard DVD.

[Tantalus]

Very enjoyable and enlightening discussion on the HD formats and learned some things I didn't know. Interesting that the focus seemed to be a foregone conclusion i.e. that HD will actually thrive. It's still very much a niche market and is there any guarantee that either will win out over SD ?Because there are probably three groups of people buying these things - 1) the gamer who happens to get an HD player thrown in with the next console 2) the people who like to have the next best thing (and buy an HD player with a 32" LCD which they sit far too far away from - and who don't have 5.1 and wouldn't know 1080p/TrueHD if it gave them a haircut and 3) the ardent film fan nuts like Chris who will double dip all his fav movies all over again. Category 3) are likely to be the ones who will make or break the format and that's an even smaller minority. So where is the evidence?

With SD films available now for 2.99 (even 2 disc editions) - and HD discs at 15.99 - and even a growing availability of HD to rent (Lovefilm today had 249 BD titles vs 160 HD-DVD) - the choice to rent seems more cost-effective.

Perhaps I am just spoiled because I have such high-end SD kit - that the benefits of an entire HD upgrade are minimal?

But if I did go one way or the other, your discussion certainly would drive me down the HD front - despite a lack of titles (currently).

Anyway guys - thanks again.

[Spong]

Great podcast and surprisingly, I've been thinking the same thing. Here in New Zealand, the range of Blu-ray and HD-DVD discs is not great, but being able to import HD-DVDs from anywhere in the world is a major advantage. For Blu-ray I see Europe, like NZ is region B/2 and USA is region A/1, hence Blu-ray fanboys in our regions are missing out on a fair catalogue of material available from the USA. Isn't this a major advantage to HD-DVD?

[Tantalus]

"But if I did go one way or the other, your discussion certainly would drive me down the HD front - despite a lack of titles (currently)."

- I mean HD-DVD front. I think Phil's contributions swayed me....

On the DVD v Bluray debate surely one big selling points in HD DVD's favour is it's ability to play US HD discs. I must have imported over 50 so far.
However I must admit that with the overwhelming amount of films coming out on Bluray as apposed to HD DVD, unless a massive price difference ie a HD player at under £100/ $200 and major marketing push, I think it will go to the Bluray guys next year.

[Adam_uk]

Good debate actually. I thought Phil balanced Chris (who seemed very pro BD) very well.

Of course Sony have given some sweeteners.

Great Podcast- the best one in ages!

[Adam_uk]

Actually I think the shelf space thing might change a little. The Paramount discs will dissapear from the BD sheves rather soon.

Will you review TF next month??????

[Phil Hinton]

Thanks for your feedback. I am sure we could manage a TF review in the next podcast

[chambeaj]

Lets face there are no reference class HD-DVD players on the UK market at present. Pitiful choice of quality hardware for those of us AV lovers who could not give a monkeys about games consoles. Even worse is that the likes of companies such as Pioneer and Denon are only supporting Blu-Ray. This whole format war is a ludicrous mess imho. Having two formats is simply not going to work in the long term and will ultimately results in the failure of both formats imho.