Blue-ray or HD drive

stephenmarr

Im thinking of one of the above drives for the pc are they worth it ive just recieved my new monitor a Dell 2407WFP-HC 24" the pc is also hooked up to my Samgsung 40" Lcd
Which one would be the one to go for and where would be the best place to buy it?
the pc is an XPS 710.

Cheers guys.

projectmayhem

dvd upscaler ftw.

both formats will look nice, but are not worth the money. a good dvd upscaler will give you just as good a result

Sqaull20

I would get an external hd dvd drive (xbox360) one

You get 5 free HD-DVDs! with it...

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055166859

Didnt get it myself,got a ps3

Sqaull20

projectmayhem wrote: »

dvd upscaler ftw.

both formats will look nice, but are not worth the money. a good dvd upscaler will give you just as good a result

Doesnt the pc itself upscale dvds with a bit of software?

Most graphics cards have an internal scaler and automatically upscales DVD's you play to whatever your desktop resolution is.

FFDshow alongside WinDVD make my DVD's look great at 720p.

Khannie

Upscaled dvd's don't compare to real HD IMO.

Blu-ray looks like it's going to dominate in Ireland from what I can tell. xtra-vision have said they're going blu-ray exclusively and a mate of mine in a large electrical retailer said they're bluray all the way atm as well.

edit: It's worth noting that paramount are exclusively sticking with hd-dvd for now.

Anti

I personaly think Blu-ray is the better format. I have a HD player and a ps3, and own swat on both formats and on blu-ray the colours seem alot richer.

stephenmarr

so you reckon bueray is going to win the battle?
where would the best place to buy one for the pc
afaik the monitor can display 1080p with a 1000:1 ratio.
want to utilise the monitor to its highest potential

Anti

They are available over at www.overclockers.co.uk. But i know a few people who have had problems with them, i.e the picture is jerky or the sound is slightly off. More then likely just the software acting the maggot

yoyo

stephenmarr wrote: »

so you reckon bueray is going to win the battle?
where would the best place to buy one for the pc
afaik the monitor can display 1080p with a 1000:1 ratio.
want to utilise the monitor to its highest potential

I think HD DVD has a great chance m8, you may be better off waiting, HD DVD production costs are far cheaper than blu rays, big enough companies are HD exclusive, like paramount and universal and some others, I would reccomend waiting to see who'll win the format war before buying a drive now, esp the high price of em, and yes I would support any format over sonys (Dont like that co) but the less biased view on it is that hd dvd are cheaper to mass produce + should work out cheaper buying a hd dvd drive over a blu ray one in the future (HD DVD already has cheap drives)

Nick

DanGerMus

There are some great offers on Blu-Ray players all over the place like Virgin HMV smyths Game etc. And as an added bonus it doubles as a Gameing console too some even come with extra controllers AND games... how cool is that

stephenmarr

how long would i have to wait before one comes out on top?

Sqaull20

stephenmarr wrote: »

how long would i have to wait before one comes out on top?

Why not support them both...

LG GGW-H20L Blu-Ray Rewriter & HD-DVD ROM Serial

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CD-065-LG

stephenmarr

nice find is it worth it though are LG they good players?

DirkVoodoo

HD DVD made a bit of a comeback from the brink there in the states recently...

Toshiba players in Best Buy, Target, etc. were on sale for nearly nothing over some promotional weekend, they shifted some huge amount of players.

I have the Samsung 40" LCD-TV LE40M86BD and have watched Harry Potter and 300 on BluRay as well as Spiderman 2 and Batman Begins on DVD using the upscaler. Frankly, I thought the BluRay looked very good, but I wasn't blown away half as much as when I moved from VHS to DVD. Maybe not a fair comparison, maybe it is, but my point is that at this point, I would not blow money on a "next gen" player. I would say buy a PS3 40GB because at least that way you have the player and a gaming machine.

stephenmarr

Ive already got an xbox360 so wont buy a ps3.
The LG combi Blu-ray HD-DVD for my Pc works out at €290 delievered.
which isnt to bad as im getting both formats.

A PIONEER BLU-RAY BD-ROM DVD works out at €148

But i cant find a seperate HD-Dvd rom for the Pc.

yoyo

stephenmarr wrote: »

Ive already got an xbox360 so wont buy a ps3.
The LG combi Blu-ray HD-DVD for my Pc works out at €290 delievered.
which isnt to bad as im getting both formats.

A PIONEER BLU-RAY BD-ROM DVD works out at €148

But i cant find a seperate HD-Dvd rom for the Pc.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CD-000-TS

Theres a Toshiba HD DVD ROM only drive, far less than the BD ROM drive aswell

Nick

pinksoir

How bout the best of both worlds?

http://svp.co.uk/product/lg_ggwh20l_blu_ray_writer_hd_dvd_reader_drive_44089

Reads both Blu-ray and HD-DVD, and writes Blu-ray too. Not bad...

Says it's out of stock now, but the list price is €282

vibe666

blu-ray seems to be winning despite several attempts at a comeback by hd-dvd. i know it's been said by people that they hate sony as a company, but how anyone could hate them more than microsoft i'll never know. sony are the lesser of two evils tbh.

i think if either sony hadn't committed to BD in the PS3 or if MS had committed to HD in the 360 the playing field would be very different, but at this point despite selling hd-dvd players for practically nothing and bribing major movie studio's to go exclusive despite being the inferior format the hd-dvd group are backing the wrong horse.

if you want to pitch your tent in one camp or the other and stay there then blu-ray is the way to go, but as has also been said there's no need to cut yourself off when there are dual format players out there. look at what happened with dvd+/-r. i reckon most people couldn't even tell you which format is the native one on their dvd burners or who 'won' the last format war.

granted it'll be slightly different now with more user friendly names to put to the formats, but it might well end up the same as the last war.

you can have the best of both worlds which means not having to worry about format incompatabilities such as getting a blu-ray only player and not being able to watch the HD version of something like transformers or visa versa if you go the other way and want a blu-ray only movie.

pay a few quid extra to hedge your bets. BTW a lad at work just got back from Japan where he picked up a dual format BD/HDDVD rom drive for his PC for under 40e (with a bit of haggling).

DanGerMus

vibe666 wrote: »

pay a few quid extra to hedge your bets. BTW a lad at work just got back from Japan where he picked up a dual format BD/HDDVD rom drive for his PC for under 40e (with a bit of haggling).

F**k in hell... damn japs get all the best stuff for half nothin.

Blu-ray all the way though for me. Simple fact of the matter is that it isn't like vhs v betamax. The info on them is identical so it's down to capacity and BD whallops HD here.

kaisersose77

but do they need 50gbs?

I thought blu-ray movies were using mpeg2 at the moment (well were at one stage anyways) and werent compressed at all. Cant see them needing the full 50gb if there using AVC unless they fill the disc full of unnecessary crap.

DanGerMus

look at dvd multidisk boxsets or You could fit entire TV series on one disk at standard resolution It doesn't all have to be 1080p. What about backing up or longterm storage for companies. As games become larger and more detailed more space will be needed. Back ten years ago when pc games went on to dvd the didn't use all the space but they're nearing capacity now. Bigger is better.

kaisersose77

There already developing bigger capacity HD-DVD's and Blu-Ray disc's , so what we see at the moment mightnt be the final standard. I think they have it in the terms and conditions that these are developing tecnnologies and they cant be held responsible if your current blu ray/hd-dvd player cant play the latest discs down the line. Already the first generation blu ray players cant play the newest features on blu ray discs like Picture and Picture and some other things.

yoyo

kaisersose77 wrote: »

There already developing bigger capacity HD-DVD's and Blu-Ray disc's , so what we see at the moment mightnt be the final standard. I think they have it in the terms and conditions that these are developing tecnnologies and they cant be held responsible if your current blu ray/hd-dvd player cant play the latest discs down the line. Already the first generation blu ray players cant play the newest features on blu ray discs like Picture and Picture and some other things.

Good advice there

Nick

Blazer

Have both formats.
Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive and blu-ray drive in my laptop. Both are connected to 37" 1080i LCD and all are HDCP compliant.
At present I'm most impressed with HD-DVD. Both HD+ Blu have around the same quality of pic depending on what film you watch..eg..what mightn't look good on one might look better on the other format and vica versa..there are a few of these titles around.
What impresses me about HD-DVD is the menu system. The movie can still be playing away and you can still access all features of the menu.
Plus the fact you can go online etc with it gives it a better overall experience with it.