HD DVD or Blu-Ray? a Guide to Picking a High Definition DVD Reader

Today, there are two types of DVD formats to accompany your HD television. They are crossing paths and the choice is yours to pick which one you think is best. But really, which one is best, the HD DVD or the Blu-ray? This guide will teach you the differences and help you pick a DVD reader for your HD television.

The beginning.
What started all this was two projects that 'Sony' had been working on, these two projects were UDO and DVR Blue. What were these exactly? They were formats that could be rewritable on discs. Soon these two projects turned into one, to form the Blu-ray disc. As for the HD DVD, it was done in the 1990s. At this time, we knew very well that using wave lengths that were shorter than the average ones, would make everything much more dense, allowing much more information to stack onto a single disc, this also helped the idea of the blu-ray but this idea is what made the HD DVD possible.

After all this had happened, people began to discuss the purchase of an HD DVD or a Blu-ray. The obvious winner of this would have been the HD DVD, which was much cheaper than the expensive Blu-ray. Blu-ray at the time was very expensive, just like any new technology in the beginning, is usually expensive. Later on, many companies began supporting these two. Blu-ray soon began to have much more company support from the bigger companies, such as Disney, which made up 70% of the DVDs that were brought to HD style.

Enough of the story telling, we now begin to think of the differences between these two, and the perfect choice to anyone who owns an HDTV. There is some differences between these two rivals.

The differences.
First, the blu-ray, which is more expensive than an HD DVD, but as a saying goes: 'You pay for what you get.' Currently the blu-ray can stack more information than the HD DVD on a disc. For a single blu-ray disc, it can take 25 Gigabytes(GB) or 50 GB; if a dual layered disc. Blu-ray uses a different format for interactive features included in a DVD, this format, made by 'Sun Microsystems', is 'Java' software. As for manufacturing, blu-ray is currently harder to manufacture than its rival, HD DVD. Blu-ray currently has more blu-ray format DVD titles than the HD DVD released.

The rival of the blu-ray, the HD DVD, is cheaper than the blu-ray. It contains less space for data storage: 15 GB or 30 GB for a dual layer, which is much less than the blu-ray. Instead of 'Java' software, the HD DVD uses a format, which was created by the hands of 'Microsoft' and 'Toshiba', very well known companies, and is called the iHD. A bigger advantage to manufacturers is the fact that the HD DVD is easier to manufacture and has a 'hybrid' feature, which makes it possible for one to buy a DVD, and use it on their HD DVD. Both the blu-ray and the HD DVD use a blue laser rather than the red laser, used in CD and DVD readers. A little difference, is the fact that the blu-ray DVD cases are easily identified by a blue logo at the top of the case, but countered by the HD DVD which also has an easily identified red logo at the top of their DVD cases.

Most people will be completely confused with the talk about data capacity. What's so special about blu-ray having higher data capacity than the HD DVD? The answer to this is simple, the more space there is, the better quality you will see the movie on your television.

The problem with the two separate formats.
Many other problems arise when these two formats appear on stage. The first problem, is the fact that companies must either pick one format to release their movies on, or both. What's the big deal? The fact that there are two formats, a company must pick one or both. Either way, they are left with a slow release of their DVD. The other problem is the fact that the buyer must make a choice between the HD DVD or the Blu-ray. Because both formats involve different movies, like a gaming console, they are left with only their luck hoping that their favorite movie or that their format wins the 'war' so that they may enjoy many more movies.

Together.
There is still a chance that both these formats decide to get together and become one universal format for their consumer to enjoy. This has happened before, this gave birth to the DVD. But if this does not occur, then perhaps we will see a DVD reader that can read both these formats.

In the middle of the 'war'.
We are still in the middle of this 'war' between these two formats. And we are at the tip of cliff, with only one choice, and two formats, which one is better? The better format, currently is probably the blu-ray, due to its bigger library, it is currently winning. Not only this, but the support of 'Sony' has made this a much more common format, due to the release of the Playstation 3, which reads blu-ray discs. But as the swords clash, 'Microsoft' decided to bring an HD DVD reader to their console, the 'Xbox 360', to read HD DVDs.