Now, I already covered this part not long ago not having forseen the end of the battle to arrive so soon. The key differences between HD DVD and Blu Ray include the readable portion’s distance from the protective film and the cost of production.
Briefly, Blu Ray’s readable layer is much closer to the protective polymers that guard against scratches. As a result, the PITS that physically behave as 1’s and 0’s for digital data are more shallow and don’t require the same angle laser as an HD DVD did. The fact that coincides with this feature is that the Blu Ray disks are more prone to scratches and user destruction.
Best Buy currently sells some Blu Ray disks for about $36! That’s a serious wad to spend on a disk. While the production costs are higher for Blu Ray, I doubt there’s any comfort when thinking that THREE movies or a trilogy will run you over a hundred bucks. So the question remains:
Is there a good reason that the most expensive, more fragile, most difficult-to-produce high definition format won the battle?
No. Sorry. High definition is 1080 pixels across featuring a near 16:9 wide aspect ratio. Both disks excelled at delivering this far beyond what simple DVD’s were able to do thanks in large part to a smaller, blue or VIOLET light laser (smaller 1’s and 0’s meant MOER of them on the same sized disk).
The only guess I’ve got is that behind the scenes in some smoke-filled room, there’s talk of the next, big thing to do with movies and Blu Ray content. More and more movies are starting to enter the cineplex as 3D movies requiring polarized glasses. Blu Ray, with slightly more storage space over HD DVD, would be better suited to bring these “3D” movies to the home WITH the tons of extras on the same disk.
Your “3D” experience at home, however, will be fulfilled with those great red/blue-green paper glasses since even high-definition sets cannot yet replicate the two-channel polarization that takes place at theaters.
| DINARIUS Bryan's old Digital Interest blog |
