Yet another article wondering WTF is wrong with Bluray

Evan Powell at projectorcentral.com did a few DVD vs Bluray and HD-DVD comparisons. Again, to the Bluray camp's chagrin, HD-DVD is clearly the winner.

If the Bluray camp keeps on using the MPEG2 encodings, they are not going to do well in the future. MPEG2 is going to use up unnecessary space, thus forcing the extra space to be necessary (with a lower quality picture to boot). How much sense does that make?

Currently we have the bizarre phenomenon of the $500 Toshiba HD-A1 HD-DVD player delivering a markedly better picture than the $1000 Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray player.

The success of the HD-DVD format is clearly in the interest of the consumer. Not only does it represent a much better value today in both performance and price, but if Sony's Blu-ray is to survive at all, the influence of HD-DVD in the marketplace will drive down the prices of Blu-ray through natural market competition. Either way, the consumer wins with a healthy HD-DVD presence in the market.

One thing I like about this article is the author points out the 1080p scam. Salesman will claim that 1080p is a "higher resolution" than 1080i. This is a farce. 1080 is 1080, and progressive does not make HD any "truer". 1080p does have the benefit of not having motion artifacts, although these usually go unnoticed by the average consumer. The point is that the resolution is EXACTLY the same, just the methodology is different.

Be sure to check out the engadget article linked below. There are some good and mostly accurate comments.

[Thanks Lee from this engadget article's comments]

P.S. If one wanted to go with numbers and charts instead of articles, you could check out thedvdwars.com. This site uses information from amazon.com to produce these charts. At the time of this writing, it would appear that Bluray discs are slightly cheaper on average, although HD-DVD sales are consistently higher. HD-DVD has over twice the movies available compared to Bluray as well.

One has to wonder about the PS3 at this point. Will the PS3's Bluray player even matter in terms of this format war? As it stands, Bluray is just not looking like a viable option. In reality, however, when the Bluray camp straightens up and starts using VC-1 or MPEG4 the format wars will really begin.

It really pains me to see that we will probably be forced into one of these new formats. But the information I've found really points to HD-DVD being the better choice. More companies are behind Bluray, but more consumers seem to be behind HD-DVD. Which is more important?