HD DVD and Blu-ray are the two new optical technologies and through its blue laser offers superior storage capacity, when comparing with the current DVD format, which has to be considered the predecessor. Blu-ray is somewhat more advanced and offer a higher maximal storage, 50GB on a dual-layer disc vs. the 30GB for a dual-layer HD DVD. The fact that Blu-ray, where Sony is in the driver seat, has the biggest support among movie studios it’s actually the HD DVD format which has advanced the most in the battle for the next generation format.
There are considerably more HD DVD players on the market today while at the same time the movie assortment is a lot bigger than for Blu-ray. HD DVD players aren’t just cheaper but Sony has had some serious problems getting the mass production started, something we’ve reported about at numerous occasions. At X-bit Labs they’ve published a news article about the current situation on the blue laser war front and even if Sony and the Blu-ray format is far from defeated, we are still waiting for that “PS3 effect” and what it could do, and it’s still HD DVD in the lead.
“For the Blu-ray camp there is still an opportunity to create a snowball, where are more affordable high definition players and high definition movies compared to the HD DVD formar. However, at this moment this is a ball that the HD DVD camp definitely has.”
