Yesterday at work we were discussing the next generation of dvds. None of us really new the difference between Blu Ray and HD-DVD. All we really new was Sony was pushing Blu Ray and Toshiba seemed to be pushing HD-DVD. Microsoft jumped in the HD-DVD bandwagon with the XBox360 to compete with the Playstation 3 and it'd Blu Ray drive.
So what are the advantages of these technologies over regular DVDs?
Well mainly storage capacity. By using blue lasers in stead of red lasers, the disks are able to contain more rows. More rows means more data. I guess it has something to do with wavelengths properties of the laser beam. It is really technical and honestly I think I slept through that physics class.
So what are the difference between HD-DVD and Blu Ray?
Well the main difference is that Blu Ray disks can actually store more data, something like 50gb compared to HD-DVDs 30gb. So that has a lot of people excited, however the real advantage of HD-DVD is that it more closely mimics current DVD technology so the cost to manufacture is lower thus causing the technology to be cheaper.
So who will win?
Well I don't know. The fact that the Playstation 3 comes with Blu Ray drives, the fact that Sony owns licenses for something like 40% of all movies, and the extra storage capacity put a strong plus on Blu Ray's side, however considering the cost of HD-DVD to be way less and throw in the weight of Microsoft and their will to dominate the console market it is hard to pick a winner.
I think in the end, Sony and Blu Ray will win. The extra storage capacity is really hard to pass up on. I think in a year or even the next generation XBox you will see them offering a Blu Ray solution instead of HD-DVD.
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