Warner Bros. and their New Line Cinema were until yesterday, the last studios producing both HD DVD and Blu-ray disks. Yesterday they decided that come May, they will stop producing HD DVDs. They will exclusively be making Blu-ray disks.

Before WB made their announcement, the number of titles, and potential titles available were about the same on both formats. 70% of all movie titles will now be lined up behind Blu-ray. Clearly this is the beginning of the end for HD DVD.

HD DVD was technically the more consumer friendly, more complete, and with the official 51GB version2 more capable format. But it appears to have lost the war…… Disappointing.

Right now this is the biggest heavyweight fight since, VHS and Betamax. There is a lot of debate as to who is winning, or going to win. Honestly nobody knows. The ball is still way up in the air.

First let’s look over sales points. Black Friday sales numbers are in. 57,000 HD players were sold. 62% of them were HD DVD. At the same time, 72% of disks sold were Blu-ray. Now one thing these numbers don’t include is a special deal that Toshiba and Wal-Mart had a couple of weeks ago. For one day, Wal-Mart sold the HD-A3 (Toshiba’s cheapest player), for only $99. That is half it’s normal price everywhere else. And in that one day 90,000 players walked into the world. Wal-Mart also has not released any of it's sales numbers of any format.

How does that make sense? If HD DVD has so many more players, how can Blu-ray sell more disks? Well Sony also has the PlayStation3 game console. Currently there are millions of them in homes, and each with a Blu-ray player capable of movies. But that doesn’t mean too much. Polls have shown that many people don’t even realize that the PS3 can play movies, and the majority doesn’t care. That is why Blu-ray disk sales are not 10 time higher than HD DVD’s. So the industry is largely ignoring that. But it is driving disk sales a little higher.

So since the sales numbers can’t give any indication which format is winning, let’s look at the technical benefits of each, and see if we can find one that is better.

Capacity:
Blu-ray weighs in at 50GB. HD DVD at 30GB. However the recently ratified HD DVD v2 spec comes in at 51GB, but nobody knows if current players will be able play them. So Capacity goes to Blu-ray for now.

Video:
They both support the same video CODECs so that is a bust.

Audio:
Well right now both formats have support for all the same formats. HD DVD though requires that all players support more of them. Blu-ray only requires players be capable of the current DVD formats Dolby Digital, DTS, and Linear PCM (but nobody really uses that one). HD DVD requires that players support those, and Dolby Digital Plus, and Dolby TruHD. Audio goes to HD DVD.

Interface/Disk Menus:
I’m going to focus on the more advanced menu types, they both have simple menu systems that match the current generation DVD’s. Blu-ray’s menu engine is based off of Java and GEM and is very similar to what your current cable box uses. HD DVD’s version is actually based on Web technology. It uses XML and CSS and ECMAScript (where JavaScript came from). It offers almost everything Modern AJAX web sites can. The big difference in Disk interface capability is On-Line content. HD DVD requires that every player be capable of internet access, usually through a home network. Blu-ray does not require it, and to date only one player is capable. This means that Every disk can have direct online features, like secret discounts for other titles and online games (like movie trivia), plus other things I can’t think of at the moment. And since the disk uses web technology for its menus, the difference between on-disk and on-line could be largely invisible. Interface features are in favor of HD DVD.

Copy Protection:
This part is different than the rest. Of all the possible aspect of a next gen DVD format, copy protection is the one thing consumers want less of, and studios want more of. Basically Blu-ray has 2 kinds of copy protection AACS, and BD+. HD DVD only uses AACS. Both have been cracked, so if you really want to copy ether format, it’s no problem, thanks to SlySoft. DVD’s had six different regions around the world to help control piracy. If the regions of the player and disk didn’t match, they wouldn’t work. In the USA that isn’t a big deal, unless you like to import the latest movies from your favorite Asian director. In other countries it can be a real hassle. Which is why in most of those, you can find region free players on every street corner. HD DVD has no regions, YAY! Blu-ray has three. At least Blu-ray took a step in the right direction. Copy Protection goes to HD DVD.

Those are all the major points of each format. HD DVD is a tighter, more consumer friendly spec. Blu-ray is still ironing out some of the feature details, and is less friendly to those paying for the movies. So with a score of 4 to 1 out of 6 categories. HD DVD is the better format. Even if you give Copy protection to the studios you get 3 to 2. Of course the only reason most studios lined up behind Blu-ray to begin with is for the copy protection. In their eyes, taking peoples rights and selling them back is a big place for profit.

Sources: Blu-ray, HD DVD, Comparison