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It seems that battle over the successor to DVD is close to being decided. The interestingly-named Blu-ray is now a big favourite to win the format war over dominance of the high definition disc market. In the last few weeks Warner Brothers and Paramount studios have announced plans to switch their support from HD DVD to the rival Sony-led Blu-ray camp, leaving Universal as the only major Hollywood studio that is continuing to release movies in the Microsoft and Toshiba-backed HD DVD format.

But those who remember the VHS-Betamax format war in the 70s and 80s will know that the victorious format is not necessarily the best product for consumers: Sony’s Betamax was generally considered to be the better format, but cost slightly more.

After taking a look at the Reevoo reviews that mention Blu-ray and HD DVD, it seems that shoppers are very happy with their Blu-rays, especially as part of the latest PS3 package, but that HD DVD player owners are more circumspect.

"Watching Blu-Ray through PS3 has to be seen to be believed"

"Play a Blu-Ray DVD on this
TV and the picture and audio quality are stunning"

"Blue-ray looks incredible"

HD DVD owners like the value-for-money:

"Great Picture. Great Sound. Gread Price. (So much better than blue ray that has numerous problems and you are paying a preumium for these problems)"

"Compared with stand-alone Blu Ray players at the time of purchase this was a third of the price, had faster loading times, ethernet upgradeabilty and a better selection of movies so for me this purchase was a ‘no-brainer’!"

But Blu-ray’s market dominance is starting to tell: "catalogue of films doesn’t compare to blueray rental shops i.e blockbuster won’t be stocking any hd dvd’s"

Just in terms of the number of reviews, Blu-ray is clearly ahead, and had noticeably more glowing reviews.

Alternatively, another reviewer comments:

"If you are worried about the BluRay/HD format war, don’t be; the HD players are so cheap now that you could get a PS3 (which is the cheapest and the best BluRay player on the market at the moment) AND an HD-E1 and have both bases covered."

Assuming you don’t get one of each, it’s starting to look like a Blu-ray player is a safe bet. This will probably come as big relief for most shoppers tired of the format war, and for audio-visual buffs who have been hoping that the better quality format would emerge victorious this time.

For more information:
- HDTVorg has a summary of the latest developments.
- HDTVUK’s Blue-ray/HD DVD archive is a good background to the format war to date.
- Updated: Dixons customer survey on shoppers preferred format reported at HDTVUK.

Blog posted on Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008 at 12:51 pm under Televisions. Leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.