Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD, What A Dilemma

I was reading the technology section of my local newspaper this morning and, lo and behold, there's this huge article about the battle between the Blu-Ray Consortium and the HD-DVD alliance. Now, for those of you who are asking, "What's all this about Blu-Ray and is it going to make my head hurt?", I will give a brief explanation of these two budding technologies. Blu-Ray & HD-DVD are the two technologies competing to be the new standard for DVDs. Currently, information that is written to DVDs is done with a red laser. Using the red laser, you can't write as much information to the disk as you can with a blue laser (hence the name, Blu-Ray). DVDs on the market today are fixed at a resolution of 720 x 480. On a Blu-Ray/HD-DVD, the maximum resolution is an astounding 1920 x 1080. In short, when comparing these new standards to the current DVD, there will be incomparable image clarity. The picture should almost seem lifelike. Now obviously, you will also need a HD compatible TV to go along with these HD DVD players when they do come out. Oddly enough, there will be a HD-DVD player on the market this month and a Blu-Ray DVD player in May of this year.

Keep in mind though, both DVD standards come down to basically the same thing. They both deliver high definition media for your consumption. That's what it really boils down to. It's up to you, the consumer, to decide what is the better choice. Really and truly, you could flip a coin to help you decide, and that wouldn't be any more help than if you were to decide on your own. It's anybody's guess as to which format will become the standard for future DVDs. It's the VHS vs. Betamax wars all over again.

So now you see the delimma. If you are like me, you're going to walk into your local electronics superstore and look at DVD players for both formats. Then, you're going to ask that kid that's fresh out of high school which would be the better buy. You know what happens next. The kid looks at the price of both DVD players and will proceed to explain to you why the player with the bigger price tag is so much better than the other. That is, of course, once he sees you're over the sticker shock.

As you can see, I did not go into to much detail about either format. If you want, simply click on the link that I provided earlier in this post for both formats to learn more about them. I'm not necessarily trying to educate people about this new technology. I just want the public to think twice before dropping that almighty dollar (and quite a few of them, going by the projected prices for these players), so that they don't wind up with a betamax.