HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray - Jamison A.

In the twenty-first century, the world is stepping up into the realm of what is called “High Definition.” Sharp, clear pictures and clean, crisp audio dazzles onlookers. However, in this futuristic world of high definition, a war over which medium high definition will be on is taking place, one disc…to rule them all. Sony and Phillips’s Blu-Ray is battling it out with Toshiba and the HD-DVD.

Blu-Ray is an oddity to many people, as it just sounds like a new futuristic technology. Blu-Ray is a disc, much like a DVD, but has nearly twenty times more space than a standard DVD has at two-hundred gigabytes of storage available. Blu-Ray is gathering support in movie and video game production studios due to the massive amount of space only one disc can hold.
I’m sure the letters HD and DVD sound familiar, and that all “HD-DVD” means is that they’re put together. But what does that really mean? HD-DVD is like a dvd, but can hold more data. HD-DVD holds fifty gigabytes.

So the Blu-Ray can obviously hold more data than the HD-DVD, so why would you not automatically go for the Blu-Ray? The price tag has the ability to throw up red flags for many. At Bestbuy.com, the cheapest Blu-Ray player is the LG Blu-Ray player, which weighs in at a whopping $1199.99. Prices for the discs themselves range from $29.99 to $34.99. A Toshiba HD-DVD player costs $499.99 and an HD-DVD movie ranges from $24.99 to $34.99. Since there is no player that plays both types of discs, a consumer has to choose between the two.