Prominence of HD-DVD players
September 4, 2009
Earlier there had been a number of controversies and discussions regarding high definition DVD players. High definition digital entertainment is made possible with the introduction of advanced
HD-DVD and Blu-ray players which are now available in the market. Once high definition DVD player and recorder prototypes were exhibited at consumer electronics trade shows but now there are plenty of buyers for these players.
HD-DVD players are manufactured by a number of popular brands and they are very affordable too. The affordability and quality of this type of high definition player is incomparable. Blu-ray and HD-DVD are two high definition DVD players that are having a neck to neck competition. However these two formats are incompatible with each other.
HD-DVD player versus Blu-ray
Popular brands such as Toshiba, NEC, Sanyo and Thomson support HD-DVD on the hardware part. On the other hand Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema, Paramount Pictures, and Universal Pictures support HD-DVD on the software part. In case of the Blu-ray players the hardware side is supported by Hitachi, LG, Matsushita (Panasonic), Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, HP, Dell, Apple, TDK, and Thomson. Twentieth Century Fox and Walt Disney Studios support Blu-ray on its software side.
HD-DVD players are affordable and offers enhanced technical features. High definition DVD recording and playback is possible in this player. Recent movies are available in HD discs and you can view them with enhanced clarity and quality through HD-DVD players.
Purchase an appropriate HD-DVD player
September 1, 2009
Old DVD players fail to offer the high-quality picture performance and may not support recent disc formats. Switch to advanced HD-DVD players and experience next level digital entertainment with your family. Recent movies are available in HD discs and you can enjoy them in your HD-DVD players in 1080p high-definition. You can also watch standard DVDs in 480p. Popular companies like Samsung, Toshiba and Pioneer has developed high-end HD-DVD players. The customers can choose from other options like Standalone HD-DVD players, Xbox 360 HD-DVD player and PC HD-DVD players.
The standalone HD-DVD players come in stunning looks to complement your home décor. It takes you to a complete home theatre experience and presents before you clear and crisp pictures. These HD-DVD players are capable of playing MP3 music or JPEG photos burned to DVD. Besides these, it can play CDs, CD-Rs, and CD-RWs.
Another type is Xbox 360 HD-DVD player which redefines you Xbox 360 game. It will transform you Xbox 360 game video game console to HD-DVD player.
PC HD-DVD players are one among the popular options set before you. In order to play HD-DVDs on your computer you can also purchase a PC with HD-DVD players. When compared to the standard DVDs which can hold 4.7GB, these HD-DVDs can hold lots more that is 30GB of data. It can be concluded that these HD-DVD can expand the storage and can be used for playing discs.
If you are planning to purchase a HD-DVD player to complement your existing home theatre system then check whether the A/V receiver supports HDMI and if they features open inputs and outputs. HD-DVD players consists of composite, S-video, digital audio coaxial, component, analogue audio, analogue surround and digital audio optical outputs.
When you purchase HD-DVD players check out if the formats, discs, and outputs, cables supported. Ask the seller about the product specification and access as mush as information possible. You can also consider other customers opinions and feedbacks. Keeping all these factors in mind with bit of a research you can own an appropriate HD-DVD player.
Blu-Ray versus HD-DVD
August 22, 2009
Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are the popular and the most prominent DVD standards in the market today. Many models of these types of DVD players are developed by a number of leading brands. Market being fiercely competitive both the types of DVD players are competing against each other head on head. There are a number of similarities between the two types of DVD players.
The parity between the two types:
Blu-Ray as well as HD-DVD players use the same blue lasers instead of the red making them almost same. For the video and audio compression both the types supports the same options.
There are few other disparities which makes each one distinctive than the other one. For instance Blu-Ray offers 50GB storage space on a dual-layer disc which is just 30 GB for the HD-DVD player. The DVD forum, which created the DVD standards have not approved the Blu-Ray but have give approval to the HD-DVD. HD-DVD player are considered cheaper than the Blu-Ray as the HD-DVD’s are developed on the existing equipment which is not the case with the Blu-ray discs. However, improvements have been made in the manufacturing techniques of Blu-ray players making them cheap but not cheaper than the HD-DVD players. HD-DVD players were introduced in the market two months before the first Blu-ray player.
Companies such as Toshiba, Microsoft and Intel were in favour with HD-DVD. The company Microsoft has also included an additional HD-DVD drive for its Xbox 360. On the other hand companies such as Sony, and Pioneer supported Blu-Ray players. Dell, Apple computer companies and Disney, Fox entertainment companies constituted in the Blu-ray Disc Association’s board of directors.
Apart from them, the motion picture extended their support on Blu-Ray as they thought the recent manufacturing equipment may reduce piracy. Blu-Ray came up with a number of special features and offered more storage space. HD-DVD players were expected to win the race, but the ultimate winners were Blu-ray.
Factors that favour HD DVD players
August 21, 2009
Both HD DVD players and Blu-ray DVD players offers brilliant picture performance and offer crisp and clear images. As a customer it is necessary to differentiate between the two and then select a format which caters to your needs. After the purchase you should not regret the deal and therefore consider all the factors while you decide between the two types of DVD players.
As far as HD DVD players are concerned, there are few factors that favour it and they are pretty solid reasons too. After reading this article you could make your decision wiser.
Affordability
There is no doubt concerning the picture quality offered by HD DVD players. This HD DVD player which offers unbiased digital performance is available at economical rates and can be afforded by the common people.
Higher resolution
When compared to the standard DVD players, HD DVD players offer six times better the resolutions enhancing the image quality.
Astounding audio
With the addition of Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD, a next generation audio technology you are likely to experience an excellent audio performance from this advanced HD DVD player. The better part of this HD DVD player is that it is capable of decoding the codecs and it can reproduce excellent audio even if your home theatre does not support the latest audio technologies.
Full HD
With a 1080i HD DVD player you could enjoy all HD DVD movies that are encoded at 1080p in the best possible manner. The HD DVD player can play these movies as the de-interlacing process ensures “full HD” 1080p picture quality of the source content.
Ideal for gamers
Considering the requirements and needs of the gamers, Xbox 360 provides an HD DVD player at relatively low cost along with free HD DVD movies.
Picture-in-picture and content storage
Most of the HD DVD players are compatible with picture-in-picture and content storage qualities. Apart from that it supports an Internet connection which delivers distinctive web-enabled features that will connect the online communities and special features with your entertainment experience.
Combo discs capability
HD DVD players alone support combo discs which consist of standard DVD version on one side high-def version on the other. This combo discs is compatible with any DVD player and the DVD player in your car.
Supports latest HD DVD movies
Since most of the HD DVD movies come in this format it is better to purchase a HD DVD player. With this HD DVD player you could enjoy all the latest movies with optimum clarity and quality.
Compatible with PC notebooks
There are a number of leading brands such as Acer, HP, Gateway, and Toshiba which offers HD DVD on PC notebooks.
Approval from DVD Forum
The DVD forum and organisation that produce original DVD format has given approval to HD DVD player as the only next generation high-definition format.
Do consider all these factors before you decide upon the type of the DVD player.
Basics of HD DVD Players & HD DVDs
May 27, 2008
When DVD hit the home video market a decade ago, it changed the whole conception of home entertainment with its superior video and sound quality. The old VHS tape was no match to DVDs which came with high resolution capabilities, superior colour quality and other features like digital sound effects, extra commentary tracks, zooming and movie selection features. The full length movie could be recorded in a single DVD and this was not a small feat that time. DVD’s popularity soon led to the demise of VHS tape and adoption of DVD format by the film industry in the following years.
However, a standard DVD had a major disadvantage. A high density optical disk though it is, a DVD could store only standard definition videos. At best, DVDs can store and display movies with a resolution of 720×480 pixels either in interlaced or progressive scanned formats. This is much lower resolution by the high definition standards. The main reason behind it is its storage capacity which is much less than what is required to record a full high-definition movie.
This setback was soon overcome by the emergence of two high definition formats - HD DVD and Blu ray. These competing formats are also incompatible with each other that led to format war with companies and entertainment industry is quite divided over their support and adoption of these formats.
Just as we compare HD DVD with other high density optical discs and to find out its advantages, it is worthwhile to understand the basics of HD DVD format and HD-DVD discs
What is HD-DVD format?
High-Definition DVD (HD-DVD) is an optical disc just like a DVD, but it comes with better storage capacity so that it can record and playback high definition movies. HD-DVD disc has the same diameter (12 cm) and same thickness (1.2 mm). However, a HD-DVD can hold much more information than a DVD. To make it more clear, a single layered HD-DVD can hold 15GB of data as against 4.7 GB capacity of single layer DVD. In other words, a DVD can store a movie (standard video) of two hours duration while a HD-DVD can store more than twenty such standard videos.
Although both DVD and HD-DVD store data in the form of pits on their surface, there are a lot of differences as to how closely the pits and tracks are arranged and how data is recorded or read etc.
In a HD-DVD the pits are made much smaller and the spiral tracks are more tightly packed. HD-DVDs have less than half of the track pitch of standard DVDs (0.40 micrometers Vs 0.74 micrometers). To store and read data from such minuscule pits, HD-DVD uses blue laser (or violet) of smaller wave length (405 nanometer).
Most HD-DVDs use MPEG-4 video compression standard to store information. This enables HD-DVDs to compress large data into small files using less space on the disc. HD-DVD is also compatible with MPEG-2 compression format which is a standard encoding method for DVDs.
Types of HD-DVDs
There are four types of HD-DVD discs based on their capacities and read-write features:
- HD-DVD ROM
- HD-DVD RW
- HD-DVD R
- HD-DVD RAM
Except HD-DVD RAM, all other types have 15 GB capacity per layer. Thus, a double layered double side HD-DVD will have a capacity of 30 GB.
HD-DVD RAM is a high capacity disc that can hold 20 GB on a single layer and 40 GB on a double layer.
Video and audio formats
For high definition recording, HD-DVDs use various HDTV resolutions and video compression formats.
The range of HDTV resolutions that HD-DVD can support include 720p, 1080i, 1080p while the standard DVD video format (480p) is also supported by most HD-DVDs. Most HD-DVDs are capable of compressing in both MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 formats along with other more efficient formats like VC-1 and AVC.
HD-DVDs can support up to eight sound channels at 24 bit or192KHZ and audio can be decoded using a variety of digital audio formats that include Dolby Digital AC-3, DTS, Dolby TruHD and DTS-HD Master Audio.
HD-DVD Movies
There were about 330 movie titles available in HD-DVD format by the end of 2007. Along with HD-DVD only discs, dual-format discs and hybrid discs have also been used by some of the companies for movie release. In a dual-format disc, there is movie in DVD format (4.7 GB layer) on one side of the disc and HD-DVD version (15 GB layer) on the other side.
Hybrid discs come in two versions: HD-DVD/DVD hybrid disc and HD-DVD/Blu-ray hybrid disc. These discs support two formats and are playable by HD-DVD player and blu-ray disc player.
