Heath McKnight's Tech Blog
Heath McKnight's blog

Blu-Ray and I: are we getting closer to our own creation of hi def DVDs?

This is my first blog, and what better way to inaugerate it than talking about Blu-Ray.  Recently, the new James Bond movie, CASINO ROYALE, came to DVD and Blu-Ray (BD).  The Blu-Ray sales were out of sight, shipping 100,000 copies (http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=130) in around a two week period!  This is great news, and could be the first sign of the hi def DVD format war coming to an end.

I have yet to see HD DVD in action, but my best friend has a Playstation 3 and a Westinghouse Digital 1080p, 42 inch HDTV (he bought it based on my review, http://creativemac.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=102133).  Aside from playing PS3 games every now and then, my wife and I had the opportunity to watch CASINO ROYALE on Blu-Ray with his impressive HDTV.

What I saw was stunning, far better than if it were on my "dinky" 30 inch 1080i HDTV.  And it got me to thinking, especially with the news of how well CASINO ROYALE sold on Blu-Ray.

With news that CustomFlix (http://digitalproducer.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=123195), the on-demand DVD creator, was launching a Blu-Ray beta program (HD DVD is coming soon), and the near-completion of post-production on my film 9:04 AM (http://www.904am.com).  I was beginning to think of the possibilities of finally going to hi def DVD.

So I've begun doing some research into how widespread sales were for both PS3s and Xbox 360s (since you can now buy a separate HD DVD unit, making the overall price of an Xbox 360 jump to that of a PS3), and according to some analysts, both can sell around 10 million gaming consoles each in 2007, worldwide.  (My source is an from USA Today, http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/2007-03-19-ps3-woes_N.htm.)

All right, that's promising.  As far as HD DVD and Blu-Ray unit sales, it's tough to get a handle on it, since most places are including the separate HD DVD player you can buy for XBox 360, which is skewing the numbers.  I'd wager more people are buying a gaming system with the HD DVD or Blu-Ray features than the stand-alone player.  That's a guess, mind you.

So, now I want to get into hi def DVD.  I'm excited to see what Apple, Avid, Sony and others have up their sleeves at NAB 2007 for us, the ones who want to start making better hi def DVDs (I'm not all that excited about how Apple's DVD Studio Pro does it with a regular SD DVD-R).  I want to make menus, I want to have less compression, I want a TON of extras, etc. 

I'll update after NAB with a follow-up blog and then either write another blog or, more likely, an article about getting my film to Blu-Ray and eventually, when it's more readily available, HD DVD.

Posted at 01:24PM Apr 07, 2007 by Heath McKnight in General  |