Are you gagging for Blu-Ray / HD-DVD in your Next-gen console?

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Why are so many worrying about Blu Ray and HD DVD drives in games consoles?

1) There are no games, even on the drawing board that would require them for storage, as DVD9 is still some way from fully utilised. See http://gamesfirst.com/?id=1132 for an analysis on the current storage situation with next-gen gaming.
2) If you want to play DVD's and you are worried enough about quality to want a HD DVD drive, you would never in a million years play them through the cheapo drives that will appear in the PS3/360. Just as I would never play normal DVDs through my 360 when I can get a good quality player for <£100.
3) One of these formats will be a loser. No way will the market support 4 different formats for movies (UMD, DVD, HD-DVD, Blu Ray).Therefore buying an HD drive is bonkers until the market shakes out in a year or three.
4) Are you seriously going to buy all your favourite movies again on another format, which will certainly be 50%+ more expensive than the current DVD format? Especially knowing one of those formats will end up as another Betamax? Bear in mind that many of your favourites won't become available in HD ever, because the original source material lacks the resolution, or won't be popular enough such that it might take 10 years for them to appear.

Seriously, give me a logical reason why I would worry about PS3 having a BluRay drive or Xbox360 getting an external HD-DVD? Especially when I will inevitably end up paying Sony a premium for the privilige of technology I likely will never use?

Or is it that Blu Ray sounds sexy and therefore will become a must have ........
 
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its so people think they are getting some thing special, talk to most sony fanboys and they love the idea of blueray just cos its new lol its marketing gone mad ;)
 
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I'm not gagging for any HD DVDs yet. As they're going to be far too expensive, I'll already have most of my movies on DVD already, and there has been no clear winner between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray yet.

At the end of the day I'm likely not to use either of the consoles for playback of HD-DVD / BD-DVDs, as I'd want a better quality standalone player for it, not a console.

The reason people worry / argue over it is because a lot of people will use their consoles as the only DVD player they use. For example the Xbox 1 has a fantastic DVD player, but the PS2 has a pretty damn pants one. A lot of people will want less space taken up and less money spent.
 
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Not at all bothered by it because I'm buggered if I'm moving to a new format for watching films on when I see nothing wrong with normal dvd's. It is nice to see we've got a future format for gaming though.
 
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I'll never say no to a higher spec drive.

No games so far fill a 9GB DVD, but who's to say that they won't in 3-4 years time? Consoles aren't PCs that can easily be upgraded. It's up to the hardware manufacturers to predict the future and that's a pretty hard task. Once consoles can take advantage of higher quality textures and sound, I'm sure it's only a matter of time before someone creates a game that takes up more than 9GB.

I predict that Unreal Tournament 2008 will be the first to break the 9GB barrier. They must be up to atleast 5-6GB on the current version. :p
 
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I think microsoft have got it right with sticking to DVD for now
Currently shipping 360 games average about 49% of the capacity of the DVD-9 format. The total size increase for Xbox games between 2001 and 2005 was 77%. If Xbox 360 titles follow the same path, they will still only occupy 87% of the DVD-9's capacity. By using development tools like Microsoft's XNA package and techniques like procedural synthesis, you can expect developers to squeeze more game into less space than was possible on older hardware.

Either way, developers will be creating many of their games for release on both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. Although the PS3's Blu-Ray format wil be able to accommodate 25-50GB discs, faced with increased development costs, developers will probably choose to target the lowest common denominator:%uFFFD the 9GB media the 360 uses.

And as for having HD players for watching films well i think its just stupid right now (until prices come down)
Why spend £500+ on a HD player and another £600+ and a HD TV to watch it?
Sure the picture will be sharper but lets be honest DVDs gererate a very good picture anyway is the extra picture quality really worth £1000+ :eek:?

And remember even if you do decide to go for this option you then have to update all your films to HD also lol madness
 
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I'll be getting a HD dvd/divx player after i get my telly with upscaling capacity so i can watch Divx and Dvd in better quality than you would see from a standard dvd/divx player through scart. It'll also have the benefit of support hd dvd but like i said im more concerned about my current collection looking better than HD dvd support.
 
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Well, I'm not gagging for it in a console but I wouldn't mind the drives coming out for the PC so I can burn more stuff at a time. I hate having to sort through my cds/dvds and have multiple ones for the same thing... Also box-sets are a bit annoying, they will be able to put all of a series of a tv show into one disc.
 
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Firstly I would like to point out that to my mind umd isnt part fo the equation - as this is particular to one actual device ( ie psp) its not really designed for home consumption ( ie no surround sound etc) it does one job pretty well - especially considering the size.

As to the real question regarding hd / blu -ray I actually think its slightly shortsighted of m$ nto to put a hd - rom player in any home they can ( they are after all backing hd-dvd ) if they can get it moving and include it in the losses of xbox 360 ( which are going to be massive anyway, but still a drop in the ocean for BG) that gives their hardware backing a good standpoint.

It will still read standard dvds ( be it 9 or 18 variety) and because of the multi porcessor / gpu standpoint of these consoles I personally think the amount the content for each game will grow exponentially, rahter than linearly ( if thats a word?) as was suggested above

This is all a guess, but I have already got a 360 and its reasonably good ( i havent got hidef cablle yet) but I still back the PS3 with future expansion possibilities galore to win again even with a 6 month to 1 year to catch up on.

No I wont buy all my dvd's again - but I might buy all the 007 films on one disc, or every episode of 24 or whatever just to cut down on the storage required.

Look at it another way by the time either of these formats are going to be on the market in a big way - both M$ and Sony to a lesser extent already hop most of us to be running some kind of audio / video home server where most of our films will be wirelessly broadcast from box under the stairs!!
 
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But the thing I don't get in MS thinking is that the drive cannot have a use for gaming. It's an external, optional perpheral. No console manufacturer is going to go down the road of allowing games to be released that will work only on some of it's user's machines. Can you imagine the outcry when Unreal Championship 2008 or Fight Night 4 will only work via HD-DVD?

I just can't see a developer being brave enough to bring an HD-DVD-only game to the market before the 360 becomes obsolete in 3-4 years time. The next gen after that would be the time to jump on the HD-DVD bandwagon.

With Sony it's a different issue as it will , allegedly, support BR out of the box so the case for bloated games is already made.

The only use a 360 HD-DVD drive will ever be put to IMO is for people to play their shiny new DVDs on.
 
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R5Rich said:
its so people think they are getting some thing special, talk to most sony fanboys and they love the idea of blueray just cos its new lol its marketing gone mad ;)


well of course there going to be doing that ...they dont want another betamax incident..... i must say i am a "sony fanboy" anyways but i think blue ray does has its advantages as being able to say "last longer" due to more capacity than hd since in another 5 years well have somthing stupid like smellivision and well need that extra space or UBER HD with 300" screens ........
 
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I'm not gagging for blu-ray or HD-DVD period, either in consoles or for movies. I don't think many people are - I think most people are quite happy with current DVD movie quality for example. I'm completely unimpressed by it all.
 
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dirtydog said:
I'm not gagging for blu-ray or HD-DVD period, either in consoles or for movies. I don't think many people are - I think most people are quite happy with current DVD movie quality for example. I'm completely unimpressed by it all.


Exactly how I feel about it myself. Right now I couldn't care less.
 
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I'd only ever be interested if it somehow improved my gaming experience. As DaveyD implied - I use my consoles for playing games on, and standalone players for things like movies & music.
 
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Why do we need either?

I can see the point for movies but games erm no.

When you get developers filling discs with naff cut scenes and f all content thats when the games require massive file space.

Textures alone do not need gbs of space nor will they in the next 10years arguably.

HD-BR is all marketing hype and people are buying into it already. The only people who will win are the big coperations when you buy all your movies on the new format all over again.
 
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