HD-DVD vs Blu-ray Saga Update

The ongoing HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray battle is rapidly developing into a war of attrition, and, as usual, it's you and I who are missing out.

The latest twist in the tale is that the European Commission has said it will investigate the licensing terms of both formats. At the moment the investigation is what the EC terms 'unoffiical' so it won't name the companies involved. However, Sony has publicly stated that it has been contacted by the EC as part of the investigation.

It would be easy to be cynical about the EC's involvement, and some commentators have been quick to suggest that it's just a way of imposing a tax on the new formats. Given the ridiculous levies on DVI computer displays and digital camcorders with FireWire inputs over the past few years, its easy to understand the cynicism. However, the EC has a legitimate role to play in ensuring that competition is fair and that consumers get a good deal.

There are other issues dogging HD-DVD and Blu-ray too. It seems barley a week goes by without one manufacturer or another announcing a delay to the shipping date for its devices and, most recently, LG scrapped plans for a hybrid player which would have supported both formats.

Finally, the one bright light on the horizon, the fact that both formats used the same video encoding system, H.264, has dimmed considerable. Every Blu-ray movie shipped so far uses MPEG-2, an old and much less efficient encoding method. And every HD-DVD movie shipped uses VC-1, a variant of Microsoft's proprietary Windows Media format.

Even the previously clear differences are becoming foggy. For example, one of the advantages of Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD is in disc capacity. Blu-ray discs have capacities of 25GB in single-layer forma and 50GB in dual-layer, compared to HD-DVDs 25GB and 30GB respectively. However, because Of the use of MPEG-2, a 25GB Blu-ray disc can store the same two hours of high definition movie content as a 15GB HD-DVD disc. So, far there aren't any dual-layer Blu-ray discs on the market, although there are dual-layer HD-DVD discs. So, by using dual-layer discs, studios can fit a whole movie plus the kind of extras we’re used to on DVD discs on an HD-DVD disc. On the other hand, Blu-ray movies are limited to only the movie.

Confuse? You're not the only one. The HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray battle looks set to get more complicated before it gets clearer, and as for trying to pick a winner…forget it.