Blu-ray Disc (BD) and HD-DVD

Updated - March 2008

Update - On Feb. 19th  Toshiba Corp. President Atsutoshi Nishida said in announcing that his company would halt the manufacture of HD-DVD players that he wanted to avoid confusion among consumers.  Since Toshiba was the primary developer of the HD-DVD technology and currently the only manufacturer of dedicated HD-DVD players (both LG and Samsung manufacturer dual format players and some others buy relabeled players from Toshiba) this will effectively mark the end of the HD format war between the competing formats (i.e., HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc).  Universal also announced on Feb. 19th. that they will now focus on releasing movies on Blu-ray Disc.  Announcements of support for the Blu-ray Disc format followed a few weeks later from Paramount and Dreamworks, the only other major studios that had been releasing HD content exclusively on HD-DVD.   The actions effective ended the format war between Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD with Blu-ray Disc as the victor.

Background:  DVD - The Digital Versatile Disc (also known as the Digital Video Disc) has now been widely available on a national basis throughout the US. for a decade and was the fastest growing consumer electronics product in history. Up until 2006 DVDs provided the highest quality of any widely available source of pre-recorded video.  However, the video quality of DVDs is clearly inferior to true high definition TV (HDTV).   Consumer electronics manufacturers and a few movie studios realized that once other sources of HDTV became available, a media was needed to bring pre-recorded HD movies to the consumer.  The first attempt to reach the marketplace was Digital VHS (D-VHS) tapes.  Both JVC and Mitsubishi manufactured D-VHS VCRs and a few studios released a modest number of movie titles in the D-VHS format.  D-VHS was from the beginning considered an interim format until a high definition optical disc was brought to the consumer marketplace.  D-VHS met only with very limited success and essentially died about a year before the introduction of HD optical discs.  

In the first half of this decade Sony and Toshiba, each joined by several other companies were developing high definition optical disc technologies that relied on the use of a blue laser to pack the needed additional data capacity onto an optical disc (as compared red lasers used for DVDs).  Ultimately Toshiba, and its partners that held several of the key patents for conventional DVDs, built their HD optical disc as an extension to the design of conventional DVDs.  This group won approval from the DVD patent licensing organization, the DVD Consortium - subsequently renamed the DVD Forum, for their alternative for a HD optical disc.  This format became known as HD-DVD.  

Sony, along with several partner companies, developed their own HD optical disc format that while their discs may appear similar to DVDs and HD-DVDs, they use a substantially different structure for storing the data within the disc.  This format is much less tied to the DVD technology, and less encumbered by the existing DVD related patents, than is the HD-DVD format.  Sony and their partners named their HD optical disc format Blu-ray Disc (BD) and created a new standards and licensing organization called the Blu-ray Disc Association.

Both HD-DVD and BD do share some things in common in addition to similar size disc.  Both HD-DVD and  BD support discs with multiple layers but both formats are currently limited to two layers for production discs.  Both formats use a blue laser whose shorter wavelength (as compared to the red laser used for DVDs) allows for more data storage on each layer of the disc.  However, the BD format allows for higher data density per layer (approx. 25 GB per layer for BD as compared to 15 GB per layer for HD-DVD).  Both formats have adopted the same three video encoding techniques (i.e. video codecs).  Each of these 3 video codecs is capable of producing excellent results as long as the video is encoded at high enough data rate.  However, the most efficient codec can produce equivalent results to the least efficient at less that one half of the data rate.  The 3 video codecs supported by both BD and HD-DVD are:

In addition to supporting the same set of HD video coding formats, BD and HD-DVD standards include the same set of required and optional audio formats, including new Dolby Digital and DTS advanced audio formats.  However, none of the current generation of BD or HD-DVD players can fully support all of the new (optional) formats allowed by the respective BD and HD-DVD standards (e.g., no player currently supports DTS-HD MA, see below).  All of the players support the same baseline Dolby Digital and DTS surround sound formats, as used on DVDs, and all software is encoded with these baseline (i.e., default) formats.  Therefore, as a minimum the HD disc player will be able to output standard Dolby Digital or DTS digital audio.  The new, higher fidelity, Dolby surround formats are Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby Digital TrueHD, with TrueHD being the highest fidelity Dolby format as it provides lossless compression (i.e, decoded output is bit-for-bit identical to the original master recording).  DTS has also developed two new formats under the overall name DTS-HD.  These are "DTS-HD High Resolution Audio" and "DTS-HD Master Audio" (with DTS-HD MA being the highest fidelity DTS format as it provides lossless compression).  The highest fidelity advanced formats require data rates too high to be passed over conventional digital optical connections to an external Audio/Video Receiver (AVR) or processor.  As a result, the various disc player manufacturers have taken alternative approaches to getting this improved audio out of their disc players.  One alternative is to output the digital audio data stream via the HDMI interface (along with the Video data) and the advanced audio is only enabled when connected to a new generation of AVR that includes HDMI inputs as well as decoding for the advance audio format.  A second alternative is to provide, within the disc player, the decoding of the advanced audio format and to then encode the audio as linear Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) and output then the PCM audio via the HDMI, along with the digital video.  Many recent vintage AVRs that have HDMI inputs can accept PCM audio and the AVR in this case does not require any capability for decoding the new advanced audio formats.  A third alternative is to have the disc player decode the advanced audio format and also perform the digital to analog conversion and provide discrete analog outputs for each of the channels (either 5.1 or 7.1 channels). 

For more technical details on the BD and HD-DVD disc formats and technology check these links for:  Blu-ray Disc and for HD-DVD.

BD and HD-DVD 2006 Introductions

Toshiba brought their first HD-DVD player to market later than planned in April 2006 and Samsung followed a few months later (June 2006) with the first BD player.  Both formats had their share of problems with first generation hardware and software at the beginning.  For the HD-DVD side the movie studios were later than expected in having their initial software ready and the initial Toshiba players (originally announced for availability in late 2005) were delayed and initially had a number of bugs and very long disc loading times.  However in general the quality of the video produced by the first generation of HD-DVD hardware and software was excellent.  The BD camp had somewhat more problems than HD-DVD in the first several months after the initial BD introduction.  A number of manufacturers had planned to introduce their initial BD players in the May/June 2006 time frame.  However, only Samsung actually had a player in production by that time (in June 2006, one month later than they has previously announced).  Also the only manufacturer of the pre-recorded discs (i.e., movies) at the BD introduction was Sony and for the first several months they were only able to manufacturer single layer discs authored using MPEG-2 encoding.  This combination of the lowest capacity disc (i.e., single layer) format and the least efficient encoding technique (i.e, MPEG-2) resulting in discs with generally inferior quality, as compared to the initial HD-DVD releases. In some cases the initial Sony manufactured discs had relatively low quality transfers from the original film which further contributed to poor video quality on certain of the initial BD releases.  However, by the end of 2006 both camps had overcome most of the startup problems.  Toshiba issued a number of firmware updates to their first generation of HD-DVD players that corrected most of the more significant bugs and late in 2006 introduced their first 2nd generation player that provided better overall performance, including quicker disc load times.  The BD camp saw other manufactures (Panasonic, Pioneer, Sony) introduced their first generation of players in late 2006 and the production of 2-layer BD discs began was well as the use of the more advanced video codecs (e.g, AC-1).  Sony also introduced in November 2006 the Playstation 3 that supports playback of BD software.  Also Samsung issued a firmware update to their first generation BD player in Oct. 2006 that corrected their player's biggest technical issue and this brought its level of performance in line with their competitors 1st generation BD players. While the quality of film transfers still varies by title, there has been a general improvement, especially as compared to some of the earliest BD releases.  

All BD and HD-DVD players can provide high definition video output in the 720p and 1080i HD formats.  All of the BD players are also capable of outputting the video in a 1080p high definition format (i.e, 1080 x 1920 pixels in a progressive <non-interlaced> format at 60 frames per second, referred to as 1080p/60).  Most movies are recorded on BD (and HD-DVD) discs in a 1080p format at 24 frames per second (referred to as 1080p/24) to match the 24 frame per second rate of motion picture film.  The 1st generation Samsung player (as well as the 1st generation Panasonic BD player) used an internal chip set that only decoded to 1080i format.  Therefore, these manufacturers included an additional signal processing chip in their BD players to perform de-interlacing back to 1080p/60 format for output from the player via the HDMI interface.  Thus, the recorded 1080p/24 information was converted to 1080i/60 then converted again to 1080p/60.  The 1st generation Pioneer and Sony BD players introduced at the end of 2006 employed a chip set that could directly output 1080p/60, thus eliminating the additional conversions associated with interlacing and de-interlacing.  None of the 1st generation HD-DVD players provided a 1080p output.  These players used the same basic video decoding chips as did the Samsung BD player and unlike the Samsung did not include the additional processing chip to de-interlace back to 1080p for output via HDMI.

BD and HD-DVD in 2007/2008

In the first half of 2007 manufacturers of both formats introduced their second generation players.  Toshiba introduced their first 2nd generation player at the very end of 2006 (their entry-level model HD-A2) with higher-end models introduced during the first half of 2007.  Their mid and high-end models offer 1080p/60 output while their entry-level models are limited to 1080i.  

HD-DVD Players:  Toshiba has been essentially the only major source for stand-alone HD-DVD players while Microsoft is offering an add-on HD-DVD drive (made by Toshiba) for use with the X-Box 360 video game console.  Toshiba announced in Feb. 2008 plans to halt production of DVD players thus essentially killing the HD-DVD format.  The following players may still be available from some vendors until existing inventory is exhausted:

* Note:  Advanced Audio refers to support for the Dolby Digital TrueHD and/or DTS HD-Master Audio (DTS HD-MA).  YES in the table means that the player supports both Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD-MA.  Some players may include internal decoding for the advanced audio formats while other players may simply provide a bitstream output via the HDMI, in which case a separate AV Receiver or Processor would be required in order to decode the advanced audio data. All discs and players support the core Dolby Digital and DTS surround audio and those formats are available in any case, even if the advanced audio formats are not supported.

BD Players:  For BD players there are more choices of brand names.  All of the BD players offer 1080p/60 output and a most of the current models support a native 1080p/24 output for use with those few HDTV displays that can currently accept this video format.  The current (March 2008) and announced future models of  BD players (for the U.S. market) are:

Notes:  

1. Information on future models is preliminary and subject to change.

2. Advanced Audio refers to support for the Dolby Digital TrueHD and/or DTS HD-Master Audio (DTS HD-MA).  ALL in the table means that the player supports both Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD-MA.  Some players may include internal decoding for the advanced audio formats while other players may simply provide a bitstream output via the HDMI, in which case a separate AV Receiver or Processor would be required in order to decode the advanced audio data. All discs and players support the core Dolby Digital and DTS surround audio and those formats are available in any case, even if the advanced audio formats are not supported.  Also all players that support any of the advanced audio formats also support output of uncompressed linear PCM audio (as found on some Blu-ray Disc movie titles). 

BD Profiles:  The first of 3rd generation of BD players some of which support the new "BD Profile 1.1" requirements  have appeared.  Such profile 1.1 players must implement additional features including "picture in a picture" (PIP), support for secondary audio decoding and include as a minimum 256 MB of 'persistent' memory.  These new features are being mandated by the Blu-ray Disc Association through an updated "BD profile" (i.e., essentially an updated specification of the minimum required functions for BD players).  All new BD players receiving approval from the Blu-ray Disc Association after October 2007 are required to support this updated BD Profile version 1.1.  Although the Samsung BD-P1400 was the first available 3rd generation player, it was introduced before the required support for Profile 1.1 and it conforms to the older Profile 1.0 requirements.  However the BD-P1400 was the first BD player to support output of the DTS HD-MA audio, via bitstream over the HDMI.  The first movie BD release that will be supporting the new features enabled by Profile 1.1 (e.g., PIP) was release on January 1, 2008.  A firmware update for the Playstation 3 in late 2007 that updated it to support the requirements of Profile 1.1 and Sony has announced plans for a firmware update in March 2008 that will upgrade the Playstation 3 to Blu-ray Disc Profile 2.0.  Panasonic has announced plans for the first standalone Profile 2.0 player with their DMP-BD50 planned for release in the May 2008 timeframe.

Dual Format Players

 Earlier in 2007 LG Electronics became the first manufacture to introduce a player that could play movies on both BD and HD-DVD discs.  The LG model BH100 was essentially a full featured BD player that has added a limited capability to also play the movie content of HD-DVD discs.  However,  interactive menus and special features of HD-DVD discs were not fully supported.  LG has now introduced a new dual format player, model BH200,  at $999, that fully support both the BD and the HD-DVD features.  Also in December 2007 Samsung introduce a dual format player, model BDP-UP5000 that supports the features of both BD and HD-DVD.  In early 2008 announced plans to introduce a 2nd generation dual format player, model BDP-UP5500, in the second half of 2008.   However, the decision of Toshiba to halt the manufacture of HD-DVD players and the withdrawal of movie studios and retailer support for HD-DVD is expected to result in LG and Samsung dropping dual format players from the future offerings.

BD and HD-DVD Software

Currently about one half of the U.S. movie studios are producing software (movies) on HD-DVD format while all but two of the major studios/distributors (Universal and Paramount/Dreamworks)  are producing software on the BD format.  See the table below for which U.S. movie studios are releasing software on which HD format.  Although HD-DVD had a few months of head start on BD, sales of BD software has surged ahead and as of late-2007 is outselling HD-DVD by 2-to-1.  BD and HD-DVD software is available from national retail chain stores such as Circuit City and Best Buy and on-line from many e'tailers.  Amazon.com is probably the leading seller of both BD and HD-DVD software and they offer an extensive listing of current and future software titles.  Both Blockbuster and Netflix rent BD software and Netflix also rents HD-DVDs, while Blockbuster in mid-2007 announced they are dropping rentals for HD-DVD software and will only rent BD software (along with standard DVDs).  A number of publications provide reviews of BD and HD-DVD software with Widescreen Review magazine providing the most comprehensive reviews.

Note 1 - In July 2007 Viacom (parent of Paramount Studios) announced they are changing their format neutral position in the Blu-ray Disc (BD) vs. HD-DVD battle to offering future releases only in HD-DVD format.  Also Dreamworks Animation titles, distributed by Paramount, will also be released exclusively in HD-DVD format.  However, given the February 2008 Toshiba decision to end production of HD-DVD hardware, Paramount and Dreamworks have since decided to resume releases on Blu-ray Disc sometime in mid-2008.

Note 3 - In February 2008 Universal announced they would be focusing future HD releases on Blu-ray Disc format.  This followed Toshiba's decision to withdraw from HD-DVD hardware production.  

The Format War

Much as been made in the press about the format war between BD and HD-DVD, comparing it to the Betamax vs. VHS format war of the late 1970's.  Although both formats will probably survive for several years, the industry support, especially that of the movie studios, is in BD's favor and 2007 was predicted to be the year BD began to dominate the market.  However, the July 2007 decision by Paramount Pictures to switch from a format neutral position to exclusively supporting HD-DVD prolonged the format war into 2008.   As of late 2007 BD appeared to be at least holding (and perhaps gradually increasing) it's 2-to-1 lead in market share for software sales.  Then in early January 2008 Warner Brothers announced plans to drop support for HD-DVD and after May 2008 only release their movies on Blu-ray Disc.  Warner is the largest producer of DVDs with approximately 20% of that market and is considered essential to the success of any HD optical disc format.  Warner had been releasing movies on both HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc and saw sales on Blu-ray Disc exceeding those on HD-DVD.  The format war essentially came to an end on February 17, 2008 when Toshiba announced they would be halting production of HD-DVD hardware, thus giving Blu-ray Disc the victory.  Shortly after than the two remaining studios offering HD titles exclusively on HD-DVD (i.e., Paramount and Dreamworks) announced plans to halt production of HD-DVD titles and move forward with production of titles on Blu-ray Disc.