HD DVD and Blu-ray Compared Again

While reading Gizmodo.com today, I found a very interesting article.

HD DVD and Blu-ray Compared Using Identical Source Material - Gizmodo

The movies Training Day, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Rumor Has It have all be released in both HD DVD and Blu-Ray formats. Finally, a head to head comparison of the new formats.

The article compares them, and ranks HD DVD as the superior product. However, upon further inspections, this is not a complete apples to apples comparison. It appears that the codecs used to encode the movies were not the same. The movies on Blu-ray used MPEG-2 while the movies for HD DVD used VC-1. And the VC-1 codec is a superior codec.

Since both Blu-ray and HD DVD can use the VC-1 codec, there is much speculation as to why they did not use it.

So, though this first comparison of the 2 new formats clearly had HD DVD as the winner, but there are several factors that leaves that conclusion to be doubted.

I personally believe that the Blu-ray will be the superior product when it is all said and done. However, as we learned in the VHS/Beta-max wars, the superior product does not always win.