Here's the document from the DVD Forum, the group of companies that actually developed and set the HD-DVD format.
http://www.dvdforum.org/hddvd-whatis.htm

Heck, even the official Blu-ray site says HD-DVD supports 1080p.
http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/#hddvd

An HD-DVD supports 15gb per side, Blu-ray supports 25gb per side.

Therefore, for double-sided disks, HD-DVD will hold about 5.5 hours of high-def video, and Blu-ray will hold about 9 hours of high-def video.

What's interesting is that they BOTH use 405nm lasers. So they should both be feeling the constraint of diode shortages, no?

 

Clearly he wants Blu-Ray to win and therefore doesn't want to go look at the links, or reality.

 

Thanks for the links, the one on engadget was especially insightful.

 

The 1080p support is software based. THIS IS JUST A STORAGE MEDIUM! You can record whatever you want on it. I also think Blu-Ray is better and should be paid whatever extra pennies it costs. Down the line people will come up with who knows what that will need more space so HDDVD right now fills up to 90% which doesn't give any room for growth.

Unfortunately HD will win because the $200 XBOX drive which plugs into any PC just fine and will rule all once WinDVD and PowerDVD release their HD software later this month.

 

They've also gotten the Xbox HD drive to work on a mac.

So if someone is already running media center this is a pretty cheap way to get HD-DVD up and running.

And if you can store up to 9 hours of HD video on an HD disk I think it'll be fine. Few movies even reach the 2 hour mark any more with the longer ones reaching up to 3. Hell, you can pretty much fit the entire LOTR's trilogy on one disk.

So there's plenty of storage space with either one. Both support the same levels of HD which leaves, well, storage size as the only real difference. (Other then price.)

With most people being happy with the "limited" 4.7 gigs on a normal DVD, I'm not sure they'll care that one is a bit larger then the other.

Hell, I'm not sure most folks will notice.

So, most likely, it'll come down to price. And HD wins there.

Add in that people are working on players that will play both formats and you end up with a dead format war before it started.

 

Okay, I'm convinced. I'm not biased as it may seem. I just wanted to learn both sides of the story. I was probably thrown off, because the first gen HD-DVD didn't support 1080P.

I guess we'll wait and see what happens. The funny thing is, I've never been a sony fan, if they fail, I could care less. I just don't want ps3 to suck in time.

 

Amit is correct in that the 1st gen HD-DVD player did not support 1080P (or if it did it was 1080i deinterlaced or some such shenanigans).

 

No, he's not. The first gen PLAYERS didn't support it. His comment was that HD-DVD didn't support it.

HD-DVD itself does. The players just didn't output at that level.

That is not the same as HD-DVD not supporting it.

 

yeah, you got a point.

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I guess RICOH has come up with a universal player that uses a spacer to make up for the difference in surface thickness. I don't know how much quality you would lose in the process, but it's a step in the right direction. I wonder if it's too late for the two formats to still work something out. The name "HD-DVD" is self explanatory for the novices, so that's a plus.


I guess we'll wait and see.

 

I'm still surprised at some of the ideas here.

I can encode a video at 3240p if I wanted to and record it on any media that can hold that much data. The number 1080p is only a pixel count, not the physical output on a machine. Both HDDVD and Blue-Ray can have whatever you want recorded on them.

Bottom line, the resolution is not a factor in this debate.