Blu-ray and HD DVD: The facts

Tip 1: The benefits

Why should you care about HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc? The simple answer is that these two optical disc formats are the best sources of top-quality, high-definition video currently on the market.

 

How much better than DVD?
High-definition video (usually abbreviated to hi-def, or HD) represents the crème de la crème of visual entertainment in the home. Where standard-definition sources such as DVD deliver their images at a resolution of 720x576 pixels (or 720x480 pixels in the US and Japan), HD resolutions can reach the giddy heights of 1,920x1,080 pixels -- which means they contain roughly five times the amount of detail in the UK. HD video also tends to be better encoded and less compressed than standard-definition pictures, which makes artefacts such as noise less visible.

Feed some HD video to the right television or projector and you'll get an experience far beyond what DVD can offer. Take the climactic Empire State Building sequence of Peter Jackson’s version of King Kong, for example. Watch the standard DVD edition on a big TV and Kong's fur will be a largely indistinct mass of dark grey and black; the buildings and streets of Manhattan, lying in the background, will be slightly fuzzy; and behind them, you'll notice little speckles of noise in the clouds where the video information has been compressed.

Swap it for the HD DVD version and it's as if you've removed a layer of grime and Vaseline from your screen: individual bristles can be made out on Kong's back as he climbs the building, while the cityscape behind leaps to life with clean, razor-sharp edges and the sky becomes crystal clear and noise-free. The improvement, especially on a screen of 42 inches or larger, is nothing short of a revelation.

Different hi-def flavours
HD DVD and Blu-ray can deliver hi-def video in three formats: 720p, 1080i and 1080p. 720p offers the lowest pixel count (its resolution is 1,280x720 pixels) but each frame is scanned on to your screen progressively, or in its entirety, which results in smooth edges during motion.

 

The 1080i format has a 1,920x1,080-pixel resolution, but each frame is scanned in two passes, which can lead to jagged edges around moving objects. The best of the lot is 1080p: it's both progressive and highly detailed, but not every HD Ready screen or projector is able to display it. You'll need a large screen to truly appreciate how much of a leap over 720p and 1080i it represents -- we'd recommend at least 50 inches to really highlight the improvements.

But HD DVD and Blu-ray's talents don't begin and end with rapier-sharp picture quality. They also offer the best sound available. As long as the right hardware is hooked up to your disc player, you can experience lossless Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio -- new digital audio formats encoded so efficiently that they lose none of the original recording's quality when they're decoded by your disc player or home-cinema receiver.

The new disc formats also take DVD's interactive menus and extra features one step further. Both can incorporate complex, fully animated menus, including pop-ups that can be browsed while you're watching a movie, and both can offer picture-in-picture video -– although this feature is not supported by all Blu-ray hardware.

Also available to both formats is the ability to drag in more content from the Web -- as long as your player is equipped with a network connection, certain discs will allow you to access exclusive online content, including videos and updatable stuff such as cast bios and filmographies.

Go to TIP 2 : Which is best?