Are Blu-ray dvds the future?

[AB Asks]

Reports say that Blu-ray high definition dvds are going to win in their battle against hd-dvds for domination of shelf space. The question is, do we really need this next generation of dvd? A lot of people have only just replaced their videos with dvds and now Blu-ray is looking to take their place. How do you feel about the rise of Blu-ray discs?

[legend758duo]

Surely both hd and blu-ray are just enhanced versions of dvd?Theres no need to choose between either at the moment.Well unless you want to repeat the betamax vs vhs should we shouldnt we nonsense again.I had a beta max video and thought the quality was better than vhs.But what do i know?

[fo3nix]

See my answers here:
http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Technology/Elec tronics/Question504888.html

Short answer:
Both doomed anyway; in 5 years or so, downloads will be dominant.

And yes, it is required. More and more consumer camcorders are going HD, and a format is required to store it. DVD doesn't cut it any more.

[Gromit]

Congratulations AB Ed, your stupidest question this year.

You may have noticed that TV screen sizes are getting larger. If you imagine a digital picture say a jpeg and look at it at 200% or 400%, then the picture quality gets worse the higher you magnify it because there is the same amount of information. This is the pictures resolution.

Blu-ray discs can hold a lot more information, so the picture size/resolution can be bigger an can be viewed larger without loss of quality.

You can still play your old DVD films on Blu-ray equipped machines, it is just that on your 60 inch television, they will start to look a bit poor.