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[hopdude]

The 360 went in support of Blu-rays ex-competitor, HD-DVD. If you wanted, you could get a HD-DVD drive for it for like $100 more or something. It turned out that they bet wrong, choosing the inferior format, not that it matters too much except that you can't watch modern hi-def movies on them anymore.

As for what blu-ray (and also HD-DVD) is (are?), they are essentially DVDs which by one means or another fit more space onto the same form factor. Like DVDs have more storage than CDs, Blu-ray disks and HD-DVDs have more storage than DVDs. That's the only thing.

That's also where the confusion kicks in. Both formats were marketed as if they were their own special brand of video which is better than their competitor. Which is false. In reality, they both use the same video compression scheme, the only difference being that the way the disks are read is different between the two.

TECHNO INTERLUDE PARAGRAPH: Both formats increased the storage capacity of the disks by making the 'markings' on them (the little ones and zeros that make up any digital data, for the technically illiterate) more dense. HD-DVD did this by creating a more focused red laser than that of a DVD, which is exactly how DVDs increased their capacity from CDs. Blu-ray, however, used a blue laser instead of a red one (Hence the name). This is significant because blue light has a shorter wavelength than red light, thus allowing higher densities to be achieved much more easily. Combined with similarly improved laser technology, Blu ray achieved an impressive 25GB of space per layer (making 50GB per disk possible), outreaching HD-DVD's 15GB (thus 30GB per disk) and of course dwarfing DVD's 4.7GB (or 9.4GB per disk). Because blu-ray disks and HD-DVDs are mostly similar in other regards, blu-ray can be considered the superior format, a fact which half the industry ignored by supporting HD-DVD anyway.
END TECHNO INTERLUDE PARAGRAPH

SO AS A REASON FOR ALL THE ABOVE BABBLING: The HD format, be it in blu-ray or HD-DVD form, looks MIGHTY darn GOOD if you have a big, high definition tv. At least, that is, if the film was originally filmed in HD. Some (read: a lot) movies in HD are actually old movies where the film was rescanned for higher detail. In my experience, these look exactly like the DVD versions. Movies that were shot in HD, however, look really darn nice (like 300 and Wall-E, for example).

TL;DR: HD and HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are only good if you have a high def tv, in which case they're pretty nice. Otherwise, no real use in terms of video.
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