Rest In Peace HD-DVD

  if true.

nonetheless, i'll still be watching mine for many years ahead as i eventually snag a dual format  blowray/hd-dvd player down the road at the right price.


it is a shame that the far more consumer friendly format died at the hands of the excessively corporate friendly format thanks to inside payoffs and teenage gamers.  the least true part of it all (corproate speak) is that consumers made the choice.  60:40 over a year is not a "choice"

for now, i suspect.      they'll eventually move over  if BLU  catches any mainstream adoption,  UNLESS they (and Tosh and UNI) follow the strategy i laid out in the other thread.   

i suspect some of the titles i imported on hd-dvd (equilibrium, machinist, brotherhood of the wolf) will not be available within 3, hell, maybe 5 years even  on BLU  even if all studios went blu.  that alone would keep me from ever completely getting rid of my hd-dvd collection.   as long as there's something out there to play them,  i don't see the big deal .  (other than of course having to buy a blu player  puke heheh)  oh well. 



the funniest thing is i can't believe M$ is willing to roll over this easily and just accept  BD  as the defacto optical medium for the next generation xbox.  wow.

I'm going to load up on HD-DVD in the coming 4-5 months.  I had six show up a few days ago (HP * 4, Evan Almighty and Knocked Up), four yesterday (Blade Runner, Queen Live, The Fountain and Pan's Labyrinth) and I *think* I have one or two more on the way (LOL).  I can think of a few dozen titles I'd like to have before they disappear from the market completely.

I'll buy a Blu-Ray player when the time is right.  It'll have to be a combo, it'll have to support at least 1.1 and it'll have to be under $400 max.  Or, since I have my A35, I might  buy a quality Blu-Ray only at about $250 or less.  There are a good few movies I want to own that will never be on HD-DVD now.  Worth it to me.

I agree.  HDM is dead, well, it's niche at best.  DVD will reign supreme for many more years especially with the nice job some of the players do in upconverting.  I'm not too worried about downloads.  It'll be at least three and probably five before bandwidth/storage make it even worth thinking about assuming you can get past the DRM issues.  Granted, there will be compressed 720p crap with cheesy audio before then but that doesn't float my boat at all.

'Twas a pleasant interlude.  No regrets.

I've ignored all the chatter up til now.  From the standpoint of the average home viewer, what's the difference?  I'm not looking for rants about Corporate America, who does/doesn't respect copyright laws or use the DMCA as a weapon, etc. -- just what the Average Joe in his living room would see between the two formats.

Average Joe - nothing^*.  But he'll pay more for it now. 

The format war was actually good in some ways.  It generated a lot of chatter, effected price wars and made both formats better through competition.  Now that Blu-Ray has won the battle it gets to fight the war against DVD (and maybe downloads) and prices will likely level off at DVD+$10 with no BOGOs or package deals.  I think the BDA has its work cut out for it in thinking how it's going to move forward over the next two years.  I assume Sony won't be able to subsidize everything for much longer.  It remains to be seen if they can get to a place where the production costs will allow them to go head-to-head against DVD.

* J6P mostly doesn't know what he's buying, doesn't calibrate his display, runs HTIAB audio and so forth.  Not dissing anyone; it's just how it is.

basically nothing,  in theory BD can offer superior PQ , AQ  due to larger storage capacity and bandwidth,  however, to date, they have not (had not) been shown to really do so.  this is due to the advancement of codec development and compression algorithms.  in fact, many BD (usa) titles can be imported as hd-dvd releases from europe  that feature better PQ/AQ  than their BD counterparts sold in BestBuy here.     the fact is most titles released in 2007 on either format were equivalent in maximizing their resources to create a truly cinema quality experience as long as the user has a good tv/ speaker system/ receiver.     hd-dvd players  offered internal decoding of advanced Audio so that older receivers could get the best sound,  many BD players do (did) not.  hd-dvd was a finalized spec,  bd still is not (that is the bd player you buy today might not play all future bd discs).   hd-dvd allowed users to buy/play region free discs from around the world,  bd does (and will ) not.   hd-dvd did allow the twin/combo format ( hd and sd playable on all hd-dvd/sd-dvd players) , while bd can not (and will never do so) so for average joe, it probably doesnt matter much, except if he buys a bd title, it will only work on his bd player.    prices without the 'war' will definitely not fall as fast as they were during the war.


for true movie/tv enthusiast/purists, a lot was lost however, particularly in the ability to import region-free titles (japanese movies, english tv shows, etc).   they will now have to hope some usa studio publishing on BD decides to buy the rights to the title and release it domestically.   that, and it will be much harder to rip a fair-use copy of their disc to their home theatre PC and play it that way across the home. keep in mind some BD players may even BRICK* if you insert a bd-r  (think dvd-r ) in them   due to excessive antiDRM bullcrap.

not really, but that war was settled by the consumer, not studio backroom deals and diehard gamers.
almost all titles were released on both formats (not so with hd/bd) and people ultimately voted 70-30 across the board over about 5 years.

they voted for the most userfriendly experience with almost equal* feature quality.



this time they did the opposite- theoretically better feature quality and far less userfriendly experience.