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Is an HD-DVD player worth it now?

3K views 68 replies 27 participants last post by  Kyoseki 
#1 ·
I've noticed that the prices of the Toshiba HD-DVD players have come down a good bit in just the last couple months. BestBuy and Circuit City both have the HD-A3 and HD-A30 models for $149 and $199. Thats a pretty good deal compared to what they were just a few months ago and Blu-ray players. Is it worth it? I heard somewhere that Blu-Ray already won the format war? Is this true?
 
#54 ·
I have no interest in the high-definition DVDs. In 2004, I got caught up in the hype of HD and bought a plasma TV. After about 2-3 months of going "Wow, look how cool that is!" I realized that it doesn't make the content any better. Crappy shows are still crappy in HD, and I should've used the money for more useful things, like tools or Jeep mods. :)
 
#57 ·
I'm on my 3rd xbox 360 in one year,RROD... It dies about every 5 months or so. I can't wait until it's out of warranty. What an overhyped POS.
 
#58 ·
My PS3 and its games are sweet. Its very accomplished at games. Wait till Metal Gear, GTA and Gran Turismo come out. XBOX 360 is nice too, my roommate has it. Different strokes for different folks.

What it boils down to is in two years PS3 will be running blu ray disc and can have more expansive games because of the storage side of the disc, so to say PS3 is lame now is pretty short sighted.

This discussion is about movies though and it was not really necessary to mention the gaming aspects of the PS3.
 
#61 ·
The PS3 is a great piece of hardware, no denying that, it's just that it's library right now is somewhat lacking.

... nonetheless I bought an 80gb one last night :)

... oh and Amazon are running a 3 for 2 on a LOT of BRD titles.
 
#63 ·
I play games a lot, but most of the great titles are already on the xbox so I didn't see any point in getting one, but circumstances arose that let me get a deal so I went for it.

This one is definitely going to be my driving game system, Gran Turismo is one of my all time favorite games, so I'm looking forward to the prologue in April and then the full release at Christmas (the prologue had better count towards the cost of the full version).

Now, if I can just figure out how to justify a $300 steering wheel setup....
 
#65 · (Edited)
But if you're a consumer will you choose a format with only 2 movie studios supporting it? Or will you choose the one with all the other studios supporting it? The movie industry in general only has a window of time to make money off a new format before another one replaces it. They don't want a format war, so it had to end quick. Blu-ray had features that the studios wanted like regional encoding. HDDVD discs are not regionally encoded meaning a disc from Germany would work in your HDDVD player. Who's choosing the format?

The only technical advantage that Blu-ray has is more theoretical storage space on the discs. What's more is the HDDVD players were always much cheaper than the Blu-ray players even before the HDDVD fire sale. That's all on Toshiba for not getting the advertising done on HDDVD.

Also like I said earlier, HDDVD players started with their full final specs.

Every Blu-ray player out there except for the really new ones are spec 1.0. There are a few Spec 1.1's out there right now. This means your Blu-ray player right now won't be able to play all the features on the newer Blu-ray discs. What's even better is the final 2.0 spec won't be released until the end of the year. So all the people with blu-ray players will be buying another one if they want internet connectivity and other advanced features.
More money for the those in the Blu-ray camp.

Me, I just like watching movies and don't care about special features.

The exception to this is the Play Station 3. It has the hardware and the ability through firmware upgrades to be a final spec 2.0 machine. Kinda funny that a gaming system will probably end up being a movie player only for most people.

So basically buy a PS3 if you want Blu-ray now.

Sorry for the rant and repeat of things I said earlier.
 
#66 ·
I don't necessarily choose by studio. I choose by, 'If I like it than (regular) DVD, If I loved it, then Blu-Ray.' But that criteria also is affected by cost, and special/bonus features. I am one of those who like to watch a lot of the bonus features too.

And then there are some movies out there, while I wish were released on Blu-Ray, I will buy the regular DVD instead. Chance are, if I had an HD player too, I would've bought that instead.

In the end is all comes down to movie like ability and cost.
 
#67 ·
I agree with you on choosing whether or not to buy certain movies in HD. Haumana. I've noticed that not all movies are better in HD than upscaled DVD. Sometimes the quality is actually very close. I bet there are lots of people that think the DVD player they already have is high definition.

Also movies that suck in DVD will probably suck in Blu-ray. It's not like Blu-ray makes the plot of the movie better. lol
 
#69 ·
I've noticed that not all movies are better in HD than upscaled DVD. Sometimes the quality is actually very close.
The quality of the picture is also heavily dependent on the quality of the film transfer, some, like the Fifth Element, originally had a really crappy transfer done so the movie's quality wasn't any better even though you had a lot more pixels.

That's why there's a remastered version, everyone complained that the quality was so awful that the studios did the job properly.
 
#68 ·
The consumers ARE choosing the format. We are not the consumers of the disc technology, we are consumers of the produced content on the disc. The movie studios are the consumers of the disc technology.

Look at cassettes, there were at least 3 different kinds of cassette tape materials. Cassettes were released on one or the other and you bought the ones you liked. This drove the studios to pick the cassette format that sounded the best for their content.

The difference between cassettes and DVD's are that very few are making a player that can play both. So if you want to blame someone, blame Toshiba and Sony for not making it easy to produce a player that handles both. Don't blame the movie studios.
 
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