JimRochester

I was in CD/DVD store yesterday and the guy was asking some ridiculous prices for some HD-DVD's. He's trying to tell me what collectors items they are. I personally don't think there are that many people that are still HD only, or even if they were would pay $30+ for and HD-DVD when an SD or even BD's could be had for $10 or $15

Is there really a market for these $33 copies of Bullitt?

I figure this board is a good cross section of the HD market. Now that the demise of HD-DVD is just about a year old. Where do we stand with the HD formats?



Note: I did not include the option of neither because I assumed anyone not owning HDDVD would not start now.

bookcase3

I'm slowly replacing my HD DVDs when I can get their BD counterparts very inexpensive.

DeanoBKN

I bought my Blu-Ray player in January of last year, but I still own my XBOX 360 HD drive and about 30 HD's. I have no desire to replace them as my HD player works just fine, but if I can find them dirt cheap ($5 to $10 at most) I probably would.

Pointyskull

If they're just sitting on the shelf, I'd say the answer is 'no'.

While there's a certain inherent collectible-vibe with any sort of discontinued entertainment commodity (especially where terms like "limited edition" and "collector's edition" are bandied about recklessly), I imagine the only time a high price would be warranted would be if some portion of the content was HD-DVD exclusive.

When I went Blu, I considered selling my HD-DVD player and HD discs until I realized that was pointless. The discs play, the player works, the image quality is excellent. Why would I want to rebuy them?

JimRochester

That's what I thought. It was cheaper to buy a cheapo Venture HD player for $40 as insurance than it would have been to rebuy 80 discs in Blu

macnorton

A question for those who are...why did you go HD exclusive to begin with? I am curious as to why...since Blu had the size advantage right from the get go.

Pointyskull

The price of the player.

When I bought my Toshiba (Dec 07) it was about $150, and Blu-Ray players weren't anywhere close to that. I knew that "the war" would only have one winner - and all indication seemed to point to Blu - but I figured the battle would wage on a little longer.

Then a little over month later Toshiba pulled the plug.

macnorton

So even though on the technical side, Blu might have been more advanced, price was a factor...very interesting.

Pointyskull

Technical schmeck-nical.

HD-DVD titles from Blade Runner to Transformers look and sound spectacular, there's an abundance of supplements and overall are a dramatic improvement over SD. I would still hold most of them equally against their BD counterparts in terms of audio/video quality.

What was (and still is) not to like?

And of course price was a factor. That doesn't seem all that unusual. If I had unlimited cashflow I'm sure just about all of my purchasing decisions would have been different - be it car, clothes, home, vacations, entertainment, etc.

This forum is cram-packed with DVD-related bargains because I think price is a factor for most, especially when it comes to home entertainment. You find your budget, and then determine what works best in that price range.

That's where forums like this are worth their weight in gold, as far as I'm concerned.

GenPion

I still have HD-DVD's in addition to Blu-ray's. I mean, why not?

steebo777

I buy movies based on what I want, so I still have my HD DVD player along with a PS3 for BDs.

macnorton

Don't get me wrong, I am not arguing about the quality. I have seen HD & Blu of the same film and I'll be damned if I could tell the difference.

I was stating from my techno-geek side...as in the larger size capacity for Blu would allow for certain advantages. But at the same time, it took Blu forever to get any kind of interactivity where HD already had it. So one part of me looks at the Blu side and sees that and the other part of me looks at HD and sees something else.

I gladly would have been format neutral, but the war ended before I could. I was asking because there seems to be a lot of militant answers like, "Fuck Sony" or "fuck Microsoft"...something without a lot of substance. Price is a perfectly valid reason...I just assumed (my fault) there would be more to it then that.

CardiffGiant

I guess I am one of the few that is still just HD (and DVD). The price point is what got me into HD. For those that think that is ridiculous: we all have different situations that essentially make the decisions for us. In my case, I needed a DVD player, I wanted an upscale for my new HDTV. The A2 went on sale for 88 bucks with 5 free HDDVDs.

Of course, I made an informed decision, this format could die, but I still have a cheap upscale DVD player and my HDDVDs will still work. I knew about the differences between the two, HDDVD was (at the time) more interactive and, many felt, had less issues that Blu. If you were just getting into the HD market last November and you saw tens of thousands of HDDVD units being sold, then I don't think you would have said that Blu-ray had a distinct advantage over HD.

I haven't bought into Blu yet for the financial reason that it presents.

Macnorton: I've always thought those "sony" or "microsoft" people were funny as well...I watch HDDVDs with a Toshiba player on a Sony TV.

Gizmo

I always felt HD DVD was superior to Blu-ray in both hardware and software (titles I would like to own) but went Blu within a few months of its launch (same with HD DVD). As of today, I have not fully replaced a single HD with its BD counterpart with the exception of Heroes (to have all the seasons in the same format) and Serenity (more features). I still kept the HD DVD versions though...

PopcornTreeCt

I was for HD DVD, they had better movies. Out of Sight is one of my favorite movies and the HD DVD is reference quality.

bunkaroo

I still have 60 HD DVD's, but the vast majority are Uni releases. I have a handful of imports that are not available on BD or as a region-free BD (Le Pacte Des Loups for one).

As Universal releases them on Blu I will replace them, especially if they are combos. Truth be told, I haven't used my HD DVD player in months as it is. I have well over 400 BD's not to mention 100's of DVD's to watch, and the format is the small minority of my collection at this point.

Dan

Still have all of my HD DVDs. I haven't purchased their Blu-ray counterparts yet (with the exception of Vexille since the Blu-ray has english subs).

LickTheABCs

Haven't sold off one HD-DVD yet, and don't really plan to. In fact, I think I use my HD player more than my Blu-ray player due to the fact that, IMO, it's a much better upconverter.

I refuse to re-buy a product just because the case is a different color. There are exceptions like Serenity adding new features or Batman Begins adding the prologue but in the grand scheme of things, I've yet to see one of the studios "catch-up" releases that looked anything but the same as the HD release.

Groucho

Never bought into HD-DVD, I waited until a winner was clear. That said, I did own a Divx player for several years back in the day.

Doughboy

I was rooting for HD-DVD til early last year, but then I jumped on the Blu-ray bandwagon when I realized how much faster the PS3 was compared to Toshiba's players. Not to mention the advantages of 20 extra GB per disc.

As for my collection, around late '07 I switched from HD-DVD to Blu-ray for WB's dual format titles. I've also been replacing Universal HD-DVDs with their Blu-ray counterparts so I could get the lossless audio upgrade(except for U-571 which looks better on HD-DVD).

The only ones I'll likely end up keeping are those rare WB titles that have Dolby TrueHD exclusively on the HD-DVD(Phantom of the Opera, Training Day, etc.) and the Paramount releases that have higher bitrate DD 5.1+ tracks on the HD-DVD.

lizard

Blu-ray has had numerous technical problems from the get-go:

• The stupid changing of "profiles" from 1.0 to 1.1 to 2.0. 1.0 players are still for sale today, two and a half years after the format launched.

• The profoundly boneheaded decision to use Java, which has led to disc incompatibility with many players, slow loading times, and has required numerous firmware updates for players. I presume that they will eventually get it right and firmware updates will no longer be needed just to play new discs, but it hasn't happened yet for many players. The method used for interactivity in HD DVD was vastly superior in simplicity and performance.

• The use of BD+ copy protection, which slows loading times and which ultimately proved futile, as almost everyone here predicted.

• It was (and remains, I presume) more difficult to encode in the Blu-ray Disc format. It requires much more software time and technical expertise than it did for HD DVD.


The main advantage of the BD format, the larger disc capacity, proved unimportant, because newer compression codecs were able to provide excellent PQ and AQ in the 30 GB capacity of HD DVD. Throwing in a second disc for extras, if more space was needed, was no big deal.

The other advantage of the format was the scratch resistant coating (needed because the data layer of BD is so close to the surface). For those of us who treat our discs with care, this was irrelevant. But it is an advantage for rentals.


Blu-ray Disc won the format war. But don't believe the hype that it was for technical reasons. 'Taint so.

bunkaroo

To be fair there is more to it than that for some. Now you're still using your HD player for upconversion so you have more value in keeping that player in service.

Personally, I still use my Oppo for all DVD. Also, the DTS-HD tracks are worth it for me to trade up. And ultimately, I am trying to work towards not having to rely on my HD DVD player for any movies. I'm not really worried about it short-term, but I would hate to still have to maintain an extra component in my rack 3 years from now for 10 movies.

bookcase3

For me, price was the sole factor for going with HD DVD: I got a Toshiba A2 for $99. For what it's worth, I still think it's better than my PS3 for upconversion, too.

utopianz14

I initially bought a HD-DVD player because of the price. Can't argue with paying $100 for the player and three HD-DVDs.

Shortly after HD-DVD lost the war, I sold off most of the HD-DVDs I had accumulated (which wasn't that many to begin with - around 25 titles), when the selling prices were more than reasonable. I ended up making a net profit, essentially getting the player and the two HD-DVDs I still own for free and then some.

And last week, I finally got that $50 gift card for purchasing the HD-DVD player from Best Buy.

My HD-A2 is still getting a lot of use, but mostly as an upconverting DVD player. I'll get a BD player someday, but for now, I'm more than content watching my upconverted DVDs and my Planet Earth HD-DVD on it.

bunkaroo

I would never argue Blu won because of tech. That's not how these things ever get decided it seems. Still, it's hard to argue with the fact that lossless is now on all Uni titles. There is something to be said for the extra capacity. Not to mention, IMO, while 30GB may have been plenty right now for most films, you want to have room to grow and do more. Seems like HD DVD was already butting it's head against the ceiling. I am hoping higher capacity can equal more longevity for Blu.

Also, I've always thought it was the BD-J stuff and not the BD+ stuff that makes some of these discs load slow. We had slow loaders before BD+ even hit the scene. Nowadays it's probably a combo of the two.

I also happen to love the scratch resistance. I take extremely good care of my discs, and no one else touches them. But that doesn't help me if it's a floater in transit. The coating does help me there.