JimRochester

It's funny, I've still had very little problem with any of the HD DVD's not playing. Accepted has one glitch and freezes toward the end in the courtroom scene, but that's not yet available on Blu. I have upgraded a few titles to Blu but only because they were such smokin BF deals, or in some cases I needed something to fullfill a 5/20 or a U&S coupon.

Gizmo

I remember the "all HD DVDs will be on Blu-ray is about a year" back in 2008 by some of the big wigs. It's now almost 2013 and there are still HD DVD exclusive movies. Yeah, that's nearly 5 full years after the death of HD DVD.

At this point, many of the HD DVDs are $1-$2 each. The players can be had for $20-$40. There's a good chance some of those HD DVD titles will never be released on Blu-ray (some available only overseas, some of which are region coded on Blu-ray). So if someone really wants to watch some movies in HD, on disc, HD DVD is the only way to go. Plus, some still look better thanks to no additional DNR/EE and/or have more special features.

Am I advocating rushing out and buying HD DVD? No. But the "it'll eventually come out Blu-ray" is probably the worst line ever considering it's been 5 years.

Gizmo

If you don't care about 1080p, get an A2 or A3. If you care about 1080p, get a A20 or A30.

The A35 is a little less common but I think still commands around $80. The XA2 is the best HD DVD player around and goes for about $150ish.

Ignore any first generation models. They look great, but load times are killer.

If you have an Xbox 360, just get the add-on. That's about $20 or so and it should play just about everything and it takes up little space (it's what I currently use for the 5-10 HD DVDs I still play a year).

slimdude

I could see if there were hundreds and thousands of titles that were not released on blu-ray, but it's only just a handful. I know 5 years is a long time, but there are still hundreds of movies that's been previously released on VHS and laserdisc, that were never released on DVD either. If there is a movie that's not released on blu-ray, nor HD-DVD that I want to see, I'll just watch the DVD up-converted on my blu-ray player. It may not look near as good as the blu-ray and HD-DVD, but I'll live through it. Warner Brothers HD-DVD releases were known to be defected, so those same titles had to be re-purchased on blu-ray, since the HD-DVDs wasn't reliable to play thoroughly.

Alan Smithee

I have both an A30 and A2 hooked up right now- some discs play fine on one but not the other, so I have to keep them both hooked up. (Have an A35 on the way finally, so will see how that one compares.)

It would be interesting to see what would have happened if HD-DVD had won the format war with all these bad discs out there. I'm guessing most people are just assuming their players are dying rather than the discs rotting.

orangerunner

Blu-rays aren't completely without their problems and quirks as well. I had a Basic Instinct (Lion's Gate version) disc that simply wouldn't load up. There were absolutely no scratches or visible defects.

Starship Troopers wouldn't load on my Sony Blu-ray until until I found out you have to put a USB stick in the back of the machine, then it loaded up just fine.

orangerunner

I read somewhere, not sure if it's entirely true, but the A1 Toshiba machines work great as CD players as they contain the same drives and guts of some $2000 audiophile quality CD players.

If it's true then it's a pretty good pick-up for $20!

slimdude

I've never played a CD in my blu-ray player, nor my HD-DVD Player. I may play a CD to see what it sound like someday. I"m more of a movie buff, than a music lover, especially with all the crap they're making nowadays. I don't even consider that as music! Whenever I do decide to listen to the radio, or play my record albums, and CDs, I listen to old school.

E_v_i_l

I had the same issue with Crank: High Voltage.

Alan Smithee

Those are more software problems than media problems- the discs just don't play properly under some circumstances if they don't like the hardware, but the DO play- at the very least, there's nothing wrong with the physical disc, only the way it's been authored. Rotted HD-DVDs are genuinely defective due to poor manufacturing, and they can never be played again once they are in that state. (I have one porn HD-DVD that won't play properly on my A30 due to bad authoring- the video that plays under the main menu comes up, but it doesn't show any of the overlayed graphics so you can't start the feature. My A2 plays it fine.)

bruceames

Noebeli is an HD DVD collector in the truest sense of the world, certainly owning one of the top collections (if not the top) in the world.

HD DVD, in addition being just as good as Blu-ray, having many exclusives (well over 100) and many others that have something superior about them than the Blu-ray version, as well as being very cheap on most titles and players, is a very collectible format as well for those who are so inclined. There is quite a bit of rare stuff on the format (mostly imports). So it's not necessary that the format be avoided like the plague, especially for those wanting access to those exclusives (the list of which is getting trimmed slower than ever).

slimdude

It's not a matter of being an avid HD-DVD collector (which isn't a problem) but the matter is, can certain discs still play without a hitch, whether the glitch is the source of the disc(s) or the player itself. If it's the player, then you're out of luck because, the parts are no longer being manufactured, even when all updated firmware has been previously installed. Having the player repaired by a professional technician, is going to cost a lot more to fix it, than what the HD-DVD player is worth.

bunkaroo

If anyone is interested in a fully functional and barely used HD-A1 or HD-A20, PM me. Haven't touched them in years.

I liked the format a lot for imports. Domestics - not so much. Thankfully all the imports I had on the format were released on Blu within a year or two.

orangerunner

For someone who wants to start a HD collection from scratch, I think HDDVD is a great place to begin.

I bought into HDDVD back in 2010 and throughout some various wheelin' & dealin' I have 300 titles and five machines. When I calculated what I bought and sold over the past two years, my collection worked out to $1.46 per title and that includes the five machines.

You can't really go wrong even if you get a few duds among the titles.

Gizmo

What imports?

bruceames

Sorry if I wasn't clear, but I was responding to the point that it was "foolish" to invest in an HD DVD player at this point in time. I never addressed the issue of defective discs, which is what this thread is all about.

So to contribute something positive to the thread topic, while there are discs that are truly defective and won't play in any player, there are others that are "sensitive" and will only play in "less finicky" players. It seems in general the players that are most likely to play the defective Warner discs (if any will play them) are the BH200 and the Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on.

So it mostly boils down to getting the right discs and/or the right players. Fortunately they are cheap so the risk involved is low.

And speaking of cheap, it seems Blu-ray is getting pretty cheap itself these days. If buying anything of the formats is foolish, I'd be inclined to say that it would be more likely BLu-ray than HD DVD, because HD DVD is already devalued so much and doesn't suffer price erosion nearly to the extent as Blu-ray does now.

dvd-4-life

Here's a question that I don't think has been asked. Once you play an WB HD-DVD and it plays ok-does that mean that it will play the second,third,fourth time w/o problem?

bunkaroo

I'm not going to type out the list. Probably 6-10 of them. You can look up my profile at Blu-ray.com to figure out which ones have been on both formats. Two that immediately come to mind are Tideland and Le Pacte de Loups.

MBoyd

That's how I'm using mine. It's slow to load, but sounds good. I've picked up a couple of formerly expensive CD players at thrift stores that I want to get repaired someday. They might eventually replace it.

Qui Gon Jim

I am just thankful every day that load times have improved over what they were when the formats were released. I don't look fondly on the interminable waiting on a move to load in my XA-1, and then the fury when a movie would crash during the viewing and having to wait, again, to reload.

The modern BD players are much better in this regard for sure.

bunkaroo

Agreed. ^^^^ The wait for the BDP-S1 to load was brutal, and that was the "flagship" launch Sony player. It wouldn't even play the Die Hard menu screen smoothly. PQ was great though....once you got to it LOL.

Why So Blu?

The only two HD-DVDs from my collection that I know of that went all glitchy were Batman Begins (during the Tumbler chase) and Bourne Ultimatum (with only 15 minutes left to go). All the rest play fine.

I have since replaced Batman Begins with that BD Steelbook that came out when TDKR was in theaters.

Alan Smithee

[QUOTE]Here's a question that I don't think has been asked. Once you play an WB HD-DVD and it plays ok-does that mean that it will play the second,third,fourth time w/o problem?[/QUOTE

I've had a couple mess up on 2nd viewing when they played fine the first time. Others who have owned discs since they were first issued have said some have stopped playing completely, suggesting this is a rot issue. (I can only recall 3 regular DVDs doing this.) To be fair, I've heard some of the early blu-ray discs have been having problems recently also, but I'll bet not on as large a scale.

Gizmo

Nearly all the players, both HD DVD and Blu-ray, were slow and shit until like mid 2008 (for Blu-ray, obviously). I'd hate to go back to that 3 minute load time.

Josh-da-man

I realize this is an old post, but I have to wonder if certain discs aren't somehow corrupting the players' firmware.

I seem to recall something about certain discs (don't know if they were blu-ray or HD-DVD) that would have then-current firmware on them and perform on auto update when you put them in your player. Could it be something like this? Is there any way to reset the players to their factory settings?