I'm not going to replace all of mine either, but I am replacing my favorites...like "Forbidden Planet!"

I have about 25 double dips and they were worth it.

Yeah i really hope DVDs are here for a LONG time!

As a collector who loves packaging, those HD-DVD and Blu-Ray cases are just plain horrible. I'd kill myself before having a shelf full of tiny little red and blue cases, no matter how pretty the picture quality is.

I love little things like cardboard slip ons and steelbooks and 2-3 discs editions etc.. Those things will never be on those new HD formats.

But yeah like most people said it IS kinda cool that you won't have to replace your DVDs with those new formats since you can still play them in the HD players if you choose to upgrade to HD.

But personally i REALLY don't see myself actually buying an HD/BD player, unless i buy a PS3 (which i might in a year or so). Oh and i still need a HDTV! Which i really want one but they are still too expensive because i'm not getting anything under 1080p. So, maybe in a year or two..


I love to buy DVDs so much though! I have over 400 of em and i really don't see why i'll stop!


Long live the DVD! hooray! :P

If anything topples SD-dvds, it won't be the HD formats, but some sort of digital-download thingie. Which would be a ways off, ten to twenty years off.

By then we'd be able to have quick enough downloads and ways and means to keep movies/TV shows not unlike what MP3s and ipods have done with music.

What I'm saying is that it's not necessarily the better quality format that replaces the old one, but the more convenient one - it's always the more convenient one, and HDdvds/Blu-ray are no more convenient than SDdvds.

The difference is that VHS cassettes initially were not forever. How many years does it take to demagnetize the tape? 25-30 years? So when I was buying VHS, I knew time would come when they just die natural death. So the reason of turning to DVDs might be even not because of the higher quality (although a huge leap forward of course), but because of the short VHS life term.
And now we have DVDs that are practically eternal. Why shift entirely to HD? Even if DVDs are stopped being produced we can still keep them and watch them till the end of our days. The only thing I can think of now why people can start turning to HD - because manufactures will stop producing DVD-players and will deliberately make HD and BR players which would not read DVDs (well, they have to find some way to take our money). But I think people will not tolerate that - there'll always be handymen who'd be able to repair your old DVD-player or to convert HD-player back to regular DVD-reading one. And if the situation indeed happens that there's no players around to play DVDs, I guess there'll be hundreds and hundreds of special workshops where these handymen will work for us

Agreed, although 10-20years is too far off of a prediction. As soon as we get fiber to the house of JSP, SD, BD and HDDVD is dead IMO.

I'm not a technologically minded person, so I don't know how the backwards compatibility works, but what if HD-DVD/Blu-ray players do what the PS3 did? Ie, the the first PS3 models had backwards compatibility with the PS2, but the newer PS3 models have the backwards compatibility taken out to reduce manufacturing costs. Could DVD backwards compatibility be taken out of HD-DVD/Bluray in a similar way too?

I am in the boat with the people who do not want to upgrade my massive DVD collection to HD. I really hope DVD playing devices continue to be made for a long time. In 10+ years, I don't want to be stuck with hundreds and hundreds of useless coasters.

Once movies become all digital downloading, would you be able to save movies to your hard drive to keep indefinitely? If you want to save your collection of hundreds (or thousands) of DVDs to a hard drive, you would need a frigging huge hard drive.

I hope that movie watching doesn't become streaming from some internet site. I want to actually own the movie either on DVD media or on a hard drive. If the site hosting the movie deletes the file, then the movie cannot be streamed and not watched anymore.

I disagree with the DVD/HD -VCR/DVD Comparison.

I use to think that my DVD's would be around for a long time, but once I picked up that 60" Mitsu/Blue Ray player and having HD Direct TV I can not stand to watch regular TV/ DVD any longer. And now I look at that collection as see alot of wasted cash for an inferior product......

i didn't even know there was a format other than DVD...weird.

When the site is changed to 'HD-DVD talk' or 'Blu-Ray Talk'
Can't wait

Guess what? Some new technology that makes HD look like an inferior chump will eventually come out, so you are just wasting your money on HD too....

That's funny, now that I've seen that news story.

The difference is that any DVD to spec is pretty much like any other DVD, but games aren't the same way. HD DVD as designed is basically an extension of DVD, so it'll always be backwards compatible, and the format spec requires it. I don't think Blu-ray players are required to support DVD, but I don't see any players ever avoiding that.

As long as players cost an arm and a leg and as long as there’s a format war, DVD won’t go anywhere.

Format wars didn’t work for SACD vs DVDA, it didn’t work for DVD-R vs DVD+R, and it won’t work for HD vs BR.

Agreed. Once you have the ability to download movies in 2 seconds, movies will go the way of CDs. Which is fine because they still release CDs and I still buy them.

The question is, what will replace HD and Blu-ray? Hmm...

True, but you know that at first, and probably for a while, they probably won't be even full SD quality. Imagine having to download 9 GB at a time. I just can't imagine the strain on bandwidth.
and then the "keeping" issue, DRM and all that. I can tell you right now I'd rather save up and switch over to Hi Def, have a physical artifact that was factory-pressed and I won't lose in the case of a random, unexplained hard-drive crash, than deal with that crap.

Nope, only when you have the ability to download or purchase in hi-def at super-fast speeds in the MAJORITY of American homes via your television will DVD go the way of the dodo. Most Americans don't even have HDTVs yet...so DVD has a good life ahead of it - at least a decade or more. And unless those downloads include a lot of bonus materials and interactivity, people are still going to want to buy physical media.

It's tricky, because while music downloads has certainly hurt the music industry in terms of CDs, the internet has had virtually no (or very little) effect on the purchase of books (despite Bill Gates prediction that they'd become obsolete!) and not much more on the purchase of magazines.

You can be sure that is already being worked on.

Whenever it happens, DVDTalk is already ready.

Not sure what this means. I say DVD will never really die, it won't be the CD of the video world, but DVD is very useful for very many things beyond movies. And even with movies, it'll be AT LEAST 5 years befoe anything happens with HD formats taking over.

But I actually own Blu Rays with cardboard slip-ons. And I own 2-disc versions of movies too. So I'm not following what's so bad about Blu Ray and HD-DVD cases. They're actually thinner, which helps conserve shelf space.

DVDs will be like CDs. Studios will continue to release on DVD for years to come.

My god, have you never seen a LD! They had some of the most beautiful packaging, i.e. gatefolds, box set with CDs, posters, full size books, etc.!!!

When DVD came out, all that changed and we were stuck with crappy little containers. HD DVDs are the same, nothing has changed.

The only draw back on LD was the size, storage space was always a problem. I still have over 350, some I haven't watched and some aren't even open yet.

I'll be watching them when I retire in 350 days...long live retirement and HD DVD!!!

HD capitalizes on Lines of resolution. What could possible come out that looks better? Nothing really, or nothing significant at least.

The human eye needs to be 9' away to even see the difference between 720 and 1080 lines of resolution on a 70" screen.

While they can probably release a tv or whatever that produces more lines of resolution, the human eye will never see it...so whats the point?

HD is here and will be here and be the standard for a long time.



HD Video isnt like the invention of bread, its like the invention of sliced bread.