Again, I said it's the people (studios, Toshiba, and Sony or anyone involved), it's the fact that they could have a hit a home run with the formats but instead chose to take the launch so lightly and not have something new and innovative for the launch.

Also, the picture and sound quality on these discs should be impeccable and all the reviews I've been reading have not been glowing except only for a couple discs. That's plain appalling.

I am saying you won't see any HD extras regardless for quite a while. The studios will simply not pay for them because of the extra costs. You might see a few releases that have them but for the most part it'll be few and far beween.

To be honest, who cares?

The only extra I'd want in HD is the trailer. The rest can be SD 16x9 for all i care.

On my display (1024x768, 90" wide) I'm getting the best PQ I've ever seen. Beautiful, full colors and unbelievable levels of details. It truly is stunning... I really hate it when I have to switch back to SD DVD for something. I literally am amazed scene after scene when watching a movie. I've never had that kind of feeling with SD DVD on my system... the flaws have always been readily apparent to me. On the audio side we get DD+ with the probabiliy of Dolby TrueHD with a firmware upgrade.

IMO, HD DVD did hit a home run: stunning PQ, great AQ (probably getting better with TrueHD), all the DVD extras ported over, software around $20 (less sometimes), and players only $450. The player is supposedly a great SD DVD player and among the best upconverting ones, too. Also the CD playback stream rivals audiophile CD players costing $3000+. Some are calling the HD-A1 possibly the best CE value ever. All that, plus we know it will get better with time...

If you're talking about BR I would say it is more like seeing Mark McGwire step up to the plate and bunting.

I have not figured out the reviews yet... I don't understand some of the negative comments myself. I thought Perfect Storm, for example, looked very good even though most reviews thought it was so-so at best. Very likely they are display or system related, too. The Riddick review on this site was pretty critical-- some of the remarks saying the PQ in some spots looked upconverted instead of real HD were even removed. Not a fault of the review, though... there is NO substitute for seeing the material on your system with your own eyes.

You might not care but many people do care. All I'm saying is that it will be sometime, if ever, that you will see HD extras.

Personally, I don't really care about interviews in HD, but things like deleted scenes or trailers should have to be in HD.

I think, in many ways, reviewers are hedging a bit to try not to looked dated or silly in a year or two. If you go back and look at some of the 1997-1999 reviews for DVDs, they're laughable. Giving 5-star "flawless" ratings to video quality that was marginal at best, compared with what we eventually got.

I've read a lot of thoughtful HD-DVD reviews since the launch, but I definitely sense that reviewers are hesitant to call something "amazing" when there are only 20-ish titles to work with. And that probably makes sense, as I'm sure we'll be seeing some amazing PQ in the next few years.



And I'm with digitalfreak on the subject of HD-extras. They'd be a nice bonus... but other than things like trailers and deleted scenes, I don't think I'd care at all if they save space by going SD 16x9.

How could they have hit a home run if there isn't universal praise for the launch? The player that was released was buggy piece of crap from what everyone has said. It was only fixed after a firmware upgrade. I can understand that you can't please everyone but many of the sites that I frequent have not been that encouraging of the format.

Such as?


Honestly, the only thing preventing me from running out and buying a HD-DVD player today is the format war. I still have a stack of unwatched SD-DVDs and quite a bit of patience, so I'm not going to take the risk of picking up a machine and software from the losing side. I can wait a bit to see how things shake down once the gaming machines get released, the holiday sales figures are available, and the 2nd gen players are released.

But everything else about HD-DVD looks top notch to me... yes, the quick release of a buggy machine was unfortunate, but that's pretty much par for the course in today's marketplace. And it was fixed relatively easy and promptly by the firmware update.

yup. it really is a fine piece of equipment. my only beef after the firmware fix was the long load times, but I'm completely used to them at this point. Anyway it's a worthwhile trade off for the best home video experience I've ever had.

Everyone? I bought mine on day one and haven't had a single problem with it. Unless you have actually used one, you really have no business calling it "a buggy piece of crap."

There were some buggy players released, but 68% of the participants on AVS answered "No" to the question: Has your HD DVD player locked up 3 or more times? I would have participated, but I didn't think it was fair since I only had mine for about a week when the poll was running.

I had one picture freeze before the update... the 1.2 firmware was available about 2-3 weeks after I got mine...

I think mine is pretty stable. I did have a lockup at one spot on Phantom of the Opera. I restarted and it consistently locked up at that point... so I skipped to the end of that chapter... no trouble after that. Afterwards, I instpected the disc (it was from Netflix). It was easily the worst looking disc I'd ever seen. It looked like it had been dropped on asphalt and walked on. There were literally hundreds of scratches/abrasions on it. Frankly I'm suprised it played AT ALL. Two and a half hours with only one unplayable spot. Gave me a better sense of just what the thing can handle.

I just got mine last night and it is truly an incredible piece of equipment - no problems here whatsoever. Performance is outstanding. I am recommending this to everyone I know.

This site, Digital Bits, Hometheaterforum, AVSforum.

Let me qualify my statement and say many. The reason I haven't gone out to buy one is because of the shoddy launch and the shitty player Toshiba released.

This site and AVS are EXTREMELY positive when it comes to HD DVD.

TDB is a totally different story.

You are like half the posts in the HD-DVD section that's why it's positive. HAHA

Seriously though are you kidding?

uhh...no.

the amount of people that were pro-BD on BOTH sites (hell, even including HTF) has greatly dwindled. the difference is night and day.

The "real" launch isn't until this Fall, though. As for not going all out on day one...why play an ace when a six will do?

I am neither pro HD or BD, the Samsung Launch was even worse considering that HDMI doesn't even work like it should so don't think I'm a BD fanboy. I dislike both equally.

no one is claiming you are.

have you experienced or bought either? it sounds like all of your info is 2nd or 3rd hand

It is and I trust all of the sites thoughts before I go ahead and take the plunge, but I will now wait because of all the issues both launches have had.
I'm not just gonna be an idiot and buy it knowing that it has all these problems. That would be stupid.

Plus waiting for the big problem to resolve: THE FORMAT WAR.

Or I'll just wait to buy a universal player which is a certainty.

The Toshiba HD DVD player is not exactly optimal, but it's very far removed from "shitty", and I don't regret shelling out $450 or however much for it in the slightest. My biggest gripe really has nothing to do with the hardware -- I just wish I had more movies to watch in HD.

I'm curious here, are people buying HD-DVD/Blu-Ray for improved PQ or for more extras(no jokes about BD please )?

it's kinda funny to me that I do hear stuff like "the picture/sound is amazing but it still blows because they didn't give me bloopers" or something to that effect.

To me, it's inconceivable to think about extras when the picture and sound quality is improved so vastly.

Hmm...so you're basically calling everyone on this board an idiot and stupid. You do realize that most of us own one of the players, right?

Not winning any points.