JimRochester

But would you pay $33 for an HDDVD that's available for $10 as an SD or $15 as a BD?

The Bus

At the time I bought my HD DVD player, it was not only $500 cheaper, but a lot of the Blu-ray releases were inferior to their HD DVD counterparts since at the time many Blu-rays were only 25GB, not 50GB.

The PS3 was still months away in the horizon.

macnorton

I am really surprised it came down to price with a lot of you folks. I don't know why I am surprised either...perhaps in my head it seemed like to easy of an answer.

But I digress...thanks to all of you for your replies on that, I appreciate it.

Gizmo

Where are these $33 HD DVDs at? Nearly half the collection is $10 or less at Fry's or Amazon.

bunkaroo

Maybe he meant buying an import HD DVD vs. a domestic BD.

JimRochester

The example I was using was Bullitt. A cheapo title on both SD and BD. But it was priced at $33. Amazon had a couple sellers at $28 and $38. SOme have come down but for a while MAtrix trilogy was still $100 while everything else was $6. Just not sure what makes people think anything is worth more than a BD or SD counterpart.

nycdude

I bought a HD player but long since returned to Amazon and recently purchased a Sony BD player.

I am still a dvd man since I only purchase absolute Blu-Ray keepers.

candyrocket786

It was price and the group first to the market for me (the format war provided some insane deals on media). There's also the "Region Free" aspect of the format that allowed many of us to browse for titles overseas; some which I have no desire of replacing (ex. Equilibrium)

I didn't go Blu until a year after the PS3 was released.

lizard

My reasons were much the same as mentioned by others above:

• Much less expensive player (HD-A1).

• No "Profile" issues, meaning that all extras on HD DVDs worked on all players from the very beginning (although I hate Universal's "U-control" features).

• Fewer discs with quality issues (but I avoided combos, because a few of those had problems and I refused to pay extra for them). The first release of The Fifth Element on BD would be an example of a crappy early BD release, although that title wasn't of interest to me anyway.

• Vastly more movies of interest to me were on HD DVD than BD.


I still use my HD-A1 as my sole DVD/HD DVD player to this day, although I purchased another as a back-up. I continue to shop for an affordable, fully-functional, BD player, with increasing frustration. At least some of the new ones announced at the CES look promising on features and price. My BD collection is about 24 titles now, despite having no player.

gimmepilotwings

I don't remember when I went Blu, it was probably soon after I got my first HDDVD player D2 from Costco.

My HDDVDs outnumber Blus at about a 3:2 ratio. I will buy HDDVDs as long as I can find titles that I want. I won't purchase most Blurays until they are around $10 a piece as price is a very major factor in my purchase decisions.

In fact, I am keeping my eye out for an A35/XA2/805 on the real cheap if I can find one.

Gizmo

Its only that high on Amazon because Amazon themselves no longer carry it "new" and private sellers are free to mark it up for as much as they want. Supply and demand. Head over to eBay and its under $10. Fry's? $10.

I can make several comparisons to new HD DVDs that Amazon carries vs their BD counterparts where the HD DVD is vastly cheaper.

The Void

I have both HD-DVD and Blu-ray and I'm keeping both. My Blu-ray collection just recently surpassed my HD-DVD collection. I have 92 Blu-ray titles and 88 HD-DVD titles.

I'm not going to replace my HD-DVDs and I'm keeping the 4 HD-DVD players I have. My only Blu-ray player is the PS3. I have the XA2, A2, A35, and Xbox 360 drive for HD-DVD.

I got some great deals on HD-DVDs in 2008 and really built a decent collection.

I do prefer Blu-ray and even did before HD-DVD's failure. Mainly because I had fewer problems with the discs. I HATE Universal's HD-DVD combo discs. Good idea but I got several bad discs, the quality control was terrible. Exchanging the bad combo disc always fixed the problem but a spotless new disc shouldn't lock up on you.

Raul3

I actually have 2 HD-DVD players. The Xbox add-on that I bought when it was released, and an HD-XA1 that I bought for a ridiculous price ($60 new) last year.
I rarely buy HD-DVDs now, but I bought Heroes S1 a couple of weeks ago. And I may buy something else in Fry's, at $5 or lower, in the future. I mean, if the movie is in HD, why not?
And yeah, I have a PS3 with a lot of Blu-Rays.

KingSmoth

For Bullitt, no. The only two imported titles I currently have an interest in spending that much for are T2 and Death Proof steelbook. I already have Death Proof on SD, but the steelbook will be a cool HD item to have. I have T2 Ultimate and Extreme on SD, but considering it is one of my favorite films, I'm willing to throw down that kind of money for an import.
I also think the red cases look better than blue.

GMan2819

I just added 15 new titles to my HD DVD collection. I will continue to do so as long as I can get good deals < $8. The few BD titles I have were all under $8 as well.

tonyc3742

I bought into HDDVD at exactly the wrong time.....before the mega price drops and bundle packs and rebate eligibility, and after HDDVD disks were harder to find. I got one...*one* disk free.
If I could recoup any of my wasted money on it I would, but I'd be lucky to get 20 bucks for it.
The only way I'll buy an HDDVD disk now is if it's less than four bucks or is a combo disk, so it will at least be usable when my virtual doorstop becomes a real one.
I am using it as an upconverting player, but to me he difference just isn't as eyepopping as many say.
And I'm resisting BD because I don't like the high retail prices, and after getting burned once, I'm twice shy; and most of my DVD collection is TV series that are not offered in HD.
As it is, my going Blue is going to wait till the PS3 has some great games I have to play, or until the disk manufacturers stop making regular DVDs I want to buy (and I get caught up on my backlog.)
Yes I'm bitter, this experience has definitely taught me to avoid being an early adopter.

beebs

HD DVD won me on price. In the end, it was one of the best deals ever.

On the Player side -- They ended up paying me $20 (after selling my Xbox Add-on, $100 in GCs, and Amazon price corrections) for owning a Toshiba A3 and 19 free HD DVD movies (10 from mail in rebates, 2 in box, 7 from Amazon bundle deals).

On the Movie Side -- B1G1 and price corrections galore. Numerous $4-5 deals. I sold my HD DVD cases and made over $150 on those (everything goes in sleeves in boxes). All told, I have an A3 plus over 120 HD DVDs for something south of $600.

My Blu-ray deal was pretty good, too. BR player free with Panasonic Plasma. Came with 10 free movies. But, it cost me $20 more in the end.

-beebs

Big Worms

Same here. Finally ready to get rid of my HD DVDs. Luckily I don't have that many.

GreenMonkey

I still have more HD-DVDs than BDs also, partially because my preference was always HD-DVD until it died, and partially because I liked the titles a lot better back then. I bought the PS3 in summer '07 for about $220 after sale of my PS2 - but I only really bought early because I wanted a 99% PS2 backwards-compatible unit.

I think my count is something like 30 HD-DVD / 7 BD and the wife's count is more like 30/30.

I'm not upgrading titles, they look just fine, I'm with Lizard on the lossless-is-mostly-placebo opinion, and my hacked HD-XA2 is all-region, Reon, and totally awesome (and our primary DVD player). I sure hope it doesn't die because I couldn't get another one for cheap like I got this one.

smirnoffski

I'm in no rush to upgrade by existing HD-DVDs to BR.

Keeping things predominantly HD-DVD has one overlooked primary advantage: It prevents dumb relatives from asking to borrow movies.

"Sorry aunt Martha, the ones with the red cases won't play on junior's new PS3."
so satisfying...

JimRochester

One thing that struck me from this poll, although we have a limited number of people, 80% of who ventured in to hi-def were willing to invest in both formats to get the films we love in the better presentation. Obviously we represent people that are more in to film and technology than the average Joe Consumer.

Although shelf space is a factor I could see where if both formats had survived, people would either need to buy 2 different hi-def players for $125 each or more would have gone the dual format route like LG. All water under the bridge now but I guess I never realized how many of us were format neutral. No one gave up on hi-def with the death of HD.

Why am I rambling? I just think that Bill Hunt and too many others were too eager to call it a format war and to predict neither would survive if both stayed the course.

kefrank

That's one of the biggest reasons I've preferred this forum over the other home theater forums, which all seemed much more partisan during the format war. While this site had a handful of vocal fanboys, most of us were format neutral (or at least level-headed single-format owners) and in this for the movies in hi-def.

Honestly, I don't think Bill Hunt or the other opinionated journalists really had much influence on the actual outcome of the format war and frankly, neither did consumers. Make no mistake - it was a war between corporations and the rest of us were mostly just civilian onlookers.

Eve Brown

no i would not pay $33 for a regular movie anyway

$33 is
about 2 tv shows
5-8 regular movies

and I recentily got 10HDDVD on Craigslist for $40

bunnydojo

Same here. Out of Sight, Sneakers, Shaun of the Dead, and 12 Monkeys are big favorites. At the time, no Blu-ray exclusive titles interested me anywhere near that level.

As far as I know, none of them have been put on Blu-ray, so I guess it was the right choice for me, albeit still a slightly regrettable one.

Hammer99

Still got just under 200 HD DVDs, but it's been almost a year now since I watched any of them.