After much thought about the end of the format wars, with blu-ray winning the optical media war, what are hd-dvd owners suppose to do? For a time there, I was even importing hd-dvds from various countries, because they were blu-ray exclusives. Now, that doesn't seem like a good idea.
Of course, any time is a time to buy a blu-ray player now, since its future seems a lot more secure now, although apple and microsoft think the future is downloadable media.
So, do we get rid of our hd-dvd players and movies and cut our losses? I suppose it's an individual decision, but if space and money have little motive in your decision, I would suggest just hanging on to the hd-dvd players and movies. There are several reasons why.
For one, there are over 500 HD-DVD movies released in the USA and over 1000 HD-DVDs released internationally, and HD-DVD has no region lockout, unlike blu-ray.
Secondly, the costs of players and movies should be dropping dramatically. Amazon last night had the hd-a3 players for like $97 brand new, which includes the two pack-in movies, as well as the 5 free mail in offer, but if you're going to want movies from the mail-in offer, you have to hurry up the order, because that offer will expire i believe on 2/28/08, although you still have an extra month to send the offer off, which means the receipt has to be dated before 2/28/08.
Third, why go out and re-buy all of your HD-DVDs on blu-ray? You won't be able to get your money back on the HD-DVDs. So, it's not like it's an equal trade-in.
Fourth, many first generation blu-ray discs were not authored correctly, because blu-ray features and specs weren't fixed or finalized. The same first gen HD-DVD movies, however, were finalized. Many people believe that HD-DVD video quality is better than the competitor.
Fifth, hd-dvd players are great for upconverting regular dvds, and in some cases, cheaper than a standard def upconverting dvd player.
Sixth and last, hd-dvds offer not only great video but still many reference quality audio titles, like king kong, corpse bride, and batman begins. Many people claim that batman begins is the ultimate reference disc, for both video and audio, although I haven't personally bought this one yet. If you have a good dts-hd, truehd, dd+ home theater system, why spend more money replacing the same movies on blu-ray. Spend the extra money on more movies.
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I've personally battled around in my mind what I was going to do with my collection, or rather if I was going to expand that HD-DVD collection. I've made a decision not to buy many more, if any, import titles, and only buy american titles when i can find them at a significant discount, which I believe should be around $5-$7 for common titles, maybe a little more for some of the rarer titles.
A month or two ago, I was also debating weather or not to get another hd-dvd player on amazon and almost ended up buying it, but I decided to wait on it. Now, I think I'll personally need a backup or two eventually, since I did decide to keep my players and movies.
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Some of the cons of HD-DVD:
7.1 sound never really got to mature on the hd-dvd format, as most movies released were released as 5.1 surround, the same surround as we've used on laserdisc. Hell, even the laserdisc had a couple 6.1 surround sound discs, and dvd has many now, whether they're matrixed or discreet. Pan's Labyrinth was one of the 7.1 surround sound movies.
Since 7.1 isn't that big on hd-dvd, the few hd-dvd players that did offer analog surround output were only 5.1. Let's make one thing clear though. When I say analog output, I mean that the connection outputs are analog, because the receiver itself did the digital decoding. Even many of the older non-digital home theater receivers would have had a 5.1 analog input, and in this case, it would pass through the 5.1 tracks at the decoded bitrate which it was meant to be as. There is a big debate on whether or not a receiver or a player should do the decoding, but that's another argument for another time.
Well, obviously, since HD-DVD is going out of business, another con is that there won't be a lot of new movies released on the format, and eventually, probably none. It's unfortunate because many indie studios would have used hd-dvd as opposed to blu-ray, because of licensing and manufacturing costs associated with blu-ray.
Other than that, I don't see any other cons. I keep wanting to compare HD-DVD with laserdisc, but when I think about it, there were over 15,000 laserdisc movies released in its lifetime, but only around 1,000 HD-DVDs. Even then, the laserdisc player was never a mass market consumer product. Even the failed CED Selectivision video disc format had around 2000 releases from 1981 to 1986.
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I'll keep my hd-dvds, buy them cheap when I can find them, and then eventually get blu-ray too. To hell with downloadable media that microsoft and apple keep trying to push.
Now that blue ray is on top, does that mean a huge increase in ps3 buys?
The only thing that will make people buy more PS3s as a game system will be more, better games and system price decreases.
However, as a movie system, because of lack of blu-ray specs in most stand-alone blu-ray players, I believe people wanting a blu-ray machine, people who know about the firmware and specs issues, will most likely go to PS3 as well.
The PS3 will probably be more popular with home theater enthusiasts than gamers, until stand-alone blu-ray players come out with final specs.
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Believe me.. It's tempting, because you can sometimes find old blu-ray players around or under $200, but they're just about useless. I probably could save up a little more money for a couple weeks and buy a PS3 but doubt I will yet...