BTW, I just had to mention that
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
I had to return to Venturer HD DVD player because there was something flakey with that unit. At first it didn't want to play the HD DVD discs, then finally it did, but after I hooked it up to the HD TV with the HDMI cable, it plays about 30 seconds of a regular DVD . . . and then wouldn't play DVDs at all anymore. Huh?
Just a flakey unit. We returned it, which was a huge headache--never buy anything you might want to return from Walmart.com--got the refund, spent a little more buying the same unit, only under the parent Toshiba brand, and now it works. And, so far (knock on laminated plastic faux wood) it's working great.
This actually turned out to be a pretty good deal--comes with the two HD DVDs (Bourne and 300, which I love, so I'm stoked with that), and then three more we could order from Amazon.com as part of the order--Sky Captain, 2001, and Terminator 3 is what I ordered. Then, we send in the receipt and the UPC from the package, and we will theoretically get five more DVDs--Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, The Frightners, Darkman, Aeon Flux and Pitch Black. Not too bad for $198 + shipping.
On the down side, Blu-Ray is buying up the studios and getting the most exclusive content, which is going to hurt HD DVD. The recent exclusive deal with Warners is going to do serious damage HD DVD as a long term format. If you shop around, you can get reasonably priced Blu-Ray players, which bodes well as they only recently broke the $500 barrier, and now some resellers are selling them for $260 or so. Plus, Blu-Ray is built in to the PS3, and so that's going to help the numbers, in the long run.
But I'm not worried. I've got an HD DVD players that works with the HDTV, we shopped almost entirely on price, so we have the most inexpensive set-up we could manage. Under $600 for the TV, HD DVD players, and 10 HD DVD titles . . . Free would have been better, but I can live with that.
By the time the legacy titles I would most like--Lord of the Rings, Back to the Future, and the Indiana Jones films--hit Hi-Def (and they will almost certainly be Blu-Ray), Blu-Ray players will be under $200 bucks. There will probably be an HD DVD player available for under $100 (which will make a good purchase for those of us with minor HD DVD libraries, to keep a backup machine). In the meantime, the success of Blu-Ray may mean some deals on HD DVD titles.
Oh, and I should say--the cheapest upsampling regular DVD players are around $90. Any HD DVD player (or Blu-Ray, for that matter) will, by default, also be an upsampling DVD converter, and upsampled regular DVDs look a lot better on hi-def TVs than straight video from a plain vanilla DVD player. So, my HD DVD player will always be a good upsampling traditional DVD player, and we have a lot of regular DVDs that aren't going anywhere any time soon.
In the end, Blu-Ray is a solid format, and can store more data. It's more expensive to develop for than HD DVD, but eventually, that hurdle will be overcome. If Blu-Ray wins the format war decisively, that will help the market--more folks will start buying Blu-Ray players, more titles will make it to Blu-Ray, and so there will be more hi-def content out there, and it will be cheaper to access--and this will also drive down the prices of the flat-screen TVs which (I'm predicting here) will in 10 years be significantly cheaper than their cathode-ray counterparts today. It's all good.
So, if you haven't bought yet, you might want to wait a few months, or just go ahead and buy a Blu-Ray. But if you just recently got an HD DVD player, don't worry. It'll hang on for a while, new titles will come out, and for as long as the player lasts, it'll be great for upsampling (upconverting) your existing DVDs. Which ain't too shabby.
Update, 4/20/08: I got a $50 credit from Amazon, since Toshiba decided to kill the HD-DVD format. I bought some more HD-DVDs with it. I figure by the time the player dies, I will have watched them enough that I've more than gotten my money's worth. And, it's a great up-sampling DVD player.
And, BTW, for Great Deals on Microsoft Office 2007, and more, check out Software Supply Group. Thanks!
