Holy crap Griffith. You'd think that the format war was still going on.
At the time of HD-DVD's "death", like I said, "It was a great format, and in many cased superior to Blu-Ray at the time..."
Note the "at the time" part.
Blu-Ray discs were all 25 GB, no dual layer-50 GB like today and most mainstream HD-DVDs were doing 30 GB oh and the HD-DVD specs already allowed for a triple layer that would bring it to 51 GB, meaning that it could actually do more storage than Blu-Ray.
PQ was decisively worse on Blu-Ray (month after month after month, HD movie reviews in home theater magazines were about how much better the PQ was on HD-DVD).
DVD upconversion was(is) better on HD-DVD players.
HD-DVD had internet connectivity and "live" content well before you could get anything on Blu-Ray.
Heck, the Blu-Ray standard wasn't even finalized until after the war was won where HD-DVD was set out there in advance.
HD-DVD was on Gen2 devices about the time that the first Gen1 Blu-Ray machines really hit the shelves. That meant significant improvements and bug fixes that were solved while Blu-Ray players still struggled.
As for paying companies off, what is $50M ($100M total) when Sony paid Warner $400M and Fox $120M.
The PS3 argument has already been killed off for the most part as a "winning element". Most people with PS3's during the "war" had them for gaming, and the only Blu-Ray movie they had was Spider Man or whatever was bundled. Sony was able to say that they had more Blu-Ray players sold than HD-DVD because they included the PS3, which first and foremost (at the time, again AT THE TIME) was a gaming machine. I know that since then, more people were willing to grab a PS3 as a Blu-Ray player because they knew that it was not a dead format, but I thought that we are talking about during the war.
Please *read* peoples' posts before arguing about it. I love Blu-Ray media, and its day too will pass, but this whole thing for me was about getting HD content as soon as possible. HD-DVD did a great job at it, and now that Blu-Ray has had time to catch up and surpass what HD-DVD did before it was killed off, it has been a great format that I have enjoyed for a few years now too.
I am really not bitter about the who, what, and why anymore of the war, but it seems like you are still stuck in it.
Friend (and I really mean that because we are all friends here, even when we debate things), I've been where you are on this war... Let it go. Blu-Ray won. Sit back, pop in a movie, crank up the Axioms and enjoy it. THAT is what is important. That YOU like what you've got.
