I have no love for either format, but HD DVD was a giant failure waiting to happen and I am glad it happened sooner than later
Sooner would have meant dying off as quickly as the Divx format died off when it was challenging DVD. HD DVD put up more of a fight. HD DVD had plenty to offer. The picture and audio quality was there. As far as the three-layer discs not being able to play, they were saying that all it would take was a firmware update. Maybe that was a lie, but it's something they were banking on.
HD DVD didn't have region coding, right? That's one thing that would put it over Blu-ray. Also, Managed Copy is dead on Blu-ray. On HD DVD it was a part of the spec at the beginning, and while it never got to be used, it was more likely to happen on that format. Perhaps it would never have turned into what I wanted it to turn into, which would be a legal way to rip my high-def movies into a jukebox-style program, but the potential was there.
I'm fine with Blu-ray, but I still wonder how different it would be if HD DVD had won.
