Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater HD DVD

Does any of you guys watch movies on HD DVD? I wonder why people have chosen Blue Ray over HD DVD.

Because blu-ray won. No one's manufacturing HDDVD any more, or HDDVD players.

It happened back in Feb 2008, I believe. At least one big studio announced that they were choosing BluRay over HD-DVD and at that point I guess HD-DVD's backers felt that they no longer had enough studio support to make the format viable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_DVD

That said, I suspect a number of people here still have HD-DVD players and disks. There were some really nice HD-DVD players on the market, seemingly quite a bit more mature than the BluRay players of the time.

After the smoke cleared, some still bought HD DVD players at low prices because they liked the dvd upconversion.

I still have my player and a handful of HD DVDs, but I haven't had the player hooked up for quite a while. I'm out of HDMI ports and space on my shelving. I'll probably hook it up again when I get a new pre-pro, though, and my system is moved to the basement.

I was definitely rooting for HD DVD when the war was being waged, but neither format was as mature as I wanted them to be. There were still too many titles on HD DVD that required updates to play properly, and we never got to see Managed Copy do anything.

It would be nice if Blu-rays were trouble-free at this point, but there are still issues with certain titles. Since HD DVD never solved its own issues, though, I can't resent Blu-ray TOO much for winning the war. At least we got a format with more space per layer. That has to be worth something, right?

I can't wait to hook my betamax back up now.

It has a slot for HD-DVDs? That was forward thinking.

Yes.

But weirdly enough, you have to rewind the disc after watching.

I still have my HD-DVD hooked up, and we've even watched some HD-DVD flicks in the past couple of months. Mainly because my youngest has gotten huge into Harry Potter (she was too young when the rest of the youth out there got into it the first go around) and all but 1 of those movies (or is it 2) I have on HD-DVD.

It was a great format, and in many cased superior to Blu-Ray at the time, but if you throw enough money (and at times arguably false, or misleading advertising) into any tech battle, you will eventually win.

Two years later, I really don't care any more. The investment "lost" into a dead format was minimal, and I got to enjoy HD content much sooner than if I had waited for Blu-Ray to get its act together.

I still have an HD-DVD player hooked up as well, because I have some good movies in that format. The player was one that Wally World had for, I believe) $129 around Thanksgiving and you got 4 HD-DVD movies with the purchase...

I'll keep it around till it dies to occasionally play those HD-DVD movies, but I don't think I'd replace it with an eBay deal if that happens..