Back in the day people watched movies on VHS. Remember those things? The boxy lookin’ things that melted in the sun and could be ruined if you watched them too often? It seemed that VHS tapes were around forever, if you are about 30 years old like I am, that’s what it seemed like. I can say for sure that VHS was around for well over 30 years until the DVD market finally pushed all VHS out the door.
But do you remember the HD-DVD? That’s right, a high-definition/density DVD that came our right after regular DVDs. The
optical disc was used to store more information that could create a better high quality picture than a regular DVD. Toshiba released the HD DVD, but it was soon a thing of the past in Feb. 2008 when Blu Ray discs hit the market.
Still, the HD DVD was nothing to sneeze at. The format could pack a whole 15GB of information PER layer instead of 4.7GB per layer on a regular DVD. You might not really remember the format because it was not around all that long. In 2008 Warner Brothers stopped production, Best Buy would stop recommending it and Wal-Mart switched over to Blu Ray discs only. For those of you that are counting, it was only a short 2 years before everything that was released in HD DVD, was switched over to Blu Ray for good.
Do you have any movies in the HD DVD format? What do you think a movie like Twister would be worth in that format?
HD DVD films can still be purchased for a fraction of the cost of a DVD let alone Blu rays. Obviously there are no new releases but many attractive library titles.
Twister was the last US HD DVD release and probably fetches silly money so unless you are a collector would probably miss that!
To own both formats is a strong suit, you can get the cheapest title in glorious HD!
Thanks for the comment Mark. I agree that the HD DVD library is quite strong.
I had an XBox360 for more than 1 year prior the advent of HD-DVD. I added the external player relatively quickly. I bought the PS3 as soon as it came out, ergo I went both ways for the duration of the battle.
I think HD-DVD lost because they aimed too low. HDMI, which is important for image quality, was option for HD-DVD players. XBox360 didn’t have it for years. HD-DVD players were often Pentium-4 units. I own a bunch of HD-DVDs and none of them have uncompressed audio.
I have to say, the combo of the Cell processor, the HDMI cable and uncompressed audio put Blu-Ray over the top. It should be noted that most Blu-Ray players were and are PS3s. There was a difference, and it was especially a difference you could hear.
I still plug in an HD-DVD like “Goodfellas” every once in a while, but Microsoft’s support for HD-DVD still seems rinky-dink in comparison to the PS3′s integration of Blu-Ray.
I currently own 3 HD-DVD players, 2 Toshiba units and the Xbox 360 add on and still use them to this day.
I have quite a large collection of nearly 200 movies and have not took the plunge to go over to Blu-Ray yet as have been put off by the price so far as they are really expensive.
Imagine owning 200 Blu-rays and how much that would cost compared to 200 HD-DVD films which cost a hell of a lot less and have the same picture quality and features and as for new movies well my HD players all do a excellent job of up-scaling standard DVD’s so don’t feel like I am missing out on much!
Blueray is better. I remember the format wars a couple years ago. HD DVD was red and Blueray was blue. One factor that helped Blueray win is its name. Who wants to buy what you already have (apart from the HD infront) or get something totally new? Plus blueray can hold more data.