Well if you don't own a HD-DVD player yet, you're right, there is no point to buying the combo disc, for the same reason there is not much value in re-buying dvd's on HD-DVD: Standard dvd, though not spectacular, is entirely watchable on an HDTV.
But if you do own an HD-DVD player, it's still nice be able to be able to rip the standard dvd to your pc, or to backup the disc, or to play in a portable dvd player. Small-screen dvd players will be the last things to go HD because there just isn't much noticeable difference between 480 lines of resolution and 720 lines of resolution at those screen sizes. And I don't see mainstream laptops having included hd-dvd drives for another couple years.
Also, I don't think it's useful comparing the combo disc price to the standard dvd price. The more useful comparison is to the blu ray price. Right now, for "300" the DVD/HD-DVD combo disc is $4 more than the blu ray. HD format war aside, is the having the standard DVD worth $4?
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Well if you don't own a HD-DVD player yet, you're right, there is no point to buying the combo disc, for the same reason there is not much value in re-buying dvd's on HD-DVD: Standard dvd, though not spectacular, is entirely watchable on an HDTV.
But if you do own an HD-DVD player, it's still nice be able to be able to rip the standard dvd to your pc, or to backup the disc, or to play in a portable dvd player. Small-screen dvd players will be the last things to go HD because there just isn't much noticeable difference between 480 lines of resolution and 720 lines of resolution at those screen sizes. And I don't see mainstream laptops having included hd-dvd drives for another couple years.
Also, I don't think it's useful comparing the combo disc price to the standard dvd price. The more useful comparison is to the blu ray price. Right now, for "300" the DVD/HD-DVD combo disc is $4 more than the blu ray. HD format war aside, is the having the standard DVD worth $4?