Poll: So, what are you HD DVD early adopters going to do?
By Darren Murph 
posted Feb 16th 2008 12:40PM
posted Feb 16th 2008 12:40PM
posted Feb 16th 2008 12:40PM
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I will bite the bullet and switch to Blu-ray but I am not going to just get rid of my HD-DVD add on. I plan to build some kind of collection of HD-DVDs so that my player does not completely go to waste and when ever I feel that the PS3 is worth the cost I might buy it instead of a standalone player.
The PS3 has been MORE than worth the cost since its launch in Nov. '06.
@ KayRazy:
No it isn't and Sony is letting their game division slide because they are pushing Blu-Ray so much. Since their launch, they have already had 4 different SKUs and that was before it was even out for a year. They are stripping out backwards compatibility and telling people that if they want to play older games that they have get a PS2 when backwards compatibility was a major thing when the PS2 game out. It is like Sony saying "Screw you if you want backwards compatibility, go buy a PS2 to go with that $500 paperweight."
The PS3 is amazing value. You get a kickass console, blu ray player and media center all in one.
@ DrXym:
Lets put it this way. I have a 360 and that is going to get all the games I want. I have supported Playstation in the past and I know that my system gets very little use till I get a new game and then once I finish that, it goes unused again. For me, the PS3 would be a paperweight most of the time as I do not buy movies that often and I am just going to start before HD-DVD dies completely.
I've owned both since before X-mas so it's business as usual for me. I bought the A2 at the wal*mart sale for $98 and will be keeping it along with the 20-30 or so HD-DVD's I currently own. I will just buy BD from now own. I already own about 15 or so BD and it will continue to grow.
Unless you were a super early adopter (paying 400-500+ for your HD player) I really don't see the big deal at all.
@Darrol, if you have a 360 then that's fine and you should stick with it. I can't honestly say the PS3 has many titles that justify switching although 2008 may change that.
But the PS3 is an extremely capable, multi-talented and reliable device. Its equally at home playing games, or movies and I don't see the conflict in Sony promoting a device that does more than one thing and does them all well.
I have to wonder when / if Microsoft will produce a Blu Ray add on for the 360. If they had brains they'd revamp the Elite and build-in a Blu Ray drive. The PS3 is cheaper than an Elite and does so much more. Microsoft need to fight back because their lineup is starting to look pretty ropey.
that's exactly what i'm doing. i'm hoping hd-dvd prices drop so i can get a couple more titles. and then i'll probably get a ps3 to accompany my xbox - then build up on bluray.
i'm not mad i didn't wait out the fight. i'm more mad that i'm on the losing side =(
@DrXym
excellent point. blu-ray add on would keep me from getting a ps3. what if they released a combo drive? that would ease the pain =)
@DrXym
excellent point. blu-ray add on would keep me from getting a ps3. what if they released a combo drive? that would ease the pain =)
Sorry but the PS3 is an excellent value. I own a PS3, 360, and a Toshiba A35 so I have them all. The 360 didn't have any games worthe a crap until Gears of War came out the following fall of its release. Want a HD player on it? Buy the add on. Want wireless for it? Buy the $90 add on. Want a bigger HDD? Buy the overpriced pos add on. I have had two of the RROD, where the PS3 is still quite and running strong.
The 360 has Bioshock, Halo 3, Gears of War, and Mass Effecta along with 3 Jpn style RPG's. Other then that, their games are all meh, or multi platform like COD4.
Darrol, For once I do not feel pity for those who waited. People complained about the price and now they got what they wanted. Granted it was at the sacrifice of PS2 compatibility but you cant get everything you want now can you. It was announced way in advanced what was happening to the SKU's and if it was such a big deal you should have invested in a PS3 already.
@Static
Well I am sorry Static, I am not made of money like every other gamer in the world. The money I make has to be put aside so that I can get the hardware and software that I need to move forward and make more money, especially when Apple is way overpriced. I am not part of the consumer group that can buy a HDTV and turn around to buy a PS3 with 30 movies right off the bat. I waited because I could not afford a PS3 and I still think that Blu-ray should have not been forced on gamers when a majority do not have HDTVs.
@Cheese Head
I understand that you and many other consider it a good value. For the time being I can live with multiplatform games and exclusives to the 360. Most of the games I play are because I can play with my friends and I only have 1 friend that has a PS3.
I would highly suggest the PS3. I bought a $100 HD-A2 back at Thanksgiving, and when Warner went over I bought a PS3 and it has been a fantastic choice. It smokes every other blu-ray player on processing speed and such. And it plays games. AND it'll meet spec for the forthcoming profile specs.
Regardless, I'm not sorry I bought the HD-A2. It's STILL the best upconverting SD DVD player I own. Just putting that out there considering they're about to be $4 LoL
Pretty much what the first guy said. I see no reason not to buy American Gangster, Cloverfield, or any other HD DVD exclusive I want. My A35 didn't go up in smoke.
MEANWHILE, I went purple last December with a Panasonic DMP-BD30K. All hooked into a Denon 3808 which will turn any of it into lossless audio. I would have gone with a cheaper Onkyo (also handling all lossless formats), but they don't play well with DirecTV DVRs.
And I will probably snap up any closeouts on HD DVD. Any disc I want and can get under $10 is worth any risk. By the time there's a problem, BDs will be cheap, or so they tell me. I fully expect that my A35 will last quite some time, and that Toshiba will have replacement HD DVD players available if I need one.
SONY sold it's last Betamax deck in 2002, 15 years or more after Beta "died." I would expect the same support from Toshiba.
I really don't understand the article's view that HD DVD adopters need to melt their discs and players down and switch. Purple is still an option, shading to blue.
That's not a good idea. What happens when your hd-dvd player dies? Toshiba's dropping support for it, and you'll be left in the unpleasant situation of scrounging around for hardware that's no longer supported.
@MacDork
I am pretty sure that at the rate we are going, by the time it dies on me, digital downloads would be what everyone is doing as much as I hate to think it. If it breaks it breaks but I tend to keep my stuff in working order longer than most.
How can a console be bad just because it has many SKU's?
You just get more choices.
But in Europe we can only buy the 40 GB, in US both 40 GB and 80 GB, and in Japan 40 GB.
Yes that's alot ;)
The point Jakob is that they are messing with everything but the Blu-ray drive to bring down the cost. It is not just that they decided "Lets change this by putting in a larger harddrive." They took out components each time so that it started with full backwards compatibility, moved to only have some backwards compatibility and on to none.
So sony is pulling backwards compatability and telling me to buy a ps2. BIG deal.
Apple gets criticized for a price drop on the iPhone because it retroactively penalizes early adopters.
Sony drops some backwards compatability and gets critisized because it penalizes people who couldn't commit and were waiting for a price drop.
Which way are we going on all this complaining?
If you jumped on the early adoption bandwagon of blu-ray, congratulations.
I remember when my mother paid $600 for a VCR. I hear VHS is going the way of HD-DVD now. I think she might be complaining about being an early adopter of video tech.
Whatever Mom. Suck it up already
The real issue with adding blu-ray to an HD DVD system is the tiny number of connectors on most TVs and AV systems, and the stupid audio format choices on blu-ray.
For example: why does PS3 support TrueHD and not DTS-MA, when DTS-MA is the favored blu-ray disc format? To fully play discs on a lot of BD players (not just PS3), you need to spend about $1000 on a proper AV receiver form Onkyo or Denon.
The HD-A35 and XA2 both had all audio formats decoded inside, so all you needed was a 5.1 amp.
As usual, this ability is still in blu-ray's future.
SONY sold it's last Betamax deck in !!! 2002 !!!
That was 15-20 years after Betamax was dead. They did this to support their millions of Beta customers, not because they were still trying to "win."
Why do people think that Toshiba is so stupid as to piss off their last supporters? They will be making a HD DVD player well into the next decade, so that their customers have a way to get replacements.
And there is always eBay, where you can STILL get a working Betamax player.
Well sven, Sony is screwing it's supporters by letting Playstation 3 slip as they spend millions on Blu-ray. If you buy the 40 gb version now, it requires a PS2 for those games which could bring the cost of the PS3 right back up to what the 80 gb goes for and that is not complete backwards compatibility anymore.
If you are made of money and have unlimited space for stuff feel free to accept it. I still honestly think Sony has made some big mistakes so far in changes they have made just so they could push Blu-ray when it was going to be around as long as the PS3 was anyways.
yep, you're totally right. Sony is letting the gaming division slip. You hit the nail on the head.
There's only the little issue that overall the Sony gaming division is creaming MS's gaming division in total number of units of consoles sold. They recently started turning a profit overall and most indications are that they're making a profit on each individual PS3 now (or at least, not losing money) due to many cost saving initiatives. There's also the little issue of both PS units outselling the 360 last month. There's that one other point that now that BD won, a lot of mainstreamers sitting on the fence as far as which console to buy will get the one that also gives them a better movie experience. Or they will buy the PS3 solely as a BD player and possibly discover the pretty good to awesome games available.
Other than those minor points tho, you're totally right. Sony is screwing over their game division to push Blu-ray.
Well those Xbox360 people are in for another surprise. Start getting used in to telling your friends you never owned HD-DVD or Xbox360 to ensure not to become the laughing stock of the neighbourhood. Because the HD-DVD news also makes people swarm to the PS3 in flocks.
It's almost like the stock market! Maybe best to include your Xbox360 with your HD-DVD before that one becomes obsolete as well, it might convince some retards to actually purchase your HD-DVD.
I'm not a sony supporter.
I'm a sony consumer.
I'm on my third ps2. When this ps2 dies, maybe i'll get a fourth one- maybe not.
Prices drop. Hardware improves and gets cheaper. That's the nature of tech.
By the time the PS3 game game developers catch up to the possibilities of the cell processor, ps3's will be cheap enough that by waiting for the good games i'll be further out ahead by buying a ps2 and a ps3 than if i had spent $600 on a 60GB but since i've got a working ps2 i'm ahead already.
It's not sony that's screwing the early adopters.
The early adopters were rewarded by sony with a ps2 backwards compatible machine.
Why is it no one applauds Sony for that.
Early adopters were rewarded for purchasing a machine that helped sony win the "format war" and those of us that wait get a cheaper gaming machine and an improved Blu-ray player - but no hardware decoding for PS2. It's a trade off.
Sony and LED manufacturer Nichia have already come up with a smaller laser. IBM's new 45nm Cell will use about 40 percent less power than its 65nm predecessor. Both of these advancements make the playstation3 form smaller, cheaper and/or cheaper to run.
It's us late adopters that screw the early adopters. Not Sony.
(On a sidenote, now that my quest to find a a copy of Fatal Frame was succesful, my need for a PS2 will drop exponentially once i've finished it.)
I'm going to have to agree and do the same as Darrol.
I got in to HD DVD originally because got a great deal on an HD-A1 (under $100 off ebay). I figured, I can enjoy my current collection with decent upconverting, and enjoy HD rentals from Blockbuster online which I was already paying for anyway (and which they haven't dropped yet) and when the format war was settled, I would just go from there.
The only titles I've purchased were The Bourne Trilogy, the Matrix trilogy, 300, and Transformers, and those were all on some kind of discount, so I don't feel like I'm losing a whole lot of investment.
To the President of Toshiba: Market HD DVD primarily as a storage medium AND then for video. If it's significantly cheaper I guarantee Blu ray will crater and be relegated to One off movies. Work with LG and make multi-writers for the computer. $20 bucks vs $2 per disk, it's a no brainer for people who need to archive material. Digital photos from a 10MP camera take up a crap load of space and hard drives aren't the best solution. 16 gig flash card needs an HD-dvd solution. Screw the MPAA/ RIAA. Floppy disks didn't need the MPAA/RIAA, Iomega zip disks didn't need the MPAA/RIAA, Porn industry doesn't need the MPAA/RIAA. Make the HD writers so they retail for
One thing I learned as an HD-DVD early adapter is that this Toshiba HD-A1 working in conjunction with my 52" Panasonic Plasma TV makes standard DVDs look almost as good as the high definition variety. Initially I rented only HD-DVDs from Netflix, but where no HD version was available I soon learned that this Toshiba HD player works wonders with plain old run-of-the-mill DVDs. On recognizing that Blu-Ray is no better than HD-DVD in picture quality I'll just stick with what I have until regular DVDs are no longer available. Oh, did I mention that I do indeed appreciate those 5.1 analog audio output RCA connectors allowing direct analog feed to my multi-channel pre-amp.
@DrXym
I have to wonder when / if Microsoft will produce a Blu Ray add on for the 360. If they had brains they'd revamp the Elite and build-in a Blu Ray drive. The PS3 is cheaper than an Elite and does so much more. Microsoft need to fight back because their lineup is starting to look pretty ropey.
---
They would only put an external drive for that as blu-ray would be incompatible with EVERY single Xbox360 game made so far.
The biggest thing that disapoints me about this. I still need 2 products to play DVD's and BRD's Wich is a huge pain in the ... I preferred the HD-DVD option because you only needed one piece of hardware, as HD-DVD players were backwards compatible with DVD's, BRD's are not compatible.
Bad choice on the Studio's as they are really choosing the brand most likely to fatten their back pockets.
For me, the PS3 is an excellent Blu-ray player and network media player. Not that they added Divx/Xvid support to the H264/MPG4, I've only had one dl video not play. Im not a big gamer but I also enjoy some of the games. With 2008, it looks like some of the new titles will be really popular.
Kick-ass BluRay player + WiFi streaming media player + next gen console = $399. That's not bad at all.
If MS were to add an external BD player to the XBox, you'd have to spend like $700 to get the same at the PS3. Xbox with Harddrive + Wifi card + BD add on, etc...
I sold my Toshiba A3 and my 30 discs on eBay the day after the Warners announcement. Think I recovered most of my funds, especially with the BOGO sales. Bought a PS3 that day also because it's the most future proof Blu-Ray player out there.
Adam - That was smart and decisive. I can't believe it got to this point. How could they have not seen this coming after all the +/- R confusion?
Make things hard for consumers and someone will make it hard for you.
Already returned my HD-DVD (to BestBuy) within the 60 day (extended Holiday) return policy, which ended 2-weeks ago. All my discs (7) were purchased as CostCo and were returned as of last week.
As a PS2 and XBox360 owner, a PS3 could be possible. But not until a firmware upgrade that lets PS3 output pure bitstream via HDMI (DTS-HD MA Bitstream for example). Hell, I might even accept internal encoding output (of DTS-HD MA) as LPCM via HDMI (as my Onkyo TX-SR875 would work with that).
Amazing to me that Sony has been pushing HD audio quality of Blu-Ray, but doesn't even fully support it out of the box.
@DX
The PS3 will never be capable of bitstreaming HD audio unless they change the hdmi 1.3 port to a newer one. And who cares if the PS3 decodes it?
@nin
Optical perhaps?
The PS3's HDMI is HDMI 1.3a, is this not capable?
PS3 lacks the hardware to bitstream truehd/dts ma hd.
i did the same thing. only difference: i already had a playstation 3. got a pretty decent deal out of my hd-dvd player and the 10 movies i owned.
I adopted HD DVD first, and have a slew of discs for it, but I also adopted Blu-Ray (360 HD DVD Add-on first, PS3 second; yes, I'm a gamer) so I'm not feeling any pain. However, if anything, I'm going to use the death of HD DVD to purchase a nice stand-alone player so I can get the maximum use out of my discs for cheap. It's still obvious that Digital Downloads aren't up to par with true HD, so that's also out of the picture.
As for the HD DVDs themselves, I'm hoping to capitalize on Netflix and retailers ditching HD DVDs in an effort to get some titles for cheap (Heroes S1 and Battlestar Galactica, anyone?)
Same here. Picked up a HD-DVD add-on drive cheap last year and got Heroes S1 and 3 extra movies free, so the drive more then paid for itself on day one (and that's not including the 5 free from the mail-in offer).
I also got my PS3 from my fiance this past X-mas, so this news doesn't sting having both players already. I also put off buying any movies for either format until recently, so my total investment 'pre-fallout' is minimal.
If anything, I look forward to getting some great deals on cheap HD-DVD discs. I can always plug the drive to my PC and rip them to another format later when physical media becomes 'so last gen'. I just hope the lack of competition doesn't have us remembering the good ol' days when Blu-ray movies were 'only' 30 bucks.
Digital Downloads are not up to par? I bet if I put my 1080p content and switched between the original BD disk... you would be very hard pressed to tell the difference.
I have both players... the future is NOT on a disk. I could care less who wins or loses... downloads are fine for me with my 70" 1080p upscaling TV.
@JeffNLA
I believe that he said that because HD movie downloads take up so much space. I mean for a person who buys hundreds of movies per year, that is a lot of storage space.....DUH!!!
I only bought a HD-DVD player because it was cheap. I was in the market for a nice upconverting DVD player, and for 30 more bucks I got HD.
I plan on keeping and using it as a DVD player until Blu-ray is under $150.
This is exactly my plan also.
My HD player and 20 movies still cost less than the cheapest Profile 1.0 player available (with no movies).
Blu-Ray early adopters have wasted far more money, and will have to "double dip" on hardware/software anyway.
Yep the same with me.
I wasn't planning on going next gen until I saw that an HD-DVD player was only a little more expensive than an upscaling DVD player I was about to buy so i thought 'What the hell?' and got one.
+1
I have a great upconvert player and all of my HDDVDs still work just fine. When BR puts out a profile 2.0 player for sub $200 I'll pick one up. Til then, I'll enjoy the HDDVDs I have and any other titles will still look good. :-)
Seems like a lot of people did this. I wasn't planning to either, until I got a deal at best buy for basically a $100 upconverting dvd player that I needed that had HD capabilities, and 11 free movies. I still plan to buy movies as the prices come down, and wait on Blu-Ray until they make up their damn minds about the spec, or have some way to upgrade non integrated players.
Oh... and add not buying anything Toshiba supports to that list; Toshiba completely screwed the pooch on this one.
I'm gonna load up on HD movies while they are cheap!
That looks like a good idea, but isn't !
As an early laser-disc adopter I thought I'd do the same when the first DVD's came out.
Now a couple of years later with a broken laser disc player which nobody can repare anymore I am stuck with an investment in laser-discs, no longer have a player, and those titles I had on laser-disc are now so dirt cheap, that it doesn't even justify reparing the laser-disc player OR picking one up cheap on ebay.
Bottomline, it is money lost investing in a format that is declared dead.
Only way around it would be to hook a HD-drive up to your mac or PC and back-up those titles for years to come. No idea if that's possible though.