Poll: Did you purchase an HD DVD player post-format war?
By Darren Murph 
posted Aug 9th 2008 12:00PM
posted Aug 9th 2008 12:00PM
posted Aug 9th 2008 12:00PM
The percentage of electronics at the end of their lives which were recycled.
The EPA found that the percentage remained consistent from 1999-2005. Even as recycling rates went up, the amount of electronics reaching end of life outpaced the increase, leaving the figure static. (source: EPA, July 2008)
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I cryed at the loss of consumer power.
I considered one, because there were 7 free movies with a player for under $100 deals...but I figured when the machine finally breaks I would have spent $100, which would be an extra 2 tanks of gas lol.
I bought a combo player for dirt for my HTPC and picked up a nice collection of about 30 hd dvd's all for under 400 bucks. From now on out, it looks like i'll just be buying blurays for 20+ each, but it was definitely nice stockin up on a high def movie collection for the price of dvd's. =)
I didn't care who won the format war... and to be honest both bluray and HD DVD look and sound the same to me. I just wish there were more movies that use 7.1 sound so I can make use of my home theater system. Why advertise it so much if rarely any movies actually have it?
Hell, 5.1 isn't used as much as it should be. I see more and better use of surround sound from modern video games that I'll ever see from movies.
I also have a Dual Player for my PC. I was able to find a good deal on it. Now I want to go out and buy a small form factor PC like a Shuttle XPC or something so I don't have to bring my Tower downstairs. They have $7 - $11 HD-DVD movies at Fry's. I need to go buy more while the pickings still good. I at the very least need to rack up all Harry Potters and Transformers.
I steered clear when it was still called AOD.
I bought a xBOX 360 add on ($50 + 6 free movies) for future ripping when my players die (Toshiba HD-D2 (bought pre-death) and my first BD player the LG BH200 - bought post death)
What could possibly be the point of this "Poll"? Are we that desperate for material that we throw out HD-DVD flame bait 6 months after the fact?
I bought an HD-D3 from costco and ended up with 7 free movies I didn't want. It's a good replacement for the 360 add on drive and I can use my harmony remote to watch dvds again (was using ps3 before). But I bought no more hd-dvd discs.
bought a2 for 90 during that walmart sale and got 5 free movies (at the time didn't even know there was a war just looking for a good dvd player)
bought a d3 at costco for $69 w/ 7 free movies after it was over as a backup player.
Same here, but it was at Sears before the war was over. Got 10 movies for about $10 each. Just recently bought Batman Begins for $12.
my xa1 still upconverts beautifully and CDs sound damn good on the thing. Doesn't completely sound like a losing format to me, just scarce ;)
my xa1 still upconverts beautifully and CDs sound damn good on the thing. Doesn't completely sound like a losing format to me, just scarce ;)
I had an Xbox 360 HD Drive Pre-death and a small collection at the time (under 5 movies), then after the death call, I've bought over 50 movies, with an additional 8 yesterday at Frys (on sale, 10bux each). I have an A30 about to arrive any day now and frankly i figure I'll run these into the ground before I go completely BR. (Hard to justify paying 20+ for a movie) on my PS3 I barely use...
I returned my HD DVD player to Wal Mart for a full refund after the Warner announcement.
Then I scoured the internet for deals, and got a Samsung BD-UP5000 for $378. Considering I got $150 back from Wal Mart that made the price $228. Considering that I sold my Xbox 360 HD DVD add on late 2007 for $100 bucks that made the Samsung player $128.
I'm very happy with the purchase, I love the player and it works great for me. I picked up Planet Earth among others on HD DVD for $25 bucks. I don't feel I got burned by HD DVD losing, all 28 of my HD DVDs still work just fine and I bought a lot of them way below a comparable Blu-Ray price.
I too, went the Samsung BD-UP5000 route. I had a refurb Toshiba HD-A1 which I sent off to the bestbuytradein.com program, and I definitely took advantage of HD-DVD price drops and picked up a few more of those on firesale.
I have an LG BD writer which happens to read HD DVDs so I own a grand total of 3 HD DVDs that I have or intend to format shift. All 3 were on sale for rental prices so I'm not put out by owning them. I certainly wouldn't be paying anywhere near full price but at these prices (they cost me €5.50) I may as well. I doubt my collection is going to grow much more unless I happen on some more disks at those prices. Most of the stores have or are very close to shutting down their HD DVD sales completely so I doubt the extreme firesales will last long.
I love how people talk about how cheap HD DVD movies were in comparison to bluray movies, but that was only because they were being clearanced off shelves. The movies, when HDDVD will still a relevant format were at least the same price, some even more expensive. The players were less expensive, but thats because the "consumer was choosing bluray" and HD DVD organization (toshiba) had to drive prices down in order to attempt to out sell bluray. Yes the PS3 was the reason ,but who cares, most people bought PS3's in order to watch blurays.
With your head that far up your ass, I'm amazed you had enough oxygen to make that post.
You don't have a clue as to what you're saying, do you?
I kept my HD DVD player and continue to buy HD DVDs. The player works great. The encryption's been cracked so eventually, when it's time to move on to a better format (SuperBluray? DVD 3.0? Teh Interwebs?) I can just rip the discs with an X-Box HD DVD add-on and copy them across.
There are multiple reasons why I didn't switch to Blu-ray. One is that it's one thing to pay $200 for a player (actually, I got it as a Christmas present) and $10-15 per movie (with exceptions for special editions), it's quite another to plonk down $400 more (minus any refund for the HD DVD player) for a Blu-ray player and pay $15-30 for movies for that.
The other is a reason I chose HD DVD over Blu-ray in the first place - I don't think Blu-ray has long term viability. I'm not going to start a flame war by explaining why, but essentially I compared features and specs, felt HD DVD was a scalable platform, and BD was less able to work with the online future and less able to even be what it purported to be, a reliable brand guaranteeing disc and player compatibility.
That situation has not changed. HD DVD has failed but that doesn't mean Blu-ray's going to succeed, any more than you'd expect a Mercury Tracer to win a race across the Atlantic just because the Boeing 747 it was up against just withdrew.
Perhaps I'm wrong in that. Perhaps the studios and manufacturers will review the situation over the next few months and agree to the changes needed to make Blu-ray a capable platform. I hope so. I truly hope so. But for now, I already have HD DVD, so there's no harm in me spending money on more content for it. For me to invest in Blu-ray requires me to spend $300+ on a player ($300 for an discontinued, obsolete, player that's on special.) That's a pointless investment.
I might as well wait. The better options are right around the corner. In the mean time, if I see an HD DVD I like, I'll get it. Shame I've never really cared for the movie Trainspotting, otherwise I'd support Channel 4's forthcoming HD DVD release of that and hope it results in a few more releases.
Would I have bought an HD DVD player after the Toshiba announcement? I'm unsure. Between the Warner announcement and the Toshiba one, the prices were ridiculous and, frankly, HD fans were insane if they didn't buy one, given the rebates pretty much gave you the players for free.
I think that they were insane for buying one though. There will be no more movies, other than DVD, they have a few HDDVD's which they can only watch so many more times, then it becomes useless. I agree, prices were amazing, but that is only to clearance out a "useless" piece of technology that will never be around again.
Well, BD2.0 seems to be at least close to what I liked about HD-DVD. Of course, it sucks that all stand alone BD players at this point except a small minority of the brand new ones aren't compliant with it.
I got a Toshi HD-DVD player around Christmas like others here, and I have a pretty substantial (50+, growing) HD-DVD library. I got a 20 Gig PS3 post-death on ebay at a pretty hefty discount with a couple controllers and three games for less than what the new crippled ones are selling for.
I think I made the right decision, and finally BD prices seem to be dropping a bit (new titles down to $25 from $35 in my area, used prices starting to drop to the $15 range, which is my sweet spot). Sony and Toshiba fucked up, they should have gone it together and done it right from the start, but I don't think there was any real question as to whether Sony would be able to out-last Toshiba with their 1/3 of all movies on the planet exclusive library.
I intend to keep buying HD-DVDs and I'll buy BDs when the price is right or when I want the movie badly enough (there are a fair number of Sony action flicks that obviously you have no choice on, and the new releases aren't coming on HD-DVD for sure).
How lame is this site now?
Nfinity *BANNED* ...... Truthteller *BANNED*
How interesting this topic could have been if they were allowed to voice their opinions here, alas, the bully boys have won.
The interest and traffic flow has dropped enormously lately, no matter what you might say about their opinions, they were responsible for driving lots of interest and traffic flow.
Obviously the power crazed so called journalists bully boys have flexed their muscles, now it's just a place for the blue ray dribblers to meet and french kiss each other, what happened to freedom of speech, and now this lame attempt at getting some traffic back by dragging HD DVD back into the spotlight.
Pathetically laughable by the PS3 kiddy console crowd.
couldn't agree with you more funny how the blu supporters were calling them names like "pussies" and yet nfinity and tt got the boot over it. pretty said and the comments have been extremly lame ever since
Me 3, how slow is it here without them, lets start a campaign....
"BRING BACK NF AND TT"
Me 3, how slow is it here without them, lets start a campaign....
"BRING BACK NF AND TT"
So let me get this straight.... no one has anything relivent to say on HD topics now that they're gone?
So what does that mean?
People like to argue? People like to "correct" other people who don't share the same opinion as them regardless of whos right?
So everyone was actually enjoying ripping into other people even though they were complaining that they were hearing the same old expected comments and that they were tired of it? Now that people aren't spending their time doing what they were complaining about everyone want to bring them back?
What kind of disfunctional group of people post here? People can share their experiences and opinions the exact same way as before. If you only posted to argue with those 2 peope, then you shouldn't have been posting in the first place.
God forbid that I now don't have to read through 3 pages of stupid arguing crap (which is occasionally funny) to actually read less then 10 posts that actuallt contain information about the posting from other people.
If you want to argue and fight, go meet up behind the portables after school and settle things the old way. If you have something to share, do so; if you only had something to share because of 2 peoples radcal comments then you're just as much a waste of time as they were.
Don't get me wrong, on THIS PERTICUAL POST, they would both have a lot to contribute but when they bash for the sakeof bashing even on good news posts, its just stupid and if YOU miss that, then that says a lot about YOU aswell.
Seeing the comments before my comment that are presently highly ranked is just pathetic! So many of you begged for them to be banned so that the posts would be reduced to more compelling information, now that you got your wish, youre borded? This is a bad joke!
actually i only remember seeing a handful of people wanting them banned and as far as i can tell they deserved to be banned alot more than those 2 did. as far as opinion's i enjoyed nfinity absultely insane opinion's of where hd is headed. actually most of the times he was just posting a crazy opinion that would be followed by 3 pages of about 4 or 5 users talking thrash about him for no reason other than just blind hate for him no matter what he said.
Truth Teller is banned? I thought he was just sulking.
I'm with you guys, bring back the dastardly duo, it's not the same without them, this place is like a morgue now!
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I bought an XA2 with 11 free movies for $300 new, a few weeks after the announcement from Tosh. I couldn't be happier, this thing is built like a tank but performs and handles like a Ferrari, until a quality 2.0 blu ray player is very cheap I am more than satisfied.
I'm with you guys, bring back the dastardly duo, it's not the same without them, this place is like a morgue now!
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I bought an XA2 with 11 free movies for $300 new, a few weeks after the announcement from Tosh. I couldn't be happier, this thing is built like a tank but performs and handles like a Ferrari, until a quality 2.0 blu ray player is very cheap I am more than satisfied.
I've spent $500 dollars on HD-DVD after the Warner annoucement (with no HD purchase prior to the point).
That brought me 3 HD DVD players and over 50 movies. I think a lot people didn't realize how good those HD DVd deals really were(and in some case still are).
Bought a A35 from Amazon at a rock-bottom price so I could listen to my HD-DVDs in lossless bitstream audio. Now my Xbox HD-DVD add-on drive is only used to upconvert standard DVDs over a VGA connection.
I got my A-30 in December on Amazon for around $230. When the price went down to $160 a month later after the warner announcement, amazon happily refunded me the almost $70 difference. Not too long after, they sent me the $50 dollar credit that they gave to all hd dvd owners. Honestly not much of a loss and not much to regret, as its a solid player and has the VRS video processor (the same as in the $400 Oppo DV-983H upconverter) which results in flawless upconversion of standard DVDs. It does it so well I honeslty could not discern a difference between the Transformers HD-DVD and standard DVD. I only have around 20 HD-DVDs, but half of those i purchased after the sales. It's still a great player no matter what, and I think it's undeniable that all in all HD DVD was a much more well-thought out format. Anyway, when Blu Ray players come to a reasonable price, I will buy one. No ill will here. It's the risk taken in a format war.
Picked the xbox add on for 25 quid (50 dollars) and the quality is great. The dvds are cheap and in my opinion a definate revival should be launched. The hd dvd player should be sold at a loss but make their money back on the dvd sales. I've bought roughly 20 or so hd dvds since I bought it because of the low prices.
@ XDragon
A word of advice...if you're going to use ALL CAPS, try to use words that at least resemble English. I'm certain "PARTICULAR" is what you meant to write (as well as "bored" for "borded").
A piece of advice for yourself would be reply where people will see the related comment not where it gets lost. 2nd, if you read the time, you would see I was half asleep when I wrote it. If everyone was as lame as you that they felt the need to posted a message for every spelling error, then blogs would be filled with stupid posts like yours. Seriously, thanks for calling me out, now get a life.
I bought my RCA HD DVD player in like-new condition in December (prior to Warner calling the format war) for about $90-$100 (including shipping). About a month a good it looked like I could probably recoup about 50-75% of my cost by selling it on EBay. Now it looks like I might only get less than 25% of the cost. My idea to keep this as a CD player keeps looking better and better (it has Burr Browns inside). The way I look at it, I have gotten lossless audio for $10 per month out of my non-HDMI receiver. Not bad.
I sold my Blade Runner HD DVD for $20 (used) and rebought it on Blu-Ray for $15 (new). That is obviously an outlier, though, as the few HD DVD's I have replaced I have taken a "loss" on.
I really agree that there are some great deals for HDDVD out there, but what are you planning on doing for new HDDVD discs such as Ironman, not on HD, Batman, when its released, etc. EVerything will only be on bluray. You now have a pointless machine that doesn't upscale any better than a bluray player or even an upconvert dvd player. That is now 50+ HD movies people bought and a player that will likely just sit there unless you plan on watching those 50+ movies over and over and over.
I doubled my HD DVD collection during the fire sale, and just got HD-A3 off ebay when I got a 1080p TV. I'm living purple becuase I also got a BLu-Ray player at the samne time as the HD-A3.
I have no plans on buying any blu-ray disc that I already have the HD DVD version for (including the Matrix). I'll just live happily with 2 players and over 50 high def discs.
Shouldn't it be "The token 'Other' option?"
Darren,
Unlike others, I think this a fine topic for "filler", however, I do understand their concerns over flame-baiting.
Anyway within a month after the end of the war, I returned my A2 to WalMart($99), purchased a new A35 from Crutchfield + 2 free movies ($150), then decided to build a HTPC and go "purple" with a LG Bluray/HD DVD combo drive ($150 for just the drive). 64 "red" titles ($10 avg, some imports) and 13 "blu" titles ($22 avg...ugh!) later (and counting), and I'm a happy camper. Both are (or were) great technologies that have their own pros and cons, yet still have one singular difference that matter to all consumers: cost.
I don't buy into the mindset that when my dedicated HD DVD player dies, that I won't be able to watch those movies and it would have been a wasted investment. Whenever that day comes, who says that BluRay will be the BEST available home theater standard 3-10 years from now? Granted, development of current BD tech has recently spawned disc with a capacity of 500 GB -- possibly enough for someone to watch 4K resolution films (Theater quality) in your own home.
In time as technologies become more common place, they become cheaper to produce and readily available. Because of this, I find it hard to believe that there won't be combo drives that will play HD DVD discs, whether it's 3, 10 or 20 years from now. For instance, if you purchased a mass produced PC from a retailer today, it will more than likely still have a 3 1/4" floppy drive and a V.90 modem built in. VCRs were first developed and sold by Philips in 1970 (older than me and the vast majority of us), but we can still buy a VCR brand new today under multiple brand names.
Cost was my first complaint of Blu and now my only complaint of Blu. It's a bummer that players and discs haven't dropped more in price (i.e.: weak U.S. dollar), but I know it will come sooner or later. Then we can talk more about Blu becoming the standard over SD DVD. I for one want it to happen (wish it was "red", but it's a dead issue so to speak). The sooner it does, we can start debating its value against newer tech that will probably be available in the next 2 years anyway. But not to worry. If, and when, Blu becomes the standard, it will be available anywhere in between for as little as SD DVD has been available and as long as VCRs have been available.
And in between it all, I'll still be a happy camper!
Why bring this up again??? What's with the instigating?
Bought mine just before the coffin was nailed shut. Paid 200 before taxes when it was priced at 349.99 canadian, ended up getting a refund for the difference when it dropped to almost 99.99 and then got a 50$ gift card to boot. As it stands it's my primary DVD player, with sweet upconversion playing most if not all my movies, BluRay being the obvious exception. No regrets. I paid about what a good upconversion player would have cost me so no issues here.
I don't see any value in purchasing an HD-DVD player post format war unless you already have a player and you want another one as a backup or for another room.
If you're going to get into HD, you might as well purchase the surviving format.
As for buying movies, if I had an HD-DVD player, I’d be going nuts picking up movies at the awesome prices people are willing to part with them for.
You kind of contradict yourself there, you say, don't buy a HD DVD player because they lost the war, but if you did own one you'd be buying the discs like crazy because there so cheap.
Why not buy yourself a very cheap player then and do just that with the discs, what you save on the discs will pay for the player in no time and then you can save a bundle on all the discs after that!
Because if I haven't already invested in the wrong format, I might as well get into the one that will still have new releases so I won't need 2 players to watch my movies. If I already invested in the wrong format, the only reason I'd continue buying movies is not because they are cheap but because they are dirt cheap. That or I'd try selling my player and HD-DVD collection on ebay but then again, the value on the return isn't really worth dumping it because its still a great dvd player. The point is, I wouldn't begin an investment into a dead format but if I already had while it was alive and the value of the investment had plummeted, then I'd get the clearnece priced discs I was missing.
When I bought my HD-A2, the $199.99 price point was a bargin. I bought it to rent HD-DVDs from Netflix and only bought 2 HD-DVD's (including planet earth).
You pay the price to be an early adopter, but at least I came out of it with a kick-ass upscaling DVD player.
Being a tech junkie like all of you, I knew I had to wait until the war ended, and everyday it was killing me. I did not want to invest all that money on a player and movies that would simply fail. I was always keeping up to date with engadget, engadgetHD, and Gizmodo. When the 3 TV's in the house are all over 60 inches with 1080p capability you kind get revolted by the grainy quality of filthy low-tech DVD's....ewww gross. I was kind of hoping Blu-ray would win anyway, and it wasn't long before the war was over. I went out and bought my Blu-ray player (came in my pants at Best Buy) and now I have 60 Blu-ray movies and she is still growing into a big and juicy HD collection..mmmm numie numies.
While we are on the topic of video formats, honestly I would never simply just download a movie, ever, even if the picture were incredible, I love my physical format, which is tangible and not virtual. I hope Blu-ray lasts 20 years, because I would hate to have to buy Holographic Disc's anytime soon. I would like to skip the holographic discs and go straight to holographic cards, no moving parts, nice and neat...just like solid state hard drives...muah..love ya SSD & HVC. In the end I am glad magnetic tape cassettes and discs are dead and optical discs are also going the way of the dodo. Regarding movies, transferring files from a computer I would love nothing more then to only use flash cards and holographic cards. I believe flash cards will simply get more efficient and will not be phased out.
Unless we develop isolinear chips
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Isolinear_chip
or optolythic technology
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Optolythic_data_rod
flash and HVC are the way to go for all data transfers and transferable video/audio recordings.
p.s. we can thank Star Trek for most of our advancements in science, technology, and medical science…yea that’s right not Star Wars….but the Trek…bitches.