The price value of HD-DVD was a no brainer decision for my home theater. The movies I own now on HD look FANTASTIC. As a consumer, I see no advantage to Blu Ray other than exclusive studio support from some. There is no doubt if all studios supported both formats, Blu ray would die fast and this war would be over.
My own 5 cents:
1. HD DVD cannot loose at this point.
2. Blu Ray might one day match HD DVD in sale numbers, in which case both formats loose.
3. It is easy to enjoy most advantages of HD DVDs with the currently available A/V receivers and TVs/projectors. This
is not so for Blu Ray (severe HDMI audio issues, inter alia).
4. All in all, HD DVD players are cheaper than the Blu Ray ones and work better. Also, the discs are either cheaper or combos with a DVD side.
5. Most people who learn to appreciate HD in time buy less and less DVDs. Therefore, studios who do not produce HD DVDs are likely to sell their movies on DVDs to less and less people!
6. People who have HD DVDs love the format and fight for it, exactly as the early adopters of DVDs did. This is the best and cheapest advertisement in the world!
Please, release your movies on HD DVD!
Sony - Don't make Blu-ray the new Betamax and strand your customers with an investment in media content they can only watch on overly expensive equipment from a few manufacturers.
Blue Ray just seems to be a problematic format to me. HD DVD gets more features, has dual format discs which run on normal DVD players as well and you can play it on your Xbox 360.. what could be better. definetly not Blue Ray.. thats for sure.
at first i was going with blue ray cause it had more gig meaning that they can add alot of features on about the movie .But seeing BR releaseing their movies with no features on it,telling me theres something wrong here like maybe theres a bad chip that cant read extra features so there just jumping out there in the real world to just try to stay right up next to HD-DVD until they can fix it.But i like how HD-DVD has been giving us features and more on their fomat.
If you want more many than you're getting now then you would start releasing your movies on HD-DVD. Just look at the Amazon.com listings for the rank of HD-DVD movies vs Blu-Ray. Why would you want to lost all that money? It doesn't make sense. No studio or company is winning with 2 choices. HD-DVD offers more times than not offers a higher picture quality with the VC-1 encoding. Stop losing money.
Blu ray - people just don't understand what it is - at least with HD DVD they recognise the letters DVD + who cares about highter storage capacity - a lot of these add ons to the movie discs are a complete waste of time and rubbish.
I already own 40+ HD-DVD's that I play on my Toshiba HD-XA1. I am very happy with the format. I own a PS3 and I only own the 1 movie that came with it. I rented a couple of blu-rays from netflix and can honestly say that I will not be buying or supporting blu-ray any longer. My PS3 will be used for games and thats if we can get a good game by 2008.
I would love to see POTC: Dead Man's Chest on HD-DVD. I'll definitely get it. Already have King Kong (courtesy of 360), Superman Returns, Batman Begins, and (coming soon) Jet Li's Fearless. It's funny how Superman Returns was harder to find in the HD-DVD format (I know Amazon sold out of this for awhile), while Blu-Ray was a dime a dozen. HD-DVD FTW!!!
HD-DVD is a much better product then Blu-Ray at this time. Sony keeps telling us Blu-Ray is to improve. "It's going to get better. It's going to have more storage capacity." Even Click which is a 50gb looks soft and has bad reviews. I wanted Blu-Ray to win based on specs before the war started, but now that I realize Sony merely tried to win with "paper" results over actual results, I am in camp HD-DVD. Is this Sony's 4th or 5th failed proprietary technology?
Spread the word on the facts of this case. HD-DVD is superior to Blu-Ray. The larger capacity of blu-ray discs is so it can hold more data for the LESS efficient encoding algorithm so all that "greater" capacity isn't an advantage, it's a necessity for blu-ray...
HD DVD costs consumers less to purchase and manufacturers of the discs less to make all while delivering superior sound and picture to Blu-Ray. Blu-Ray players are twice the price with no next generation audio support. MPEG 2 encoding for HD content...who said that was a good idea?
I also bought the XBox 360 HD DVD drive and I am happy I did. The picture is fantastic. I am up to 15 discs. I am hoping that Disney and Fox change their mind and start supporting the obvious choice in HD.
Bought the Xbox 360 HD-DVD add-on mid-November and now I have 14 HD-DVDs in my collection, already a third of the amount of DVDs I've accumulated over a 6 year period in just a mere 3 weeks. This seems to be a common trend amongst those I know of who've invested in HD-DVD.
HD-DVD FTW. I'm tired of Sony's strong-arm tactics and I'm ready for this format war to be over. Give me Disney movies on HD-DVD! Why not give consumers the choice of format.
With the HD-DVD add on for the 360 I will be watching HD goodness for less than half of a $499 PS3. Sony has done it again, let us not forget their past...8 track, Beta, Mini-Disc, and now Blu-Ray...they just don't get it.
Seriously... Sony, cut your losses... there is more money to be made by adopting HD-DVD and actually selling a lot of DVD players than kindling the fires of another format war.
I love HDDVD. It saddens me to think that "Black Hawk Down" and "T2" won't be available because they are put out by studios that are supporting bluray only.
