HD-DVD and the Early Adopter Premium 230
Hodejo1 writes "The early adopter premium is the difference between the cost of buying the latest greatest techno-toy today and the cost of buying an equal or better unit a couple of years later for much less. That Blu-ray unit you buy today for $300 will cost $80 two years from now. The premium is the $220 you pay to get the starter Blu-ray unit now as opposed to waiting. The same applied for HD-DVD until the axe finally fell and this is where it gets interesting. MP3 Newswire has been tracking post-mortem HD-DVD sales on eBay and surprisingly found that there are many takers. And why are people flocking to buy this decade's Betamax? Simple, they did the math. The demise of HD-DVD format creates "an option where the consumer can get his high-def player NOW without paying the $220 early adopter premium. That savings pays for the player and more. New sealed boxes of the Toshiba HD-A3, which shipped last fall for $300, are now drawing on average about $75 on eBay, where plummeting HD-DVD movie prices are averaging between $6 and $10. "Take a consumer with a 42" plasma set who needs to replace a broken standard definition DVD player. He can a) replace it with another standard definition DVD for about $60. b) He can buy a Blu-Ray player for between $300-$1000. c) He can buy an HD-DVD unit for under $80 and then buy ten $10 or sixteen $6 HD-DVD videos for a total of $180". What really drives this is Blu-ray's skimpy catalog, which will take a couple of years to pump up. Rather than blow the $220 on the early adopter premium just to have access to a limited number of movies the post mortem HD-DVD buyers can enjoy cheap Hi-Def players, cheap Hi-Def videos, and pay less. These users can shift to Blu-ray when players are less expensive and the catalog is robust. Actually, the early adopter premium is more like $320. With the win, Blu-ray manufacturers have raised prices."
you missed the most important factor. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:you missed the most important factor. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure that can't be right. I could perhaps understand the control freaks at Sony trying to pull a stunt like that, but requiring AACS is going to have a big impact on another emerging market Sony has a huge stake in; HD camcorders. Currently, the only way of efficiently distributing sizeable hi-res content from such a camcorder to friends and family (assuming they have HDTV capability in the first place) is via a physical HD disc, which essentially now means Blu-Ray. Hitachi even has a HD camcorder [hitachi.com] available that records straight to an 8cm Blu-Ray disc, which is then supposed to be immediately playable in any Blu-Ray player. Unless both the Hitachi camcorder and end-user AV software is also doing AACS encoding before writing content to disc, then that's going to leave a lot of HD camcorder owners just a little peeved when they try and show of their latest home videos in glorious HD.
Then again, it could actually be a good thing if they don't play on standalone players. It was bad enough having to sit through $random_family_member's holiday snaps, things took a turn for the worse with the first analogue camcorders, but the thought of seeing all that in HD? Won't somebody please think of the children!
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I am looking for an HD-DVD myself simply as an upscaling standard DVD player. They are cheaper than the regular upscaling DVD players on average.
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My Playstation 3 quite happily plays high definition content over my network using its DLNA (UPnP) functionality which for all it knows could be ripped HD-DVD discs.
Speaking of FUD and Sony, the PS3 quite happily rips CDs to its hard drive and then lets you copy them off to memory sticks, etc. if y
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That only interests a small segment of the audiophile population, which is itself a small segment of the consumer population in general. If that truly was a major deciding factor in the purchase, then the MPAA's piracy numbers are accurate. You can't have it both ways.
Of course, I'd wager you also foresaw the failure of Apple's iTunes because of its DRM format and still wonder how the Virtual Console can possibly make money with ZSNES available for free.
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please put the crack pipe down, it's already been established that backing up movies you've purchased is legal.
Plus they are useful DVD players (Score:5, Interesting)
There was a Digg link where everyone laughed at play.com [play.com] rebranding an HD-DVD player as an Upscaling DVD Player with HD Capabilities. I disagree with the laugh track - I think that's a clever step to take, and it's also completely true.
Cheers,
Ian
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That would get annoying.
Re:Plus they are useful DVD players (Score:5, Informative)
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The manufacturers swear the standalones will be 'nearly as fast' as a PS3 later this year. Doesn't really help the early adopters though.
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If you're about to sit and watch a two-hour movie, then WTF is the big deal about having to wait a whole, additional minute for the unit to get ready? Turn it on, go and get a beer out of the refrigerator, then come back. If you're so worried about having to wait 1 minute to watch a 120 minute movie, then I would have to argue that the problem lies not with the player but with
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And yes, it's useful. 30 seconds to boot vs. 2 hours to watch a movie on average; you do the math. Turn the player on, grab something to drink, then take a movie off the shelf. By then, the thing's on and you're ready to sit down and feel your ass grow.
Regular DVDs look fantastic on it, yes. I would recommend that people not turn on the black and rgb enhancement, though; those features see
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boy is this getting old... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, average sale price has gone up after Christmas sales ended.
Also, if BluRay's catalog is skimpy, what does that make the HD-DVD catalog, which is smaller?
It'd be great if the HD-DVD fans took a clue from Toshiba and stopped trying to push a dead format. They're not doing anyone any favors.
Re:boy is this getting old... (Score:5, Interesting)
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And play them on what? They won't play on any BD player currently in existence, or likely in existence in the future (by design).
Then there's the media. How cheap are you expecting dual-layer Blu-Ray discs to be? Go look up the price of a dual-layer recordable D
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> It does not make sense to buy an HD-DVD player at any price.
You're assuming that many people buying HD-DVD players TODAY are primarily motivated by desire to watch NEW movies in HD, as opposed to picking up a cool new disposable toy because it was cheap enough to say 'Fuck it' and buy just to enjoy the novelty of, and have a future player for HD camcorder videos burned to DVD+R media.
The fact that Bl
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Um, my perfectly good $59 HD-DVD player.
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Re:boy is this getting old... (Score:5, Interesting)
To be fair, I suspect Blu-Ray won't outlive plain old DVD. Unless Sony starts dumping $20 Blu-ray players with $9.99 movies, the rest of the world who can't afford Hi-Def TVs and Sound systems will probaly be satisfied with plain old DVDs for quite sometime.
Once the initial analog hurtle was jumped from VHS to DVD, there was no real need to go beyond that except those who had Hi-Def. Much like SCDs and mini-discs never took off, I personally believe Blu-Ray will be "good enough" until downloads, holographic discs, or solid state media takes off in 5 years. I still bet DVD will still outlast them for quite some time.
Just think of Blu-Ray and HD-DVD as the Laser Discs of the 21st century rather than VHS or Betamax. They're nice, but most people don't need them or will buy them except hardcore hi-def enthusiasts.
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Just think of Blu-Ray and HD-DVD as the Laser Discs of the 21st century rather than VHS or Betamax. They're nice, but most people don't need them or will buy them except hardcore hi-def enthusiasts.
Exactly!
This is the part that most people seem to be missing about all this. High Def video is currently a pretty high end luxury item to most people when one considers the cost of the TV itself, sound, players, and then media. Unless high def becomes standard amongst the wider audience, this does not mean a whole heck of a lot to those that arent videophiles/audiophiles in a big way AND have the funds (or perhaps stupid with lots of funds or obsessive with lots of funds, either way needs a good chunk of i
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Sports are being broadcast more often in HD, over the air and via cable. Sports have the benefit of looking much better and more detailed in HD. It's a difference almost anyone will see. This will drive the sale of HD TVs and general HD awareness. Once people do have HD TVs, the
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In addition to sports, computer animation should look better in a higher resolution. Beyond those two, though, I don't think there's much purpose in HD.
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By that metric, VCDs should outlive both DVDs as well as Blu-ray...
Unfortunately, the reality of economies of scale isn't so nice and simple. If you've bought a pack of CD-Rs lately, you might notice that prices are going up significantly, even while DVD+-Rs are falling. They're not equivalently priced yet, but for the storage, a DVD is much, much cheaper.
VCDs used to be FAR
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The fundamental difference between then and now is that the HD buyer begins with a substantial investment in HD video and multichannel digital audio.
He has practical large screen - wide screen - home projection. He has his choice of display technologies.
He can spend as much or as little as he chooses on theater sound.
If he choses the upscale HT receiver, HD radio, satelite radio, Internet radio, PC and iPod integration are
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I think the difference today is home cinema/theater is much more practical. Back when I got into this I had found I was buying various movies in widescreen on VHS (1990 or so) because it was great to see the whole picture. However, VHS just couldn't hold enough detail to allow for widescreen pre
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Great Player (Score:5, Insightful)
Dave
Re:Great Player (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not feeling too bad about my purchase of a Toshiba HD DVD. I mean, it came almost free with the HDTV that we bought before Christmas, and aside from renting a few HD DVDS, we haven't really invested a whole lot of money.
It came with 2 movies "Bourne Identity" (love it, great action and good features) and "300" (artist self gratification and generally crap movie), and a coupon for 5 more free. Haven't seen them yet. Doubt I will. It won't matter.
We will be buying a Blu-Ray once the price point on a medium featured unit goes sub-$200. Typical consumer price.
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New titles (Score:3, Interesting)
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Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Alien Quadrilogy FTW (Score:3, Interesting)
Start laughing in 5 years (Score:2)
iTunes has already made a lot of progress for music, movies will most assuredly follow. All it will take is something like a Tivo that can purchase movies online and allow you back them up for playback on your home PC (presumably after loggin in online) or the "tivo" you purchased it from. And if netflix ever starts actually putting good, and new movies, online for download, which is certainly in th
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I don't think there is anything assured about it. iTunes has been a winner for pop singles, but hasn't made a dent in the album market or in other genres. HD movies are an entirely different ballgame from pop singles. 30 GB vs. 5MB is huge factor.
iTunes works for 'music as background noise' that you don't pay any real attention to, much like car radio and elevator music.
HD Movies are a very different usage scenario.
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Conversion prospects? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Multi-format players (Score:5, Interesting)
Despite Samsung canceling its next gen combo player (http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/006597.html), I think that this is a near term decision - when the market picks up for current model combo players, there will be financial incentive to meet that demand with new products.
Re:Multi-format players (Score:4, Insightful)
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Right, because I couldn't find 5.25" disk drives nearly a decade after it stopped being used as a distribution medium, and just try buying a 3.5" floppy drive today, because that format is dead and replaced by USB memory sticks.
Somebody must have hit you with the stupid stick. The post you were replying to was referring to COMBO players, not being able to get obsolete devices. Did you ever see a 5.25"/3.5" floppy disk combo drive? No? Well, there's your analogy. There is about the same likelihood of seeing HD-DVD/Blu-Ray drives.
And, of course, Blu-Ray players will never offer backwards compatibility with DVD, since it is soon to be a dead format.
Again, idiotic. DVD is an established medium, which everybody uses. It is what people upgrade to Blu-Ray/HD from. Of course it is supported. But a format that is dead, and whose only serious manufactur
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I can buy an HD-DVD BluRay combo drive [google.com] today.
Why the deliberately obtuse antagonistic belligerent reply? I won't say that you didn't really know what the hell you were talking about, or that you just jumped at the opportunity to be an ignorant blathering fanboy.
I'm too nice for that.
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You could only use one drive or the other, but they were in the same unit.
Re:Multi-format players (Score:4, Interesting)
Does anyone remember Super Disk drives [wikipedia.org]? Those were a combo drive that would accept traditional 3.5 inch floppies in addition to being able to read and write its native 120 MB (later 240 MB) disks. These drives used the same slot and mechanism for read write of two highly disparate formats.
Actually the comparison of this media works on a number of levels. The floppy was long outmoded and of insufficient capacity for several years, but the drive was still deemed necessary to at least read historical data. The introduction of the LS-120 and the later variant LS-240 SuperDisk was too little, too late. By 2000, the entire removable-disk category quickly faced obsolescence because of CD-R and CD-RW drives.
The more I think about this the more I see a parallel in the current situation; with Bluray being the "Super Disk" (HD-DVD could possibly be considered the "Zip" drive) and with the entire category of removable optical media facing overall obsolescence due to the higher capacity of solid-state (USB flash drives or SSD hard disks). Eventually owners of BluRay optical media may end up, like owners of SuperDisks, in possession of a device with a quietly discontinued format, and it's media becoming hard to find.
More likely, we may just end up with more of the same the alphabet soup that we already enjoy with optical media and it may well include the HD-DVD in the string of formats listed before it's all over.
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Speaking of being hit with the stupid stick, the 5.25" and 3.5" floppies used completely different form factors, which makes them a poor analogy for HD-DVD and Rlu-Ray, which share pretty much the exact same form factor. It would be a wee bit difficult to produce a "combo"
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Somebody must have hit you with the stupid stick.
If they did, they hit you harder with it. The quote you take provides foundation for the argument based on the original poster's mention of obsolete media. So, I give examples of two types of obsolete media that persisted for quite some time after they were officially (and repeatedly) pronounced dead. Then, just after you stopped quoting (and apparently reading with a reasonable level of comprehension), I mention a combo drive - a 5.25"/3.5" combo drive, as a matter of fact, which yes, I have seen. I
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I think what you meant to say was that HD-DVD will soon be gone, but I beg to differ - the line to beat this particular dead horse is still quite long. Look at your standard DVD player and the formats it supports - hardly anyone uses most of them anymore, but that doesn't stop them from lingering in the list of features. HD-DVD wi
$60? (Score:2)
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It may well be that the Toshiba HD players have the best upscalers in them, but all that implies is that the upscalers in the HD displays are crap (which would not be surprising, given that the display manufacturers want you to buy HD everything, so why make an effort at having your old DVDs look good on the display?).
So, if a DVD HD player makes a good DVD upscaler, and you can buy it dirt cheap, why the heck not!
The blueray player price rise someone mentioned here could really shoot Sony in the fo
I'll adopt... (Score:2)
I mean, HD-DVDs ? Physical disks ? Dust ? Uuuh.
Besides, frankly speaking, this early adopter rush probably has nothing to do with a taste for high quality and everything to do with a pissing contest with your neighbors.
embellishment (Score:5, Insightful)
The articles itself was interesting and looks spot on, however this embellished comment on the article is inaccurate. Amazon lists over 500 HD-DVD titles [amazon.com] and over 700 Blu-Ray titles [amazon.com]. It seems someone is grasping at anything to save face on a lost cause.
With a large volume of HD content available for the dead format and the player/movie prices heavily cut to move inventory it should be no surprise they are selling. Thats the point of the massive price cuts, to clear out the inventory of the dead format.
Is this bad news for Blu-Ray? Hardly, once the inventory for this dead format is depleted it will be a Blu-Ray market until a viable alternative is developed. I doubt we'll get any meaningful agreement between hardware manufacturers, software developers, content producers, and telecom providers that will enable a meaningful replacement for Blu-Ray any time soon.
Re:embellishment (Score:5, Informative)
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If I follow your argument correctly, you're saying that digital distribution is doomed because demand has been higher than expected?
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If the demand for a DVD is higher than expected, they press more copies.
If the demand for a download is higher than expected, they scratch their heads and say "damn, the internet is too slow." Its not that there aren't long term solutions, its just that the ONLY way to improve bandwidth is
digital distribution (Score:3, Insightful)
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Of course, the smart thing would be that ISPs distribute the content themselves, so it does not really cost them in terms of external bandwith. That's exactly what the major ISPs here plan to do with IPTV.
That's great if you're able to use a major ISP. However, what about all of the people using municipal systems? What about watching a movie somewhere that doesn't have an internet connection, like in a vehicle?
Sorry, but physical media is here to stay. Sure, it'll diminish in presense, much like it has for the music industry; but the last time I checked, CD's are still selling heathily.
700 titles isn't much of a catalog... (Score:5, Interesting)
Always surf the wave's trailing edge (Score:5, Interesting)
Everybody who buys computers knows there's a "sweet spot" in price/performance that's about in the middle of the pack. If 1TB drives are just available, and you can still get 80GB drives but no smaller (not new), the the lowest $/GB is going to be around the 500GB size.
Well, the sweet spot for consumer entertainment boxes has tended to be near the trailing edge for over a decade now, not the middle. Unlike computer parts, there's very little Moore's Law involved.
I got a DVD player when they hit $300, and watched about 20 movies on it by the time they'd dropped below $100. So those 20 movies cost me $5 each to rent, and $10 each to own the player that early; I bought too soon.
Better results came from buying a LaserDisc AFTER the DVD had been announced and LD's dropped like a stone. I got it for a couple of hundred, watched several dozen movies on it before they were being sold from the stores, bought 20 discs for $5 each, and am still watching them one-by-one (and it's barely less good than DVD). In addition, it's now a conversation piece, a historical curio.
People still buy technology with the wrong, wrong mindset that it is a capital asset, that it will last a long time like a house, or at least a good car. It's not. It won't last that long anymore; not just the gadget, the ENTIRE FORMAT. My tapes lasted 20 years, DVD came and went in about 10, Blu-Ray is widely expected to be obsoleted by (often downloaded) AVI files in less than 10.
So treat it as an operating-money decision instead. Figure out the number of movies you watch in a year - if you're out of the dating years, have a family, generally Have A Life, it's probably less than 30, may be under 20. Then figure a five-year lifespan for a format these days, and that's the number of discs you'll play: maybe 100-150. Paying $600 for a player is $4-$6 per disc. Add then rental, and are you sure you don't just want to go to the theatre?
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Add then rental, and are you sure you don't just want to go to the theatre?
There is nothing family orientated about a trip to the local picture show. Every single time I goto the theater I am annoyed or offended.
The ultimate combination for the casual TV viewer is a modern antenna [dennysantennaservice.com] mounted on your house [antennaweb.org] plus Netflix [netflix.com] for the remainder of your desired special programming
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Add then rental, and are you sure you don't just want to go to the theatre?
Since it costs $9/ticket for adults at the theaters in my town, it's a minimum of $18/movie for my wife and I to go to the theater - and see the movie once. At 20 movies/year for 5 years, that's $1800 total. So no, it's still an easy choice to rent movies and watch them at home. Especially since you have the convenience of starting when you want, being able to stop the movie if you want to, etc. For the price of a trip to the theater you can usually purchase the movie, especially if you're willing to wait
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The difference these days is that optical medium have been, for the large part, backward compatible.
I can play CDs in my DVD pl
Wow the media finally figured it out. (Score:5, Interesting)
Fact is, picking up a firesale HD-DVD player + Planet Earth, Galapagos and so on in HD-DVD as well as a few films that do actually suit HD well such as 300 and Transformers I've been able to get the content I actually want to see in HD early. I'd never buy an HD player for the likes of the Bourne series, simply because I already think Matt Damon is an idiot and I don't particularly care about watching a high definition idiot in my room, I'm quite content with people like him remaining standard definition, and in not watching that sort of thing in HD I don't feel like I've lost out on anything whatsoever.
I guess to put it another way, some films you watch for the fantastic visuals, others you watch for the story. The story based films really don't make much difference whether they'd HD or standard def. but you'd never watch something like Planet Earth for the story, whilst it's interesting the main pull to it is the fantastic visuals that make you realise how amazing our planet actually is so I had a choice. Do I wait god knows how long for a Bluray player to come down to £50 - maybe 2years or more? or do I just buy an HD-DVD player addon for my 360 for £50 and enjoy the content I actually care about seeing in HD right now. To me it's really a no brainer, as has been mentioned previously on Slashdot, it's not as if the 360's HD-DVD drive can't be used on a computer to rip the content to disc and burn to a Bluray disc sometime down the road anyway when the prices for burning Bluray discs becomes reasonable.
Some people look at me funny when I say I bought an HD-DVD player and a few films, but I struggle to find myself as being the joke when I've paid £90 for the same player + content they're paying over £300 for. I'm still possibly going to buy Bluray down the line, I just aint going to pay anything over £100 for it. It's all too easy for some people to overlook common sense and logical action due to over the top brand loyalty. I understand there may be some people who do want to see their favourite actors in all their high definition glory rather than enjoy the storyline but I'm not one of those and plenty of others aren't - for those of us who only watch story based discs for the story then even 700mb XviD (i.e. not quite as good as DVD quality even) is plenty good enough.
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You'll be singing a different tune when they spent that money just once and can continue to enjoy new releases while you spent that money once AND have to spend the additional money again when you find that you can't buy anything new that will play on your player. And you'll have to either dispose of the thing or figure out how to make it all fit in your TV stan
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Just to make my point with numbers:
100 HD DVD Player
50 10 HD DVD movies @ 5 each
V 3 years pass
100 Blu-ray Player
150 10 Blu-ray Movies @ 15 each
=total 400 + time value of mone
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I guess to put it another way, some films you watch for the fantastic visuals, others you watch for the story.
Or, to take a less piecemeal approach, a movie experience is a combination of the visuals, the audio, and the inherent movie content which includes story, acting, etc. You might watch Planet Earth for its great visuals but if you're playing the audio on not-very-good stereo speakers then you're missing out on a great part of the experience. HD content with a good setup gives you the best of all aspects of the movie and, while you may be satisfied with only a few of them, others want to get the best possi
I'm a chronic early adopter (Score:5, Insightful)
I also bought into HD-DVD (bought the $180 xbox 360 add-on drive when it first came out). That $180 got me the ability to watch movies in high-def, access to HD-DVD discs that were generally much cheaper than their blu-ray counterparts, and access to many great exclusives (like the Battlestar Galactica HD-DVD boxset) not available on blu-ray. And it's not like any of that stuff I've already bought is going to turn into a pumpkin now that HD-DVD is dead. It also gives me access to some great clearance deals on discs now. No regrets
I also bought a blu-ray player (PS3 after the first price drop for $500). Gives me access to blu-ray discs and exclusives, a good gaming system with potential, full hardware backwards compatibility for my PS2/PS1 games (it's the original 60GB American model). And it's easily upgradable. No regrets.
I'm sick of hearing about the "dangers" of early adoption. IMHO, it's almost always worth it (as long as you don't go crazy with the top-of-the line stuff). Early adoption can buy you years of fun ahead of everyone else and rarely becomes truly worthless even if your chosen format "loses."
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Prior art (Score:3, Interesting)
The Amstrad box was so popular that production of 3" discs had to be restarted and 3" drives got a whole new lease of life. Still died in the end though.
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Just as an FYI and future reference, "disc" is reserved for optical media while "disk" is for magnetic (hard or soft media). So if you have seen CD expanded to "compact disk" it is wrong as far as the nomenclature is concerned. And yes I am aware your ID is a lot lower than mine but when something is factually incorrect it is factually incorrect.
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Just as an FYI and future reference, "disc" is reserved for optical media while "disk" is for magnetic (hard or soft media).
Bollocks. The two spellings have been used interchangeably for years. Whilst it might be true to say that the trademark "Compact disc" requires the "C" spelling, extrapolating from this to your general rule is purely wishful thinking.
It is true that "disk" is more common in the USA, whilst "disc" is (or was) more common in English English, but all these things are becoming very blurred.
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I'm not sure how many I have to post before you are convinced but here goes:
Exhibit A (most reliable) from Apple [apple.com]
Exhibit B (least reliable but similar to what you said) is here [auckland.ac.nz]
Exhibit C (medium reliability) from Washington State University [wsu.edu]
In the end, I believe they all support what I said.
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from http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp [cambridge.org]
did the math (Score:2)
The did the math? (Score:5, Funny)
What? The summary does a good job of describing why HD-DVD is a good buy, although they have to make up facts to do it, such as pricing a DVD player at $60. However, I think it is more likely that most of the people buying HD-DVD players don't know that it is dead. Never attribute to average people doing math that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.
I want a Betamax deck. (Score:4, Insightful)
Save your HD-DVD player! Some loser, twenty years from now, may want it!
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Don't know about the rest of the world, but I'd like a Betamax deck (to digitize some old Beta tapes I have).
Beta was slightly less pointless. For a home theater it offered superior sound and video even in long play mode until SVHS & Hi8 came out. Oddly enough, I found beta to be more practical than SVHS or Hi8 as I found there were more people with beta decks than SVHS and Hi8 ones.
I had a Sanyo super beta till it died some years back, and I wish that I recorded more with it, esp music videos on MTV's 120 minutes as VHS was in contrast crap even in LP mode.
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http://tinyurl.com/28398p [tinyurl.com]
(link to ebay listing of a Betamax deck)
Don't forget... (Score:5, Funny)
Personally a part of this phenomenon (Score:2)
* + $10 shipping
Then picked up a bunch selling at deepdiscount.com for $10.
Then picked up Planet Earth for $35 (damn Canadian shipping costs - would have been $25 if I lived in the US!).
In all, I've spent maybe $250. That's not enough to even buy a Blu-Ray player.. but it was enough to get me HD player, plus a whole bunch (20)+ of mo
HD-A2 vs. *Quality* Upscalers (Score:3, Informative)
Personally, I bought an HD-A2 when the price dropped below that of the OPPO players, which are widely considered the cream of the crop in upscaling DVD players. Many reviews on AV discussion boards indicated that the Tosh HD-DVD players were(/are) at least equal to the OPPOs, plus you got HD-DVD as a bonus. Meanwhile the only thing I sacrificed was support for formats like DVD-A/SACD on the OPPO, which I didn't plan to use anyway.
Of course that was before the format "died", so there was at least the *possibility* that the HD-DVD portion would be useful going forward. But if I were looking at it now, I'd much rather have a $60 "HD-A3 than a $30 Wal-mart brand just for the upconverting function...
Fortune (Score:2)
Never buy what you do not want because it is cheap; it will be dear to you. -- Thomas Jefferson
Re: (Score:2)
Very little and it has nothing to do with the article. The reason HD-DVD is done is because Toshiba said its not going to pursue HD-DVD anymore. They learned and realized that Sony made a mistake by dragging a format war over a decade. Thats a huge investment to make for a technology where the market will only support one standard.
This isn't like the console wars or the OS war
Re: (Score:3, Funny)