Confessions of an HD DVD moron

Jumping on the HD DVD bandwagon was fun for many early adopters--until Blu-ray knocked the format off the road, causing Toshiba's tech to spin out, crash, and burn. Those dazed folks still left clutching their brand-new HD DVD high-definition disc players are now scratching their heads saying, "What was I thinking?"

Slate's Josh Levin is one of those format "losers" pondering his HD DVD "D'oh" moment.

Read the story at Slate: "I'm the idiot who bought an HD DVD player"

[ewelch]

Not only is the guy a moron, but he's dishonest as well. He whines about Sony paying off Warner to switch to Blu-ray, but decides people don't need to know that Toshiba had paid off Universal and Paramount in a feeble attempt to turn the tide in their own favor.

And he owns a SanDisk player? What a maroon.

[cyberDJ-2038765336053745013836]

I have a SanDisk player and I'm buying a second one.

That means I am a maroon with a superior player. One that isn't part of an Apple-based monopoly.

[zootle]

I thoroughly enjoyed Mr. Levin's article - honest and funny. I was wondering how much Sony paid Warner, and now I know - half a billion! They'll have to sell a LOT of players to make that back before online HD becomes the high-definition source of the masses.

[speed_pour]

This was so painful to read, I'm disgusted. The author clearly doesn't know the reasons that HD-DVD failed, doesn't understand why it's bad that it failed, and simply didn't understand anything about the format war to begin with (at least he admitted that...more or less)...oh yeah, and he used Apple TV, the single worst example he could have dredged up, to suggest downloadable "HD" content would come soon or that it would somehow beat physical media.

Put simply, HD-DVD lost because they did everything wrong AFTER their first 6 months of major marketting. They didn't court the movie studios (hoping that their lower cost of licensing and production would win favor). They spent way too little in marketing the format compared to Sony that dumped a fortune into every advertising avenue around. They didn't encourage studios to produce discs taking advantage of the far superior technologies built into the format. And finally, their best possible friend, Microsoft, never released a console with built-in HD-DVD support.

Fact is, it's going to turn out very badly that HD-DVD is going away because we won't see any sort of competition in the market, Sony is now free to further extort the studios and content producers, and now there's no incentive for blu-ray to improve or for any newcomers to enter the market with technology that many already know is capable of far more than either format previously offered. Lest we forget, there was never a reason for the "format war" to end, as dual-format players would have easily dominated the market within a year and nobody would care which format they were buying, simply knowing that it worked.

Finally, Digital downloads will not put an end to physical media within any short timespan (5 years or less) as many people theorize. However, it's worth countering the other side by pointing out that digital downloads will certainly rob sales from physical media. All said and done, digital downloads will more commonly be available in HD, it won't be done by the likes of Apple (who continues to deliver performance below reasonable expectations in this arena). We can expect to see HD content delivered over the internet to a set-top box in your home in the next 5 years, and it will be increasingly available with increasing options on what to rent or buy in digital form.

I've gone on long enough, the point is, author is dumb...

[gerrrg]

That's a fairly balanced view of the whole situation, I have to admit.

But what's the difference between the High Def broadcast (and recording that with your DVR), versus digital download? If it's a matter of being able to watch a show or movie in HD whenever you want to, doesn't that just become a matter of semantics when you can schedule your DVR to record it?

[devon.leslie]

Thing is - HDDVD was a completely safe bet and had everything going for it: all the best codecs for sound and video, a formalized standard, a great piece of software from Microsoft to drive the interactive content and plenty of space for everything. What killed HDDVD was not entirely due to Toshiba's poor marketing. In the end, greed killed HDDVD quite simply because Sony spent more money paying off manufacturers and studios while promising a future region-locked DRM utopia. What Toshiba did 'wrong' is quite simply what they didn't do; they didn't pay off the right people with nearly enough money and they didn't give studios the opportunity to keep their precious market segregation. In other words, Toshiba was trying to sell 'The People's Hi-def Player' - not very popular among tight-fisted movie corporations.

[redwall_hp]

I'll be the one laughing when 90% of all movie distribution is done online. Who needs HDDVD *or* BluRay?

[MickBurke]

The people who bought into HD DVD over the last 6 months have 2 people to blame: First themselves. If you don't have enough sense to discern how this was going to go with all the information available, then same on you. Second: Toshiba. They were not in the first category, in that they DID know how it was going to go, and yet still spent the last several months conning people into the cheap seats on the Titanic. Shame on them.

[chowyunfattest]

Attempting to compare HD-DVD to either Beta or Laserdisc is ridiculous at best ! My betamax produced amazing recordings for nearly 10 years.I have had several Laserdisc players dating back to the mid eighties and a huge collection of discs.The Laserdisc was the BEST format for home projector owners for more than ten years.Which is actually a more successful run than the DVD had!

[fungie5]

Here are some facts for all to ponder -

-Bluray's development actually began well before HD-DVD, so Toshiba really started the war.
-There were attempts to merge the two formats years ago and they almost succeeded, but Microsoft insisted that it's multimedia technology be used. Sony wanted Java. So the war continued.
-Blu-ray is technically superior to HD-DVD because it was developed from scratch, spent more time in development and incorporates completely new disc format technology designed specifically to take advantage of the blue laser. HD-DVD re-used most of the older DVD technology in order to find a cheaper route to market in less time; it's not really much of an advance technically speaking. That's why HD-DVD has such a significantly lower capacity in comparison. It's also the reason why HD-DVD players and discs were so much cheaper from the onset. You pay less FOR less.
-Both formats support identical video and audio encoding so these are really non-issues. It's up to the studios to use whatever encoding format they choose to. HD-DVD had to use high efficiency encoding (eg.MPEG4) in order to save on disc space (unlike Blu-ray). In fact, HD-DVD had to put their content on double layer because the 15GB single layer was too small to create a full content HD disc at 1080p. Blu-ray single layer 25GB discs were doing the same job as double layer HD-DVD discs.
-The actions of Toshiba in introducing their products earlier forced Sony to release their devices before they were really ready. This created the situation where BD devices now have a version number allocated to them at present. These current devices don't fully implement the Blu-ray specifications. Had there been no war, this issue would have never arisen. Early adopters on BOTH sides of the digital fence got stung.
-Both formats use DRM; Sony, however, developed several layers of DRM protection which included the AACS that HD-DVD also uses (giving it yet another edge over HD-DVD)...they're in the movie business too, so they're not going to take piracy lightly...the fact is that this whole DVD upgrade experience was really just to begin the process of discarding standard DVD since it's DRM has failed miserably!
-In January, there were 6X more bluray players than HD-DVD players sold since the 'war' began. The studios apparently felt that the general public had made a clear choice after Christmas sales were tallied. Backroom deals just helped to cement the inevitable.

[drew30319]

Kotaku had a HD DVD post yesterday as well, "HD DVD, Redux"

http://kotaku.com/362677/hd-dvd-redux

[cyberDJ-2038765336053745013836]

For now, I will buy a Blu-ray player and watch my Netflix rentals in High-Def.

In a year, I will just run my video card output to my 42" TV and watch High-Def downloads directly out of my computer.
Once the selection of on-line titles reaches critical mass, discs won't be needed anymore.

[fungie5]

Discs have several years left in them, just not in the USA or other 'western' countries. Downloads won't be an option for most of the world for many years to come. In most developing countries, people either buy pirated DVD copies or rent originals, because DVD prices double by the time they hit the shelves there. Studios charge more for DVDs sold outside the USA, and many governments would oppose the download access as they couldn't charge taxes on such purchases. The fall in HDTV prices is allowing for the technology to catch on everywhere. Soon the demand for HD content will soar in many places (in about 2-3 years, I estimate). But the demand won't be supplied by downloads in these places. The infrastructure for widespread downloading and paying for the content online simply doesn't exist in most of the third world. This disc technology wasn't developed JUST for the USA, the EU, Japan and Korea. The world is much much bigger than that.

[cross platform]

Just the Title to this turned me off! What's happened to Cnet? Are they just here to get hits for bashing something?

[Jonathan]

Whatever,

Look. I've had an 46" HDTV sitting in my living room HDless for 4 years now. I purchased a HD DVD player for the total price of $160. As of this writing that is still aprox half the price of the cheapest BR player and its a fully compatible player to boot. I'm really sick of all the people ******** and moaning about how their HD DVD player is now a paper weight....oh really. So it just automatically stopped playing movies all of a sudden? I guess that makes my VCR that still plays the handful of movies that aren't out on DVD a paperweight as well huh? This weekend I picked up a 360 HD DVD player for $50 from best buy. Now I can also watch HD DVD's on the go....granted it requires external power and its bulky as hell but its still available, and my current HD DVD player can easily sit under a sub-$200 complete player whenever one of those decides to rear its head. I'm trying to figure out when the hell people's problem is. This isn't like DIVX back in the day when the player had to authorize the use of the disk and call home to mama and once the format died that was it. Your player was toast. There is no reason I can't pick up a few dozen HD DVD's for 10-12 and have it live happily next to my DVD's, VHS's, and yes eventually BR disks. But feel free to freak out. It will give all those discounts time to ripen even further for me....who was the sucker again?

Sony paid millions to get studios to sign an exclusive Blu-ray contract. Now the consumer will pay Sony! The studios will pay Sony! Royalties will be charged by Sony! Do you really think Blu-ray is a better solution? Sony is ripping all of us off and the naive say Blu-ray is SO MUCH superior! RIght! The truth is that most of us can't tell the difference between a HD-DVD and a Blu-ray DVD. My suggestion is to boycott ALL of Sony's products.

[mikeburek]

How many people had/have both a DVD and VCR player? Or had/have a tape deck and CD player? Is your house or shelf to tiny you can't spare the extra 2" of height to have both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players?

If you look at the output of an HD-DVD and a Blu-Ray, will you be able to tell the difference?

Does an HD-DVD disk take up 10x the space of a Blu-Ray disc?

Currently, is an HD-DVD player almost 1/2 the price of a Blu-Ray player?
Currently, does it seem like stores are lowering prices on HD-DVD discs - maybe to get rid of them?

Why not have both formats? What's the big deal? The biggest inconvenience is that you'll pick a disc out of your library and say "Hmm, which player do I put this into?"

If you can get the same quality for a much lower price, then I think all of you who are selling all your HD-DVD stuff and worried about having to re-buy it in Blu-Ray are the dumbest people ever. If you're happy with the quality, they why get rid of the HD-DVD stuff you already own? Instead of just continuing to buy the cheaper of a nearly identical experience, you just follow the marketing bandwagon and think that you have to buy the "latest and greatest" in name only. I should invest in retail stores now because all you people who can't think for yourself are just going to shell out tons of money because someone said what you have is inferior and you can't think for yourself.

Hey dude. Those old dollar bills in your pocket printed in 1983 are so crappy. I'm going to point and laugh if you don't have only bills printed after 2001. But I'll do you a favor. I'll trade your old, nasty, wrinkled, smelly dollar bills into brand new, shiny, unwrinkled, crisp bills. Just hand over your old bill + %20 "dumbo fee" and I'll get you hooked up.


Basically, that's the argument that all of you are falling for.

[mectron]

Physical mecia is already dead. The Internet is the bigges movie outlet there is. Beside, who in is in right mind will buy any product form a know (and court proven) criminal company?

Sony is the probably the most evil company in operation on earth today. (even more then microsoft).

Buy any Sony product is directly supporting organise crime.

[mikeburek]

Down with organized crime. Down with organized thought. Down with organized spelling.