I'm the Idiot Who Bought an HD-DVD Player

Toshiba finally mercy-killed its HD-DVD format last week, ending a drawn-out fight with Sony's Blu-ray for high-definition disc supremacy. The format's demise has brought HD-DVD owners untold humiliation: reams of newspaper stories comparing them to the losers of yore who bought into Betamax and LaserDisc, the sad sight of desperate early adopters peddling brand-new players on Craigslist, and, worst of all, a Web site celebrating the similarities between HD-DVD and Hillary Clinton.

[Maddens Raiders]

sounds like he's too cheap for his own good.

[lodossrage]

That's what the HD DVD camp was banking on. The motto was "the cheaper it is, the more people will buy it"

But this is a possible fate for ALL early adopters of any electronics.

The only thing I dislike is that he talks about Sony paying warner bros of to join and being underhanded. Warner Bros. has said MANY times they weren't paid off.

Yet the person that wrote this article neglects the fact that Toshiba and MS paid Paramount to join THEIR side. And unlike Warner Bros., Paramount DIDN'T deny that fact.

[sonarus]

yes you are the idiot. I find it hard to pity these guys. They knew they had been loosing. Why not bail out of the sinking ship when you had your chance. Why not return your hd-dvd players before toshiba made formal announcements. They knew it was coming but they sat there crossing fingers.

[TheTwelve]

Well, written and hilarious article. Too bad he still won't go Blu in the end, and wants digital downloads to take over. Seems he still can't learn...

Anyway, it was a fun read...

12

[BenderDGreat82]

I agree with the posts above. I think the HD-DVD people saw the public as idiots and that the next gen in entertainment will win as long as it's cheap. but people are smarter than that. the public read the specs on blu-ray vs hd-dvd. they knew that hd-dvd was incredibly limited while blu-ray is working on a 100gb and even a 200gb disk capacity. in the long run, people don't want to upgrade to next-generation in 4 or 5 years...they wanted something, like DVD's, that will be around for about 10 years.

[mikeslemonade]

People simply didn't do their research. They saw it cheaper and it had a larger install base at the time because HD-DVD came out first. All they cared about was what's happening then. They don't take into the consideration about what's going to happen.

[hades07]

If consumers did their research they would find out that minus slightly lower storage, that overall it was a better format for consumers whilst blu-ray is a better format for the corporations, and in this war the corporations won.

Hd-dvd lacked any region codes, all players have internet access to upgrade firmware, and the first batch of Hd-dvd players were capable of the same features as the new players. Blu-ray has more restricted DRM, is region coded, early Blu-ray players lack features of newer blu-ray players with Sony continiously upgrading the profiles, some players do not have internet access to upgrade their firmware, and some older players cannot even upgrade their profiles to play newer movies. With Hd-dvd, no matter what player you had you could play all Hd-dvd movies.

The reason I believe Blu-ray won is because of the Trojan horse, the PS3. The larger the PS3 install base, the more people who technically have a Blu-ray player, though in theory not all of them may use it as a blu-ray player at all. I think the format war would tell a different story if Hd-dvd came installed on the Xbox 360. With cheaper stand alone players and a 18 million installed base if it was built into the 360, I think the format could have won it if had the full backing of Microsoft.

[LJWooly]

As far as I know, all Blu-Rays are not region-encoded, but I'm not sure about HD-DVD.
Blu Ray has the player with the most capable firmware update possibilities, the PS3.

From a technical point of view, there was basically no advantage to HD-DVD. That's the reason it lost.

[godofthunder10]

hell i'm going to buy 2 of them because a cheap dvd player that upgrade dvds to 1080 isn't as good as the ones in the hd players.what i'm saying is that it's a good deal just to buy hd dvd players to upgrade their dvds instear of paying more for a player that does that isn't as good as the hd dvd p[layer.

[chester]

"The bad guy won at the end by clocking the lovable underdog in the crotch with a baseball bat."

great line.....

[ravinash]

I suppose it all depend on which side your on to who you think the bad guy was.
Truth of the matter was, there was no good or bad guy....just two big companies using different strategies to make their product win out.
And the best product won!

[HarryEtTubMan]

lol at the FLOPbox

[games4fun]

the title alone made me laugh

[SSCOOLCHEA]

seriously he is not actually saying this , tell me he is not saying this...please tell me....It would be better if you just kept your comments to yourself because not even your fellow XBOT can help you here....LOL..LOL..LAUGH EVERYBODY

STARING AT LIME GREEN CAN ONLY MAKE PEOPLE DELUSIONAL

[ATLRoAcH]

...that still makes me laugh.I still have Terminator 1 & 2 on LaserDisc from when I was a kid.They were just a big a$$ CD.A huge CD you had to flip halfway into a movie.You could make a coffee table out of one.

[Skizelli]

Haha.

[Gina-get-u]

Don't laugh. I still have my Pioneer CL-D705. At least that model flips the disc for you. And Pioneer supported the format until just maybe 2-3 years ago.

[MadMax]

Personally i will keep my HD addon for the simple fact that it is region free and will play all my pal dvds and tons of others. I am glad i bought it and have no regrets whatsoever. My PS3 wont play pal or different region dvds and regular dvds dont seem to look as good on the PS3. Not to mention batman begins and king kong and a few others are only on HD so no way will i get rid of it. I will get one of those dvd upscalers though, so you can watch all your regular dvds in 720p,1080i and 1080p. Ive also got a handfull of Blueray movies too, but that will prolly sink as well. In the meantime i will stick with regular dvds, the selection is just way to big and movies arent that important to me as the games are so who cares already. I want games for my PS3 not movies and that doesnt seem to be happening yet. For now i will continue to buy games for my 360 and Wii.

[zane547]

The better format lost, again. HD-DVD had all the features Blu-ray discs are still struggling to adopt now.

Casual consumer only sees popularity, not beyond the box.

[eagle21]

Ask them why. I edited my comment for the fact you might not be well informed. Sorry.

[Lumbo]

sorry, but yours is a minority opinion.

The more subsidized format lost. And thats a good example that you can't buy up a market if you are not willing to go all the way. The only "benefit" HD-DVD had was its artificially low prices that had nothing to do with cost and market, but all to do with a monopolistic license holder trying to flood the market to bully his own tech to the masses.

HD-DVD disks are not the "better" disks, from the pure physical standpoint BluRay is better than HD-DVD, bigger per layer size, higher transfer rates, higher transfer bandwidth, better protection from scratches and fingerprints due to the mandatory hardcoating.

The only part where HD-DVD was better was the software side aka Firmware. And even that did hardly matter. BluRay was only missing PiP and Internet conectivity compared to HD-DVD.

PiP is not seen as a make or break issue cause the main point of a movie is .. *drumroll* the movie. PiP was only a feature for the EXTRAS. And as with DVD the extras are only used by a stunningly small percentage of the users.

The second missing feature is web connectivity (BluRay 2.0) But guess how many of the HD-DVD's actually USED that feature till now? Out of the ~400 available disks not even 10.

Face it, the so called "better" HD-DVD was only better in areas no one cared about. The majority of the sold players could not even play 1080p ...

From a business point the HD-DVD was less safe from piracy and bootleg pressing firms than DVD. BluRay simply offered more to the studios to protect their rights. Even the production cost was equal in mid 07 after higher initial costs due to less good yields in 06.

BluRay was supported by all player producers but Toshiba, while HD-DVD was exclusively build by Toshiba. A clear monopoly on Toshibas format against real competition between the multiple BluRay player makers.

HD-DVD was better for ONE, Toshiba. BluRay was better for all the others, cause Sony did not kill the player market by flooding it with cheap 1080i players like Toshiba did and killed any chance at the HD-DVD side for a non Toshiba player.

Even at the software side: HDi, a proprietary Microsoft tech that was build to generate royalties for MS as the only allowed solution for HD-DVD, compared to the free open standard HDj (Java) system on BluRays side. It was clear from the start, HD-DVD was a construct to secure Toshibas DVD royalties and add another bunch of license fees for their henchmen at Microsoft. Thats another reason why most movie studios preferred to go Blu, cause they had enough of the DVD license fees they had to pay to Toshiba for every disk sold. Now they are part of their own license pool in the BDA instead of being a beggar at Toshs doors.

[rory]

you bought a zen a hd dvd and a pc people like you screw up our country may you just think

[The_Kills]

oh so.....

MS bribing Paramount, Universal, and the last slips my mind now, is justifiable?

and lets say they did, and we all know MS has money. Well then why didnt MS just bribe warner before all the others?

hmm mybe because warner wasnt bribed by anyone...

People like this guy simply wont get it through there heads, HD-DVD was going to fail...there was no doubting it

[DJ]

Warner even publicly adressed the payment rumors with a resounding "NO". They simply saw that the Blu-ray versions of their films were selling three times better than the HD-DVD versions, and Blu-ray had a 10x install base advantage that was steadily growing.

I'd say the millions of PS3s sold over the holiday season also helped them make up their minds.

[DJ]

It was the exact line from almost everyone that got burned by HD-DVD: "Digital Downloads will win, not Blu-ray." But that's just a minute percentage of consumers, and most of them have a positive view of the format.

Digital Downloads are a great concept, but it's still way too early. There's a lot of issues associated with high-definition movies downloaded onto a hard drive that have already been stated before, so it's obvious that services like Apple TV and Xbox Live have their work cut out for them. Hell, even Sony's been looking into it.

[Lumbo]

Well well well, another "i lost, hence digital downloads will win, nananananaaana" blogpost.

Suddenly Toshiba is the "underdog", has the blogger lost the rest of his feeble mind? Toshiba has been the patent parasite that sucked at the healthy DVD vein for over a decade. Did he already forget that Toshiba is the one entity that held all the levers in the DVD group due to owning ALL related patents?

If we get to talk about an underdog outsider in the video media market it would be the BluRay group. Sony already lost a few format wars, hence the chances for a win against the DVD behemoth called Toshiba where anything but great. And BluRay started late compared to HD-DVD.

So it seems Mr. smart blogger lost his perspective while feeling burned for buying the wrong system. He managed to post the same unfounded story that Warner already has rejected multiple times about a $400M bribe, but made the paramount defection look like an act of goodness. In case he forgot: Paramount had already PRESSED several movies including Transformers on BluRay when they suddenly trashed this disks for a well documented bribe of $150M from Toshiba. The number has been confirmed by both Toshiba and Paramount.

So Sony is the bad guy for bribing movie companies while not having done so, but Paramount is the hero of our times for taking a freaking bribe and even telling so.

Sour grapes and a lot of nonsense, as usual with the blogposts from people who chose wrong and now hate the winner for their own idiocy.

[The_Kills]

Yah mybe Blu-ray will be succeeded by it in the next 20 years...

people are still using DVD's heck even VHS, and some wise guy is coming and telling me, that Blu-ray will die at the hands of DDL's.

Oh plz, this is talk for the truley bored.

[The_Kills]

I love this Lumbo guy..

[Lumbo]

Hmm, here is something to make you hate me :p

[meepmoopmeep]

nice 300GB HDD.. i only have 160GB with 104GB free space.. hehe..

only blind moronic people keep believing that DD will be the successor of DVD.
DD might be the future.. but the FAR FAR future AFTER the demise of Blu-ray.
They have nothing to fight with and so they jump onto the DD bandwagon. give it up. DD won't happen.

[cmrbe]

Anyone with common sense knew that HD-DVD really didn't have a chance. The argument that feature and price will win over Content and installbase was quite idiotic to begin with. The installbase provided by the PS3 assured the content providers that there will be lots of Blu player out in the market which will see good sales of their contents which is all they care about.In return the content providers supported blu. Price is important but it is pointless if you only have 30% of available movies.I mean what's the point of investing in a cheap movie player when you can only watch a handful of available movies?. Features?. I doubt anyone seriously expected people to like PIP. I mean who wanted to see how a movie is made while they are concentrating on the movie itself?. Special feature after watching the movie is good enough.

Idiots?. Perhaps. I only hope that people will learn to use some PLAIN COMMON SENSE next time.

[Skynetone]

Id hate to be the person how bought into hd-dvd

[SpartanGR]

In simple words everyone who bought HD-DVD products with it's price as factor, is a cheap bastard.
Go buy everyone a PS3. It's future proof enough

[eagle21]

But it's not like over 12 million people bought into that format anyway. Just move on.

[fenderputty]

bought and HD-DVD player with 10 movies while on sale over the holidays. I looked at him a little puzzled and asked him why not go blu since they were offering deals as well. He didn't really have much of an answer to which I replied ... good luck with that thing there. lol

[davez82]

First of all, if someone wants digital downloads chances are he needs an hdtv. Now anyone who has an hdtv is going to have bluray or hddvd because thats just how stores like best buy make money, u know the stores that "sell" the tv's?

Secondly, what kinda moron do you take people for to think they are actually going to take the time to setup their home for digital downloads, let alone a broadband connection? It makes absolutely no sense.

Thirdly digital cable tv companies are adopting dvr box sets, so why download when you can just record for free?

Lastly, do you actually own a downloaded movie? then you run into the problem of storage. If you dont own the movies your pretty much renting, if i'm not mistaken how different is that from Paper view.

Sorry hddvd owners, i know you got burned and i feel for you, but just give it up and go blu... nobody likes a fanboy.

[Absinthetic]

i dont understand why people think digital distribution is the future

it didnt work to put CD's off the store selves

why do people think blu ray will be different?

[Adamalicious]

Yeah - there are really great methods of getting music via DD now, but more music is still distributed by CD. Mainstream DD for HD video is easily still a few years off. Blu-Ray will stand in the gap.

[darthv72]

for a collectors item. $50 new at best buy and still eligible for 5 free movies. I have yet to try it out on my 360 but I have used it on my pc. I got the udf2.5 driver, updated my anydvd to hd and also got an update for powerdvd.

I could care less about the rest of the people who bought one. It isnt like it stopped playing upscaled dvds all of a sudden. I have some rare LD's too and use them on my pioneer CLD-A100 laseractive.

Somebody go look up that unit and see what it was capable of.

[The_Kills]

I C UR IP

G3T T3H H4X Fir3D UP!

[Adamalicious]

that's an internal IP! so good luck ;P

[tweaker]

HD-DVD supporters already got it wrong the first time. Who would want to listen to them about DD? They're obviously in denial or anti-sony in a way. Deal with it you HD-DVD sore losers.

[BenderDGreat82]

I'm a smart idiot (not an oxymoron in this case). I purchased my HD-DVD player 2 days ago when Microsoft decided to bring the price down to $50. I' getting 5 free movies (the value of these movies is more than twice of the actual player) and there's a good amount of HD-DVD titles that are going to be super cheap. I mean, my PS3 is in the living room getting all the hi-tech goodness and the hd-dvd player will be in the bedroom. I was a blu-ray supporter from day once seeing that it was true future proof due to the very high capacity it will one day hold while hd-dvd is, or was, DVD 1.5. But guys, at $50, I couldn't pass it up. Now, in order to watch my HD-DVD player, I have to wait to get my 360 from Microsuck (RROD, baby!!).

[aiphanes]

The 40GB PS3 is $399-$100 means the PS3 will be $299!

Do it and do it NOW!!!

A PS3 for $299!

[ALICE_666]

idiot.

[Utalkin2me]

I can tell you 300 looks better on hd-dvd, just had to throw that in there. Bluray can't get of these bad translations from 35mm and 70mm. Some are good and some are bad, need to straighten that stuff out.

[jackdoe]

He's really pulling a lot of sh!t out of his ass as "sources" of information.

[jlemdon]

but I have a PS3 also.:)

[ArcAngel_07]

Until people can download a 5 or a 15 gig movie in the same time it takes to download a 5meg song, it's not gonna fly! and then there's storage issue. I have literally THOUSANDS of songs taking gigs and gigs of room. Sure the hard drives will get bigger. But we're talking about a thousand, or more, times the size of today's drive to keep all the movies we'll suppose to keep. It'll happen. Not just anytime soon.

[Bolts]

I must be the biggest dumbass in the world. My first mistake was buying the cheap HDDVD drive for the 360. Turns out that drive is as lousy and poorly made as my Xbox so I went out and bought a Toshiba player for my HDDVD movies 'cause hey, its so cheap and affordable! Now I can't even give them away. What a horrible waste of money. But I'm just glad this stupid format war is now over. Long live Bluray! I looooove watching movies in 1080p.

As for digital dowloads...you gotta kidding me. There is no comparison in image quality. Case in point, watch the Lost shows downloaded from Live or digital TV, then watch the same shows on Bluray. The hidef media totally owns broadcast and internet download.

[djevolve]

Not only did I laugh my as- off from the main story i also laughed
@ fanboi'S POST OF BUYING TWO HD DVDs. I also bought the add on and feel the need run it over with my truck, then that way I can really enjoy hd quality. I find it funny that this guy made people watch planet earth becaused thats exactly what I did thanks giving.

[MiniMii]

Yup. Thats you.

The good guys triumphed over bad guys Toshiba and MS. Everything worked out in the end.

Except for the bad guy's "goons" who are now blaming everything they see for their own stupidity.

[MiniMii]

Well seems like the idiot hasnt learned his lesson yet:

"no, Im not going to buy a blu ray player"

Then, my idiot friend, you will never enjoy the HD era for the next 8 years that it will last...

OWNED

[Merritt]

I bought one, I've also bought 20 movies in the past week for an unreal price. So please don't call me stupid or moronic. I am upgrading my DVD collection to HD on the cheap. HD-DVD does have 400+ titles and is region free, so I will enjoy movies for a long time to come, on my 120" screen.

As for Blu-Ray, when MS does release a player, I'll pick that up as well. I'm happy I have HD-DVD. I of course would have been more happy had it "won the war". But hey, you don't win 'em all.

[feejo]

Clinton is better than Blu-Ray, but american dose not deserve her.

[kapedkrusader]

Why is this guy blaming Sony. He should be pissed at Microsoft. HD-DVD was on it's way out when Microsoft decided to pay up millions to keep them in and prolong the format wars. Also, the only reason that HD-DVD was half the price of Blu-ray was because Toshiba was taking a huge loss on each player. I would also like to add that I've always had good experiences with Sony products. They are innovative and very reliable.

[leon76]

More idiots are the guys who bought x360 AND the hddvd add-on....These are the real Idiots!!!! ahahahahahahahahah!!!!!

[MadMax]

The real idiots are the losers like yourself who ran out and bought a PS3 on day one, lol. You wanna talk about idiots? lol, moron

[BUKKAKALYPSE]

I never really got much into the HD formats (i have an HD-DVD player cuz it was cheap and it had transformers) but i hear BluRay players cant read regular DVD's ..is this true? anyone? just wondering cuz if they can i might buy one but if they cant then whats the point..i might shell out $30 for a amazing movie but i'd still want to watch the oldies that i have and i dont want to replace them all with BD

[tordavis]

N4G is a haven for fanboyism and anti-MS article spawning. This article proves it. The Sony fanboys have nothing better to do than revel in their tiny Blu-Ray victory. This article is calling everyone who bought an HD-DVD player an idiot, it's breaking the TOS AND it's spam. Yet the article still exists.

[Nitrogen]

shut up

[JokerSGS]

I told people Blu-Ray was going to win. I had to laugh at my cousin who bought the 360 add on and tried to explain to me how HD-DVD is better. Ha

[Fragking28]

I appreciate hd-dvd(toshiba) for eing a good consumer friendly product interms of movie interactivity and cash wise. And I think blu-ray(sony) for supplying us great quality with bluray and pushing the envelope technilogically wise. I was for hddvd but for bluray because i had to ask myself i would rather have better wquality than being cheap. But to most of the people in this forum talking about the consumer is no longer dumb as the answer as to why bluray won I have to say your wrong.

The reason why bluray won is for two reason only one becasue hollywood decided to go with the quality product and because hddvd was not implemted in the 360. Now before you guys try to rip me a new ass let me explain. Any intelligent person know that bluray won because it was in the home of more people. That's because of only one thing the PS3, remember hddvd was outselling bluray by a good margin in standalone units up until almost every hollywood studio decided to back bluray towards the end of the war. If it was not for the ps3 bringing bluray into the homes of the people who purchased the machine the hollywood studios would not prodominantly back bluray (keyword prodominantly).

If the 360 on the other hand had hddvd at launch yeah it would of brought up prices and it probably wouldnt of sold as much right now there would of been more hddvd payers in peoples houses there for hddvd the advantage. One of having more players in households and two being alot cheaper than there rival meaning the war wouldnt be close to over and most likely hddvd would be winning with no clear cut winner for a very long time. By the way it was about time sony won one battle the lost every single other battle they fought in terms of storage media. ( It's like watching everyone kill kenny and south park then on one episode something amazing happens he survives).The future is blu go Sony!!!!!!!!