Casualty of the HD Disc War
I guess I could only be classified as a Casualty of the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray Disc war..
Being an XBox 360 owner, I became an early adoper of HD-DVD as an addon for my X-Box 360.. I loved the idea that many of the HD-DVD discs would also play in my standard-def DVD player.. Other than the Disney titles, most of the movies I wanted to purchase were available on HD-DVD and I was rooting for the victory of HD-DVD.
Having worked in the Video Business, I knew that SONY isn’t the most “generous” company and felt that if they won and had a basic monoploy on all HD Disc technology, it wouldn’t be a great thing for the average video producer.. SONY always charges a premium for their technology and why should Blu-Ray be any different.
I was excited last year when Wal-Mart offered the pre-Thanksgiving $99 HD-DVD player special. I and thousands of other consumers rushed out to take advantage of this awesome pricing. A HD-DVD player for my bedroom that would really make my Vizio LCD shine!
I was at CES when the death nail was driven into HD-DVD… The buzz on the show floor about how they canceled their big press event and traffic in the SWEET Blu-Ray booth kept growning stronger.
My personal outcome of the Format war?
No Blu-Ray player is in my near future…
Standard DVD’s look pretty awesome on a good upscaling player fed to a modern HD television.. I have two HD-DVD players at the house, tons of discs and I’m sure that there will be some aggressive sales on the HD-DVD discs that are already on the market…
Unless Sony starts giving them away to get people in their camp, I’m out of the game for now…