1. HD-DVD confused a lot of people with its name. My father thought that they were just DVDs in HD that could be played on a regular DVD player. The whole Combo concept hurt more than it helped too.

But the real issue was until August, only Universal was exclusive to HD-DVD. I think studio support won out on this one.

Posted at 12:04PM on Feb 19th 2008 by Josh

2. Wait, so you and your friend "knew" HD-DVD would win, but you opted for a Blu Ray player. Nice.

Posted at 12:42PM on Feb 19th 2008 by Hector Martinez

3. No, we "thought" HD-DVD would win, but I wanted to get a PS3 for X-Mas, and at that time Blu-ray looked like the frontrunner, so I opted to go with them.

Posted at 1:07PM on Feb 19th 2008 by Erik Davis

4. Blu-Ray is better, HD-DVD uses tech similar to the old DVD format, where Blu-ray hold more info and uses newer tech which made it, in theory, cost more initially.

Thats how I understood it anyways.

Posted at 1:09PM on Feb 19th 2008 by CJ

5. And that's how misinformed the public is. BRD is closer to that of CD than it is DVD.

What I don't understand is other studio's willingness to support BRD. Total $ in sales was a win for the BRD camp, but if you look at sales per player, HD-DVD was a clear winner. Also, when you consider that this gives Sony a monopoly from top to bottom, it's like giving them a knife and asking that they don't cut too deeply. I think this is something consumers are going to regret in the coming years. Really, you have Warner Brothers to blame for the turn of events.

BRD is going to be more expensive for independant studios and it is bad for the consumer with needless DRM, manditory AACS, and region restrictions. When I'm not able to use my media, how I want, I'm going to go look for other ways. This is only going to encourage widespread adoption of bittorrent and similar technologies.

Posted at 7:52PM on Feb 19th 2008 by Ryan Beesley

6. I wasn't going to post, but Ryan is giving misinformation.

Blu-Ray has consistently outsold HD-DVD for ... 6 months? 8 months? Since the format war started, the total of Blu-Ray sales are greater than that of HD-DVD. And looking at weekly sales specifically, as time went on, Blu-Ray was selling more and more compared to HD-DVD. Even before Warner's announcement (70-30 prior to warner).

On the Sony "monopoly" -- Sony was the main developer, but there are over 200 members of the Blu-Ray Disc Association, and MANY (sorry no numbers) patent holders on Blu-Ray. It's no longer a "Sony Monopoly."

OTOH, Toshiba was basically the only company making HD-DVD players -- THEY had a monopoly, but that's seldom mentioned due to anti-Sony sentiment.

Yes, you read that right. TOSHIBA was the monopoly in this -- and played dirty pool to get HD-DVD accepted by the DVD group.

On the "more expensive" for independent studios -- Scenarist, which was used primarily by Indies, went Blu-Ray exclusive a few weeks back. So the "cheap" incy software ditched HD-DVD.

And mandatory AACS -- this is the epitome of misinformation. BOTH formats used the exact same "Mandatory AACS" copy protection. The SAME. Sony added an additional layer called BD+, because THE STUDIOS WANTED IT. But AACS was the same on both. You would have had the exact same restrictions on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray.

The better format won in this case. Be happy. And in my experience, in general my Blu-Rays blow away the image quality of my HD-DVDs by far (not to say there are good and bad in both formats, but I'm talking in general).

-Pie

Posted at 11:41AM on Feb 20th 2008 by EatingPie

7. i think i'll just stick with my $15 LD-DVDs.

another $15 for better picture just isn't worth it.

Posted at 12:16PM on Feb 20th 2008 by Brien

8. If you don't care about a better picture, I sort of wonder why you even bothered with HD to begin with

Posted at 6:24PM on Feb 21st 2008 by Brian