Why I Decided to Go HD-DVD

I’ve done it folks. After years of writing about the HD-DVD and Bluray format war I’ve finally decided to jump into the market courtesy of a sick deal that was floating around last week. For about $210 I was able to grab The Departed, 300, and The Fountain along with the Toshiba A2 HD-DVD player. In addition, Toshiba’s five free HD-DVD mail-in rebate offer still applies. In the end, I think I made out pretty well with this deal.

I know that my most recent foray into the format war discussion with this previous post may have led some of you to believe that I had given up on the HD-DVD format entirely, but I assure you I haven’t. That post was mainly made to summarize the excellent points that the Digital Bits guys made against recommending HD-DVD. While I partially agree with many of their points I still find much to like about the HD-DVD format.

I’ve mentioned the benefits of the format many times in the past, but I’ll reiterate that the definitive feature that HD-DVD holds over Blu-ray is the maturity of its platform. While HD-DVD has only had a slight head start on Blu-ray, the actual implementation of its next-generation features consistently surpassed its competitor. While Blu-ray hardware is only just now being revised to support next-generation special features, HD-DVD has had it from the start. And Blu-ray’s late implementation of this technology also means that many users of the first-generation Blu-ray players are now completely out of luck.

Honestly though, I feel that the decision to purchase this player was driven more by the insanely low price (coupled with the free movies) than anything else. I know that there’s a large collection of HD-DVD titles I’d like to own, and I’m less concerned about not being able to play Blu-ray titles because I figure I’ll pick up a PS3 sometime late next year anyway. For now I’m content with what HD-DVD has to offer me.

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