HD-DVD Officially Dead

Ryder: I am totally going to buy one of the newer HD-DVD players on closeout at $99 and $129 with 7 movies.... because this is one of the most impressive upscaling DVD players for regular DVD's. I think that DVD's will be around like redbook CD's for a long time... most of america only cares about cost and DVD quality is good enough for their smaller tv's. $15.95 on sale for a DVD versus $25-39 for a Bluray.... SACD had this problem... the average consumer didn't care enough for the extra quality to buy the gear to play it. Plus you factor in all the HDCP incompatibile tv's with gear and people really get frusterated... and the rip off $100 HDMI cables at your BestBuy stores.. Christmas 2008 will be interesting... streaming rental of movies or Bluray?

HD DVD is officially dead?! Who would have believed after all this started that, at this time this year, we would no longer be considering HD DVD players in our future? I mean, at the very least I figured a co-existence of the formats - but a complete dismantling of one of the formats?
LOL - the funny thing is that even though Sony FINALY got what they wanted aparently, which is total market share and monopoly of some major technology or format in the electronics world, it probably won't matter! In fact, I think the universe is conspiring against Sony, personally (lol)! I say that because I'm pretty darn certain that discs as we know them, are becoming more and more obsolute, as "hard drive media storage" is where it's all going anyway!!!
Mmmmmmmmmmuuuuuuuuuuuuuahahahahahahaha!

Yes! I just bought one yesterday, very impressed with its 1080p upscaling, and I guess I will buy some of my fave movies once the drop in price, maybe even a second player to keep in storage, at these clear out prices it's hard not to be tempted

Now:

1. companies like OPPO will be able to choose a new format to focus on and we will start to see reasonably priced high quality BluRay players on the market at about the same time as

2. the switch to all digital HD broadcasts occurs in less than 12 months and

3. many consumers are faced with buying either a set top box to control their current 4:3 set, or purchase a new HD wide screen tv that takes advantage of HD broadcasts, downloads and disks and

4. standard DVD will begin to fade to black as the cost of entering into full on HD falls and

5. land fills around the world will brim with all $50 DVD players, and cheap 5.1 non HDMI HT systems people bought and are throwing out with their perfectly good 4:3 CRT televisions and

6. both Sony AND Toshiba enjoy incredible profits as the entire world retools to go HD.

You got to love it.

PS - the dead parrot thing was too funny.

Knownothing, Oppo has already announced a BD player.

Blu-ray is the superior tech despite what a couple of naysayers have tried to preach in this thread.

Warner has publically stated that BD was cheaper and easier to encode than hd dvd was because of bandwidth.
Now lets just hope they use the extra space and bandwith on future releases instead of the good enough hd dvd ports we had been getting on Blu.

Bandwidth and space are very important for HD optical.

With all the CE's backing Blu from the beggining, I can't believe anyone is suprised that hd dvd lost.
The truth is that this would have been over long ago had M/S not suckered Toshiba into pressing on last year.

I owned several players from both formats as well as a PS3, and BD's best looking movies do look better than hd dvd's on my 110" screen.
Is it far better?...no
Is it enough to matter to a true enthusiast with a dedicated theater?
That would probably depend on the size and quality of display ect.

BD had always had the better audio with uncompressed PCM on every single Disney, Sony title, and DTS-=Master Audio on every Fox title.
Warner sold 63 million dollars more on Blu than hd dvd in 07 with 25 titles including The Matrix, Batman Begins and V for Vendetta not out on Blu.

The consumers/ enthusiast have chosen BD so let's just hope that Universal and Paramount actually use the 50gb discs with higher bitrates and Lossless/Uncompressed audio.

With reportedly 7 out of 10 HDTV owners waiting for a clear winner in the previous pillow fight, we should see quite a bit more adoption between now and the end of 08.

Nobody with any common sense is going to pay 300.00 for a box so they can pay to rent crappy looking downloads that are barely better looking than dvd, and take 7 hours to download, when they can rent the better looking and sounding BD from Netflix, Blockbuster, Hollywood Video and Movie Gallery ect.

Actual 1080p downloads that will most likely never have lossless audio, are mnany years away for the majority.
I would say at least 5 years.