I gave it a lot of in the past few months and made my decision
Sold all hd-dvd related gear just today.

I have too much around formats wise.
I am going to miss a few discs.... Blade Runner, I am Legend come to mind.

Keeping the format around was getting a challenge. Players in good working condition are getting more rare. I find it easier to get my hands on a Ld player than finding a perfect HDDVD player.
Being able to play dvd, Blu ray and in the future UHD BR on one machine convinced me on dumping the HD-DVD format.
It's all fun collecting formats but at one point there's too much of everything.

Holding on to the D-Theatre system for now but I might be compelled to sell that at one point.

it goes to prove my fears, that it simply does not pay to attempt to be a collector/enthusiast of modern HD Home Video formats,
or pretty much anything CE related beyond the DVD age.

modern BRD discs seem rugged and made to last, but finding an operational player for them in 10 years,
even a high-end reference model? seems more unlikely every day.

Enjoy and appreciate the quality and longevity of long-outmoded legacy SD formats and their related playback devices;
the once technologically limited yet glorious era of Home Video that spawned them is dead and buried,
and the world will likely never see another remotely like it.

appreciate what remains, and appreciate that it came from an age when CE firms actually took pride in their product,
and often worked extremely hard to justify said pride to the end consumer that they clearly held some measure of respect for...

Managed to get some money for all of it
not an easy thing to do I must add

Ordered the replacement blu ray copies trough various websites online.
Been searching the internet all night to get the best deal on numerous titles delivered at my doorstep.

Would like to find a nice "I am Legend" release....

Any ideas on what is the best out there?
Liked the hddvd very much but since it was/is a Warner edition not the best title to own on HD-DVD (was error free btw.) for now....

I want one with both endings....

How many HD-DVD discs and players did you have originally?

I'm not at all surprised the quality standards of newer technologies are worse.
I see it in every walk of life these days with cost cutting measures in place everywhere.

I originally bought music on DVDs and it was a one off purchase of an ancient laserdisc (at least 30 years old) that confirmed laserdisc was a vastly superior format. I've never looked back since.

I owned 103 discs. Trough the years I obtained some discs that we're nice but no must have's for me.
Sold the lot for the amount I needed to rebuy the BR equivalent of those titles I really Wanted.

Ordered things like:

The Ocean's Trilogy
Mission Impossible 1-4 box
The Bourne collection 1-4
The assasination of Jesse James by the coward henry Ford
Training day
Payback Director's cut
The Prestige
.... older films that are fun to watch.

trough amazon UK. They we're dead cheap on blu ray. About 40 euro for all above.

I like amazon since the pricing is right when comparing online.

I don't miss the equipment or hd-dvd's meanwhile. it was strange to see them go but I'm happy with my decision. I lost faith in hddvd a few months ago.
Kubrick titles (Warner) we're getting tricky to play right.
Who wants a medium that crashes from time to time?
Threw the defective discs in the garbage and sold the good ones.
Owned a Toshiba HD-XA1 that was superb along with three HD-A1 players. They all did the job but Warner made me quit on the format.
Recently bought an HD-EP35 for the bitstream option with True Hd and DTS HD but the player wasn't very solid build quality.

I can't think of selling my LD collection one day.
Love those

Weirdly enough, my player froze up just playing a regular dvd the other night. Maybe because it was a newer DVD and I hadn't updated the firmware? Shame on me. Sadly I think it's done for. It won't load past the "Welcome" screen now. Online searches show sending it to Toshiba for repairs, I imagine that's not viable anymore

Sorry to hear about the frozen player. Sounds familiar to be honnest
Had a few regular dvd's that froze during playback.
That's what I hated about the players. They are unreliable. Only one that gave me the least problem was my HD-XA1
The fact that support or knowledge about the players are slim to none made me sell it all.
I don't miss my hddvd's. I'm happy it's all gone. I don't miss is this movie going to play until the end?

Nothing worse than an digital picture lockup with a big screech that nearly blows your speakers.
Even an old worn out VHS with flickers and dropouts would be a king to that.
Usually the only discs you encounter that on are bootleg DVDs badly recorded using really low quality defective media.

I thought about seeking out an XA1, I definitely like the look of them, but seems that people want too much for them. I can't justify spending so much on a player that might not work all the time.

I have the same problem on my XE1, and I work around it like this:

Switch on the Player - "WELCOME" and nothing else is happening (for a while).
After a few minutes an error code will be displayed, for me it is "2007C023".
So then I shut down the player by keeping the front power button pressed for about 10 seconds.
The moment it shuts down (color changes from blue to red), I press the power button again to switch it on.
This time player boots normally and works perfectly.

From what I remember it was called the "WELCOME Bug" and was *NOT* fixable.
Player had to be sent to Toshiba to be swapped against a new/or refurbished one.

Maybe you can try if this trick works for you, too.

Thanks for that lons_vex. I've not gotten an error code, but its worth a shot to see if it works for me.

Well my love affair with HD-DVD was a short one. It started off so good, but between only playing DVDs via component, the HDMI would freeze it up, and none of HD-DVDs working, I realized it was done. I kept two movies that were combo packs that I liked and boxed up the player and discs and donated it all to a local thrift store. It was fun while it lasted.

I remember reading the Blu-Ray of Blade Runner released around that time (in the US at least) used the exact same data as the HD-DVD...

Studios that released both HD-DVD and Blu-ray optimized their mastering for the HD-DVD's 30GB limit(BD is 50GB). They typically used the same data. What's very interesting is those HD-DVDs used Dolby Digital Plus at 1.5mbps whereas the BD version got regular Dolby Digital at 640kbps. Space is certainly not an issue of BD over HD and DD+ is a supported format, I don't know why they opted for lesser bitrate.

Blade Runner discs are bit identical. There is a second BD release which uses the same video but different audio codec though. It's just the red cases fits better with some cover art such as 300, Invasion, Forbidden Planet, Blade Runner.

Sounds very familiar. it's sad to see all players crash so fast. When I think about my LD player(s) going strong even 20 years later...
Toshiba should be ashamed for selling technology that can't be trusted. I mean, they knew there was a problem with discs and players very early at the start of the format war. Warner never did anything in Europe to replace defective discs.... Mailed them several times about the issue.
I would have loved keeping my hddvd's around but again I can't see why one would hold on to an uplayable format

Anyway,

Lesson learned

kris,

When you say "crash" yeah know precisely what you mean. LD, if it had even a bit of dirt or something stuck to the side playing that eluded you when loading it up and it shows in playback I know what it is and yet don't bother to much as the film just carries on playing flawlessly, unless it was serious bad laserrot in which case I won't bother playing the disc. If it was any dirt or scratches on DVD/HD-DVD/bluray it would often always pixel or freeze and if I can keep my cool without grabbing the player and tossing across the room at a wall!

Also the smaller discs suck at load up time. LD plays the film unless of course in the invent of system failure, LD starts up and plays the fastest as I could be watching paint drying on the wall with bluray that is the worst load up time in history!

Like to think of my LD like I do for records. They spin or they don't
no strange happenings during playback, no freezing near the end, no error codes upon loading.
Regarding BR loading times... I find most of them to be faster these days. I "upgraded" to a cheap Panasonic DMP-bdt361 for the time being and it isn't sluggisch in any way! It proved to be a good buy for those few cents it costs.
Only one that needs time is Avatar DC ... extends the running time another 5 minutes
Then again, nothing like the LD loading time.

kris,

Avatar, some 20th-Fox titles are slow at load up time. Some that do away with these silly extra features seem to load up faster! I'd rather have extras on second disc and feature film with theatrical mix not these lousy near-field mixes.

I won't trade my LD in for 4kUHD for Free. UHD can take a jump off a cliff! I been conned enough as it is with bluray near-field re-mixes.