Toshiba SD-L912A slim HD-DVD-RW writer(only 2 speed writer)
Xbox 360 add-on drive

Integra DHS-8.8
Onkyo DV-805HD

These are HD-XA2 clones. They are cosmetically nicer looking, everything else is the same.

HD-XA2 in the main living room and a HD-A30 in the game room. There's multiple backups laying around and out in the garage. I have a total of 7 players and my XA2 is the best one I've ever used. This thing is built like a tank and produces a fantastic picture.

Living room- Toshiba XA2
Bedroom - Samsung UP5000
Home Theater - LG BH200

Probably use the UP5000 the most as that is where I watch the most HD-DVDs.

After selling my Toshiba HD-A35 (backup unit), I'm only left with the Integra DHS-8.8 now!

Julien

Out of the hd-dvd game myself for some time now. I don't regret selling them. Some friends of mine sold their collection for a few "euro's"
How are you guys doing with the format meanwhile?

Not too well!

=> Extra discs like crazy

I'm basically skipping Blu-Ray to jump directly to 4K UHD for new releases.

Julien

Makes perfect sense IMHO. I loved the hddvd format but owning discs that are or might be bad sooner or later made me pull the trigger on the format.
Did put much time in the format trying several players, discs etc...
Meanwhile I got picky about buying movies on any format. Love the Panasonic UHD player but I am not buying every title available that's for sure

In the living room, I have a Sony UBP-X800 player which plays CD's. DVD's, BD's and UHD discs. For the occasional HD-DVD I may want to play, I have a Toshiba HD-A3 player.

A few weeks ago, I got a Samsung BD-UP5000 in the mail which looks like a dud. I cannot get it to read DVD or BD discs. Also, the remote control has no affect on the player. I will open up the player sometime and check to see if anything inside got disconnected in shipment.

I was going to use the Samsung in my HT; but, since it is a dud(?), I think I will get another HD-A3 and use it instead. When I count the number of working HD-DVD's I have, they are an extremely low number. (My DVD's vastly outnumber my other formats.)

I have an LG GBC-H20L, which is a pc Blu-Ray player.
But, I learned somewhere that, you can turn it into into a Blu-Ray & HD-DVD combo-player by flashing it with firmawre for the GGC-H20L.
So I did. And it works

Back in the day I had an A1, then an A2, and finally a UP5000. The UP5000 is still one of the best scaling DVD players out there, outside of a newer Oppo (and a BDP-93 is what I replaced it with back when I gave up on HD-DVD). When I scaled back my theater several years back (four kids, priorities, etc) I sold the Oppo on and have had a string of mid-level BDPs and UHD BDPs... latest being a Panasonic UB420, mostly for its HDR tone-mapping since I used front projection.

After recently going down the LD rabbit hole again, I stumbled across an HD-A2 at the goodwill for $10 and figured why not? The HDMI output wasn't working, so I used it with component video and optical for a couple of weeks before replacing it with an A3 ($25, eBay).

I'll likely pickup a 1080p player of some flavor sooner or later but, since the A3 is working and my AVR does a solid job deinterlacing, I'll probably just be on the hunt for a good deal. I'll probably stay on the hunt for a Onkyo or Integra since they are, IMHO, the best looking players made... or at least the most high-end home-theater looking players made. Still, I'd jump on an A20/A30/A35 if I stumbled across one at the Goodwill too. I wouldn't say no to a good deal on a UP5000 either.

I only ever used an Xbox add-on drive connected to my PC to watch HD-DVDs. There was a software that let you watch them, I think it was call Total Media Theatre. Even back then I had rotty discs that would pixelate or glitch at the layer transition. I was never sure if it was the discs, the software or the player. I bought a copy of American Gangster and it was a death disc from the factory. Gave up on HD-DVD.

HD-A2 that I actually had to Frankenstein together, due to the one that I bought on eBay coming with poor packaging and the usb ports snapped off due to so. I just upgraded the firmware to 4.0 and works like it should! In fact it played through without error Aeon Flux, which is considered a rotter on this website. Makes me curious about other releases even from the infamous Warner Bros press plant...

As with most other things, the worst problems are reported the most. I have even seen people post "all HD DVDs are, or will go, bad".

I tested all of my Warner Brothers HD DVDs, and many others (in about 2023), and I got these results:

NO single-layer WB discs were bad. (That includes at least one "combo" DVD/HD DVD two-sided disc.)

NO non-WB discs were bad. (I did not test all of mine, though.)

About half of my WB dual-layer discs were bad.

As with laser discs and probably every other optical-disc format except maybe audio CDs, not every disc will play (now) on every player. It is always worth trying a disc on another player before deciding it is bad, certainly any non-WB-dual-layer disc in my opinion.

And, to answer the original topic question, my main HD DVD player is a Toshiba HD-XA2. I also have one or two HD-A2s, and my original HD-A1 that I bought three days before the official start of the format. Plus an LG GGW-H20L HD DVD/Blu-ray computer drive.

Have you tried them again recently?

They decay quite quickly once rot starts...

Julien

Not long after my last post (mid-2020), I ended up getting an Onkyo HD805 (Toshiba XA2 clone) from an AVS member for $85 without a remote (I use a Harmony Elite, so it wasn't needed). I ran that until about a year ago, before pulling it from the stack and recently passing it along to a friend who still collects and watches HD-DVD (I've ripped all of my discs to my Plex server).

I don't collect niche media or track versions, so once the boredom of COVID and haze of nostalgia wore off, my LD and HD-DVD equipment began sitting idle and taking up space. I moved out my LD player and AC3 demod/decoder because they had appreciated significantly in value (especially compared to the price paid at ShopGoodwill). Still, the HD-DVD player stuck around a bit longer since it wasn't as large and matched my other equipment (Integra AVR as pre-pro). Eventually, I needed more cabinet/rack space for an amplifier upgrade, and that's when I passed the player along to a buddy who still watches physical HD-DVD discs.

At the time I finally pulled the HD805 out, XA2s were selling for close to $300 (they've dropped to $~$150-200 now) but the HD805 was much less well known and I didn't get any buyers even at the $85 I paid for it, so I decided I'd rather hand it off to my buddy than go through the hassle of selling it for a loss or it collecting dust in hot attic storage.

I have not. They all stay "cool and dry" here, so I think that the discs that were still good after sixteen or so years will probably be OK for a while longer.

One thing I did notice among my bad discs is that they were not all "equally bad". Some could not be read at all in my disc drive, others had trouble while reading their tables of contents, and others did not fail until I actually tried the ripping/extraction process after everything "looked good". That last group consistently failed, though. Ideally, I would have an Xbox 360 HD DVD drive or two for additional tests, but I do not.

Do a round of trimming once in a while to avoid disappointment.

Each time I tested the "good ones", a new generation of rot had developed/increased.

Julien

OK, good to know (and unfortunate), thank you.