I have my Xbox 360 and hddvd setup. I really like it and it is fast. The picture quality is awesome as I look at my stuff on a 62 inch hd tv. My blue ray is slow. Once it gets going it is good but I cant do some of the stuff that my HD DVD can do. I am still not happy that Blue Ray won but I do have to say the picture is nice. I like the fact I can get the HDDVD stuff for dirt cheap. I have about 100 HDDVDs now. Unfortunately, I am going to have to start buying players like I do with laserdiscs and the players.

I am right there with you. Every time my friend comes over to my house, he asks when I'm going to stop buying HD-DVD's. I too have been looking at getting a second player, just in case.

HDDVD should have won the war...
It was the LD of HD world:
- Fast
- No Région coding
...

No, MUSE LD was the LD of the HD world.

We bought out HD-E1 on day of release at £450 brand new, and it was a 1080i machine. Our last HD DVD machine buys were twom HD-E30 machines (the middle one in the UK range of three) for £55 each! That was when the shops here were trying to sell them off to make room for other (blue) stock.

We now have two E30s (as our up-scaling multi-region enabled players) in actual service, and three spares.

It is a shame that HD DVD died. I still think that my Ultimate Matrix Boxed Set contains some of the best HQ pictures I have ever seen.

I always felt that the two things that let it down were that TOSHIBA did not get any other CE companies to make machines, whilst Sony had more-or-less everyone. And easy brand recognition, that name was always clunky and rather clumsy to vocalise, HD DVD, it just does not scan smoothly. Now HDVD, DVHD or even DVD-HD would have been better.

Yeah, it was some "HD", overpriced and not always better than a DVD Pressing.
I'm quite sure a 2011 MuseLD Pressing with the nowadays transfer technologies could be amazing.

I have been working, desultorily, on "cracking" the MUSE format, in order to produce an encoder which could be used for amateur HDTV transmissions. Unfortunately, I cannot see any way to get the result onto disc. Be it said, I really need to get hold of a MUSE player — I have discs & a decoder, but without the player, they're not much use! But I have been assured that material originating on video, as opposed to film transfers, looks stellar in this format.

There was a movie company that made a limited edition run of 2000 hd movies for one of their recent releases. My computer died and I dont know the name anymore but I believe this was as recently as this year. So while it is pretty much dead there was a blip. I just like it because I think the color is better then blue ray and the picture is clearer. To me HD was always Wow, that is cool. When I first saw king kong I almost died. Now, the blue ray stuff that comes out is good, it just doesnt wow me. Maybe I am jaded and it is never like the first time. Who knows. I think I am going to start buying as many hddvds on the cheap as I can get and add them to my laserdisc sales down the road.

I also got into HD DVD the week TOSHIBA announced they would give up on the format.

Players and discs dropped, but not to zero. eBay was an interesting market place to look at. Most people leaving HD DVD to jump on BluRay would sell player+discs as a bundle and I tried to "unbundled" these sales with a simple Total Price = Price(Player) + N x Price(Disc). And very clearly bidders had a precise idea of what each separately was worth.

Basically players would fetch between $125 and $350 (depending on how high-end they were) and discs were around $7 each.

I jumped in for a HD-A35 with 100 movies and added a few more along the way. Total for HD-A35 w/ 110+ HDDVDs ~= $1,000.

I haven't found the time to watch them all yet!

All my HD DVDs

Julien

I pick them up here and there. I try to get them for as cheap as I can. I think the most I spent on one was 10 dollars and that was for season 1 heroes and season 1 battlestar.

Will there be another format to replace blu-ray or will net-flix rule the land.....?
Curious about any insights regarding format futures......?

Netflix has been int he news for shooting himself in the foot these days:

• Netflix Creates Qwikster For DVD Only Business
• Netflix To Lose 1 Million Subscribers

Given recent Apple news (new data centers, TV commercials for iPad 2 in Europe, etc.). I wonder if one of the big announcement coming with the iPad 3 release date will not be a HDTV on-demand/iTunes Apple-centered movie streaming service.

Julien

Amazon has a pretty sweet deal with their amazon prime as well. They have 11k movies and tv shows they are streaming now and are getting more every day.

So will streaming replace any kind of hard copy format?
Will the concept of a video in hand go the way of the dinosaur's?
Makes me want to collect LD's even more......
I like having the options in front of me and there any time the spirit moves me to view a select title of interest.
Makes me wonder about the future of viewing films...many questions pop into mind.......
Many classics could fall into oblivion from neglect or not enough views etc.....

Just throwing in my additional support for the format. HD-DVD just made sense to me, utilising an already well developed architecture and manufacturing system, which would have helped bring prices down for the format faster than what Blu-ray has (in theory anyway).

I am so on-board with Toshiba that I've gone really anti all other manufacturers, which sounds rediculous I know. I've just purchased a Toshiba blu-ray player and hope that my next TV I get will also be one.

HDs are like lasers to me. Cheap and awesome. I am continuing to collect both formats and just got a crappy xbox so I can watch HD in my bedroom. Nothing like paying 3 bucks for an xbox 360

I think picture quality on bluray in some cases plain rubbish!

I have seen so many technical colour balance issues that looks like a colour-blind idiot who was sat in front of poorly un-calibrated tv monitor no doubt a THX tv with on the total p**s mismatched colour!
I can list so many titles and then list the better ones on Laserdisc and first edition DVD titles but sometimes its the other way around?

Terminator 2 is buy far the WORST and it needs to be started over from scratch with a new scope 35mm super35 print of the theatrical print ONLY and telecined without any common colour issues that often happen when transferring film though a video camera device.

If the 35mm or 70mm print was played beside the so called perfect HD bluray format the 35/70mm would laugh at the waste of bit space HD bluray and tell it to climb back into its pram.

I have only seen a few a few decent mirrored transfers nearly 98% of the rest is JUNK made for a rubbish bin!
--Andy--

I always thought that the European HD DVD (was it German?) was the best version to get anyway, in terms of PQ.

I am just not impressed by blue ray as I should be. Dont get me wrong, it is leaps and bounds better then many dvds. That being said, transferring a film from a laserdisc copy still means you have a laserdisc copy on a blue ray.

I agree with you on the Blu-ray comment. I'm just not impressed with mine. Theres only 2 discs I enjoy watching. The Simpsons Movie and A Clockwork Orange. But, since I found out that Clockwork was released in HD-DVD, I might get that too.

I just think HD-DVD is the better format. Looked like they put a little more effort into the discs. I watched Accepted for the first time on HD and even I was impressed with the colors. While I havent had a disc issue yet, I do have older copies with scratches on the surface. But none of them skips.

I have two players. Both of them Toshiba A2. The only problem I have with them is they take too long to load. So does my Bluray. But when the HD-DVD loads, it plays. On some Bluray titles, the disc loads, then I see the Company Logo, then loads some more, FBI warning, loads some more, etc. It took me 5 mins to get to the menu for the A-Team!

I love movies. I collect LD, Blu-ray, HD-DVD, DVD, VHS and Beta. I perfer my HD movies on HD-DVD. I have around 100 title on HD-DVD and only 10 on Blu-ray.