I've picked a side, sort of

November 6, 2007 | In Technology | No Comments

I was going to wait to write on this a few more days to let things sink in, and to let me test out a few more things to make a final impression on it, but I’ve just read a few things that make me want to address the whole thing.

On Friday, I plunged into the Hi-Def disc format war. I purchased an HD DVD player. The HD A2 by Toshiba to be precise. Walmart hosted a special secret sale on a few items on Friday and the highlight around the country was the HD A2. I actually didn’t know about the sale when I happened to walk by the display. Stacked on a shelf hidden in the electronics department was four of the A2s with a price tag of under $100.

All I could say after I saw the price was “that’s insane, there is no way that’s real.” Again, not knowing the sale was a one off deal I walked away believing this was the beginning of the end of the hi-def disc battle. I later found out it was a one day only sale.

Let me clear up a few things about the player. The A2 is one of a handful of Toshiba branded players (there are a small number of companies make the HD DVD players these days). Normally the price of the A2 was around $200+, while other HD DVD units can run upwards of $500, if not more.

HD DVD is one of two major high definition video disc formats battling to claim the thrown of the mature and aging DVD. It is rivaled by BluRay, a format championed by Sony and a number of other technology companies and movie studios.

I’ve been planning on staying out of this battle, allowing the two camps to fight it out, but the price of $100 hit me in a special place.

For the last few months I’ve been looking into picking up an upconverting DVD player, that would increase the resolution of my DVD collection and make them look a lot better on my HDTV. Prices for reasonable units was around $150, a price that made me gulp knowing there was a world of ture high definition video coming around the corner.

The HD DVD player serves as an excellent upconverting DVD player. Through the HDMI cable the visuals look stunning. Even DVDs that traditionally looked poor on my television, actually looked pretty sharp and popped like never before.

BluRay players are still really pricey. Coming in over $400, the format is still out of the reach of the average person (meaning me). Until they can come in with a sub-$100 player, they’re phoning in the competition. HD DVD seems to be more aggressive at the hard ware side of things.

Netflix, the online rental place, has backed both formats, allowing users to rent out DVD, HD DVD and BluRay if they so chose. So I have a good flow of HD movies that I want to see.

Two major movie fan Web sites have taken vastly different stances on the format war. Ain’t It Cool News’ head haunco has vocally put his hat in the HD DVD ring. The editors of The Digital Bits, a major DVD site in its own right, are taking a stand behind BluRay – calling it a superior format.

While I have invested in the HD DVD format, I am not sold that it will be the final winner in this war. I can see why BluRay might win. It has more studio support and on paper seems to be selling media at a faster pace than HD DVD. But the price of hard ware, in my opinion the ultimate deciding factor in this war, is leaning towards HD DVD. As more average consumers begin to buy players (whichever ones they do) the winner will become much more clear.

At the moment though, calling either a winner is premature. Both are selling mildly well – a few thousand here and there. Each have around 300 titles to date, with many movies on both formats.

In the end, while I have invested in HD DVD, I’m not calling it the winner. I just wanted a good upconverting DVD player. It just happens to play HD DVDs too. Who could complain about that?

I’ve only had the chance to watch one title in HD DVD, that being the amazing “300.” I have three titles coming from Netflix on Wednesday that I plan on watching rather quickly. After I’ve had some time to take in the true HD experience, I’ll come back with more impressions on the format.

I’m interested in hearing from BluRay owners, how do you like that format? How does it compare to HD DVD.