Why you should buy an HD DVD player now
If someone would have asked me whether or not to buy a Blu-ray or HD DVD standalone player a month or two ago, my advice would have been to hold off. As of late last month, my advice has changed. This past weekend, I picked up the Toshiba HD-D2 standalone HD DVD player in store at a local Costco. The price? A mere $249.99. For those of you who might be wondering what the “HD-D2” is, it is another Toshiba HD DVD player model and it is practically identical to the Toshiba HD-A2.
There are many high definition enthusiasts and consumers that are skeptical of buying into an HD DVD or Blu-ray player right now. Some people want to wait out the “war” and see what happens. Others are just waiting for prices to drop. Contrary to some of these skeptics, I say NOW is the time to go out and buy an HD DVD player! Why? Here are my top reasons for purchasing an HD DVD player this past weekend.
1) PRICE:
Toshiba is currently running a $100 instant rebate promotion. That’s right, $100 off at checkout, instantly. The promotion lasts until June 16th and should allow you to snatch up an HD-A2 or an HD-D2 between $240 – $299. Once the promotion is over, prices for Toshiba HD DVD players will likely jump up again.
2) FIVE FREE HD DVD’S:
Toshiba is currently running a mail in promotion that gets you 5 free HD DVD’s. Complete the offer and you should receive five free HD DVD’s in a few months. If you don’t particularly like the free HD DVD’s, you could always sell them on ebay or elsewhere to help offset the cost of the player! Just don’t forget to fill out that form and mail it in.
3) DVD UPSCALING:
Toshiba HD DVD players provide DVD upscaling capability, enabling smoother playback of standard definition DVD’s on a high definition TV. Many people seem to prefer the upscaled DVD video output compared to standard DVD video output on an HDTV.
These were my top 3 reasons for buying an HD DVD player now. I also enjoy supporting a competitive market, which has helped to drive down prices and provide more consumer choices. Other skeptics might cry wolf and suggest that HD DVD might be “dying” or “dead” because the format only has one exclusive major Hollywood studio (Universal). Don’t let that scare you, HD DVD is far from dead. This upcoming 2007 holiday season will be a key period for the high definition optical formats. That being said, I don’t expect HD DVD players to drop in price all that much more this year, so you might as well pick up a unit now.
There is one other reason you missed and very important one too!!
It is easier to make a backup copy of a HD-DVD movie onto your PC’s hard disk. There are also better tools in the open source community and VISTA for handling the HD-DVD formats.
I can understand why you believe HD DVD’s would be easier to backup, but at this exact point in time, it is equally easy to backup both HD DVD’s and Blu-ray Discs due to the available tools such as DVD Fab HD Decrypter and AnyDVD HD.
Now that doesn’t mean that this won’t change in the future. In fact, it will almost certainly change as additional Blu-ray DRM protections are released on the market (such as BD+).
With all of that said, I do enjoy supporting the format (HD DVD) with an overall lower DRM footprint. But I didn’t want to make this article a Blu-ray VS HD DVD piece.
It is a good time to get into HD DVD if that’s what you want because of the prices, but I highly doubt they’ll take the high-def crown.
The fact that Blu-ray is already working on 8x to 12x recordable media while HD DVD is stalled at 1x is one issue.
The fact that Toshiba, NEC and Buffalo are the only companies making HD DVD transports while NEC, Pioneer, Lite-On, BenQ, Toshiba Samsung Storage Technologies (TSST) and others are are making Blu-ray transports is another issue.
The fact that Blu-ray is accelerating their economy of scale faster is another – Blu-ray has over 10 million players in the wild and HD DVD is in the hundreds of thousands. Blu-ray also has tens of millions of software discs in the wild while HD DVD is still in the hundreds of thousands.
The fact that Blu-ray has quite a bit more CE manufactures behind it than HD DVD is another point (and virtually 100% of the PC industry).
The fact that Blu-ray also has the software advantage with the majority of the Hollywood studios supporting it.
And lastly, the fact that Blu-ray software sales are over 25% higher on a weekly basis at minimum is the largest point made.
But if you are an enthusiast, I say right now is a good time to do both if you can afford it because then you get all the movies you want in high-def. So there’s that.
You gave some good info and I agree with most of your points Steve, but this article was not about HD DVD vs Blu-ray. The point of it was to show why I bought an HD DVD player right now, and why now is a good time for others to buy if they are going to go with HD DVD.
My personal opinion is that right now is not a good time to buy into Blu-ray, unless you are a gamer and you want a PS3. Why? The high cost of players ($500 minimum) and the yet to be finalized or mandatory support of the final BD-J spec in players. Blu-ray players manufactured after October of this year will be mandated to support ALL BD-J features and use a minimum set of components. Once Blu-ray players drop in price and they support all BD-J functionality, I will look at picking one up.
I hope you picked one up for me too then you cheap bastid! ;-)I mean, they’re only 250 bucks! :-p See ya soon Bro!
I geuss blu ray won eh? Sony is the boss!