While this might be a bold statement, all things point to this. Blu-Ray was already winning in market share slowly but surely, and today's Warner decision to go BD-only puts the final nails into this HD format war as Warner is the biggest movie distributor. The HD-DVD Group didn't seem to know about Warner's decision and they canceled their CES conference out of the blu tonight, amidst making vague references to possible legal action. My take: I wish Blu-Ray had a region-free policy like HD-DVD does. Living in USA today but one day moving to Europe, it will have an impact in my media library.
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Member since:2005-12-15
For me it's too up in the air right now, plus BluRay is too expensive. I don't even have a HDTV.
No, I'll wait until my SDTV fails in a few years then upgrade. By then hopefully this is resolved.
The stupid thing about this is that they're missing out on sales due to stubbornness, on both sides.. "Is it BluRay is it HD-DVD? Sheesh, I hope I don't waste my money on the wrong format..."
Edited 2008-01-05 07:26
Member since:2008-01-05
Member since:2006-03-12
http://blu-raystats.com/
Second column from the end. Click on "region free" to sort.
Most BDs are region-free. All HD DVDs are.
I'm willing to concede that HD DVD is less evil in a couple different ways (no region encoding, AACS not mandatory), but on an LCD TV at least, there's just no comparison in quality. HD DVDs look awful. So do Blu-Rays that use VC-1, so I hope the end of HD DVD means a lot fewer BD titles with lowest common denominator picture and sound (VC-1 + Dolby Digital = yuck.)
Member since:2005-07-06
This is the same issue I have. I wanted to HD-DVD to win purely for this reason. I have about 70 DVDs in the region for Africa. When I lived in the US I never bought a DVD precidely because I knew I was leaving. The other night I bought Goodwill Hunting. I got home to find that I needed a DVD player that ignores regions to play it because it was set for another reason. The DVD was in the "Collectors" section and more expensive than normal so I probably should have realised it was imported. But it bugs the hell out of me.
Member since:
2005-06-28
While on paper blu-ray was a bit better, in reality the two formats were equal for the casual viewer. As a person who needs region-free media because I want to live in two continents during my lifetime, HD-DVD provided me with region-free disks by default, and that's the only thing I will miss from the standard. I own both a Blu-Ray and an HD-DVD player btw, I am not a fanatic for one or the other format, they were pretty equal in entertaining me with top quality.