I know, I know. You're going to say "duh, we knew that." But this post is intended more for fence-sitters:

Background:

My brother is a staunch advocate of DVD and refuses to bite on HDM, swearing up and down that there is little benefit to be had over an up-converted SD-DVD disc. I am obvisouly a staunch advocate of HDM - especially HD-DVD (I am cheap).

Scenario:

I challenged him to the Hot Fuzz High-Def Disc-Flip Face-off. Invited him over to my house to view Hot Fuzz on my Panny 58pz700u. I played for him a scene from the HD side, then flipped it over and played the exact same scene for him in 480. His jaw dropped!!! Hell, mine dropped. I hadn't up until that point done this for myself (oddly enough).

Result:

He logged onto Amazon 15 mins later at my house and ordered his A-20!!!!!

Guys, this might be the most convincing argument for HD I have ever seen. I'm sure others may have doen the same with other combo's (or used two discs) and some may work equally well, but this was effective. I have now invited my wife's uncle, two of my neighbors and my brother-in-law over tomorrow (Sunday) for the Hot Fuzz High-Def Disc-Flip Face-off!!

My goal is 10 converts by holiday shopping season. Hopefully I will smash that goal. Wish me luck!!

Good work man! Everyone that I've shown an HD DVD or a BD to has agreed that the HD version looks great. Unfortunately I haven't convinced most of them to buy either HD format yet. Most say the costs for each player and the movies are still too high. I suppose even the $240 HD-A2 is expensive when compared with a $50 Walmart cheapie. I OTOH think it's a steal! To be honest though, most of these same people I've demoed HD material to don't even own an HDTV yet... though almost all of them want one.

Wll done! That's what Combo HD DVDs are for! To show people the difference! :D

The one good thing about the combos. I remember thinking (on my first HD DVD) that it looked pretty good. It wasn't until I flipped it that I realized there is a huge difference.

Good job. I think this is the way to do it. As the instore displays can't fdo justice. Even if playing a good teir 1 movie. The sourunding TVs are HD signals as well. so their a difference. But its not a huge as SD to HDM. Although in most cases its just the poor demo discs.

I think if we see $199 players in the big B&M stores as well as movies on sale. Their might be a huge increse in sales. The question is will the bargin stores get them. All walmarts and targets. I don't think BB,frys, CC are big enough to do this. And a lot don't liker shoping at the larger BB becase of their pushyness.


The walmart players are down to $27.99 in my area which is said as the tax on mty a1 was more then that. As were many movies.

I had my old DVD player hoooked up still so I put in 300 in HD in my HD-A2 and the DVD in my old DVD played and switched my tv's video sources back and forth. It made the DVD version look like a bootlegged movie!

it was smart of you to go HD followed by SD. i don't think the impact would've been as great had it been the other way around.

Wll done! That's what Combo HD DVDs are for! To show people the difference! :D

So that must be the combo strategy!

"Let me show you HD DVD.... opps this was the DVD side hold on (flips disc)" other guys jaw drops, goes out and buys HD DVD player :)

Finally Combos put to good use ;)

What chapter did you show in particular?

Yeah, I did that too right after I watched Hot Fuzz. There is a big difference, but the SD side looks pretty damn good compared to other DVDs.

If you really want to drop jaws, A/B the Matrix HD DVD (lobby scene of course) with the original widescreen DVD release. The difference is literally night and day. I've amazed all my friends with that one and put to rest those stupid rumors (of HD not being a big jump).

Even Superman Returns shows a big difference and the Superman Returns Transfer was largely panned for being too soft

Yep, I lent my buddy my add on drive and 300 and Hot Fuzz. Now my other friend wants to borrow it also but the first guy doesn't want to give it up. They both recently bought <40" LCDs so HD is new and exciting to them. It's funny cause "HD DVD" is still a mouthful for them, it's funny to hear them say it. I explained combo discs to my friend and told him to compare the DVD side and HD side of Fuzz and he was throughly blown away even on his kinda average 720p display.

Happy Feet is another good demo. CGI in SD then flip to show the HD glory. :D I was amazed by the difference. Haven't tried TMNT yet, but I'm sure that another good demo disk.

Two more that are good to show:

Ant Bully
Children of Men

I work at Circuit City, and for a while we had both the DVD and the HD DVD of "King Kong" written off from our inventory so we could use them as demo discs in the store. So for a while, I would put the HD DVD into the HD DVD player on one big screen HDTV, and put the DVD version on the big HDTV right next to it.

I started the movies at the same time and made sure they were syched together exactly. That way people could just walk right past our HD DVD display and see for themselves, side-by-side the difference between SD and HD. My favorite scenes to show off were the T-Rex Chase/Battle and the King Kong Rampage through NYC towards the end.

The difference is JAW-DROPPING.

Because of this thread I re-watched Hot Fuzz last night. It may actually be my new reference disc.

Plus, as an added bonus, I caught so many more jokes that I missed the first time around.

I did the same thing to some people I had over, though I leveled the playing field. Children of Men dvd side upconverted to 1080i on my Hd-A2, flipped to HD DVD side in 1080i. They could tell the difference before the explosion in the opening scene. Even I was a little supprised at the detail after watching it(never used the dvd side).

funnily enough i had a mate over last night to watch hot fuzz and after the movie finished i did the combo flip and loaded the dvd side into a decent pioneer dvd player and used my RPTV's zoom function to get full screen correct aspect ratio. My mate was pretty shocked at the difference...as was I

Among all the non-animated HD DVD titles only very few titles qualify for reference tags.

1. King Kong
2. Hot Fuzz
3. Matrix
4. 300

I did the same with Tokyo Drift. After they saw the difference, they said "where do I sign up?" But after seeing the price of the A2 (still about $250-$300) and most HD media ($25-$30), they said, "meh, I'll wait, DVD is fine for now."

The fact is that HDM is still not at mass market prices yet and until it does, HDM could be 3D but most people will still hold off.

'Challenging non-believers with the "Hot Fuzz High-Def Disc-Flip Face-Off"'

Try saying that when you're drunk. Oh, er, Hot Fuzz rules.

You also can show him the HOT FUZZ review screenshots.

You also can show him the HOT FUZZ review screenshots.

I'm digging around trying to find this specific review, but can't. Does it have comparison shots? I would love to see a link to that thread if someone can locate it quickly?

Any combo will do, actually. Out of sheer curiosity I always skip through chapters on the DVD side of a combo after I've just finished watching the HD DVD side. There is always a "night & day" difference.

This is ironic as this past weekend, I had the opposite experience. I found that there was almost NO difference between the HDDVD version of Fast and Furious and the DVD version. Matter of fact, the audio was better on the DVD version. I became dissapointed in my new purchase (A-2) because I'm thinking that DVD's are encoded TOO well. I watched Office Season 3 on it and it looked as good as the original HD broadcast.

I'll try some of these other titles you guys are talking about.

I'm digging around trying to find this specific review, but can't. Does it have comparison shots? I would love to see a link to that thread if someone can locate it quickly?

http://avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=885362

It's amazing how detailed Hot Fuzz in HD looks. In the shot of the street you can actually read a lot of the signs, and in the close up of his face you can make out individual hairs of his stubble.

I admire your valor and your loyalty, but until Toshiba pays me to convert "x" amount of people over to HD-DVD, I'm not wasting my time. I can't even find enough free time to enjoy the things that I love let alone converting people to HD-DVD. And believe me, I am a HD-DVD supporter too. Maybe it's just me, I don't know.

I had a problem with my Hot Fuzz disc and was forced to flip to get through a scene that was freezing up on the HD side. The difference was stunning on my 100" screen. Vivid, crisp, and eye-popping changed to be granulated and dull (by comparison).

I also wanted to point out that the difference in the sound was quite noticeable as well. Went from an impactful, wide open soundstage to something that sounded a lot more like any other at home movie watching experience.