Feeling Nostalgic...

Nah, its fun to stir up a bit of mischief now and then.....

I took part in a virtual Twitter 1982 film festival over the weekend, and five of the movies I watched ("Fast Times at Ridgement High," "Blade Runner" and "The Road Warrior") were on HD-DVD, the other two on Amazon VOD. When the HD-DVD/BD rivalry is left behind (and God knows my BD collection is quickly dwarfing my HD-DVD one) you're left with high-def media that is far better than DVD and on par with most HD broadcasts and even library BD releases. If you're into this hobby for the content then life with HD-DVD is good.

Just noticing this forum, new to AVS forums! What happened to HD-DVD, how does it compare to blu-ray?

Depending who you ask, one is better than the other or they're exactly the same. I've found little difference between them, but of course Blu-Ray players are still being made and the newer ones will be more advanced than the last HD-DVD players.

But- if you're feeling nostalgic- Everything you know about DVD just got a whole lot better! Welcome to HD-DVD.

My opinions . . .
HD-DVD never had strong enough studio support, and when Warner decided to no longer offer HD-DVDs, that was the end. Toshiba had little choice but to surrender.

Blu-Ray has a higher capacity media and bandwidth, so theoretically, it should offer superior audio/video. However, from a practical frequent usage perspective - I see little to no difference in video quality between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. There are top notch blu-rays out there - and some pretty pathetic ones also. The same goes for HD-DVD. It seems to have more to do with the quality of the source material and how much care and effort the studio puts into remastering than any inherent differences between the format capabilities.

Blu-Ray's higher capacity does offer the ability to provide lossless audio more often. How important that is depends on whether the rest of your system can handle the newer lossless audio codecs. There are folks who say there is no improvement in the sound. Others think it is night and day. I have a high quality audio system and I believe lossless audio sounds somewhat better than the old lossy audio codecs. But it is not a huge night and day difference.

There have been some manufacturing problems with certain HD-DVD titles. Overall, I have found blu-ray titles to be far more reliable than hd-dvd titles, but this is apparently mostly due to a single hd-dvd manufacturer who put out some shoddy product. The good news is that the studios who put out those defective titles have been very good about replacing them on either hd-dvd or blu-ray if you ask nicely.

Overall, I generally suggest to folks that if you are not involved in HD-DVD, don't start now. Go for Blu-ray. Those of us who are already in HD-DVD with players and a large collection of titles are in for the long haul most likely. And I am perfectly happy with that. My hd-dvd players and titles still get plenty of use. And I still have a handful of hd-dvd titles that I haven't even opened yet . .

^^^ Ditto. If you're new to the hobby, mg77 (Match Game 77?), I'd go Blu-ray and not bother with HD-DVD. BD is readily available, it's as cheap (if you shop around for catalogue titles and bargain BD players) as HD-DVD's were, it looks/sounds the same (to 99% of the population, but we here at AVS Forum are the 1% that can tell the difference... please don't occupy us! ) and almost every title on HD-DVD (with a few notable exceptions) is also on BD. HD-DVD was a format for enthusiasts that knew what they were getting into back in 2006-08 and, after the format's death, kept what they already had then added a few more (cheap) titles to fill in the holes. Then we upgraded to BD to complement (not substitute) what we had already amassed on HD-DVD. It's good to be bi-format friendly, but for new young bucks getting into the hobby HD-DVD doesn't offer as much bang-for-buck value now as it did a couple of years ago.

well . . . I absolutely love my Eagles HD-DVD. It is superb! Why it has not come out in blu-ray is beyond me, but I really do not care because I have no urge to replace hd-dvds with blu-rays of the same release unless something very special has been upgraded on the blu-ray. I really do not consider a blu-ray to be an "upgrade" over hd-dvd, unless the studio has included something very special over the original HD-DVD, such as a director's or extended cut of the release.

I just checked. I have 48(!) still-unopened HD DVDs, and I am not at all a "get every title" collector.

Starting to crack open some of my unopened haul (I have a bunch).

Watched the beginning of Lethal Weapon the other night.
My A30 still outputs an amazing picture.

I still have quite a bit of "shrink wrapped" HDDVD's (out of nearly 200). Sad part is, the 2 I watched this past week (World Trade Center and Hot Rod-NOT a good double feature LOL) BOTH froze at least once during the movie playing on a "low hours" A35. At least the picture looked AWESOME on my new 60" Sharp LED

Still have 3 players hooked up as well as a XBOX360 unit.

What I like most about DVDs is that I can put it on play whenever I want during my resting at home, I can watch my favorite scenes over and over again (kind of weird, ha? ). Like the part in "E.T." when ET told Eliot that "you are here", in my mind.
For old moives or not, I feel it sort of nostalgic as well, I just love such feelings.
But mostly I order the rental, while only few for my own collections.
Read through so many threads about DVDs and BDs, I came across some articles about "the streaming rises", and DVD/BD would finally come to the end, nostalgic as it is may disappear someday in the expecting furure?

I believe most of this thread is about HD-DVD - not standard definition DVD. Personally, I rarely watch DVD any more (strictly something I really want so see that is not available in high definition).
Once I got used to high def movies at home - there was no going back.

they can be exactly the same. The video can be encoded in mpeg2, mpeg4 or vc-1. Same thing for blu-ray, the difference for blu-ray is that the medium could be larger up to 50gb (but cost more).
For simplicity, they could put the same VC1 on each version and you won't see any differences.

^Might as well, that was Heroes' best season.

Is there a list of the shoddy HD-DVD's? I have some still sealed and I don't want to be "surprised" one day too late. Also I'm trying to rip my HD-DVD's but it seems the software mentioned in other threads don't support HD-DVD anymore. I'm using the 360 HD-DVD addon connected to my Windows 7 PC to try to get it done. I'm glad that the drive is still working. Knock on wood.

I think I listed them all in the Warner thread- again, too lazy to re-post them right now. The Eagles disc was made by Cinram but luckily my copy is OK.

A lot of folks (me included, I believe, but didn't know it at the time) have been Cinrammed.