Hd DVD's Last Kick

[Grain]

Released on the day Toshiba released the poison pill, American Gangster on HD DVD was the best selling HiDef disc of the week. It was also the only HD DVD to crack the top 10.

http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/ ... Chart/1526

Many are dumping their HD DVD collections and players, others are buying like mad while they still can, and/or are taking advantage of some crazy sales. I personally bot 19 new HD DVD's last week, and 2 more players.

The Toshiba HD-A2 & HD-XA2 have both been hacked to be region free and capable of displaying PAL, but not converting PAL to NTSC. I got my XA2 a couple days ago, and I must say it's REON chip does a jaw dropping job of upscaling SD DVD's, a really great piece of kit.

I for one will miss The Look and Sound of Perfect.

[Ian]

I'd buy a player if I could find one for like $50. I'd get it just to play Transformers.

[Wesociety]

I'd buy a player if I could find one for like $50. I'd get it just to play Transformers.

I'd rather wait till it comes out on Blu-ray. "Awesome Blu-ray!"

[Dartman]

Check the demo and open box sales at Best buy and Circuit City. Saw a A20 for 99, a30 for 129, A3 demo for 79 and Costco is sposed to keep dropping prices on their D3 machine, it should be 79 or less at this point.
I got my 5 free hd dvd's this week as well only 5 months after I sent in the forms.
BB also has a lot of HD DVD movies cheap this week and probably just getting cheaper till they're all sold out.

[Ian]

I'd rather wait till it comes out on Blu-ray. "Awesome Blu-ray!"

Me too but I'm impatient and I don't have $400 to spend on a PS3.

[Wesociety]

Btw, the American Gangster HD DVD didn't even get very good ratings from HighDefDigest...
http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/1292/ame ... gster.html

[dolphinius_rex]

Btw, the American Gangster HD DVD didn't even get very good ratings from HighDefDigest...
http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/1292/ame ... gster.html

Considering what the studio did with that movie's HD DVD release, I'm a little surprised it made it to #1. There's way too much important exclusive SD content on the DVD side... I know if I was an HD DVD supporter I'd be pissed of. But I guess there's not a lot of choice either.

[jjones]

I'd buy a player if I could find one for like $50. I'd get it just to play Transformers.

I don't know if you have a Xbox360, but their HD-DVD add-on drive is $50.

[Ian]

I bought the addon about a year ago and have the addon hooked up to my PC.

[vinnie97]

Last? Maybe, maybe not. Those Paramount backstabbers might have provided the final kick this past week. It all shows one thing: High-def is still one niche bitch.

[Grain]

I'd buy a player if I could find one for like $50. I'd get it just to play Transformers.

I'd rather wait till it comes out on Blu-ray. "Awesome Blu-ray!"

If Paramount does it the way they used to, it'll have the same video as HD DVD but with only a 640kbps Dolby Digital audio track

[jberry]

I paid $80 for my A3....getting HD DVDs from ebay 4 cheap....$8 for Transformers LOL!!!! Shrek $11, Apollo 13 $6

what is up with that????

[Wesociety]

what is up with that????

Many people are dumping their HD DVD collection and players to go Blu-ray.

As you probably know, there will soon be no more new releases for the HD DVD format. Paramount/Dreamworks & Universal are releasing their last HD DVD titles this month. Warner will release until May. After that, no more new HD DVD releases from major studios.

[Dartman]

Been buying a few hd dvd movies as Best Buy comes up with good prices, why not, they still play great. Just got Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for 14 bucks and maybe I'll have to try Hollywood video and a few other sources. I still haven't bought any BD movies and probably wont as long as most are 30 bucks with no BOGO deals anymore at the local shops on them.
They need to realize, OK, we won, now lets compete directly with DVD if we really want to make a dent in the market and make huge money.

[Grain]

Quite a few BD's on Amazon have gone up in price since the war ended. Hopefully that's not a sign of things to come, ie. that it was competition driving prices down.

[dolphinius_rex]

Quite a few BD's on Amazon have gone up in price since the war ended. Hopefully that's not a sign of things to come, ie. that it was competition driving prices down.

Although Fox has actually LOWERED their MSRP on many of their titles recently

But yeah, I'm concerned about the sales not happening as frequently. But I'll be fine as long as sales *happen*. I don't really expect a BOGO sale every 2-3 weeks like we were getting near the end there.

[vinnie97]

The BOGOs will be over til November if not for good, I suspect.

[dolphinius_rex]

The BOGOs will be over til November if not for good, I suspect.

Possibly, but I could see other incentives, like Buy2 Get1 Free sales. I don't mind those particularily.

[Grain]

Quite a few BD's on Amazon have gone up in price since the war ended. Hopefully that's not a sign of things to come, ie. that it was competition driving prices down.

Although Fox has actually LOWERED their MSRP on many of their titles recently

They better, although Amazon is still showing a MSRP of $39.98 for present and future Fox releases , which is an obscene recomendation. Even if most stores knock it down "some" from that, they are still ~$8 more than most other studios. Worst thing is Dolph, and I know you agree, a lot of Canadian retailer's stick very close to the MSRP on new releases, and we are forced to buy from the US to get decent prices, forgoing free shipping and forcing us to wait a week or so for it to show up, among other things. The one nice part about buying from the US though is sometimes losing the bilingual covers

[dolphinius_rex]

They better, although Amazon is still showing a MSRP of $39.98 for present and future Fox releases , which is an obscene recomendation. Even if most stores knock it down "some" from that, they are still ~$8 more than most other studios. Worst thing is Dolph, and I know you agree, a lot of Canadian retailer's stick very close to the MSRP on new releases, and we are forced to buy from the US to get decent prices, forgoing free shipping and forcing us to wait a week or so for it to show up, among other things. The one nice part about buying from the US though is sometimes losing the bilingual covers

Gah! Of course I know what you mean and agree. It's horrible how much we get smacked with insane prices up here for HiDef releases. There's nothing quite like getting charge $40 CAD when I could pay $23.95 on amazon.com. Even with shipping it doesn't make sense to buy in Canada. Although the delay in getting it certainly gets annoying.

That said, I find I'm starting to rent HiDef releases.

[Grain]

That said, I find I'm starting to rent HiDef releases.

I've rented a few from zip & canflix (mail), but some have arrived pretty beat up, and skip badly. Error correction with scratched disc for both new media doesn't seem as good as SD DVD. My local mom and pop rental shop doesn't carry BD's yet (he only knows of 2 customers with players!), but they rent new SD releases for $3.50 each incl taxes, and has 2 for 1 Monday rentals, so I don't complain!

[Wesociety]

I'd like to rent more Blu-ray Discs, but there are a few issues:

1) We watch most of our movies from our bedroom and our PS3 (our only Blu-ray player) is in our living room. Hopefully I'll be able to buy a lower priced BD player for the bedroom at some point.

2) Both Blockbuster and Netflix have notoriously long wait times for most Blu-ray Discs, especially new releases. This might get better on the Netflix side as they have pledged to up their Blu-ray stock, although they may also increase subscription prices due to this.

[Dartman]

Well Wesso check out Circuit City, they DID have some smokin' deals on first gen bd players. I got my panny dmp-BD-10a for 169 and they have had the Sony unit at some stores as well.
IF you have one close, or hopefully a few slow stores they might still have some left. My main store sold all of the ones they had a week ago but their clearance prices are nation wide, Best Buys can be store specific so each store gets a different price depending on how well their stock is moving.
Sear was also blowing out units but same deal as BB, depends on the store and probably all gone now as well.

[Wesociety]

Thanks for the tip Darty, but I would prefer to have a BD Profile 1.1 player at least. Maybe I'll grab one of those on clearance once the BD-Live players start hitting the market. I'm in no rush, so it seems like a good plan for me.

[Dartman]

Yeah, I'd like one too, but that panny is about as full featured and well built as any 1.0 player ever made so it will do for the price for now.
I still haven't bought or rented any BD movies for it yet but it played my superbit copy of the fifth element very nicely and has all kinds of video tweakage.
I figure down the road I'll get a 2.0 player when features and prices get more in line with reality.