How I Lost Money by Choosing HD DVD Over Blu-Ray

I'm a big fan of television shows and movies and my wife and I love our 42" Panasonic plasma screen television. We have a Sony Blu-Ray DVD player and also watch Netflix streaming content via the DVD player. As older people, it's difficult to get out a lot, and going to a movie theater is just too much of a hassle.

My entry into the world of high definition television and DVDs was not a happy one, I lost big time when I spent $700. on a Toshiba HD DVD player. Now, the player works great, the few HD DVDs I have look great, but the format is now dead, players are no longer being made and no more HD DVDs are being released.

In 2008, Toshiba stopped selling HD DVD players and the studios that had supported the format (mainly Universal and Paramount), switched to Blu-Ray. So no more HD DVDs, no more HD DVD players. When high definition television finally came to consumers, a new format was needed to replace the traditional DVD. The standard DVD format just couldn't hold the amount of data used by high definition video. A normal DVD holds about 4.7 gigabytes of data, an HD DVD holds about 15 and Blu-Ray holds 25 gigabytes. Double-sided DVDs are also made in each of the formats, doubling their capacity.

When high definition DVDs first came out, there were two formats. Blu-Ray and HD DVD. Various player manufacturers aligned on either side, as did Hollywood studios. It began to get combative, as some movies would be released only on one format, forcing you to potentially buy two players, if you wanted to watch all movies. The industry realized it was only hurting itself and finally agreed on a common format. Unfortunately, it was not the format I chose, and I lost money as a result.

Another funny thing about the situation is I did the same thing about 30 years ago when I bet on the wrong horse in the whole Betamax vs. VHS battle. Yes, I bought a Betamax tape player and started to buy movies on Betamax, all of which was a big waste of money when VHS become the sole format for consumer video.

One positive note, after discussing this article with my son, he tells me there is a market on eBay for the HD DVD players and discs, so I am going to have him list the player and all our discs on eBay. I hope we can make some money to offset our purchase of the Blu-Ray player.

Antone Gonsalves "Toshiba Gives up on HD DVD, Ends Hi-Def Format War" from Information Week via informationweek.com

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