Home audio & video forum: Poll: Which factor would make you upgrade to a Blu-ray or HD DVD player?

Upgrading now would be a waste of money. Most movies won't look that much better in HD, its mostly special effects and animated features that will shine in HD, cant wait to watch 'Planet Earth' in HD tho.


When they'll hit the under $200 mark ill consider it.

While HD may be (slightly) better, the lack of content worth watching makes it very unlikely I'll upgrade. Thre are maybe 2-3 movies a year that are even worth seeing, so the current DVD quality is mroe than good enough.

This isn't about technology, it's about the trash that the movie industry is producing.

Can't see the big deal. Most stuff Hollywood produces is worth seeing maybe once, if that. High def isn't gonna make lame actors and lame writers any better.

If players get reasonable <$200 and more rentals available might consider it.

As for Blueray vs HiD (whatever) who cares? Like a car gets you from pt. A to B, does it matter THAT much how; yes I know to some people it does; Gotta have that Mercedes or Lexsus. But my ford does the same for 1/4 the price. So let the loaded folks battle it out; I'll wait.

I'll have to say that I wont be upgrading. I have regular DVD now and do not watch anything on it other than what I produce from family trips etc. There is so much trash that the movie industry is producing that I don't watch it now, why would I spend upwards of $200 bucks just to let it sit there so I can say I have one.

Movie industry, get away from all the profanity and ludeness and I'll consider it.

After both formats were hacked, I stopped caring. Whoever gave me a player for less than $200 won me. HD-DVD did that with the Xbox drive.

Before the hack, it was HD-DVD because it had fewer consumer-screwing, ahem... I mean consumer-protecting DRM. Blu-Ray pandered too much to the studios for my taste. But now, it doesn't matter. I can download whatever I want.

I now have both Blu-Ray (someone else bought it) and HD-DVD in the same house. The differences are slim, but I prefer the fun menus on HD-DVD. Blu-Ray has the unfortunate backing of more studios. I'm kinda' lucky in that most of the movies I want to see are on HD-DVD.

HD DVD features have far surpassed anything on BluRay

whoever told u studios r not doing hd-dvd u r wrong cause its just the opposite they r giving more dual releases cause I know 1st hand since I work for a company who makes dvds for both formats & also sorry but hd-dvd does have the more advanced & new tech. not the 10yrold tech. blu ray use so it can rip u off just like ps3 amazing that it will be 499 b4 sept when less than a yr ago it was 699 what a rip off

Its expected that by Christmas this year.
The Blu-Ray players will be $300.000

I think thats very reasonable, especially since its your only choice for HD format...

I'd just get a PS3, for $500 dollars you basically get a kick a$$ computer.

That you can use on your TV.

I was very surprised that most people picked price over quality... wait a second, that's what happened with Beta!
Like cell phones I'm sure HD players will get jammed with added features that some people will never use, but for me I'll put my money on core quality, not bells and whistles.
OK, so I bought a PS3 which you could say contradicts my earlier statement, but it was the BluRay that clinched my console purchase, not the other way around.

I dont care about added features. I just want to drop in the disk and see the movie start within ten seconds. Price is important but content is more important. Right now the only one movie coming out on Blu-Ray that I want to see is 300. (and that is coming to HD-DVD as well.) The other problem is the players suck. They take forever to start up and load, and then they freeze up. They are also picky about what files they will play. Forget about playing an mpeg file of your kids from your digicam, you are still going to need a standard player for that. If you want to know much they players suck, swing by Best Buy and take a look at all the returned thousand dollar player they have from six months ago.

Eventually, everybody will switch a HD player because we are replacing our crt tv with HD LCD tv. And dvds don't look good on LCD tvs or at least the HD dvd or Blu ray will be infinitely better. And once you see the better picture quality, you have to upgrade. That is how the vhs was replace by the dvd.
So unless you're not upgrading your tv soon, your old dvd player will be fine for now

So who is winning? The one with the most players sold and/or the one with most (good) titles. And right now, that would be the Blu ray because of the all the PS3 sold and with the good titles around spread around evenly with many studios hedging their bets , creating titles for both hd dvd & blu ray


I hope the format wars end soon or we'll be downloading our movies instead of buying disks

I would consider a dual format player priced at $100.00
The quality of the original transfer is what matters. A high definition transfer of a classic film will be limited by the source. The quality of standard DVDs is high enough. After collecting tapes, then Laser discs, now DVDs only, I only collect DVDs of small art house films that are not shown on cable and may never be transferred to HD or Blu-Ray.
Now that NetFlix rents HD or Blu-Ray DVDs why buy, except for your absolute favorites.

I already own a blu ray player, that is a PS3, and am already building my blu ray library, hd dvd will be go the way of Divx, besides for pc storage blu ray is the way to go....

I'd BEEN thinking from the beginning that Blu-Ray was better, probablly largely due to a lot of VERY GOOD P.R. early on by the Blu-Ray association, combined with the fact that for the first year or so, none of the HD-DVD players had outputs greater than 720P/1080i (even though many of the movies DID).

Of course all the NEWER HD-DVD movies and players support full 1080P (although there are still "discounted" HD-DVD PLAYERS from the "last generation" that aren't 1080P -- this is an ISSUE for me, even though I have NO plans to buy a 1080P TV for anything approaching the near future, just BECAUSE...).

HOWEVER, the fact that Sony has just come out with a BRAND NEW Blu-Ray player whose SOLE "new feature," so far as I can tell, is that it's exactly HALF the price of the old one, at $499, tells me the lower prices of HD-DVD MUST be having a painful impact on Blu-Ray sales.

Flipside, HD-DVD DOESN'T have as much studio support, with Universal being the ONLY studio releasing ONLY in HD-DVD, yet Blockbuster Video JUST ANNOUNCED a day or two ago that THEY'RE leaning towards Blu-Ray rentals over HD-DVD because "that's where the demand is." (I'm thinking it's more like maybe that's where the under-the-table DEAL is). HOWEVER (and I REALLY CAN'T KEEP UP), but I could've SWORN Blockbuster was part of the SAME MEGALOPOLY that includes NBC-Universal-RCA, with RCA being one of the FEW BRANDS of HD-DVD players available other than Toshiba (all likely MADE by Toshiba)... If that IS the case, then Blockbuster is talking about carrying the format that COMPETES with its business interests (but then that JUST COULD BE to avoid implications of antitrust violations if they ARE part of the Universal "family," and I'm NOT sure on that, just thought they were).

All the folks I've talked to at Best Buy seem to think the advent of the first dual-player machine by LG a few months back means this format competition will become a NON-issue, just as DVD+R and DVD-R became a NON-issue when those two formats were integrated a few years ago... Yet I BELIEVE there's a bigger difference between these two formats than there was between those, so it's hard to say, and I guess only time will tell.

In the end, I guess those consumers who have the patience to wait and let the dust settle DO win out... But all the early adopters, well, some of them end up paying through the nose, and many of them risk ending up with a DEAD platform, like VHS, Videodisk, RCA videodisk, and so much more that's come "down the pike" through the years.

Time WILL TELL, I guess,
Jeff