Two words: Fire Sale, or why I bought an HD DVD Player

Anyone reading this probably knows I have an obsession with dead audio/video formats. From my quad LP collection to laserdiscs, I have an eclectic taste in how I watch or listen to media. So not a single person should be surprised that as soon as Toshiba killed HD DVD, I went out and bought a new HD DVD player to go with my shiny new HDTV.


Why would someone who's tech savvy invest in a dead format?


Simple, economics. HD DVD's demise has led to a unique situation. For the past year and a half, Blue Ray and HD DVD have been pitted against each other, vying to be the winning 1080 media format. Now that HD DVD has failed, retailers are dumping HD DVD stock. Players are going for less than half price, sometimes for as little as $70, and movies have been marked down from $50 to $15. Soon those prices could drop even further. This equipment is still in high definition, still displays just as clear as Blue Ray (for all effective purposes), and still has a library of decent movies attached to it. Now's the perfect time to buy in HD DVDs. HD DVDs aren't like Beta tapes in the 80s. They won't decay just sitting on the shelf (or if they do, not nearly as easily). Disc medium is pretty tried and true, other than scratching, it isn't very often that discs give out. So if you're comfortable with having a high def collection that doesn't grow, it makes sense to buy into them. I don't have the money to invest in Blue Ray, and since the HD DVD movies are going cheaper than their DVD counterparts now, it makes sense to buy them while they last.

There is no guarantee that Blue Ray is going to be around for much more than 5 years anyway. 1080p is no longer the highest resolution television available, and both BR and HD DVD were limited to that resolution. The next generation of disc based media has already been demonstrated in prototype form. Known as the Holographic Versitile Disc, or HVD, it is able to store 3.9 TERABYTES of information, in comparison to BR's 50 GB or DVD's 8.54 GB. The technology exists NOW to replace an entire BR collection with a single disc. Who knows what five years more development will bring? Also, media's role in film distribution may even end, as studios shift to a digital mindset, offering high def downloads much like Apple's aspirations in the music industry.

So I don't feel like a "sucker" for buying the dead format. For the next little while, I'll enjoy movies in high def cheaper than on normal DVDs. After that, I'll go back to regular DVDs until the price on Blue Ray comes down to an affordable level.