As part of the ongoing quest for high quality HD content, I scoured the craigslist to pick up an HD-DVD player for my Xbox. I ended up grabbing one for a cool $100.
Both HD-DVD and Blu Ray have hyped up the ability to do really cool things with their menus and navigation. In the couple of discs I’ve watched so far, no one has taken advantage of them. Two movies from Universal have requested to add cookies to my Xbox, with no explanation of what the cookies are meant to do. Being a geek, I know what cookies are, I can only imagine my grandma seeing this message and wondering why someone is trying to send her snacks. I declined the cookies and the movies played fine.
Recently Warner Bros. jumped ship on the HD-DVD format, and it looks very likely that Paramount will follow suit. Warner claims that consumer confusion is hurting sales not only of HD formats but of standard DVDs as well and it was time to pick a side and end the format war. Great for consumers who have invested in Blu Ray. Bad for HD-DVD consumers.
I don’t feel too bad for dropping $100 on the player, as I’ll get a good number of netflix HD-DVD rentals under my belt before the format really dies, but I do hope that Microsoft will sell and Blu Ray player for the 360. I hate Sony with a white hot burning rage, and I have no desire to support them by buying a PS3. I know all blu ray related sales put money in their pockets, but I’d like to minimize it as much as possible.