I killed HD-DVD
by Phil Long
Sorry HD-DVD fans, but it was me. The family curse returns. Just as my mum killed Father Ted (who died 10 years ago, this coming Thursday), in December I cut off the air supply for HD-DVD leading to it’s inevitable demise in the format war with Blu-ray.
How did I achieve this? I ‘invested’ in a HD-DVD player for the X-Box 360. Shortly afterward Warner took the decision to only release on Blu-ray and just last week Paramount and Universal followed suit, with the final nail in HD-DVD’s coffin being Toshiba canning the manufacturer of HD-DVD players. Thankfully I only bought two HD-DVDs – Superman Returns and Batman Begins, both available on Blu-ray. The ending of the format war is overall good – as buyers now don’t need to worry about what format releases will be available on.
This meant I had to begin the hunt for a Blu-ray player. I’ve avoided buying DVDs for more than a year; but there are plenty of things I want and it seems the catalogue on Blu-ray is pretty decent. Choosing a player I thought would be complicated, but thanks to the helpful posts of AVforums I concluded that the only option at present is – surprisingly – the PS3. The reasons for this are simple; at present existing players are not upgradeable to support future iterations of Blu-ray releases – Blu-ray extras will include interactive Web content which requires an amount of storage, and Internet connectivity, in the player. While the PS3 currently doesn’t support these features for Blu-ray discs it has the hardware to do so – and is firmware upgradeable. Most players available are not upgradeable to the full feature set – though if you’re just interested in watching the film, it’s not an issue.
So, I now have the 40GB PS3 – cheaper than the 60GB and reportedly quieter. I also don’t need the additional USB slots, multi-card reader or PS2 backwards compatibility for what is essentially my Blu-ray player. I’m liking it – primarily because it’s a lot quieter than the 360 (though so are planes taking off, in fairness), but also because Blu-ray discs (BD) are in 16:9 so appear full screen rather than letter box (though that could simply be down to the discs I’ve chosen). I got the Spiderman trilogy for £27 from Amazon – so already I have one more BD than HD-DVD. I also got Burnout: Paradise – which is an awesome game – though lacks the multi-player (other than online) that made it’s predecessors a fun ‘party’ game. Still – that’s what Mario Kart for the Wii will be for.
In other news, saw Tufty’s projector and screen at the weekend – very impressive. Had a 720p source going into it, projecting onto the 104″ screen. Picture was very sharp even at that size – very much like watching at a mini-cinema.
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