Throughout the year 2007, it was a war between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, and the consumers had been put off from buying high definition DVD players because one just do not want to buy the Betamax of the twenty-first century, whatever that is. Then came 2008. On Jan 4 Warner Bros, a supporter of HD-DVD, announced that it will drop HD-DVD in favour of Blu-Ray, and the whole thing just collapsed within two month. By Feb 19, even Toshiba announced its abandonment from HD-DVD, together with Microsoft dropping the HD-DVD support for Xbox 360.
Yes. Blu-Ray won the format war. The very first for Sony?
Then we see a flood of HD-DVD related “bargains” appear on the Internet, and many of them got posted on OzBargain.
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Xbox 360 HD DVD Player — $44 from DVDCrave $47 from dStore
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HD-DVD Movies — there are bargains everywhere
You can pretty much grab a HD DVD player + a couple of great movies for under $100 — something totally unimaginable last year. Now the question is, are they really bargains consider HD-DVD is a dying format?
Yes and no. You don’t get this kind of gadget fire-sale very often, and I am pretty sure those HD-DVDs will be splendours on your 1080p LCD TV. However, this is indeed a dead technology so you probably won’t be able to buy any more HD-DVDs in the future. Moreover, what happen if the player breaks? Then you can’t watch the HD-DVDs that you have purchased unless you start hunting for a working machine on eBay.
And believe it or not, obsolete players are actually expensive on eBay. Search Betamax on eBay reveals many expensive 25-year-old betamax players, and they can fetch that price because someone 25 years ago did not want to follow the trend and bought heaps of videos on Betamax…
Personally I won’t spend a cent on HD-DVD (althugh I voted +1 on all those HD-DVD deals). I don’t even have a proper TV…
This is great news for those who wants to get their hands on the HD-DVD bargains bandwagon. As an example, the Xbox360 HD-DVD added drive which can be had for < $50. This drive itself can be plugged into a PC and used as a normal DVD drive (or HD-DVD if you have some of those discs lying around). Considering the price comes with a King Kong HD-DVD and a remote, it is an absolute bargain.
However, the excitement may be short lived as this technology is not longer in production and supported anymore. Enjoy the ‘latest’ technology whilst it is still ‘current’. Who knows, maybe in 20 years time…HD-DVD items might be a collector’s item.