Mama Said Knock HD DVD Out!

For those of you that remember the movie "Tron", the animation to the left completely describes what happened in the last few months between Sony (Camp Bluray) and Toshibia (Camp HD DVD).

So I'm one of those guys that occasionally gets sucked into the "early adopter" electronics arena, and unfortunately for me, I picked the losing team in the HD DVD / Bluray format war...and did I mention how bad it sucks to be on the losing team? Last November I picked up Toshiba's flagship XA2 model for a screaming good deal, and over the past few months I've built my HD DVD library up to around 40 discs. I was excited about this new format...so much in fact, that I got my brother, mom, and grandfather into the format as well. After the Thanksgiving holiday, Walmart ran a deal on the Toshiba A2 player for 99 bucks, and our family decided to all chip in and get my grandfather into the "HD life" for Christmas, as he recently purchased a shiny new LCD HDTV and has always been an electronics buff himself. Looking back on this great deal, methinks it was more of a fire sale/inventory clearing initiative on Toshiba's part because they obviously knew something that they didn't want the public to know. Marketing in it's rawest form baby! Anyway, my bro was the next to hop on the bandwagon, and then Mom. HD life was looking swell, and then right after the Christmas holiday at CES...Toshiba received the death blow that put them down for the count. Warner Studios made their HUGE announcement that they would be siding exclusively with Bluray. Being that they are the largest studio in the industry, that meant that the water was going to start spilling over the bulkheads on the HD DVD ship. Bluray having Disney, Fox, and now Warner meant that the other studios would follow suit, and sure enough, that's what happened within a matter of weeks. HD DVD was now abandoned, spit upon, and beaten down, and those few hundred thousand players that were sold worldwide would eventually become paperweights...depending one's level of involvement in home theater I suppose. Needless to say, I felt like absolute crap getting my family and friends into this...oh well...so is the life of a format war gamble.

Over the last few weeks, I've been looking for the fire sales on eBay, Best Buy, Circuit City, Hastings, etc. I think I've bought every HD movie that I want in my library...bout 40 titles give or take. I went out a couple of weeks ago and was deeply saddened to see that Circuit City and Best Buy have wiped their shelves clean of the HD DVD media that I and so many others grew to love...only Bluray was to be had now. Looks like I'll have to pick up The Matrix and Twister online since Boise retailers are completely HD DVD free.

It was a fun ride and a good fight Toshiba, and I'll continue to enjoy my HD library and XA2 player at least until it breaks and is out of warranty. Once that happens, I guess I'll be forced to switch to the Blu side. Or I'll just wait until Hi Definition media becomes a downloadable format. I would be that 'disc' format is on it's way out sooner than we think. As the Internet pipeline continues to swell, it's a safe bet that players will become more like PC's and downloadable high definition media will be the future. That being said, I would also imagine that the interconnect companies like 'Monster Cable' are a bit concerned that this game could turn into a wireless world as well. Serves them right...$160 for a friggin HDMI cable...how do they sleep at night?!?!?!

Cheers!

He that will always bleed "Red"