The Energon Pub

For me, the death knell has sounded. Netflix is abandoning HD DVD. That's the high-definition competitor to Blu-ray, which gained the upper hand last month with overwhelming support from Hollywood studios.

But I took comfort that I'd still have movies to watch on my HD DVD drive. I recently bought the drive even though I knew it would most likely be an eventual dead-end. But at only $100, it seemed worth it. That's partly because I could still watch HD DVD movies while they lasted, particularly as I didn't have to buy them. I could just get them from Netflix.

Now that won't last too long, either. Here's what Netflix said today in a note to HD DVD users: "While we will continue to make our current selection of HD DVD titles available to you for the next several months, we will not be adding additional HD DVD titles or reordering replacements."

Oh well. The investment isn't a complete loss. The player does a good job at upconverting standard-def disks to look good on an HDTV. And it will play high-def disks that I make myself in a standard DVD burner—something a Blu-ray player can't. But stick a fork in: HD DVD is cooked, and even sooner than I'd hoped.

Rogue. wrote:Oh well. I guess Sony finally "won" a format war. A proprietary format isn't necessarily the best, though.

But isn't this like shooting yourself in the foot? This will alienate those people who do have and like HD-DVD. They'll rent them from another source, I suppose. But that will depend on how much longer HD-DVD will be around.

NOBODY LOVES WHEELIE wrote:I'm not overly tech savy...please explain the differances between these two formats...

Shadowman wrote:Blu-Ray, the new format from Sony, uses a different type of laser to read the disks, and can store substantially larger amounts of data. It's critical flaw is that it's much more expensive.

Shadowman wrote:

NOBODY LOVES WHEELIE wrote:I'm not overly tech savy...please explain the differances between these two formats...

HD DVD is successor to DVD, and it's supposed to hold about 3 times as much data.

Blu-Ray, the new format from Sony, uses a different type of laser to read the disks, and can store substantially larger amounts of data. It's critical flaw is that it's much more expensive.