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[CanUKlehead]

Did I hear somewhere you can use them as a 360 drive in case the one on tye machine itself broke? I always wanted one for that reason.

I was living with my cousin amd his wife and I remember him coming home with HD DVD player...considerinf his massive TV has no HDMI input and he didn't get component cables...well.

I did buy them a Galapagos Island documentary.

Which was dwarfed by Planet Earth on blu ray when I got a PS3 a month later lol

 

[Menitta]

It's kinda cute!

 

[Smokey]

I did. I was going through my closet and actually found Planet Earth, Bourne movies, and a few other HD DVDs

What a time

 

[Kiyamon]

Yep...Bet on the wrong horse that time

This was me too. Got a ton of movies for a few dollars each at Fry's Electronics in Dallas, circa 2008.

 

[The Real Abed]

I did. I was so sure HD-DVD would win. I had an Xbox 360 back then and was totally against Sony.

I underestimated Sony. Should have known from experience.

 

[TriniTrin]

i use it on my pc as a disk drive now!

 

[Acorn]

Good ol format wars, how quaint they seem now.

 

[BrhysH]

Day one! Also bought a handful of Hd-dvds honest love these types of weird attachments.

 

[Nitty_Grimes]

Yep, I've still got it all in its box too.

 

[Zee-Row]

So what happens in an alternate universe where HD DVD wins the format war?

 

[Matrix XII]

I bought that. It worked pretty well actually.

 

[Tizocc]

If you find one at a yeard sale or something it's a decent external optical drive for a laptop

is this true?does it draw power from the pc or do you to need to connect it to outlet?

 

[MaulerX]

I bought it because I had just gotten an HDTV and it was pretty much the first time I had any kind of disposable income an adult.

Didn't regret it at all. We spent so much time watching Planet Earth on there when my kids were little.

I got it for that same reason. Lol. That was amazing back then. Probably still is.

I got my HD DVD addon tucked away in my garage somewhere along with the few HD DVDs I have for it.


Edit:

i use it on my pc as a disk drive now!

I swear I never knew you could do this. I suppose it will work with a tablet? Gotta dig it up then!

 

[dragonyeuw]

I had one for a brief moment and a few movies( Batman Begins, Bourne supremacy, cant recall what else). Bailed on it the moment Toshiba dropped it.

 

[toneroni]

Funny, I just sold the rest of my HD-DVDs to a gaffer. Only ended up watching a few of the player. What a shame..

 

[Vigilant Gambit]

The HD DVD format never made sense to me. I heard about Blu-Ray and HD-DVD as competing formats at around the same time. They launched at around the same time. The only differences between the two were the companies backing the standards, and the storage size. 15 gigs per layer for HD-DVD, 25 gigs per layer for Blu-Ray. And come to think of it, the PS3 was a Blu-Ray player, while the HD-DVD was either an expensive 360 addon or an expensive box you had to buy. So Blu-Ray was much more accessible to the market, if it didn't outright beat HD-DVD by a couple of years, and could store more data, which was the whole point of choosing a successor to the DVD.

It just never made sense from the start, for me. There was no clear set of pros and cons about one vs the other. It was simply an objectively inferior upgrade from DVD compared to Blu-Ray.

 

[Nokterian]

I bought it..still have it still own some hd dvd. But blu ray is bigger than hd dvd was or tried.

 

[TriAceJP]

I bought mine stupid cheap when GameStop was having a fire sale or something. Got a rather large set of movies for $1 - $2 a pop. I still have them somewhere but I can't be arsed to find the discs and the player and hook them up.

I remember that I had A Scanner Darkly but the disc wouldn't work so I ended up pirating it ¯\_(&#12484_/¯

Thanks, HD DVD!

 

[Hamster Plugin]

I sometimes wonder if HD-DVD would have won if it was built into the 360 instead of being an addon. Would have probably made the whole thing cost like $599 though.

That would have been crazy. HD DVD would win in North America, but Blu-ray would win in Europe because of PS3.

 

[ReBurn]

I picked one up at a yard sale for 5 bucks. It's sitting in a box around here somewhere. I find HD-DVD movies at Goodwill quite often.

 

[Mikeyg76]

I bought one for $49.99 at Fry's. Loved it, but ended up selling it and about 10 movies on eBay for $75 bucks once I knew that HD-DVD was dead.

 

[The-Great-Wan]

I have one. I remember the day they stopped production I was working for a company called Gamestation we got an email telling us production had stopped so I went home on my lunch got my HD DVD drive and traded it in at CEX for £100 with some HD DVDS then a day later I bought them all back for £30 and still have it today

 

[sixteen-bit]

is this true?does it draw power from the pc or do you to need to connect it to outlet?

No it needs an external power source sadly. I should have mentioned that.

If you want a self-contained disc drive for a laptop, I guess you could buy one of those slimline laptop drives on ebay and like and IDE to USB adapter but I haven't researched it.

 

[Wiseblood]

The format war was a good thing in the end. Originally the Blu-ray standard didn't support advanced codecs for video and audio. It was originally 1080p MPEG-2 video and PCM audio. But with HD DVDs support for MPEG4/VC1 and lossless Dolby/DTS audio Blu-ray basically had to follow suit or else their capacity advantage would be moot.

Blu-ray may have added them eventually without HD DVDs presence, but better they did it sooner rather than later.

 

[Doctor Ironic]

The HD DVD format never made sense to me. I heard about Blu-Ray and HD-DVD as competing formats at around the same time. They launched at around the same time. The only differences between the two were the companies backing the standards, and the storage size. 15 gigs per layer for HD-DVD, 25 gigs per layer for Blu-Ray. And come to think of it, the PS3 was a Blu-Ray player, while the HD-DVD was either an expensive 360 addon or an expensive box you had to buy. So Blu-Ray was much more accessible to the market, if it didn't outright beat HD-DVD by a couple of years, and could store more data, which was the whole point of choosing a successor to the DVD.

It just never made sense from the start, for me. There was no clear set of pros and cons about one vs the other. It was simply an objectively inferior upgrade from DVD compared to Blu-Ray.

The main advantage of HDDVD was that it used better codecs and, on average, looked marginally better than Blu-Ray did. It also came from a consortium rather than a single corporation.

It would have been really interesting to see where 4K video would have went if HDDVD had won - from what I understand, 4K movies barely fit on a Blu-Ray.

 

[drugstore_cowboy]

Bought one too. I think I sold it to CeX the same day Warner said they were going Blu-ray exclusive and I got a good price for it.

The HD-DVD discs only got sold a few months ago because I went out and bought a HD DVD/BD combi drive the PC. Never bought more than a dozen BD, bit of a waste all in all.

 

[Dr. Black Jack]

Bought one during the $50 discontinuation selloff. Just got rid of it a month ago since the discs won't play...apparently they're manufactured for shit and degrade over time, making them skip after a few years. I had movies that I only watched a few times start to freeze while others and all DVDs were fine.

 

[Weevilone]

I have one.. a Toshiba XA2, and a hybrid Blu-ray / HD DVD drive in my PC.

Got a bunch of the disks cheap, and I think the Xbox drive was a close-out. Paid a decent amount for the Toshiba unit, but had a Silicon Optix Reon chipset.. amazing job with DVDs on HD displays back in the day. I still use it for DVD.

 

[jadedm17]

I did for full $199 retail; I enjoyed it for years and returned it to circuit city during their promotion to people who bought one there. I believe they gave $160. Even if not i knew the risks : Do your research and enjoy what you buy.

 

[Liberty4all]

I had it and about 25 hddvds.

Saw the writing on the wall and sold it with my hddvds for 400 dollars, which I then used to buy a PS3. One month later toshiba pulled out.

 

[MooMilk2929]

Who knows, one of these could be neat to have. Like a VCR. VCR's can still be used for movies, you get used to the picture quality. I used one sometime back. Haven't owned one for probably 10 years now tho.

 

[simmias]

Got one when they were on firesale to watch BSG season 1 back before it was on Bluray.

 

[GraceflAnger]

I did and loved it. Had it up until a few years ago. I was able to get a sizeable movie collection because of how sharply the values dropped on ebay.

On a side note I just hope that since MS put a 4k Blu-ray player in the One S that it convinces movie studios to put more movies out on UHD Blu-ray at a faster pace.

 

[GinoFelino]

I'm pretty sure Jeff Rigby bought one to go with his 4K tv

 

[SlaughterX]

I did... but I have no idea what happened to it. Still have 2 stand alone players that I don't use.

 

[evilalien]

The main advantage of HDDVD was that it used better codecs and, on average, looked marginally better than Blu-Ray did. It also came from a consortium rather than a single corporation.

This is wrong. Both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD support the exact same codecs, except Blu-Ray supports higher bitrates making it better especially when combined with its larger space. The only advantage HD-DVD had was cost.

Blu-Ray was also started by a consortium and not a single corporation.

 

[eerik9000]

The main advantage of HDDVD was that it used better codecs and, on average, looked marginally better than Blu-Ray did. It also came from a consortium rather than a single corporation.

It would have been really interesting to see where 4K video would have went if HDDVD had won - from what I understand, 4K movies barely fit on a Blu-Ray.

WTF am I reading. Blu-ray was rushed to the market to match the launch of HD DVD, and had some problems with codecs at the launch, that much is true, but all that was fixed within the first three-four months by September 2006, first dual layer BD50 discs came a month later. Blu-ray always had higher bitrate limits than HD DVD. Blu-ray always had wider industry support than HD DVD. It was HD DVD that was a format of a "single corporation". Toshiba was pretty much the only company that manufactured HD DVD players. Onkyo had a couple rebranded Toshiba players, LG released some weird HD DVD / Blu-ray combo players and PC drives.

4K Blu-ray is essential a different format that regular Blu-ray. It use different discs (up to 100GB) and video codec. The development of HD DVD format could have progressed in a similar way, the already had triple layer 51GB discs in the work anyway.

 

[Marvie_3]

Bought mine for like 20 bucks on clearance one day. It was cheaper than buying a standalone dvd player.

 

[Ovid]

The HD DVD format never made sense to me. I heard about Blu-Ray and HD-DVD as competing formats at around the same time. They launched at around the same time. The only differences between the two were the companies backing the standards, and the storage size. 15 gigs per layer for HD-DVD, 25 gigs per layer for Blu-Ray. And come to think of it, the PS3 was a Blu-Ray player, while the HD-DVD was either an expensive 360 addon or an expensive box you had to buy. So Blu-Ray was much more accessible to the market, if it didn't outright beat HD-DVD by a couple of years, and could store more data, which was the whole point of choosing a successor to the DVD.

It just never made sense from the start, for me. There was no clear set of pros and cons about one vs the other. It was simply an objectively inferior upgrade from DVD compared to Blu-Ray.

Yup, that's why I knew it was DOA.

A lot of the major players in the movie industry backed Blu-Ray over HD-DVD.

Bought one during the $50 discontinuation selloff. Just got rid of it a month ago since the discs won't play...apparently they're manufactured for shit and degrade over time, making them skip after a few years. I had movies that I only watched a few times start to freeze while others and all DVDs were fine.

What?

Well that sucks.

 

[Magnus]

Yep, I did. Still have it on a shelf, I'm pretty sure, but lost its power adapter somehow. Have 8 or 9 movies too, some still sealed.

Bought it for the WB Exclusivity at the time - Batman Begins, Matrix trilogy, Harry Potter, Children of Men, and Transformers.

Alas. What a waste of $200.

On the plus side, I was only able to buy my favourite band's concert DVD in the European region for awhile, and the only drive in my home (here in North America) that could play it was that HD-DVD drive. So yeah. I used it a lot just for that!

 

[Madao]

i wonder how different the format wars would have been if this was the 360's normal disc drive instead of DVD..

 

[TheSecondSpitter]

i wonder how different the format wars would have been if this was the 360's normal disc drive instead of DVD..

Exactly the same. Although MS games divisions may have suffered a horrible death.

 

[Hasney]

Damn right I did, 20 quid with 3 movies by the time I got it though. Managed to get a little collection before it totally bombed. They're worth less than nothing or I would sell the bad ones.

Also managed to get a blu-ray writer around the same time for 40 pounds. It had HD-DVD in big letters on the box as it could read them too, so they marked it down as clearence... Oops.

 

[Dr. Black Jack]

What?

Well that sucks.

IIRC it's mostly Warner discs that do this. My copies of Christmas Story and NL Christmas Vacation failed to play properly after two years, only watched them twice each, perfect condition. Same shit started happening to all my other WB discs.

 

[Weevilone]

WTF am I reading. Blu-ray was rushed to the market to match the launch of HD DVD, and had some problems with codecs at the launch, that much is true, but all that was fixed within the first three-four months by September 2006, first dual layer BD50 discs came a month later. Blu-ray always had higher bitrate limits than HD DVD. Blu-ray always had wider industry support than HD DVD. It was HD DVD that was a format of a "single corporation". Toshiba was pretty much the only company that manufactured HD DVD players. Onkyo had a couple rebranded Toshiba players, LG released some weird HD DVD / Blu-ray combo players and PC drives.

4K Blu-ray is essential a different format that regular Blu-ray. It use different discs (up to 100GB) and video codec. The development of HD DVD format could have progressed in a similar way, the already had triple layer 51GB discs in the work anyway.

A lot of good info here. The main problem that I had with Blu-ray is that the spec wasn't final (or even close) when it launched. People have forgiven and forgotten, but the growing pains were very real for a long time early on.

My LG HD DVD / Blu-ray combo PC drive has been a beast. It's ripped hundreds and hundreds of disks of all format for the media center.

As an aside, I have a number of HD DVD movies that I've slowly replaced with Blu-rays when on deep discount, etc. I'll gladly send them to anyone that will pay for shipping and enjoy them. Will try to dig this weekend if anyone is interested.

 

[SkylineRKR]

I did buy this and it was my first HD player. Well before Ps3 was out in Europe.

Only the first wave of HD movies were better on HD-DVD because of VC-1. I had Batman Begins, King Kong, 300 and a few others.

But Blu-Ray quickly became on par and then better. It was a useless battle though, its all about streaming.

 

[sector4]

Good ol format wars, how quaint they seem now.

We're actually right in the middle of another right now haha! Dolby Vision vs HDR 10.

 

[aparisi2274]

CD addons didn't die in the 90's, in 2006 Microsoft released the HD DVD Player for Xbox 360 for just $199. There's something I love about obsolete hardware, of course HD DVD would eventually and brutally lose to blu-ray but there's something quirky and lovable about this little box.

I love how it matches the original Xbox 360 model, in fact the 360 in it's launch state has such a god damn brilliant uniform. The console, the controller, the dashboard, the addons, even the remote control shared the design template.


I'm sad to say I no longer have a HD DVD player for 360 but I would love to pick one up on the cheap, I may rarely if ever use it but I think it's a really cool little box.

Me! I had like one or two movies for it... meh.

 

[Septimus Prime]

The main advantage of HDDVD was that it used better codecs and, on average, looked marginally better than Blu-Ray did. It also came from a consortium rather than a single corporation.

It would have been really interesting to see where 4K video would have went if HDDVD had won - from what I understand, 4K movies barely fit on a Blu-Ray.

You have it backwards. It was actually HD DVD that was handled by a single corporation: Toshiba. Codec-wise, HD DVD favored Microsoft's VC-1, whereas Blu-ray early on used mostly AVC, but it's really arguable which was the better codec. Blu-ray indisputably had a higher bit rate, though, as well as a larger aperture on its blue laser.

WTF am I reading. Blu-ray was rushed to the market to match the launch of HD DVD, and had some problems with codecs at the launch, that much is true, but all that was fixed within the first three-four months by September 2006, first dual layer BD50 discs came a month later. Blu-ray always had higher bitrate limits than HD DVD. Blu-ray always had wider industry support than HD DVD. It was HD DVD that was a format of a "single corporation". Toshiba was pretty much the only company that manufactured HD DVD players. Onkyo had a couple rebranded Toshiba players, LG released some weird HD DVD / Blu-ray combo players and PC drives.

4K Blu-ray is essential a different format that regular Blu-ray. It use different discs (up to 100GB) and video codec. The development of HD DVD format could have progressed in a similar way, the already had triple layer 51GB discs in the work anyway.

Oh shit, the fabled TL51! Toshiba never got burners working for it before HD DVD went kaput, though, so it's as relevant as HVD.

 

[Louis Cyphre]

I bought it new for a blowout price of $50 and bought a bunch of movies for dirt cheap. Some of the movies were also DVD on the other side, pretty cool feature.