[Richard W. Haines]

Paramount just dropped out of HD DVD. That leaves Universal. It's a dead format and I wasted $500 on the Toshiba HD XA2. I should start a museum of expensive obsolete formats.


Let's see if the prices on Blu-ray players drop further or go way up since there's no more competetion. Hopefully they'll continue to drop below the $300 price since it's in their interest to try to establish the format for consumers. I don't think the studios and hardware manufacturers realize that the reason that standard DVD caught on so quickly was not because of the superior quality to VHS and laserdisc but because it was so cheap. Both players and discs are inexpensive and that's what the average consumer (as opposed to videophile) cares about. So they need to drop Blu-ray to the same price as a standard DVD and the players have to come down to about $100 or less. I'll buy one soon but first I have to get past my anger of spending so much for Toshiba player. Since I got burned decades ago with
Betamax, Selectavision and Laserdisc, I feel especially foolish for not waiting.
I hope I learned my lesson this time. The next time there is a format war in
the future (some higher definition unit and discs), I'll certainly wait until the
corporate politics play out and the winner is established. I am very glad
that I continue to shoot my features in 35mm and not in some digital format doomed
to obsolesence in the long run.