The second hand market is already full of HD-DVD player and software bargains with the recent Warner news, and the possible threats of Universal and Paramount to pull out (although both are going at great lengths to say something along the lines of 'we're still supporting it' - smacks like the dreaded 'vote of confidence' from a football club chairman regarding a manager's performance to me).
I've cashed in already - I've managed to pick up a total bargain : a first generation US player, the HD-XA1, for just £85. To me this is a phenomenal purchase, given it retailed at a humungous $1000 on initial release less than 2 years ago. The player is built like a tank, looks fantastic, will complement my Harman-Kardon AVR140 beautifully, and brings me kicking and screaming into the Hi-Def visual world.
There are arguments against supporting HD-DVD at such a time, but here's the reasons why I have supported this format by buying a first generation US player :
- my TV (Philips 32PF5531) can only accept a 1080i picture, so I don't rightly care I'm not getting 1080p or 24fps
- my Harman-Kardon amp can handle multi-channel in, but cannot handle HDMI - whilst the XA1 does not output true HD audio 5.1 via HDMI or SP/DIF, the player does the encoding on board - firmware upgrade 2.0 also added proper 5.1 on-board TrueHD decoding, meaning I'll get (nearly) the best surround sound option going
- HD-DVD has no region encoding whatsoever, meaning I can import movie titles for as long as they are supported
- Blu-Ray hardware remains ridiculously overpriced
- Online DVD rental companies (eg Lovefilm) allow you to rent HD-DVD titles
- There's a decent enough HD-DVD back catalogue
There are arguments the XA1 is a poor player eg slow software (I think I can handle the wait of a minute or so for the player to crank itself up and get going), inability to support multi-region standard definition DVD (I have plenty of R1 titles), etc etc
From where I'm sitting, I've grabbed a bargain - it's my intro to high def DVD, there's a considerable library of back catalogue titles to wade my way through, etc etc
If, as sadly seems likely, HD-DVD does become an obsolete format it'll take a while for it to completely disappear. During that time, I'll benefit from continually reducing software prices until such a time as Blu-Ray properly gets its act together and puts out a real budget player, along the lines of the £250 EP35 from Tosh.
So, do I care I'm supporting a potentially obsolete format ? Heck, no....