HD-DVDs are more susceptible to scratches than Blu-Ray so used HD-DVDs won't be much of a bargain if they are scratched. HD-DVD by market economics should have won being the lower priced format as far as machines and studio production goes. Second tier film studios are having a difficult time breaking into Blu-Ray because of the entry costs whereas HD-DVD was much easier to get into. BD players still are high in price and the movie selection limited. It may well be a failed platform. And yes I recently began picking up a few titles for my HD-DVD player that were announced for re-release on BD and then pulled (Children of Men for one).

HD-DVDs are made like DVDs, with the data between two layers of plastic. Blu-Ray is made like CD-R with the data layer on top and a coating over it. They were so fragile that they were originally meant to come in caddies before they settled on the coating. Saying Blu-Ray is more durable then HD-DVD is nonsense.

I'm glad I just sat back and waited.

My Playstation 2 plays regular DVD's just fine on my 32" CRT based Television, and it will for years to come.

I'm not enough of a dedicated movie or TV watcher to cost-justify investing in anything beyond my current configuration.

I can understand why some folks would want to go full-on 1080p in terms of TV and Blu-Ray, but I'm just not one of them.

My bud did the HD thing and is all mad because his HD signal is so heavily compressed that he says he can see the artifacts and the low image quality.

I looked and I couldn't really tell on the broadcast TV side, and I was not much impressed with the Blu-Ray on his LCD TV. I think he must have the settings configured wrong or something, because I could see what looked like jagged edges and too much red in the tint.

I guess that my regular tube-based TV "blurs" or "smooths out" the picture and on my TV I don't notice every dot and flaw.

I guess it's like cranking up Anti-Aliasing when I play computer games. It does sort of "fuzzy" things up, but I find I like that better than the jagged stair-step type of look.

His TV has that stair-step type of look, and I feel bad for him. He paid a bundle for his setup and he's not too happy about it. But maybe he just needs some help from professionals on how to set things up to get the best results.

In these hard times especially, to hear him rail about how much he spent and how the imperfections bother him, I can't help but think he wasted his money. If he had taken those thousands and put them on the principle of his Mortgage, he might have ended up happier in the long run. I dunno...

Too bad, HD-DVD would have taken off on its own. Now the Blu-Ray isnt taking off and its a forced standard that will die off like the other sony standards.

Forced...Right...Someone is holding a gun to your head and saying BUY THIS NOW! Keep trying

Sony is the king of failed proprietary formats, that is a fact.

You are right, no one is forcing you to buy BD. We watched the HULK on the 103" last night, upscaled to 1080p on the PS3 on standard DVD. It looked incredible and sure enough, the movie didn't suck.

A guy on another forum reckons he's heard from someone working for Netflix that they have a buyer for their entire stock in a one-off sale.

Is it the BDA intent on destroying the stocks or is it someone who will shortly be selling a new stream of nice inexpensive HD DVDs to owners out there?

Didn't netflix also end the buying used DVD service too? They should just keep the discs until no one wants them anymore or they all break.

They are discontinuing selling used DVDs at the end of the month.

As it requires no additional supply chain management overhead, and it results in more revenue, it would make more sense to both continue selling the used DVDs as well as to sell the HD-DVDs and to generate a bit more revenue with no additional overhead cost.

I would love to hear the reasoning behind such a wacked decision.

I would be willing to be that they had too many issues with people that weren't happy with their used discs. By the time demand has fallen off dramatically for a particular DVD title many of the discs are so badly scratched that it can be hard to play in some players.
They must decided that it was simply easier to destroy their unneeded inventory then go through the time try to determine which discs are sellable.

I think it makes sense for them to get rid of their HD-DVD collection. Since not very many people bought HD-DVD players I am sure that most of those discs are just taking up space that could be used for title that people do want.

Maybe - it would be interesting to actually hear their rationale.

But, it costs them nothing. They simply add an option to purchase instead of rent, or the option to rent and purchase. The process is already in place.

There is no need for them to encounter any more issues than they do for renting the same titles - except that when renting them they must replace them! There is no such provision in the sale of the items.

Disks are sold AS IS with BIG LETTERS stating this. If folks can't read. Tough. If they want to be weenies and address the Good Will issue, then:

But, if push comes to shove, they just give the folks who whine credit - no hassle or questions asked - and they are still out essentially nothing while realizing an increased profit as the revenue will be greater then the value of few complaints generated for product that no longer has any book value - even as a write off.

I disagree with their decision and say offer the option. ;-)

I think I read that he MPAA "encouraged" them to stop selling used DVD's because it took away from sales of the higher-priced New DVD's.

But you can get some pretty good deals on brand new DVD's at Walmart, Fred Meyer, Target, etc. Like $5-$7 a shot for a movie that's a year or two old. Seems a good value, so I'm not sure I'd want to bother saving a few bucks per disk (literally) and have to deal with potential quality issues.

This may be a good opportunity for those with players to pick up some disks cheap.