An interesting twist in the format war, HD DVD is kicking with what little life it has left. Techconsumer.com has recently pointed of a few interesting tidbits:

Not sure if this is related to the news of Warner Bros. going Blu-ray exclusive, but Amazon has this Toshiba HD DVD player with seven movies for only $139 (the same one I thought I got a deal on a month ago for $174).

Blu-ray players, of course, are still well above $300. Amazon also has a bunch of HD DVD movies for $15. Interestingly, the site has a Blu-ray movie sale going on at the same time. But the difference between the two sales is a telling story:

The Blu-ray sale has a total of 51 movies on sale with only 8 as low as $15 (and most of them suck). The HD DVD sale, on the other hand, has 84 movies on sale with 63 (nearly 8 times as many) at the $15 price point. And there appear to be some decent movies in this mix. Check out the Blu-ray sale here and the HD DVD sale here and judge for yourself. For me, though, it seems like this could be phase 1 of HD DVD liquidation.

So the million dollar question is: how much is a high definition DVD player worth to you if it is the format that has lost the war?

To add to the irony of the less expensive, more consumer-friendly player dying, check out this news: Buyers Beware: Current Blu-ray Players Won’t Correctly Play Future Discs and Blu-ray: Early adopters knew what they were getting into. The titles alone are enough to get any Blu-ray owner frustrated.

The Playstation 3 (which has Blu-ray built-in) appears to be the exception, otherwise Blu-ray players on the market are designed without “future-compatibility capabilities.” This means that bonus features on titles released starting in October will not be playable on current Blu-ray players. Wow.

What makes it even more ironic is that Blu-ray is blaming HD DVD for its problems:

“When asked why current [Blu-ray] players were released to the market in such a primitive state, [Blu-ray] manufacturers blamed the release of HD DVD and said it forced them to come to market too soon. ‘We should have waited another year to introduce Blu-ray to the public, but the format war changed the situation.’”

*Update* The price for the HD DVD player mentioned above was originally $147 when I first started writing this but is now $139. Amazon tends to play games with pricing; be sure to take advantage of the company’s 30-day price guarantee.

Will this make a difference in the format war? Probably not. HD DVD can drop prices drastically, but it’ll be tough to beat the selection of movies Blu-Ray will have now. Cheap is great, but this format war is about movies, something strangely overlooked.

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Chuck is just way too optimistic about everything. He loves writing, relaxing, playing some games and watching some football.
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