Well, given the recent price drops in the HD-DVD camp, I went ahead and decided to pick one up. I don’t really see myself getting a Blu-ray player anytime soon, since the only one worth having is the PS3 and I am perfectly satisfied not having one of those. I went ahead and got the add-on drive for the 360, since it has dropped in price to a measly 50 dollars. Fortunately, I still got in on the 5 free HD-DVD offer, which makes the deal even sweeter. I know it’s a dead format, the Betamax of the 2000s, but I really was just curious about the overall jump in quality and whether or not the much-vaunted advantages of Hi-def movie watching are really all they are cracked up to be. The player itself came with a copy of Peter Jackson’s King Kong, and I have a few other titles in the mail that I acquired very cheaply from half.com. I have to say, even though I don’t particularly love the film, King Kong looks pretty great. I don’t have a regular DVD to upscale for comparison, but the quality seems pretty sweet. It’s a bare-bones release without too many features to try out, but the ones that are there are well-implemented and pretty easy to navigate.
The way I look at it, even if I only buy a few titles that I like before the supply withers away, it was a pretty low-cost method of messing around with some Hi-def content. I don’t think that the difference is really enough to get non-videophiles on board at this point, but there is enough of a jump in quality that I think the move up to Hi-def in the future will be worthwhile.
In any case, it’s really all about the movies. If it’s a good film, Hi-def will make it better. If it’s terrible, well, it doesn’t matter how good it looks.