A little information about me, I am defiantly a tech/gadget guy. Im into PC’s, Home theatre equipment, movies, video games, etc, pretty much anything that has a circuit board in it, I want it.

 

I remember when DVD’s were first introduced to the public, the players, as with just about any new technology, was fairly expensive. But I was all over it. At the time I didn’t want to spend as $300-$500 for a DVD player, but being the frugal guy I sometimes am, I noticed that the DVD drives that went into PC’s were almost half the price of a standalone DVD players, and since my PC was in the living room near the main television, I bought a drive for my pc and used the svideo output of my PC’s video card to connect to my TV.

 

I was then able to enjoy the DVD quality video of “The Big Hit”(which was the first DVD I bought), “The Blair Witch Project”(don’t ask), and later on…”The Matrix”.

 

250 plus DVD’s later, here comes HDDVD, and Blu-ray. And to be honest, I have no interest or excitement upgrading. I don’t even have a favorite. I don’t even think its because there are 2 competing formats. With DVD’s, I remember the excitement of DVD quality pictures and 5.1 audio. From what I’ve read, both HDDVD and Blu-ray improves on both but it just not the “improvement by leaps and bounds” excitement that I had when thinking about going from VHS to DVD. I could never imagine that something like the jump to next gen DVD’s would end up falling by the waist side, but it looks like it is indeed potentially possible in this case.

 

Of coarse though, the price is probably one of the biggest reasons why it isn’t taking off, $500 for a HDDVD, and upwards of $1000 for a Blu-ray player is insane. Especially since its really only a minor incremental jump above DVD. The Playstation 3 will launch during the holiday season of this year and will most likely be the cheapest Blu-ray drive you can buy, but saying it’s the cheapest is still an understatement because the Playstation 3 is quite an expensive console. Microsoft also has plans to release a addon HDDVD drive. And to be honest, it will probably be half the price of a current HDDVD drive…the catch… you have to also own an xbox360.

 

Of coarse  the prices of the 2 competing formats will eventually go down to an affordable range and the real next gen DVD wars will begin, but until then, I don’t think I’ll be spending my money on either format…unless one is included with a PC purchase.