This was supposed to be the post on my review of my new Toshiba HD-D3 player. Now I’m feeling so bummed I haven’t even turned it on all week.
After waiting for months and hoping the format wars would end, I decided to take the plunge and buy a Toshiba HD-D3 DVD player. I was taken in by the hype that the format wars would continue for a long time and that the stalemate would go on and on. I should have gone with the gut instincts that were telling me that the Toshiba price cuts were a last ditch attempt by them to lure customers. Eventually, content was going to rule the format wars. And in our world today, most DVD content is from the movie studios. Toshiba was always going to be outmaneuvered by Sony in that department. I can only say that I now have a decent “upconverting” DVD player, since the HD-DVD movies are going to dry up pretty soon. It looks like Universal and Paramount are still talking about “holding on”. Come on, for how long? We know these movie companies are going to move on to Blu-ray.
Bottom line: Not every Sony format dies. So what if Beta, MD and UMD died? Blu-ray’s won. Time to buy some real cheap HD-DVD movies (if there are any halfway decent ones out) and enjoy them for a while. I’ll be looking for that Transformers disc to see all the great effects it supposedly has, thanks to the HTGuys podcast (scroll down the page to read the features list).