Hmmcast #156 mp4

Since Microsoft announced the reduced price and Toshiba made the 5 HD-DVD videos for free offer, we’ve been waiting for the first retail store in our area to offer the deal. On the first of August we visited the local retailers and none of them knew about the deal. A week later and Best Buy had the HD-DVD drives along with paper copies of the mail-in offer from Toshiba.

Looking for a list of 15 HD-DVD movies you can choose from? They are separated by the following five different categories:

Category A
*Apollo 13
Seabiscuit
The Chronicles of Riddick

Category B
Casablanca
Constantine
*Dukes of Hazzard

Category C
Four Brothers
*Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
SKy Captain and the World of Tomorrow

Category D
The Rundown
*Blazing Saddles
US: Rattle and Hum

Category E
*U-571
The Perfect Storm
We Were Soldiers

How to get your 5 HD-DVDs
The movies with *asterisk are our pending choices (we haven’t mailed the offer back in yet, so let us know in the comments if you think we’re missing a better choice). In order to receive the HD-DVD movies you need to fill out your name, address, phone, email and choices along with the original UPC code located on the outside of the HD-DVD player box. The original or a copy of the cash register receipt for the player purchased between 3/107 and 9/30/07. The fine print says to allow 8-10 weeks for shipping (yowsa!). After that you can call 1-800-405-7520.

Toshiba reserves the right to substitute titles.

HD-DVD vs. Blu Ray
Since we now have both, I’ll soon be able to offer a customer opinion on which looks better on our Samsung HDTV at 1080p. Blu-Ray was first reviewed here back on Hmmcast #34, January 4th.

My early opinion? I like how the PS3 upscales the DVD and allows stretching to fit the full screen. The PS3 seems to do a little better job upscaling existing DVDs. Does the Xbox 360 allow you to stretch the DVDs? The manual doesn’t say anything, but a Google search led me to this May 2007 post:

There are 5 display modes: auto, letterbox, fullscreen, stretch, and native. You can access these modes while watching a video by pressing Display on your remote or A on your controller.

I just tried that and the letterbox mode worked the best. The stretch mode didn’t look right, leaving some of the text along the bottom of the screen cut off. Points to the PS3 for what appears to my naked eye anyway as better upscaling.

More review time needed to compare HD-DVD vs. Blu Ray.

We’ve watched more movies in Blu-Ray format than HD-DVD and while both are clearly an improvement over DVD, is it that much better that it warrants all the extra money required? You need a 1080p TV, HDMI cord and PS3 or HD-DVD player. Seems like an individual decision as to whether it’s worth it or not financially but readers on a budget (and who isn’t on a budget?) should be cautioned not to run out and buy into either technology yet.

So why did we do it? We’re still exploring the many wonders of 1080p, trying to see if it’s all it’s cracked up to be. So far I’ve been more impressed with the PS3 and the highest resolution which appears to be what Sony wanted everybody to go out and do: purchase a bunch of expensive hardware. That’s not a very family friendly promotion strategy which sales of their consoles seem to be showing.

The biggest problem with both next generation movie format remains selection.

We can’t get anywhere remotely close to the title selection, especially TV shows, that we can get with DVDs. It’s a catch-22 as more titles won’t be coming until there is enough adoption. I heard something about the complete first season of Heroes being available on HD-DVD but haven’t seen that in any retail store locally yet.

The HD-DVD combo option is somewhat attractive. For a few bucks more you can get both a normal DVD version of the movie and HD-DVD on the same disc. There are relatively few movies that are worth watching repeatedly and thus buying and taking home. We tend to treat these few titles like we’ll just buy as HD-DVD or Blu-Ray instead of spending the money to see them in the theater. Two theater tickets plus gas to/from the theater, popcorn and snacks costs between $40-50. Both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are less expensive and you can watch them as many times as you want. You lose the social activity points of the movie theater experience for whatever it’s worth.

Gaming seems to be the best practical use of 1080p at the present time, but as noted recently there is a limited number of native 1080p games. Games like Dragon’s Lair are coming out in HD-DVD — already available in Blu Ray for $49.95 — and these are all new transfers from the original film include the original game sounds and no pauses according to the FAQ.

We already have Dragon’s Lair, Dragon’s Lair II and Space Ace in DVD format (the 20th Anniversary edition). Love the original Dragon’s Lair. Think we paid like $20 for all three of them in a 20th Anniversary Special Edition at Best Buy. Will the HD-DVD version of one of the three games be worth over twice the price? Probably not unless you are a diehard fan.

That’s what all this next generation video and high resolution television stuff seems like: made for hardcore fans. Those wanting the highest quality video and gaming experience possible. I’m sold on the gaming part but will need more time to see how important it is with the video. Perhaps sacrilege to nextgen movie fans but Movies in DVD format still look good enough to me.

• Bringing home the Xbox 360 Elite
• Memories in a half shell, turtle power!
• PS2 outsells Xbox 360, Wii and PS3 in March 2007
• Pinball FX Wednesday dryer day
• More potential Blu-Ray gotchas
• Third replacement Xbox 360 arrives one day after son’s birthday