Achievement unlocked: I chose poorly… (30/200)
I’ve also been sitting on this one for a while, but I’ve been plenty busy tweeting about it, so I don’t feel entirely out of the narcissistic loop.
Nearly a couple years ago (would it really have been that long ago? Crazy), I had an HDTV and wanted the latest-and-greatest version of DVD to go along with it. Weighing the two options – HD-DVD and Blu-ray – I went with what seemed like the best choice at the time: a Toshiba HD-DVD player. I dumped a bunch of my DVDs, replacing them with small red cases holding beautiful HD copies of great movies. Hell, I went as far as ordering a $40 copy of The Prestige from Amazon UK, since licensing made it only available on Blu-ray in the States. Then, about a year ago, the ride came to a screeching halt: Warner Bros. pulled support for the format, and just like that it fell apart like a [insert analogy other than "house of cards"]. I’ve been kicking myself ever since, secretly loathing the monstrous box sitting under my TV, wishing I could replace it with something that wasn’t a failure.
Just before my birthday, I bought a Sony standalone Blu-ray player. Yes, I’ll admit, conventional wisdom would have been to buy a PS3, but it was $100 more and one current-gen console in the living room is quite enough. My first titles were: Iron Man, The Dark Knight, Casino Royale, and Die Hard. I’ve added several more since then, and upgraded Netflix to send me BDs.
But, like with DVDs back in 1999, it frustrates me that some films aren’t available on Blu-ray…and, ironically, it’s mostly the same films. Star Wars. Indiana Jones. That sort of thing. Not to mention Pulp Fiction, Gladiator, Back to the Future, The Quick and the Dead, Seven, the Alien series, most of the Pixar films (come on, no Incredibles?!?), and a crapload more.
I wound up keeping the HD-DVD player. Rearranged the home theater, stacked the Blu-ray on top of the HD-DVD, gave them both the HDMI inputs on the TV. That way, I can wait to replace Transformers or the Matrix flicks.
Something tells me that in two years it’ll be obsolete, but right now, I don’t care. I love high-def.
