The IMDb Studio Briefing reported today that “HD DVD To Debut Today”. So I ran over to Best Buy and picked one up. Seriously. Here it is:
No, I don’t have a player yet. That never stopped me from buying PlayStation or Xbox games just for studying the multimedia (that was different because I still have computer hardware that can read the raw sectors). Best Buy also had players available but I do not intend to get any hardware until an HD-DVD ROM drive becomes available. Ah, the burden of early adoption.
Best Buy had the HD-DVD material in the high-end home theater department. I asked if they had any HD-DVDs in yet. The employee said the titles were behind the counter but then eyed me suspiciously and asked if I was from Toshiba. I’m not sure what that exchange was about but after I assured him that I was sincerely interested in a purchase he brought out the 3 launch titles– Serenity, The Phantom of the Opera, and The Last Samurai. I certainly wasn’t the only early adopter. At this same time, there were other customers entering the same department asking for the HD-DVD player and all 3 launch titles. Take another look at those 3 launch titles. Do you think that anyone would actually like all 3 of those movies? My guess is that these people were really interested in the purchase simply for the sake of having the latest technology.
Their demo HD-DVD players were doing duty with some sort of demo material with a split screen that contrasted high definition vs. standard definition. The demo struck me as — what’s the word — bogus. Come on– standard definition can’t possibly look that bad. Can you say “blur filter”?
Click [more] to see scans of everything in the case so you know what the next generation looks like.
Click on images for all of the fine detail you could hope for.
The Serenity jewel case cover. Note the URL http://www.copyprotected.com/
The jewel case insert — outside
The jewel case insert — inside
And the receipt of sale. Hey, DVD Jon can get sentimental about this stuff, why not I?
Who needs an ATA drive? Pull out the old electron microscope, and transcribe the 120 billion bits by hand…
i have to ask the stupid question… what happens when you put it in a dvd player/dvdrom?
Not a stupid question, or else I’m stupid for trying just that out of curiousity. :) Windows XP does not recognize the disc. I think it’s reasonable to expect similar results from the standalone Sony player.
Of course, there is the first hybrid DVD/HD DVD coming out on May 9– “Rumor Has It”.
would it work if you put it in a playstation or an XBox drive?
A PlayStation reads CDs. PlayStation 2/Xbox/Xbox 360 can all handle CDs and DVDs. No current console can handle an HD-DVD.