Progress and technology are killing me... Im in the process of replacing my DVD player (progressive one)for a new one. The new HD and Blueray seem to be moving forward and coming soon.

Will a regular DVD player play all formats (HD and Blueray) if one of these become the final format soon???

I'm not interested on HD for right now. I have a Sony large screen TV (standard) and happy with it. Is only 5 years old. I don't mind been behind technology advancements, in the end equipment is cheaper and formats are bug free....

any regular dvd player out now will not play hd or bluray. there is however a player out that will play both. you might have to sell your car to get it.j/k the ps3 will play bluray. i have yet to watch a bluray movie on my ps3.

Yea, what you have now will not play HDDVD or Blu-ray. Your going to have to dish about 500 bucks for the cheapest blu-ray player at the moment, and about 400 for an HDDVD player, or like said before, one of the dual format players although ive read those are not completely 100% compatible with both formats at the moment.

If your happy with what you have now, then waiting a year or two may be best. It's not the dramatic jump in quality like VHS to DVD was. It's noticeable yes, but not "OMG THIS IS AMAZING GOTTA HAVE IT" noticeable like DVD was, well unless your a complete home media nut that is.

Hopefully by then the players will be down to at least 300 bucks and have most of the kinks worked out. Probably manage to get a better HDTV for less too.

brisknfade wrote:If your happy with what you have now, then waiting a year or two may be best. It's not the dramatic jump in quality like VHS to DVD was. It's noticeable yes, but not "OMG THIS IS AMAZING GOTTA HAVE IT" noticeable like DVD was, well unless your a complete home media nut that is.

Exactly.

You're not really missing out on much if you're not a media nut.Except for the potential oddball title, you should still be able to get any new releases on DVD for the next couple of years.

Thanks for the info, guys.

Is hard to keep up with technology these days, or one part of my brain is just refusing to keep up with HD technology...

Go with Betamax.. it's sure to beat out this new fangled VHS tape technology!!!

It's hard to say which will win.. My understanding is that BlueRay is the better technology due to the fact that the discs can be made in 2 layers.. which will then allow them to store more data than the HDDVD... thus better compression and better resolution, etc..

Blockbuster video just signed a deal saying that they will only stock BlueRay.

But.. HDDVD still has more companies in their court... so they might just win out.

I personally don't care which one wins.. they are both a step up from current... and they are both simply a stepping stone to the next gen after that. At the rate tech. is improving in the media world.. I bet the next gen will be out by like 2012.

I will not be purchasing either dvd player. I'm hoping to be able to afford a next gen video game system, and whichever wins out is the one form of dvd that I will go with. .(Xbox = HDDVD and PS3 = BlueRay. )

True.

I love to see this one just fade away, just like prior DVD developments that never made into the market. An interesting fact I found is that DVD PC players (HD,Blueray,etc....) are ready to start coming out, if not out already. That should be a cheaper alternative if you don't mind watching movies on PC or thru Win Vista multimedia applications with your TV.

Eikon wrote:I will not be purchasing either dvd player. I'm hoping to be able to afford a next gen video game system, and whichever wins out is the one form of dvd that I will go with. .(Xbox = HDDVD and PS3 = BlueRay. )

Actually the 360 uses regular ol' DVD's to get the job done. It plays HDDVD's yes, but you have to buy a 200 dollar external drive, and then all that is good for is the movies.

Personally, im choosing neither and sticking with HD content stuck on an hard drive or network and streaming it to a tv, kind of like the Apple TV, except using something much less restrictive. Get to watch all the same HD stuff, just don't have to worry about disk's and players and whatnot.