Any other HD-DVD early adopters out there?

[Detrick]

Guess I should trash my $200 add-on and the movies I purchased.....

Fleeced by MS again........

[fndrbndr]

Nope.  I don't even had an HDTV yet.

[GBO Possum]

Yes, I got in very early.  Guilty!  I'm a repeat offender for early adoption.  But I'm not unhappy.  It has given us much pleasure, the drive still works for the movies I own.  $200 was MUCH cheaper than the Blu-Ray alternative.  Netflix hasn't entirely pulled the rug out yet.  And I may go onto Amazon and snap up the cheap HD/DVDs that I really want and get a good deal.

Until I am compelled to go Blu-Ray by lack of HDDVD material, I'll hold off buying a Blu-Ray player (hoping that Microsoft can come up with an affordable add-on for the 360!)

[JG4tr]

I don't know about trashing it... The unit still works as intended but, now that Toshiba has announced that it will not be making any more players, the format will almost certainly wither and die.

That being said, we are going to see some bargain basement prices on leftover hardware and media. I know that Tiger Direct has a sale on for the HD-A3 that includes 7 movies for the price of a basic upconvertor model at $89.99. Titles are still being released and those already out, especially the DVD/HDDVD combo discs, may turn out to be good buys after deep discounts are offered.

The other option is sell/e-bay/trade-in and recover what you can from the deal.

Personally, I'm none too pleased about Sony's long history of exclusionary attitudes and proprietary products. Thankfully, most of them have been market failures but, in this case, they drummed up or bought up too much support for the other side to counter.  

For the time being, I'll continue to enjoy the Ultimate Matrix collection and the other titles that I purchased on HDDVD. On the brighter side, maybe we can now look forward to having firm release dates for the LOTR trilogy and the complete StarWars saga in HD!

[GBO Possum]

To add one more thought.  I'm guessing Netflix will have a sale of used HDDVDs as they pull out.  Maybe $5 each.  This may give some indication of their time-frame - see the words I have bolded:-

You're receiving this email because you have asked to receive high-definition movies in the HD DVD format. As you may have heard, most of the major movie studios have recently decided to release their high-definition movies exclusively in the Blu-ray format. In order to provide the best selection of high-definition titles for our members, we have decided to go exclusively with Blu-ray as well.

While we will continue to make our current selection of HD DVD titles available to you for the next several months, we will not be adding additional HD DVD titles or reordering replacements.

Toward the end of February, HD DVDs in your Saved Queue will automatically be changed to standard definition DVDs. Then toward the end of this year, all HD DVDs in your Queue will be changed to standard definition DVDs. Don't worry, we will contact you before this happens.

[larryCR]

I bought an HD add-on early, but didn't purchase any movies. Just got them through Netflix. Just recently bought a Blu-Ray player, a BDP-S300. I notice that the price has gone up $60 since I got mine for $316.

I knew the risk when I bought the HD player, and it still works fine to play standard DVDs. I certainly don't feel misled by MS - as far as I can see they did everything they could to make it successful.

[Tonka Crash]

Among my circle of friends I'm the early adopter and the one everyone turns to for home theater advice.  I had a 5.1 receiver before DVD's debuted and had a DVD player within months of that format coming out. But this was one technology I decided to wait out. 

After CES this year when it looked all but over for HD-DVD I bought a new laptop with an internal blu-ray drive and as soon as PC drive prices drop below $100 I'll be swapping out the drive in my HTPC.  But that will also mean swapping the video card for one with HDCP and it's still not clear what software gets used for playback and how well it's integrated with MCE.

[TheJohnNewton]

Multiple formats for no reason.  I voted with my wallet and just said no.

[bimmerlovere39]

We picked up the HD-DVD add-on for the 360 this past Christmas... 

We just got the five free HD-DVDs in the mail Friday 

[Ske]

I think the big mistake MS did was not including a HD-DVD player as standard. It could have tipped the format war greatly in their favor, me thinks.

[TheJohnNewton]

No the big mistake is to have a format war at all.

[Ske]

Yep.