The format war is left up to the fools

I am recently (as of yesterday) the proud owner of a HD DVD player. I'd like to find more words to describe it, but I'll put it simply: It's sweet.

This is what I expect from a digital medium. It's a leap in technology far beyond DVD. In may respects DVD's are far more like the old, outdated Laserdiscs than they are like HD DVDs.

On the movies I've tested this new toy out on so far I can scan the menus while watching the movie! Imagine that!

Some of my friends have asked me why I decided on HD DVD. There are three simple reasons:

1) Content. I looked at some of the content between the two and found that far more of the films that I'd actually find interesting were made exclusively on HD DVD. I can easily miss out on the exclusive Blue Ray stuff without being too upset (I can live with the remastered James Bond box sets for instance).

2) Cost. The player came with 2 HD DVDs in the box. Best Buy let me chose 3 more for free with my purchase, and I have 5 more coming in the mail - all for free. That alone makes the player cost about the same as what you'd pay for a DVD-upscaler when you factor in the value of the HD DVDs.

3) Fanboys. Nothing's worse than an internet fanboy. On second thought a bunch of internet fanboys are even worse, and that's all I've seen for months. Sure there are people who detest Sony, and for good reason - one only needs to look at their history of poor choices dating back to Betamax, MiniDisc, and the PSP's UMD for their proprietary hardware they've tried to force onto the unsuspecting public. "The format war is over!", well not quite there buddy. Anyone who uses "we" when talking about one of the formats you just have to feel sorry for them, at least sorry enough to go out and buy the other format. Thanks guys for helping me out!

After weighing my options it was time to finally use my TV like it was meant to. Now if I could only get to use my TV...