LOL @ HD-DVD

http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html

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Prices for the first players in 1997 were $1000 and up. By the end of 2000, players were available for under $100 at discount retailers. In 2003 players became available for under $50.

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1997

* 349,000 DVD-Video players shipped in the U.S. (About 200,000 sold into homes.)
* 900 DVD-Video titles available in the U.S. Over 5 million copies shipped; about 2 million sold.
* Over 500,000 DVD-Video players shipped worldwide.
* Around 330,000 DVD-ROM drives shipped worldwide with about 1 million bundled DVD-ROM titles.
* 60 DVD-ROM titles (mostly bundled).

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There's also a bunch of other good numbers in there for those looking to compare whatever to DVD sales progression.

I bought an RCA player in 1997 from Montgomery Wards for $500. Lasted my parents until 2005 after I'd upgraded several times over.

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Originally Posted by omfgninjas in iraq

The difference is, DVD had way more advantages and features over VHS that really got everyone's attention, whereas HD-DVD and Blu-Ray pretty much only offer better picture and sound, and only to those that have the latest electronics.

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This is true, and the only argument with any meaning in this thread, but I think a format that holds more data is just a natural progression, something that's inevitable.

jonas: I don't give a shit about stupid consumers who don't know what they're spending $1000 on. Let them learn their lesson the hard way. Like Scourge said, two formats competing is nothing new.

From my point of view, holding more data and looking better doesn't matter one bit if you're not delivering that shit to me via a quick download and I just stream it through my Xbox to my TV.

The future of this shit is in downloads and media sharing between electronics, not whether you can shove more data onto a bothersome DVD. Vista looks totally prepared for this. It's incredible being able to quickly switch what I'm watching through a modded Xbox compared to having to switch DVDs normally. Episodic television shows especially benefit from this. What's easier: scrolling through a list of every Simpsons episode and picking whatever I want and watching it instantly, or switching DVDs to get the correct season and disc number for what episode I want to watch?

Physical media is a hell of a lot more convenient if I want to take it anywhere, which is the big downside with storing everything on a hard drive (unless said drive is portable, but god forbid something should happen to it and all your media is lost). And reselling it obviously ain't gonna happen.

Downloading digital media is great for some things in some circumstances, but it isn't better across the board.

HD movie sizes are too big for that, hence the need for a disk. I can see it happening eventually, but it won't be for a while. When DVD came out, how many people realistically thought of having 100's of them ripped to a hard drive? It wasn't feasable then, not until DVD had completely saturated the market. There's easily time for an HD-DVD/Blu-ray generation before the storage mediums catch up to the space we'll need to store them. By then we'll be on the verge of our next media type.

Hey, HD-DVD content can be as big as it wants. Until I can put a lot of that shit onto a single hard drive and stream it instantly to whatever I have inside my house, fuck that shit.

The future is in customizable, user-controlled media. All of these disc-based, store-bought things are just holding us back from what everyone really wants. Diff kinda hinted at this earlier with his comment on on-demand stuff getting big.

I don't think corporations are going to be too anxious to bring downloadable media to the forefront...

That's their problem.

Look at MP3s vs CDs now.

Yeah, but what's the percentage of people that download mp3s legally?