10-29-2007, 03:00 PM
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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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HD-DVD Continues to Cause Frustration in the Dunn Household
As any geek knows, the "Wife Test" is a critical test that every technology has to pass in order for technological harmony to exist in the home. The deeper I get into HD-DVD waters, the murkier the waters become. This time, it's the Transformers HD-DVD.
First up, there's the frustration of not being able to get the "best" boxed set in the "best" format. What I mean by that is when Transformers first came out a little over a week ago, there was a special edition boxed set that came with a collectible figurine (I think - I can't find an online reference to it now). But that boxed set wasn't available in HD-DVD format, only regular DVD. So I had to choose between getting the box with the extra goodies, or the box with the best video and audio quality. The same thing happened with Heroes Season 1, and with 300. Why do these movie companies force their customers to decide between high-resolution quality or getting the extras? They should offer both. I ended up getting the HD-DVD version.
Next we had yet another glitch with starting up the HD-DVD: I put the disc in my Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive, and waited. And waited. There's a "Web interactivity download" that occurs when you first put in the disc, and it took just under 5 minutes to complete. I learnt my lesson from the Heroes Season 1 HD-DVD, so I didn't select cancel and just waited. My wife and I are both slightly impatient people, so it was frustrating to sit there waiting for the disc to complete its process. Keep in mind here I have a 10mbps cable modem connection and my Xbox 360 is connected via Ethernet, so it doesn't get much faster in the average home.
I remember how badly early reviewers lambasted the first-generation HD-DVD and Blu-ray players for having extremely slow boot times. I don't see how it's any different if you have the player booting up in a few seconds but the DVD taking five minutes before it starts playing the 60 seconds or so of legal warnings.
Unless things start to change, I think I may have purchased my last HD-DVD for quite some time - the studios are ruining the experience. Why doesn't that surprise me?
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