What is so Special About the New HD DVD Format?


Defined Tag: Hd Dvd.

This year began a whole new format war for home theater junkies all around the world. Much in the same way that Beta Max and the VHS tapes of the Eighties and Nineties brought about heated disputes from home theater fanatics all over the world, it looks as if HD DVD is about to resurrect the old format wars for the new millennium. This time however, it seems as if it will be a battle between Toshiba’s HD and Sony’s Blu-ray formats for who will reign supreme in the war for high definition supremacy. Although the battle has just begun, it looks as though HD DVD is already set up to be the big winner, as Blu-ray is far too expensive to justify its moderately better performance.

So, with HD coming on so strong on the marketplace, should you throw away all of your current DVD movies for something that you can watch in true high definition at 1080p? Well, not just yet because chances are that your television does not yet support it. You see, with the dramatic increase in the size of an HD DVD storage capacity (up to 30GB in comparison to 9GB from a conventional DVD), you also get a far better resolution on your movies. Unfortunately, that boost in resolution will be impossible to see if your television does not support it – which most televisions at this point simply do not.

If you want to get into the HD DVD craze as an early adopter, but you do not want to pay the massive premium, there is a cheaper alternative. In the coming months, Microsoft will be releasing a brand new HD DVD add-on for their Xbox 360 system. At only a couple hundred dollars (plus the cost of the Xbox 360), you can enjoy all of the benefits of a next generation video gaming console and all of the amazing clarity of an HD DVD movie – for less than the price of a standalone player.