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January 31, 2007
HD-DVD: First Reactions
After living with our "big damn television" for a year, I've finally seen my first bit of "real" HD content (as opposed to the up-scaled DVD's that compose 99.999% of our viewing). I bought the HD-DVD drive for the XBox 360, which arrived the other day, and a friend was kind enough to loan us copies of V For Vendetta, Batman Begins and Superman Returns on HD-DVD.
Last night I did a side-by-side comparison between V for Vendetta playing on the XBox HD-DVD and my Oppo up-converting DVD player, both displaying 720p, on our Philips 50PF7220A/37.
The executive summary is: the difference is definitely noticeable, but the Oppo gives it a serious run for it's money.
I won't be re-buying anything yet - I'll at least wait for the end of the VHS/Betamax war (after all - it's a razors and razor-blades business, the player is chump change compared to the lifetime investment in media), but I've enabled HD-DVD on our Netflix account, and look forward to watching Casablanca in the highest resolution I've ever seen it :)
Posted by dberger at January 31, 2007 8:35 PM