Planet Earth

“Better than Blu-ray too! It's unfortunate that it's going away, but at least I have a good collection of movies for it, and what I don't have that I want I'll be able to get on clearance.

I'll probably never bother with blu-ray. Most movies I just download over xbox in HD now.”

“Must have a different 360 than I've got. There really isn't a lot of HD movies to download on mine.

I love my bluray. The movies are consistently better quality than on my HD system. The very early bluray movie were horrible, but they quickly fixed that.”

“hmmm... xbox live is xbox live, maybe you haven't checked it out in a while? Plenty of movies on there.

I'll have to see if blu-ray has improved. My brother has blu-ray, and he has the same tv with the same settings, and we have some of the same movies (mostly WB movies that were released in both formats). And I can say without doubt that the picture on HD-DVD is far superior to blu-ray (and the other movies he had didn't have nearly the picture quality of HD-DVD's either, but I'm guessing from what you said the quality is better now.)

I remember watching Casino Royale on Blu-ray and being really disappointed, might as well have been regular dvd.
last edited: 2/26/08 11:16:57 AM”

“The cool thing was I got my HD-DVD player on sale, and the movies with the rebate more than made up for the cost. So I essentially got the player for free.”

“Bison, while the HD DVD did not win out in the format war, hang on to it.

The TV industry has been doing this for 40 years. The first real analog tape playback made available to consumers was a 3/4" tape format. The industry recalled this for professional use and gave consumers 1/2" or current VHS.

Hyway mentioned it above...Betamax was next introduced and did not last long. This was because the industry liked what they saw and took it off the market. They tweaked it a bit and it became a far superior format and is actually still used in some broadcast situations. They dropped the Max and simply call it Beta.

Same thing happened in the audio market with DAT. Made available to consumers then pulled and endorsed by the industry.

I don't think HD was yanked, it just lost out against Blu-Ray.”

“I'm going to check tonight Bison. I looked on Friday and was sorely disappointed. I'd be surprised if they have more than 40 or 50 movies in HD.

Wounded Knee - HD is gone. It's a different situation than with BetaMax and DAT. Those formats are more "out of the box" recordable by Joe Smoe. HD is not. Studios aren't going to record to it, and the average Joe doesn't have access to that ability either. Betamax and DAT were recordable from the git-go.”

“blu-ray has a cooler name so marketing is easier. Plus its easy to spot the blu-ray section at the video store because the shelves are all blue.”

“You're right Sarge, it's about that many, but they're adding more catalogue titles all the time. I was mainly talking about new releases, there's a good selection of new releases in HD.

The only problem with downloading on Xbox is that you can't watch right away. You need to start downloading a few hours before you want to watch something.

But the picture and sound are superb, much better than HD on satellite or cable, pretty much the same quality as HD-DVD (and therefore I would assume that same as newer blu-ray releases).

The clincher for me to buy Blu-ray will be when they release Lord of the Rings. I'll want to own those in HD.
last edited: 2/26/08 12:06:42 PM”

“Speaking of Xbox 360, Gears of War 2 coming in November Whoo Hoo!!!!!”

“So my brother in law got me the planet earth dvd set for Christmas. I finally cracked it open because Laurel wanted to watch them. She just got wailed on by the cranky part Siamese cat, Little Bit, so I thought I'd humor her. Lo and behold, I've got the dry, pithy British version narrated by David Attenborough. I prefer Sigourney Weaver.”