Why don't drives read HD-DVD anymore?

[Sephiroth666]

I don't see any BD-rom drives or burners around anymore that read HD-DVD. What gives? They keep support for lame formats like DVD-RAM but drop HD-DVD-ROM like a bad habit? It makes no sense.

[ocgw]

DVD-RAM is used by Hitachi and Panasonic camcorders, so it is not a dead format

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0007/00072102hitachidzmv100dvdram.asp

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/Panasonic-VDR-M54-First-Impressions-Camcorder-Review.htm

ocgw

peace

[Bjs]

Upgrade ... Rom only units are a dying breed when next generation drives are coming down in price

Search for LG CH08LS10, supports hd dvd read

[HemLok]

We won't see pressed HD-DVDs released anymore. We never saw desktop HD-DVD burners so the format can't even survive on its own. It also needs to be remembered that of the big three software players only one of them still plays HD-DVDs and that support is unofficial. CyberLink and Corel both dropped HD-DVD support as quickly as possible. Only Arcsoft still unofficially supports HD-DVD playback. Why would manufacturers spend the extra money on producing drives that handle HD-DVDs with no real purpose. The manufacturers would make the consumer foot the bill for the extra support, too.

I have some HD-DVDs and a combo Blu-Ray/HD-DVD reader and I'm stuck with some essentially worthless HD-DVDs when this drive dies since I don't own a HD-DVD standalone but that's life. It's simply not good business sense nor practical to produce drives supporting a completely dead format. I've grudgingly migrated to Blu-ray.

[drjtech]

I use the LG GGW-H20L which is still available:

http://www.penguinsexpress.com/product.asp?pf_id=GGWH20L&gkw=GGWH20L&gad=CN2hrs4DEgiMd...iX_r3-AyDJvtFM

I've picked up quite a few HD-DVDs from e-Bay for $2 or less, including shipping. I rip using AnyDVD and then use Ripbot to shrink down to MKVs I can stream to my media extenders.

-drjtech

[ocgw]

I use the LG GGW-H20L which is still available:

http://www.penguinsexpress.com/product.asp?pf_id=GGWH20L&gkw=GGWH20L&gad=CN2hrs4DEgiMd...iX_r3-AyDJvtFM

I've picked up quite a few HD-DVDs from e-Bay for $2 or less, including shipping. I rip using AnyDVD and then use Ripbot to shrink down to MKVs I can stream to my media extenders.

-drjtech

It is also fairly straight forward to convert a HD-DVD to a blu ray so it is a "moot point" imo

I converted about 50 of them

EVO Demux to .m2ts ---->.m2ts to blu ray

ocgw

peace

[ron spencer]

you do not need evodemux anymore...CLOWN_BD automates it all

[jman98]

I don't see any BD-rom drives or burners around anymore that read HD-DVD. What gives? They keep support for lame formats like DVD-RAM but drop HD-DVD-ROM like a bad habit? It makes no sense.

DVD-RAM is still popular in the UK. As to why it's still popular, I really can't answer that.

There are still one or two drives that can read HD-DVD, but buy them while you can. The LG listed by drjtech may be the last one. Not sure if there are any others. There were more combo drives in the recent past, but almost all have been discontinued this year.

[Sephiroth666]

I suppose I can figure out how to get the Xbox HD-DVD drive working on the PC. I remember there being a way to do that. I picked one up just in case my standalone player dies at some point. I just wanted the read ability on PC so I can copy HD-DVDs that don't get an equivalent BD release to BDR.

[ocgw]

you do not need evodemux anymore...CLOWN_BD automates it all

I converted all my HD-DVD's before Clown-BD was perfected when eac3to did not downconvert HD audio properly, so I had no choice but to use EVO-Demux

But Clown-BD has evolved into a useful tool for some ppl

ocgw (old school blu ray man)

ps. I have a LG BD/HD-DVD ROM and a Pioneer 8x BD-R Burner, give me a HD-DVD, and I will have it on a BD disc playing in just about any stand alone BD player in just over an hour

peace

[orsetto]

One can only hope the HD-DVD vs BD war was the last such stupid egotistical corporate pissing contest consumers will have to endure. Americans in particular were tripped up by massive holiday promotions for HD-DVD in our largest national chainstores, back when Toshiba was desperately trying to build market share. Your average consumer could not imagine something so heavily promoted at Best Buy or Wal*Mart was actually nothing more than a billion dollar roll of the dice which could disappear from the market a few months later. And to be fair, HD-DVD did seem to have some advantages that might keep it viable. But Toshiba blinked first, they realized Sony really was insane enough to bankrupt itself just so it could say it "won" a format war nobody cared about (sorry, BD fans, but BD is nearly as big a joke as HD-DVD: ordinary boring ole DVD-RAM will still be in use long after BD is forgotten).

So even though billions of yen were poured into HD-DVD, and even though it was on the front page of Best Buy sale circulars for two years, it added up to nothing and vanished into thin air one day. There was no time to build demand for burners, so the format disappeared from PCs as well. As bjs said in his post, there is no market for PC readers anymore, all you can find are burners, and no mfr is going to make a combo burner for a totally dead format (BD burners are complex enough as it is). Get one of the last remaining HD-DVD drives while you can, and convert your HD-DVDs to BD or AVCHD. Or, now that commercial BD titles are finally dropping in price, it might make more sense to just replace your HD-DVDs with the studio BD version if you don't own too many.

[jman98]

One can only hope the HD-DVD vs BD war was the last such stupid egotistical Japanese pissing contest consumers will have to endure.

I find this comment to be ignorant of the facts and borderline racist. If you behave yourself in any retort, I won't report it to the mods, but I will warn you that in the past I have been forced to edit and apologize for similar statements, although in my case I said something nasty about Australians.

I'm not sure I would consider Sony to be a "Japanese company" any more. Yes the HQ is still in Japan, but the CEO is American. Americans basically run the company now. The screw ups that have plagued Sony in recent years have been from the American side of the company. This whole format war had nothing to do with being Japanese, but it had to do with American run Sony wanting to use a format (BluRay) that at the time offered what, in theory, was potentially superior DRM over HD DVD. I am referring specifically to BD+. In my opinion Sony started going downhill when they started letting the Americans (I am one by the way) run the show there. And they basically won the format war by spending Toshiba out of it.

[HemLok]

I, for one, do not look forward to the aftermath of this holiday season's Blu-ray adoption. Why? I've already adopted and I understand what I was doing. I have a great standalone Blu-ray player. The problem I foresee is that many less-than-knowledgeable people will see great prices for Blu-ray players and snatch them up thinking they really got the standalone player at an amazingly good price. They will, unwittingly, be purchasing old Blu-ray players that merely support Profile 1 or Profile 1.1 and thereby be limited from fully viewing Profile 2 Blu-ray releases. Really look at those Blu-ray player sales in the weekend flyers and check the fine print for the product details. A player for $89! Awesome. Oh. wait. Not so awesome. This, of course, will leave a bad taste in the mouths of these people who get screwed over. Sure, you will know that the player is only Profile 1 or 1.1 if you read the fine print but a lot of people that I've talked to don't even have a clue that Profile 1, 1.1, or 2 even exist. The manufacturers are simply using the holiday sales to unload the old and obsolete standalone players and boost the adoption rate. I am by no means a fan of the PS3 but at least the PS3 handles it all.

Getting back on the original topic that I admittedly diverged from, I own an LG GGC-H20L and as far as I am aware they simply aren't produced anymore. There were some newer models, I believe, that were Blu-ray readers only but did contain the internals to read HD-DVDs, as well, and could be cross-flashed but that won't continue forever. Production of HD-DVD readers simply is not profitable given the small market for it. As already noted, users can use software to convert HD-DVDs to a Blu-ray structure and then effectively create a Blu-ray backup. If people really look for deals they can purchase a Blu-ray copy of the HD-DVDs that they already owned.

I had hoped the DVD+R vs DVD-R War would be the end of format wars but I knew it wouldn't. HD-DVD vs Blu-ray truly showed that an unfinished fortmat spec that really isn't ready for primetime can win simply by buying studios off and getting people to buy a game system that supports Blu-ray from the start. As much as I hate Sony, I have to give them credit for delaying the PS3 so that it had an internal Blu-ray drive. That, in itself, put the first nails in the Format War coffin for HD-DVD and the BDA continually used PS3 owners to inflate Blu-ray adoption in terms of numbers when most PS3 owners that I ever talked to didn't even use the game system as a Blu-ray player! The BDA initially made a very stupid decision by barring pr0n from Blu-ray but they reversed that decision before the dust settled from the War. I simply detest the fact that a format that was still "in progress" without a finalized specification could win. Early adopters with Profile 1 or 1.1 players simply got shafted. Oh well. So goes life, right?

[jagabo]

One can only hope the HD-DVD vs BD war was the last such stupid egotistical Japanese pissing contest consumers will have to endure.

Note likely. And not limited to Japanese companies. Remember Cassette vs 8 track? VHS vs Beta? DVD+ vs DVD- vs DVD RAM? A myriad of different flash card formats? Apple vs Microsoft? It just goes on and on.

[ron spencer]

don't forget....you can also use the xbox 360 hd dvd (toshiba drive) with your PC....works perfectly. Get a bunch of them....I have 2 so far. $10 each. I also have 2 of the LG combo drives...so I figure I am ok for a while

[jagabo]

It is also fairly straight forward to convert a HD-DVD to a blu ray so it is a "moot point"

It's hardly a moot point if you don't have an HD-DVD drive to read the discs.

[Sephiroth666]

If people really look for deals they can purchase a Blu-ray copy of the HD-DVDs that they already owned

Actually there are some titles that are still HD-DVD exclusive and the SD-DVD transfers sucked. Timecop, for example is only HD-DVD or 4x3 DVD. Bulletproof and a few others are also still exclusive.

[ocgw]

It is also fairly straight forward to convert a HD-DVD to a blu ray so it is a "moot point"

It's hardly a moot point if you don't have an HD-DVD drive to read the discs.

Peeps have only had 2 years to buy a HD-DVD drive if they needed one

Let me get this straight, peeps have the money to build HD-DVD collections but not the money to buy a HD-DVD ROM????

LOL

ocgw

peace

[Ai Haibara]

Sure. The HD-DVD discs have been selling relatively cheaply, for a while. So, it's easy to run up a collection even though you may not have a player or be able to find one. Heck, I have a small collection of LDs, but never bought a player.

[ocgw]

Sure. The HD-DVD discs have been selling relatively cheaply, for a while. So, it's easy to run up a collection even though you may not have a player or be able to find one. Heck, I have a small collection of LDs, but never bought a player.

I still have (4) LD players and 100+ discs, why in the world would you buy LD's if you don't have a player? investment value?

Doesn't it make more sense to buy a player first, then buy the software for it?

Help me out here

Chit, I will sell you 1 cheap, pm me

ocgw

peace

[Ai Haibara]

I used to do it all the time, including games for game systems.

I'd find titles (games, LDs, CDs, DVDs) that I thought were interesting enough to get, and had some money to spare. (Especially since I deal quite a bit with imports.) Why wait until I eventually get around to buying the player and then come back for the items, hoping they were still there?

I've seen HD-DVDs selling for as little as $2-5, so it's easy to pick up a handful.

[ocgw]

I used to do it all the time, including games for game systems.

I'd find titles (games, LDs, CDs, DVDs) that I thought were interesting enough to get, and had some money to spare. (Especially since I deal quite a bit with imports.) Why wait until I eventually get around to buying the player and then come back for the items, hoping they were still there?

I've seen HD-DVDs selling for as little as $2-5, so it's easy to pick up a handful.

You got the first Hulk?

ocgw

peace

[videopoo]

I'm sure Ebay as a bunch of stuff you can still buy

I have a prototype HD DVD burner (Yes! Burner) if anyone wants it? PM me. I burned a 10G VC-1 encoded discs with it sometime back and it works fine. Have a couple HD DVD-Rs as well.

[ocgw]

I just bought the first Hulk on Amazon for $6USD lol

thx for the suggestion

ocgw

peace

[orsetto]

One can only hope the HD-DVD vs BD war was the last such stupid egotistical Japanese pissing contest consumers will have to endure.

I find this comment to be ignorant of the facts and borderline racist. If you behave yourself in any retort, I won't report it to the mods, but I will warn you that in the past I have been forced to edit and apologize for similar statements, although in my case I said something nasty about Australians.

My statement was not intended as a racist attack on the Japanese, or Asians in general: if anyone was offended I apologize for the way that came off. My intended point is that the two giant Japanese corporations involved got into a prideful stupid counterproductive format war, after being warned repeatedly by Hollywood studios and consumer electronics vendors that it was a horrible idea. Please spare me any defenses on either side: the war was indefensible. I am not "ignorant of the facts", I've been in the video software/hardware business for decades and followed the events quite closely, with more trade data than most consumers have access to. Time and again, it was proved Sony had about as much genuine interest in the alleged "advantages" of BD as Toshiba had in the alleged "advantages" of HD-DVD. The only "advantage" either of them gave a damn about was who would get to collect the patent royalty checks and claim victory for creating a new standard. Considering both electronics giants had the development history of CD and DVD to learn from, they both behaved like asinine spoiled children. This inane competition used up the entire small window of opportunity to leverage packaged media to the HDTV age. That opportunity was squandered, along with buckets of Toshibas money and Sonys financial stability for the next decade. Absolutely insane, and absolutely centered around Tokyo egotism: this had nothing to do with their North American or European operations, whose managers all clamored for a single unified format. If the perpetrators of this fiasco were Donald Trump and Mike Bloomberg, I would have focused my rage on "foolish New York corporations and egotistical American CEOs". As it happens it was perpetrated by two Japanese conglomerates instead, so the blame falls there. No racism in that statement intended: whatsoever. But to please the PC nitpickers, I'll go back and neuter my original post to be utterly generic.

As far as the so-called advantages of the "winning" BD format goes, have you seen any yet? Data BD is dead in the water. Authoring BD on the PC is a huge PITA for everyone (except ocgw apparently). The promise of an entire TV season on a single inexpensive BD disc never materialized. The convoluted DRM screws with proper legit playback on some players/discs. Standalone BD recorders are vaporware outside of Japan and (ahem) Australia. Worst of all, way too many BD transfers are from hunger. I wouldn't be too impressed by holiday player and disc sales: long term it means less than you think. The studios have already moved on to hard-selling on demand service for same-day availability, and the new rental paradigm they're backing involves downloading to SD cards, from store kiosks and possible web services. Toshibas fingerprints are all over that one, they may yet get their revenge...

[ocgw]

One can only hope the HD-DVD vs BD war was the last such stupid egotistical Japanese pissing contest consumers will have to endure.

I find this comment to be ignorant of the facts and borderline racist. If you behave yourself in any retort, I won't report it to the mods, but I will warn you that in the past I have been forced to edit and apologize for similar statements, although in my case I said something nasty about Australians.

My statement was not intended as a racist attack on the Japanese, or Asians in general: if anyone was offended I apologize for the way that came off. My intended point is that the two giant Japanese corporations involved got into a prideful stupid counterproductive format war, after being warned repeatedly by Hollywood studios and consumer electronics vendors that it was a horrible idea. Please spare me any defenses on either side: the war was indefensible. Sony had about as much genuine interest in the alleged "advantages" of BD as Toshiba had in the "advantages" of HD-DVD. The only "advantage" either of them gave a damn about was who would get to collect the patent royalty checks and claim victory for creating a new standard. Considering both electronics giants had the development history of CD and DVD to learn from, they both behaved like asinine spoiled children. This inane competition used up the entire small window of opportunity to leverage packaged media to the HDTV age. That opportunity was squandered, along with buckets of Toshibas money and Sonys financial stability for the next decade. Absolutely insane, and absolutely centered around Tokyo egotism: this had nothing to do with their North American or European operations, whose managers all clamored for a single unified format. If the perpetrators of this fiasco were Donald Trump and Mike Bloomberg, I would have focused my rage on "foolish New York corporations and egotistical American CEOs". As it happens it was perpetrated by two Japanese conglomerates instead, so the blame falls there. No racism in that statement intended: whatsoever. But to please the PC nitpickers, I'll go back and neuter my original post to be utterly generic.

As far as the so-called advantages of the "winning" BD format goes, have you seen any yet? Data BD is dead in the water. Authoring BD on the PC is a huge PITA for everyone (except ocgw apparently). The promise of an entire TV season on a single inexpensive BD disc never materialized. The convoluted DRM screws with proper legit playback on some players/discs. Standalone BD recorders are vaporware outside of Japan and (ahem) Australia. Worst of all, way too many BD transfers are from hunger. I wouldn't be too impressed by holiday player and disc sales: long term it means less than you think. The studios have already moved on to hard-selling on demand service for same-day availability, and the new rental paradigm they're backing involves downloading to SD cards, from store kiosks and possible web services. Toshibas fingerprints are all over that one, they may yet get their revenge...

Lol you guys want to author a chit load of crap onto a BD-R, I am the opposite, all I do is eliminate the chit load of clutter on a blu ray, and I am certainly not the only one that realizes that BDMV folder structure and BDAV folder structure are so simular that the vast majority of BD players can't tell the difference between a stripped down BD and a BDAV

How the hell do you think we backup BD movies that play in our BD players?

Seriously, this is news?

BDAV is NOT another format, it is just a crippled BD (spine shot by our friends @ Sony)

But movie only is exactly what I want as I build my 1000+ movie, PC based HD "juke box" (400+BD and 300+DVD so far)

You want to burn an entire TV season on a disc, cool, I can dig it, I want to "backup" Hollywood on my PC

https://forum.videohelp.com/topic368691.html





ocgw

peace

[jagabo]

The only "advantage" either of them gave a damn about was who would get to collect the patent royalty checks..

Of course that's what it was about. That's what it's always about. Then you have engineers who grew up as the smartest kid in the class and now think they can do anything better than anyone else. Put those two together and you always get competing standards. Not to mention the "this time will be different" attitude.

I agree with jman98 that BD+ was a big part of Sony's win. Once AACS was cracked the studios backing HD-DVD jumped ship -- on the promise that BD+ was infinitely extensible. For those of you who don't know, BD+ is a virtual machine. This adds another level of security-by-obscurity, and in theory, every new Blu-ray disc can use a different program, and hence different algorithms, to encrypt their data.

[ron spencer]

It is also fairly straight forward to convert a HD-DVD to a blu ray so it is a "moot point"

It's hardly a moot point if you don't have an HD-DVD drive to read the discs.

RALMAO!!!! again and again and again...and again

get xbox 360 hd dvd and plug into PC!!!! plenty around

[lordsmurf]

I forgot that my Blu-ray drive was a combo until I read this thread. It plays HD-DVD too. Maybe I should buy one on clearance somewhere.

[orsetto]

I agree with jman98 that BD+ was a big part of Sony's win. Once AACS was cracked the studios backing HD-DVD jumped ship -- on the promise that BD+ was infinitely extensible.

Not quite. Sony's own studio, perhaps, the others have mixed feelings about loading more protection code than actual video on a disc. The other studios jumped ship from HD-DVD to BD because (of course) they had inside info that Sony would spend itself into oblivion before backing down, and Toshiba had already spent so much it couldn't afford to renew the bribe contracts it had with the studios that supported HD-DVD. You can go back to the trade press that very week: literally within days of Toshiba not renewing the payola contracts, those studios bolted. It wasn't because they loved BD+: that caused more technical problems than it was worth at the time, as a studio lure the pluses and minuses of it were a wash. And again, no one involved gave a flying infinitesimal crap about the alleged "advantages" of either approach: it was always ALWAYS a bullsh*t Sony/Toshiba ego trip contest. Actually more Sony than Toshiba, since they were the smug a**holes who repeatedly refused to even consider a compromise, no matter how much pressure the studios and other CE mfrs brought to bear. This will go down as the single most pointless moronic format drama in home entertainment history. BD will probably not last more than a few years before its superceded by generic technology with no single patent holder. Good: Sony can go screw themselves, they deserve it for ruining the whole HD media transition. They were so, so arrogantly certain the PS3 would be their ultimate stealth weapon: man, did I laugh when Wiii came out of nowhere. I have nothing against BD, but I loathe Sonys handling of it.